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She is 8, when she first comes to the planet. It’s green, mossy, with perpetual twilight, and when she first steps off the transport, she frowns at the sky, the sun glowing distantly. The man that brought her there smiles and says she’ll enjoy it.
There are already around 20 or so kids on the planet, and they greet her excitedly, saying that it’s a lot of fun. Her hands curl at her sides, and she’s led to her room by an older girl, and told that it really is fun here. She’ll fit right in.
Gem isn’t old enough to know right from wrong. She’s old enough to not have a family, her mother dead and her father forced to leave her on the street of a grimy planet with endless night because he couldn’t afford her and she was the youngest. She never met her parents, and she doesn’t want to—she can fend for herself. But she can’t sort the world that she sees into boxes, so she goes off of what she’s told, and that’s a very dangerous thing for a child to do. But Gem doesn’t know that.
She’s told by the other kids that this planet is for a school, that they were sent here by their parents or their guardians or found in dark, desolate spots for castaways that nobody wants. They say that they’re being educated for ships, that there’s a need for science and medicine and research officers, for pilots and captains and everyone else in between. They don’t realize how much they sound like they’re being made into an army, and Gem doesn’t realize it either. She is 8 years old, with curly red hair and bruised knees and a fanged smile, and she doesn’t know that her race is sought after for fighters, for tactical officers, for soldiers. So she learns math and science and reading and writing, and she also learns art and music and fencing, self-defense, sharpshooting, and she is 8 years old.
Gem is 10 when she meets a brown haired girl with dusky blue wings named Pearl. Pearl’s eyes are sad, and her smile is sad, and her voice is sad, and when Gem asks her why, she says she’s been taken from her brothers and she doesn’t know where they are and they don’t know where she is, and Gem tells her that’s silly, because the head of the school, although she doesn’t know them, is nice. They have to be, because all of the kids are getting really good educations, and Gem’s learning so much more than she ever would in that care home back on her old planet. She’ll become so much more than she ever could be on her old planet.
Pearl frowns but doesn’t argue, and Gem shows her around with a bright smile, and by the end of it, Pearl is smiling the tiniest bit as well. Then Gem shows Pearl her room, their room now, and she reassures her that it’ll be okay.
It’s a false comfort, but Gem doesn’t know that.
She meets Etho as well, who is quietly smart and wants to be an engineer, and he explains to her all of the different parts of a machine, how they interconnect and work together, how fixing a machine is like solving a puzzle, and you just have to look for the spot that’s out of place. Etho’s a bit strange—he has an odd fascination with frogs, and his hair is white and sticks out like it’s electrified, and one of his eyes is black and blue but the other is black and red, split with a scar. He tells her one day that it’s from a fight at a rally on his old planet—he’s a wardener, and his race is known for their constant wars. He explains that both his parents died in one of those wars, and Gem says that her parents didn’t want her, and Pearl says that she never knew her parents, just her brothers, and they promise to be each others’ family from then on.
Pearl says she misses her home. Gem and Etho ask her what it’s like, and she tells them about a planet covered in oceans, with rocky sea stacks that have entire towns hollowed into them. She says Jimmy and Grian are there right now, probably looking for her, and the certainty with which she says it makes them believe her immediately. She says Gem and Etho are welcome to come with her when she finally goes back.
Gem meets Joel, next, and he’s loud and impulsive and stubborn. He races Gem across the mossy ground and disagrees with Etho over the tiniest thing and shows Pearl how to play the piano. His antennae twitch in the air every time a stranger walks too close, and he’s protective of them. He eventually explains it’s because he was homeless for a while before he came to the school, and he says he wants to be a tactical officer with Gem. She says Pearl can be their diplomat and Etho can be their engineer and Joel will be captain and Gem can be the pilot, and Joel tells her she’d make a better leader than he would, and they laugh under that perpetually twilight sky, and nothing in the world can hurt them.
