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and over through my mind. Will you kill me? There was a huge amount of trust that went with that request. In a perverse way, it was an honor to be asked.

“I need you to promise me, Dean.” Arun looked at me through pleading eyes. “I need you to swear to me. If I’m gone for good, you have to kill me. I don’t want to live my life as a puppet controlled by Legion. I won’t give him that satisfaction. Please promise me.”

I couldn’t bring myself to voice the words, but I nodded.

“Swear to me.” Arun reached out and grabbed my wrist with more strength than I would have thought she was capable. A brief flash of blackness raced over her eyes and I was afraid she was reverting into madness again. “Swear to me, Dean!”

“If you turn and there is no way to bring you back”—I paused, swallowing hard—“I’ll be the one to end you.”

“Thank you, thank you,” Arun said gratefully, releasing my arm. “I hate to put this burden on you, but you’re different, whether you see that or not.”

I ignored that comment. I had enough to deal with at the moment. I had just agreed to kill one of the few people I considered a friend.

“The letters?” I said instead.

“The one I wrote to Elon gives him my last instructions on how to save the colony,” Arun said, biting her lower lip in concentration. “The one I have for Ricky explains what he’s come to mean to me.”

“Why don’t you just tell him?” I asked. “I mean, you still can now. Why wait to let him read it from a letter?”

“He’s been nothing but wonderful to me since I’ve known him,” Arun said, shaking her head sadly as she stared at the ceiling of the Orion. “He doesn’t deserve to hear how I feel about him now only to lose me if I should die.”

“No way,” I said.

Arun looked over at me, confused. “What?”

“No way,” I repeated myself. “You don’t get off easy. If I’m supposed to kill you, you don’t get to die without having these hard conversations. You tell Ricky what he means to you while you have the time. I wish I would have told my wife what she meant to me more often before she was gone. If you have the chance now, you take it.”

“He’ll be devastated if I don’t make it,” Arun said.

“He’ll be devastated anyway reading it from a note,” I said, tossing the letter with Ricky’s name back to her. “At least this way he gets to hear it from you rather than a piece of paper.”

“Dean—” Arun said, about to try and convince me again.

“Not doing it,” I said. “You tell him. If you care about him, give him that at least.”

We regarded each other a moment longer in the quiet of my words before we were interrupted by a familiar voice.

“Arun!” Ricky dashed through the tent flaps into the room. He looked at me with a happy smile that worried me. “Oh, sorry, I came as fast as I could. Stacy is on board with the plan to help the Rung as long as Elon and Arun are. I mean, did you tell them already?”

“Oh, I told them,” I said, placing a hand on Ricky’s shoulder and giving Arun a meaningful look. I headed out of the tent. “I think Arun has something to say to you.” I left them both staring after me.

5

I ducked out of the tent a moment later to let Arun and Ricky have their much-needed conversation. Elon stood outside, his arms folded across his chest, his head bent forward in desolation. He had a mountain of problems weighing on his shoulders. I didn’t envy him the slightest.

“Need another drink?” I asked, remembering how I had found him in the downed Orion before as he tried to drink his problems away. “Or maybe you just need to break something?”

“Both,” Elon said with a sigh. “I know I should tie her down, but how do I bring myself to do that? Am I really going to restrain my sister?”

“We have got to believe that the Rung are telling the truth,” I said, trying to navigate the conversation away from his personal problems to the more global ones at hand. I wasn’t really one for making people feel better, preferring to change the subject when things became too emotional. “I’ll head out tonight. If the Rung are telling the truth, we’ll know soon enough.”

“Thank you,” Elon said, fixing me with those bright blue eyes of his. “I mean that, Dean. I don’t know where this colony would be without you.”

“Just doing my part,” I said with an offhand shrug as I headed toward our tent city. “I’ll talk to a few others today to see if I can round up some volunteers to go with me.”

“Maybe I can go with you.” Elon brightened a bit. “If Ricky stays here to watch over Arun and Stacy oversees the—”

He shut up as I turned to give him a hard stare.

We both knew he couldn’t come with me. He had too much of a responsibility to these people.

As if he could read my thoughts, he slowly nodded with a rueful smile. “Be safe.”

I smiled back and turned, making my way through the city of tents, passing people as they washed their clothes, prepared meals, or whatever work they were given to do that day. Everyone, unless they were too sick, too young, or too old, had a job to do to benefit all.

While Elon oversaw the entire colony, Stacy had taken over security, and Boss Creed managed to bring order to the everyday chaos that was our lives. He set up a system dividing people into groups and having each group work on a different project. These projects ranged from cooking, to washing clothes, to scavenging parties going into the Orion, and more.

Boss Creed had a knack for order, and he was a