She couldn’t hear the countdown.
She couldn’t hear the screams.
All she could hear was the sound of her mother’s ragged breath.
Glass was on the floor, cradling her mother’s head as blood blossomed on Sonja’s chest, turning her shirt a deep red Glass had always tried and failed to achieve with dyes.
The deranged guard was shouting something at Glass, but she couldn’t make sense of it. There was a flurry of movement as Luke locked his arms around the man’s neck and dragged him off the dropship.
“It’s okay,” Glass whispered as tears streamed down her cheek. “You’ll be okay, Mom. We’re going to make it to Earth and then everything will be fine.”
“We’re running out of time!” someone shouted. In the back of her mind, Glass registered that the door was about to close, that the countdown was somewhere around thirty seconds, but she couldn’t process the implications.
“Glass,” her mother said hoarsely. “I’m so proud of you.”
She couldn’t breathe. Couldn’t speak.
“I love you, Mom.” Glass forced the words out of her mouth and clasped her mother’s hand. “I love you so much.”
Sonja squeezed it back, just for a moment, before she sighed and her body went limp.
“Mom,” Glass gasped as a sob tore through her. “No, please…”
Luke reappeared at Glass’s side. Everything that happened next was a blur.
Her mother’s last words rang in her head. Louder than the screams and shouts from outside the dropship. Louder than all the alarms. Louder than the frantic thud of Glass’s broken heart.
You’re so brave, so strong.
I’m proud of you.
“Want me to walk you back?” Wells asked, shooting a nervous glance at the clock. “I didn’t realize how late it was.”
Glass looked up. It was close to midnight. Even if she ran, she still wouldn’t make it home before curfew. Not that she would run—that was a surefire way to catch a guard’s attention. “I’ll be fine,” Glass said. “None of the guards really care if you’re out past curfew, as long as you don’t look like you’re up to something.”
Wells smiled affectionately. “You are always up to something.”
“Not this time,” Glass said, slipping her tablet into her bag as she rose to her feet. “I’m just an overworked, studious girl who lost track of time doing her math homework.” In the old days, before her dad left, Glass would never have been caught dead studying. But now, it was one of the only chances she had to see Wells. And, weirdly, it was kind of fun.
“You mean, you lost track of time watching me do your math homework.”
“See? This is why I need your help. You’re all about the logic.”
They were sitting in Wells’s living room, which was even neater than usual. His mother was in the hospital again, and Glass knew he wanted to make sure the flat was in perfect condition whenever she came home.
He walked Glass to the door, then paused before he swiped it open. “Are you sure I can’t walk you back?”
She shook her head. If Glass were caught breaking curfew, she’d be given a meaningless warning. If Wells were caught, it would mean weeks of frosty treatment from his father—hardly what he needed right now.
She said good-bye and slipped into the dark, empty corridor. Glass was glad she’d gotten to spend some time with her best friend, even if they had been studying. She barely saw him anymore. When he wasn’t at school, he was with his mother at the hospital, or at officer training. She’d see him even less when they finished school and Wells became a full-time cadet.
Glass moved quickly and quietly down the stairs and onto B deck, which she’d have to cross to get to her own residential unit. She paused for a moment as she passed the entrance to Eden Hall. Remembrance Day was coming up. While she’d spent the past few weeks agonizing over her dress—she had to work so much harder to find something, now that she and her mother were living off their own meager ration points—she’d made very little progress in the date department. Everyone assumed she would go with Wells. If neither of them found a date, they probably would end up going together, but it would just be as friends. She could no more imagine kissing him than she could envision moving to Walden.
Then again, Glass had never spent much time thinking about kissing anyone. The real fun was in making the boys want to kiss her. Picking out a dress that was sure to send a boy’s heart racing was far more fun than letting him drool all over her face, like Graham had that one time he’d cornered her at Huxley’s birthday party.
Glass was so absorbed thinking about her outfit for Remembrance Day that she didn’t even see the guards until they were right in front of her. There were two of them, a middle-aged man with a shaved head and a younger man—a boy really, just a few years older than Glass.
“Everything okay, miss?” the older man asked.
