Beyond Our Stars (12 page)

When I reached Celina was the moment I noticed a man lying on the ground with people surrounding him. I didn't have to ask. The moment Celina saw me she cried out the very words I didn't want to hear. “He died.”

No.
“Who died?”

“Demetri, he just died,” she was having trouble speaking through the sobs.

“How?” I rubbed her shoulders soothingly even though mine were going numb.

“They starved us. We were so thirsty, so tired. And Demetri, all of a sudden he let out a cry and then his eyes rolled into his head and he died, he just died…” she was bawling, her voice breaking. I hugged her with everything I had, my muscles aching to make her pain go away.

She pressed her face to my shoulder for a moment. “They took him. We were all trying to help him and then his body disappeared. I don't know. I thought they would save him. But then he came back and he still wasn't moving,” her voice broke on a sob, “he still wasn't moving. So we had to drag him out here.”

Suddenly she was ripped from my arms and someone else stood there, shoving her away from me.

“Don't cry like it was a tragic accident,” said the bald man from the Thirteen. Morgan. He was wearing our navy uniforms, but he had weapons strapped around him, an automatic rifle, a pistol, and a tranquilizer gun.

“How did you get those?” I yelled at him and started to run to go and tell Chief. Morgan grabbed me by my arm.

“See, this girl, she believed in the good nature of these things, and now look! One of our own is dead and she's not even angry?” He was riling the crowd, the vein over his forehead bulging.

“I
am
angry!” I yelled out, before he could put more words in my mouth. “This is wrong, they're wrong! But we can't attack them! Not like this! What are you going to do, shoot at them?” I kicked the butt of his rifle. His guns looked like toys. Useless, silly toys.

“We haven't been introduced, formally. I think you'll soon learn to pay me more respect. But I know exactly who you are.” Morgan smirked at me.

“You have no business with our weapons without approval from the Chief. Do you even have a plan?”

I heard a murmur shoot through the crowd. Maybe they were angry enough now to fight back against the aliens, but I knew they weren't stupid enough to do it without a strategy.

Unfortunately, Morgan wasn't a stupid man, either. The crowd wasn't his, not yet. People supported Chief, that couldn't be overthrown by one guy who couldn't even offer a new plan. He frowned and then scowled at me. But then he started to retreat back into the mix of people.

I clenched my teeth. Suddenly a piercing scream ripped through the murmurs of the crowd.

A woman screaming, to my left somewhere on the outskirts…my eyes searched… and then there was more screaming. I climbed up some crates. The mass of people swayed in a disorganized shift. People ran, and some fell, getting trampled in the rush.

A Local appeared for a spilt second at the edge of the crowd. Then he disappeared.

I remained in the center of the crowd, watching.

There he was again, his gray head and blue robe a bizarre sight among our people. Now he was several yards away, and walking swiftly. I'd never seen them move like that. They were always so composed, but this one was scrambling. It began running, hitting the bracelet it wore around its thick gray arm with its fist.

Then he disappeared again. Some people ran, some stayed. But he never reappeared.

“Could they have been inside the whole time? Walking among us?”

For the first time Chief sounded truly astonished. He was sitting in a chair next to his small wooden desk in his quarters, leaning back, rubbing the armrests of his chair so hard I thought the fabric would get torn off.

We'd known they'd been in before the Stacks showed up, but none of us had thought about the Site being infiltrated. When I thought about the CR-3ans watching us I figured they had a monitoring system, maybe the Stacks themselves collected information. I hadn't thought of them here, walking next to us, undetected.

“They must have cloaking tech,” I answered.

Somewhere in the midst of all of it Morgan had disappeared. I'd run to get Chief.

Of course, Chief Upton was much more concerned about Demetri's death and the appearance of the Local than he was about Morgan.

“I'm sorry,” I heard Chief say. I looked up, realizing I'd been distracted by my own thoughts. I was sitting cross-legged, one knee under my chin, in a chair across from him.

