A Million Suns by Beth Revis

truth. At least in this case. He finally says, “Eldest had thought of that. We have in storage a supply of over 3,000 black med patches.”
    â€œBlack?” I ask. I’d never seen patches that were black.
    Doc nods curtly. “In the event that the ship is no longer capable of sustaining life, the black patches will be distributed to the ship’s population.”
    And now I understand what the black patches are for. A quick death, rather than a slow one.

16
    AMY
    I PROP HARLEY’S LAST PAINTING UP ON MY BED AND STAND back. His laughing eyes are even with my own, but there’s no Mona Lisa–like illusion that he’s looking at me.
    â€œSo,” I say aloud to painted Harley, “just where is this clue Orion says is here?”
    I’m hesitant to touch the paint—I don’t want to do anything to damage it. Instead, I scan the painting with my eyes, looking for some hidden message from Orion.
    I get lost in the image—there’s Harley’s face, and the stars, and the tiny koi fish swimming around his ankle. There are all the memories. How can someone I knew for so short a time have left such an indelible print on my soul? Seeing him look this way, so happy and free, makes me remember that something about Harley, that spark, that joy, that
something
that makes me wish he was still here, now.
    I force my eyes to unfocus, to look past the image and into the paint. But there’s nothing there.
    I run my hands along the paint-splattered sides of the canvas. Nothing.
    Then I flip it over.
    I’ve never really looked at the back of the painting before. But now that I do, I notice a faint, almost invisible sketch made with a piece of charcoal or pencil from the looks of it. I squint, lean in closer, then pick the whole painting up and hold it up to the light.
    A small animal—this isn’t Harley’s sketching; his pictures were much more realistic. This cartoonish creature looks a little like a hamster, but with huge, exaggerated ears . . . a bunny. And beside it, a circle . . . or, rather, a flattened circle that’s more of an oval. In the center of the circle is a tiny square that looks like one of those super-thin memory cards Mom had for her fancy camera. It’s stuck to the canvas with something tacky, but when I slip my fingernail under the edge of it, it pops right off.
    I hold the object up on the tip of my index finger. Black plastic encases a thin gold strip of metal woven with silver threads of circuitry. What is this? It seems so familiar. I turn it over, but the other side is just hard plastic.
    And then it hits me—I
have
seen something like this before. I rush to my desk and pick up the small screen that showed Orion’s first video. Connected to a small port in the corner of the screen is an identical piece of square black plastic. The thing from the back of Harley’s painting
is
like a memory card . . . if I could just figure out how to swap it with the one already there.
    I squint at the back of the painting again, hoping for some other clue. And there, just under the sketch, are tiny words, barely legible.
    Follow me down the rabbit hole.
    â€œCuriouser and curiouser,” I say.
    Â 
    It takes Elder about 2.5 seconds to reach my room after I com him.
    â€œWhat’s wrong?” he asks, skidding through the door.
    I laugh at the way his eyes search my room, looking for a dragon to slay for his damsel in distress. “How’d you get here so quick?”
    â€œI was in Doc’s office.”
    The laughter fades. In the quiet, I’m reminded of the name he called me,
freak
, and the shape of Elder’s lips as he formed the word.
    â€œListen, Amy, I’m sorry.” I start to open my mouth, but Elder continues. “Seriously. I never meant to say that. I’m really sorry.”
    â€œI’m sorry too,” I say, looking down at my hands. It’s silly for me to