“Yes, fine, thank you,” Glass responded with a well-practiced mixture of politeness and indifference, as if she had no idea why she’d been stopped and couldn’t be bothered to find out.
“It’s past curfew,” he said, eyeing her up and down. His gaze made her uncomfortable, but she knew better than to let him realize that.
“Is it?” she asked, flashing him her warmest, most brilliant smile. “I’m so sorry. I lost track of time studying at a friend’s flat, but I’m on my way home now.”
The older guard snorted. “Studying? Yeah, what were you studying? Brushing up on your anatomy with one of your boyfriends?”
“Hall,” the younger guard said. “Cut it out.”
His partner ignored him. “You’re one of those girls who thinks the rules don’t apply to you, aren’t you? Well, think again. All I have to do is enter a record of this incident, and you’re going to find yourself in very different circumstances.”
“That’s not what I think at all,” Glass hurried to say. “I’m sorry. I promise that I’ll never break curfew again, no matter how hard I’m studying.”
“I wish I could believe you, but you strike me as the kind of girl who loses track of time about as often as she takes off her—”
“That’s enough,” the younger guard said in a commanding tone.
To Glass’s surprise, the bald guard fell silent. Then he narrowed his eyes and said, “All due respect, sir, but this is why they don’t have members of the engineer corps patrol the halls. You might know a lot about spacewalks, but you don’t know much about keeping the peace.”
“Then you’ll have to make sure you don’t end up on another one of my patrol shifts.” The younger guard’s voice was light, but his gaze was intense. “I think we can let her off with a warning this time, don’t you?”
The older guard’s mouth curled into a sneer. “Whatever you say, Lieutenant.” The title spoke louder than his bitter tone. Clearly the younger guard outranked him.
The younger one turned to Glass. “I’ll escort you home.”
“I’m fine,” Glass said, unsure why she was blushing.
“I think it’s best if I do. We don’t want you to have to go through this same process again five minutes from now.”
He nodded at his partner, then set off with Glass. Perhaps it was because he was a guard, but Glass was acutely aware of his movements as they walked down the corridor. How he seemed to shorten his naturally long stride to match her pace. How his sleeve brushed against her arm when they turned the corner.
“Do you really do spacewalks?” Glass asked, eager to fill the silence.
He nodded. “Once in a while. Those kind of repairs don’t happen very often, though. They require a lot of preparation.”
“What’s it like to be out there?” Glass had always loved to stare out the ship’s small windows, wondering what it would feel like, to go into the stars.
He stopped and looked at Glass—really looked at her, not the way that most guys did when they gave her a once-over, but as if he could see what she was thinking. “Peaceful and terrifying at the same time,” he said finally. “Like you suddenly know the answers to questions you never even thought to ask.”
They’d reached Glass’s door, but she found that the last thing she wanted to do was go inside. She fumbled with the thumb scanner clumsily.
“What’s your name?” she finally asked as the door opened.
He smiled, and Glass realized that it wasn’t the fact that he was a guard that was making her chest flutter.
“I’m Luke.”
Luke never let go of her hand. Not when the dropship detached from the launch deck with a violent shake that made most people scream. Not when the beeping alarm and rumble of the thrusters gave way to a startling silence. Not when Earth began to approach, closer and closer, until the window filled with gray clouds.
“I’m so sorry,” he said, raising their interlocked hands to kiss her fingers. “I know how much you loved her. How much she loved you.”
Glass nodded, worried that if she spoke, the tears would come again. The pain was so new, so raw, she hardly knew what shape it would take, what sort of scars it would leave. If her chest was going to burn like this for the rest of her life.
But she would have a life—a life filled with trees and flowers and sunsets and rainstorms, and best of all, Luke. She didn’t know what would happen to them once they reached Earth, but whatever it was, they could face it, as long as they were together.
The dropship began to rumble, and Luke squeezed Glass’s hand a little harder. Then the entire ship began to thrash and careen to one side, unleashing a torrent of screams.
“I love you,” Glass said. It didn’t matter that Luke couldn’t hear her. He knew. No matter what happened, he would always know.