“For what?” I asked.

“I shouldn't have shown you I was scared. Look at you. You're worried too and you
never
are.”

I closed my eyes and mumbled. “That's not true at all. I worry all the time. People just don't see.”

“Well, you'll have to give me lessons then. Because I can't tell.” He rubbed his cheek and stared at the wall for a second. “You think I'm teaching you how to be strong or you're teaching me?”

I shook my head. “Does it matter?”

He gave me a single nod. “Right.”

There was a knock at the door and one of the Chief's ship engineers came in. “I went to our armory. It's been busted, like you thought,” he said to Chief. Then he looked at me.

“How much?” I asked, even though it was obvious the man hadn't said any more because he wasn't sure if I was supposed to know. Chief waved for him to continue.

“We're still counting. A lot more than he had on him. More than he'd need.”

“I'm coming down there,” Chief said, and got up, putting a hand on his lower back as he did. The stress was taking a toll on him. He looked exhausted. “We'll talk later,” he told me. “Please, if you can in this chaos, go get some sleep and
eat
more. Help an old man out, would you?”

“Sure, sure,” I said as I got up and left his quarters. I was still a little weak.

I made my way through the corridors toward the cafeteria, keeping a hand on one side so I wouldn't lose my balance.

When I made it through the doors it was total bedlam. People standing on top of tables, others crowded around the most vocal speakers. Most were ignoring their food in favor of talk about the spotting of the Local, about Morgan, about Demetri's death, about what we would do next.

They'd put out some fresh Steve meat. I didn't want to talk to anyone so I found a solitary place to sit and gulp my food down.

With my hair spilling in front of me like a shield from the argumentative crowd, I raised the bandaged fingers of my left hand to cover the side of my face. I shoved my fork into a piece of meat and was about to force myself to eat when a voice next to me said, “Chance told me that you're the one who got him, all of you, out earlier than the adults.” It was Billie.

I dropped my fork, glancing at her. She looked so much like her brother. Her shoulder length hair was that same golden brown. I could barely think I was so drained. “I didn't really do anything.” I felt like a failure after what had happened to Demetri.

“Chance said you were amazing,” Billie resumed.

Now I turned my head to Billie, keeping my hands propped under my chin. Why was she telling me this?

I didn't say anything. She searched my eyes for a second. “He told me that he misses you.”

I sat back in my seat, feeling desperation rush to my brain.

“He told you that?”

“Yeah. He wants you back, but he doesn't know how to say it,” she looked away as though she couldn't be less interested.

I could hardly believe what I was hearing. He was telling his sister this? He wanted me back? That would explain the whole angry kissing incident earlier today. If he needed me to make the first move, that was no problem. I'd do whatever it took. I was so close to breaking down and being alone was getting harder and harder.

“Anyway, I wanted to say thank you for helping my brother,” she said quietly, giving me a searching look. “I'll let you get back to your food. You look like you're going to pass out.” She got up quickly and left.

I started robotically shoveling food in my mouth. I let different scenarios roll around in my head. After the terrible things that had happened recently I needed this one thing to get better. I'd kiss him and…

Even though I wasn't sure what my move was going to be I was grateful to Billie for telling me.

I finished my food, feeling some of my optimism returning, and was about to go looking for Chance when I heard what the group of people next to me were saying.

“Yeah, they found him hiding out and locked him in quarters on the Reflection,” a man with blond hair said.

“I don't know, maybe Morgan has a point, Chief isn't really doing much. Maybe Morgan has a better plan,” said a woman I didn't recognize.

“Not so far, but supposedly he has something in the works,” answered the blond man.

“Who'd you hear that from?” someone else asked.

“Everyone's talking. People are making decisions,” the man said in a low voice.

Another man with striking blue eyes put his hands on the table and glared at the blond man. “You think this guy knows better than Chief? Are you serious? Where's your loyalty?”

I kept staring at my empty plate so they wouldn't notice me.