Gem turns 13 and Etho somehow manages to find a cupcake that they split four ways, and Joel, who apparently plays every instrument known to the galaxy, takes out a small fiddle-looking thing and starts to play it, and Gem grabs Pearl and they dance together in their mossy little field. She turns 13 and learns about biology, about trigonometry, about where the weak points on the body are. She meets Scott, whose accent is thick and hard to understand at first, and when she asks, he says that his blue hair is natural, and he slots into their little family perfectly. He tells them, one night, with genuine casualness in his voice, that his parents sent him here to get rid of him, and then he shrugs and says he misses his best friend, and Pearl says she misses her brothers, like she does every moment of every day of every week of every month of every year that she’s been at the school. And then Etho says he misses his parents. Joel says he misses the noise of the city he was in. Gem says she misses the love she was supposed to have from her parents, although that isn’t really true. Gem doesn’t miss anything about her old life.
Very late at night, Pearl admits, very quietly, that she doesn’t really like the school. She rushes on, explains that she loves her friends and the classes are nice, but she wants her brothers and her home, and Gem hugs her and says it’s okay, I understand, I don’t hate you .
Gem isn’t sure she really wants to be a tactical officer anymore. She sees kids with dead eyes and wet cheeks, kids who have lost their families or never had them to begin with. She sees kids that flinch at loud noises or jump at sudden movement, kids whose every step is silent because they grew up in a place where even the quietest noise could bring a storm. Gem doesn’t want to cause hurt—she’s a protector at heart.
There are two thousand, six hundred, and forty two kids at the school. Scott stands on his head and Etho makes a tiny little robot that claps its hands and Joel rants about whatever new thing he’s caught on, and Pearl looks at Gem and sees her. Her first friend. Pearl is the only one that knows Gem fully. Gem isn’t the only person that knows Pearl—but that’s okay too, because she knows her down to the wing that drapes across her when she leans on her, and really, it’s enough to know someone, even if you’re not the only one. Especially if you’re not the only one, because then you have someone to share your knowing with.
Gem and her future crew, her forever family, her best friends, lie on their backs in their field and talk about what will happen when they have their own ship, where they’ll go, what they’ll see. Who they’ll save. What will happen to their names.
She’s 14, when the virus comes. From who, from where, no one knows, but it slips among the students, the kids, like a deadly snake. It rears its ugly head and strikes, and seven kids are sick in the morning, but that’s to be expected—it’s a school and children are children—so no one thinks too much about it. Etho confesses to Gem that he’s nervous, hands fiddling with spare wires and springs, and she says everything will be fine and lets him walk her through how to make a simple carbon fueler.
Within the week, twelve more kids are sick, and the original seven are worse. The head of the school decides the seven kids will be quarantined, and their friends cry as they go.
Pearl tells them all that she thinks something bad is about to happen. Scott laughs and hands her a knitted moon he made for her, and she places it on their shared dresser, and Gem teases her for it. Neither of them acknowledge the creeping tension, waiting for the other shoe to drop.
Two weeks later, twenty three more kids have caught the sickness. The seven in quarantine are joined by eight more, and the school’s head makes an executive decision. Guards come to each room before they go to bed, barge in and examine every nook and cranny for anyone who’s sick. Pearl and Gem are both fine, and they squeeze their arms around their stomachs and pray their other friends can claim the same.
In the morning, when they meet in their field, Etho isn’t there.
Gem’s stomach drops. She and Pearl and Scott and Joel find Etho’s roommate, a kid named Tango with golden rods circling his head, and they learn he was taken last night, because his black and red eye made them suspicious. He didn’t have the disease, but now he surely will.
They sneak into the quarantine section, through beds with whimpering or sleeping or—in one case—comatose kids, to where Etho is, skin a deep blue and splotched with red. The red is, undoubtedly, the disease. He grins weakly, and tells them they shouldn’t be there, and says he’ll be fine, and they all know he’s lying but they agree with fake smiles, hands pressed close to mouths and noses to stop themselves from getting sick. They leave. Scott hands Etho a black crochet cat before they do.
