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It was si was all laid out My parents and I would be cryogenically frozen We would wake up after three hundred years The planet would be there, waiting for us

The only thing on the agenda that actually happened is that ere all frozen But then I oken up early—no No He woke et that I can’t let et that the reason I’m here is his fault I can’t let the three months that have passed between us wipe out the lifetime he took away

For a moment, I think of Elder’s face—not handsome and noble like I know it now, but blurry and watery like the first ti body after pulling lass coffin where he found me I remember the war would be okay

What a liar

Exceptthat’s not true, is it? Of everyone on this ship, even the frozen bodies of my parents, Elder’s the only one who handed me truth and waited for me to accept it

The watery ie of Elder co hi hiht on the Feeder Level, when the sprinklers in the ceiling dumped “rain” on our heads so heavy that the flowers bent under the force, when I was still scared and still unsure, and droplets trailed fro on his full lips

I shake my head I can’t hate him But neither can IWell, I can’t hate him, anyway

The one I can hate? Orion

I wrap my arms around my knees and look up at the frozen faces ofwoken up early, without your parents, on a ship that’s asto fill your days but tiret

I don’t knoho I ahter Without Earth, I barely even feel huain So to define myself by

Another drop splashes down

It’s been ninety-eight days since I woke up Over three months And what should have been fifty years before we land has beco but a question mark Will we even land?

That’s the question that brings me down here every day The question that makes me open my parents’ cryo chambers and stare at their frozen bodies Will we ever land? Because if this ship is truly lost in space with no chance of ever reaching the new planetI can wake my parents up

OnlyI proo, as the point of keepingto land, why not just wake them up now?

When his eyes met oing to land ”