No.Not like this.
I claw my way to the hatch, hooking a hand down inside, onto the ladder, and I turn, looking back… where Noah still has his arms pinched around Holt, squeezing, not letting go, not for anything. The ship heaves one last time, tips too far to one side, and I meet Noah’s eyes—river green, sunrise green, my-heart-screaming-in-my-chest green. “No!” I shout.
But he shakes his head, and his mouth parts, saying something to the wind, to me—it looks like words I never thought I’d see anyone say. Little words, tiny and lost to the tottering sky.I love you.And then, his faraway eyes blink, arm choked around Holt’s throat—his father, his enemy—he’s finally going to end it, once and for all. A smile finds his eyes,finds me, the last shiver of warmth in them… just before he slips over the edge of the ship.
And is gone.
A scream rises in my ears, a wailing cry—a sound that is coming from some dark place inside my gut. I feel myself shatter, every bone and fiber disintegrating apart.
I feel my skin peel open, baring the last of me, the awful, worthless pieces that are left.
The air is a swarm of bees in my ears, my eyes starting to lose their sight, a blackness seeping over my vision. I don’t even feel myself tumble down the ladder, landing on my side. I barely feel myfeet slipping across the smooth floor, staggering through the door and into the chair in the tiny room. Tears cascade down my cheeks, but I feel my palm slam against the blinking light. I feel the jolting around me, the little room—the lifeboat—breaking free from the destroyed ship that’s grinding across the beach. I feel my body sinking against the chair beneath me as if my limbs are worthless, bones turned to water.
I feel everything being ripped away from me.
Destroyed, drowned.
Taken.
Cruelly, awfully.
The walls of the lifeboat change. They aren’t walls at all, they’re windows—and below, I can see the ocean, the ship suspended beneath me, then getting farther,farther, away. I close my eyes, and I swear I can hear Noah’s heartbeat thudding in my ears, feel every exhale of his lungs, every lift and shudder of his eyelids. It all becomes a drum against my skull.He is the only thing I hear.All that’s left.
No drops of salt water on my skin.
No dark matter breaking me open.
There is only air rushing into my ears… and I am drifting between stars. Slipping up beyond the horizon, beyond the atmosphere, where I can see it all. The black hole like a massive orb, darkness spilling into it and around it, reflective and shimmering with all the stars it’s eaten, blinking their final gasps. And our planet, our tiny home, is moving closer to it, nearly at the apex—the point of no return. Only seconds now, until it’s swallowed up. Leaving nothing in its wake, no ripple of what had been—a planet, once rested here, perched at the edge of a galaxy.
I was too late.
My headthuds, thuds.
This isn’t how it was supposed to happen; this isn’t what my ancestors had planned. They thought there’d be more time—once the sister stars appeared, and the other colony’s planet was finally close enough for the lifeboat to reach.You will be the first to leave,Mom would explain, looking me in the eyes when she said it, making sure I understood.You will reach the other colony, and you will return with their ship. You will gather the rest of us. You—she would touch my face—will save us.
But she got one thing wrong: The black hole choking out half our sky was closer than she realized. She thought I’d have time before it swallowed up our sky, our planet.
Instead I reached the ship too late. And I’ve saved no one.
Only myself.
A broken girl who’s lost everything.Everyone she loved. An Astronomer who was supposed to fix it all—thecure—a hundred years of waiting.
But it was for nothing.
And I failed.
Tears stream down my face—worthless, vile tears. I am made of water and bone-cracking, unspeakable, immeasurable pain. I am nothing now. Only a memory of Noah—tipping over the edge of the ship, pulling his father with him, ensuring that Holt wouldn’t reach me, wouldn’t stop me. He sacrificed himself so I could live. But I don’t want any of it.
Through the windows, through the salty, unbearable blur of tears, I watch as I spin farther away—from Noah, from the hurt inhis eyes—and the sky turns a deeper blue, a deep black, stars and particles of light beginning to peek out from the dark. But behind me, the black hole is amassing, my planet draped in shadow, a flickering, vibrating wave, and then finally… I hold my breath, wanting to look away, yet I force myself to watch—I need to see it happen, I owe them that, I owehim—a witness to the end.
Observing the last final seconds before it all—
In a sudden, unremarkable flash, the planet seems to quiver, vibrate, and then… without a sound, without a crash or a whimper or a scream… it’s gone. Vanished.
Slipped into the precipice of the shadow, and blinked out.
Noah is gone and I want to rip out my own heart; I want to go back and tumble over the side of the ship into the sea with him. I want to press my palms to my eyes until everything goes black with death.