The blond man shook his head. “I'm sick of sitting around. It's time we did something.”

The group fell silent for a moment and it made me nervous.

“So is Chief going to punish Morgan? Maybe he should if he wants to hold on to power,” said the woman who'd spoken before.

The man with the clear blue eyes guffawed. “Morgan is nothing. Chief is our leader.” The man shook his head. “I asked. Chief is going to try and talk with Morgan, see if they can come to an understanding. He doesn't want our people to start fighting each other. I agree, we'll destroy ourselves before the natives even get a chance.”

The blond man snorted. “Yeah,
talk
to Morgan. Sure. That's why he has guards outside his room. Chief is scared.”

“That's what I think, too. He's weak and scared,” said the woman.

I pushed away from the table and left. I couldn't listen to this.

I made my way to my spot. I wanted to think. I was overloaded and unsure and I needed to go numb and thoughtless and lie like that for a while, until I had control over my feelings again. I didn't want to mess up again with Chance. And it seemed like everything I had thought about the Locals was wrong. One gesture of mercy meant nothing.

My place was a makeshift tree house, though it was barely deserving of that name. I'd enlisted Weeks to help me build it. We took one side of an empty wooden supply crate, carted it out to the trees with maroon leaves near the edge of the Stacks, and nailed it high up in the branches. The trees had no fruit right now so the area was usually deserted.

I wasn't that surprised when I swung up the branches to find Weeks lying prostrate on top of the flat board. He came here, too, sometimes. It was fine, I didn't mind his company.

In fact, he was kind of my friend now. Things weren't the same with Houston anymore. After my first time in the Stacks, I told her about it. But she only asked me things so she could go and spread what I said to other people. She was fascinated by my terror, by the times I'd felt like I was dying, as though I was telling her some spooky story meant to entertain. So I fazed her out. The only people who could understand had become my best friends.

Weeks didn't greet me and I sat down next to him, titling my head to look up. This was why I'd wanted to make this hideaway. To watch the lights in the sky and forget. They were beautiful tonight. The sun had gone down completely so I reached for the dirty white sheet we folded and left tucked between the board and the tree trunk for colder nights.

I offered Weeks half of the sheet, which he took without looking at me. We both kept our eyes on the sky for a while until Weeks finally said, “Do you think they'll come for us again soon?”

“I don't know,” I answered.

“Will you go in?”

I thought about it for a moment. “I don't know,” I answered.

“I'm starting to think they might not ever let us out of here,” he said quietly.

I didn't answer that. I couldn't. I was thinking the same thing. And I was supposed to be one of the ones who
knew
that we were going to somehow make it.

“Why do you keep taking their side, Hope?” He wasn't angry, he really wanted to know.

I pulled the sheet tighter under my chin. “I don't. I'm taking our side. Because if there's not some goodness in them, then I think we're all done for.”

Weeks and I fell into silence for a long time after that, watching the lights.

We fell asleep and I woke to him pulling on my shoulder.

I rubbed my eyes. It was daytime. I rolled over and groaned. My entire body ached from sleeping on the wood board. “What do you want?” I asked him, trying to pull the sheet over my head.

“Hope!” I finally roused myself when I heard the hint of alarm in his voice.

“What is it?” I asked groggily, sitting up.

A voice I knew came from below. “They're back,” Chance said. I started at the sound of his voice, like I'd been caught. I'd spent most of the night dreaming about him. It took me a second to comprehend what his words meant.

Not yet.
I wasn't ready. I'd spent more time trying not to think than actually thinking. And now they were back only one day later?
No, no, no.

I jumped down from the tree clumsily, landing with a thud. “Already?” I asked Chance.

He eyed my disheveled clothing and my hair and looked back up at Weeks. He answered, “I know.”

Weeks landed with an even messier thud next to us. “Whoa,” I grabbed his arm and steadied him. He looked at me. “After what happened? Has anyone gone in?” We started towards the tunnels.