That afternoon, the head of the school brings out the seven kids that were sick originally, now stick thin with sunken eyes and pale skin splotched with red. They say that the disease is contagious, and it can be caught way too easily. Pearl, Gem, Scott, and Joel exchange uneasy glances.
Then they say that the seven kids will be killed, to prevent any more severe cases from breaking out, and a wave of horror rolls through the crowd as they process the words.
Gem, Pearl, Scott, and Joel can only stand there as the seven are shot and fall, thinking of Etho.
In the night, there are cries, muffled conversations, a desperate attempt to hide someone before the guards come, but it doesn’t work. Neither Gem nor Pearl have the disease.
They stay up all night, trying to soothe each other.
In the morning, there are eighty five kids in quarantine, and another fifteen being led onstage. Etho is not among them.
The shots ring out, the kids drop, everyone huddles with their friends, afraid, crying, in shock at what’s happening. They can’t leave. They don’t want to die. They’re only children.
It continues on for weeks, like this. More get sick, more go to quarantine, more die in front of a firing squad. Tango joins Etho. Gem, Pearl, Scott, and Joel all meet in their field and hope against hope that Etho will stay safe.
One day, nearly two months after the first outbreak, Etho’s white hair and familiar face joins the lineup of four others, and Gem is screaming, and Pearl is shaking, and Scott is sobbing, and Joel isn’t able to move, frozen as they all stare at him. He gives them a small smile, mouths something they can’t understand, and then the shots ring out and he falls with the other kids, and something inside of Gem breaks. Scott is crying too hard to even see. Joel is still staring at Etho’s body.
That night, Gem decides she’s not going to die without a fight.
When they meet in their field again, smaller and lonelier without one of their family, she tells the others her idea. Pearl already knows it, but Joel and Scott don’t, and they start to smile as she continues, agreeing without hesitation. They want the head of the school to pay.
Gem and Scott sneak into the school head’s office, reading whatever they can to find if there’s a cure—or even what the disease is. Gem steals from the head—papers, files, a holopad. She and Joel type in long strings of code, trying to figure out what’s happening. Pearl visits the quarantine, tells the kids in there about who lives and who’s dead, who’s sick and who’s healthy. She sneaks them food, as well—they aren’t getting fed as much.
Gem and Joel finally find the truth, terrible, horrifying: there is no cure. Gem still has a fire in her that was lit when Etho died, and she doesn't give up easily. They’ll still do anything they can to undermine the people in charge. Because the people in charge are so, awfully, terribly wrong. By then Scott’s sick as well, and so now they have two reasons to do it—a curious wardener with a kind heart and a quietly brave aloian with a creative mind.
Gem steals from a storehouse, from the science labs, gives information to Pearl about who and why and when, but rebellion isn’t a cure, and Scott’s lead out, and all Gem can think is no before he falls as well, and she’s too numb to cry, and Pearl can’t even speak, and Joel makes horrible little gasping noises, trying not to cry.
Gem can’t think. Gem is consumed by rage, by horror, by the understanding that this isn’t right, this is horrible, this could’ve been prevented, they are just children —
Joel gets sick.
Joel gets sick, and they can’t do anything because all they are is kids, so Joel goes to the quarantines, and Gem is 15 and it’s all so unfair, why them, why this, it isn’t right! Pearl cries and cries, and Gem wishes they’d met somewhere else. Anywhere else. A safe place. There are 800 kids dying in that awful place, and they’re being malnourished, and killed, and it’s not fair, and Gem wants to scream.
Green eyes meet blue, and Pearl quirks her lips. I believe in you.
Forty more kids die. Seventy six more get sick. Joel’s in the quarantines, still.
Gem sneaks into the office to send a call for help.
Joel is led out. Gem and Pearl scream, shake, cry, yell his name, but he falls and then it’s only the two of them left, like the beginning but worse, a twisted mirror.
Pearl gets sick. Gem isn’t far behind. Pearl’s breaths are shaky as they’re lined up to die.
“I wish you could meet my brothers,” she whispers into Gem’s ear.
Gem squeezes her hand faintly. “I love you.”
“I love you.”
They fall.