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171 pages, Paperback
First published September 28, 2021
“But I still wondered: if we didn't matter as individuals, then what were we saving the group for?”
“There was safety in being the one everyone else looked to. I felt everything, but I didn’t want anyone to know it.”
“I feel like I should tell you... that I now have a slug on each shoulder and three on my lap, all seeming vaguely uncomfortable that I'm touching them. I blame you, FM.”
“My father had taken to saying I was skysick, but it was the opposite – the sky terrified me. It was so big and wide I could fall into it and be swallowed up.”
“Before I joined the DDF, I hadn’t understood the mentality that pushed people to fight as one, to keep doing so even as their friends died around them. I’d never felt that violence was the best way to solve problems, though I understood that violence was the only solution that kept us alive when the Krell kept trying to bomb us out of existence […] Now though, I understood the glue that held us together, and it wasn’t stupidity. It was the bond shared by people who faced death together. It was a sense of belonging, of being a piece of something bigger, something important, though I still wasn’t convinced everything about it was good […] But there was something about knowing that without me my friends would be worse off that kept me flying even when it terrified me.”
“I’m as ready as I am right now, I thought. Maybe in this dangerous existence, that was as close as I was ever going to get.”
“And that smile. Stars, I could stand to see that smile every day for a long, long time.”
“For a while we’d been able to reach into the expanse of space – and if out freedom had been measured in kilometers rather than light-years, it had been ours.”
“As frightened as I’ve been of the stars – feeling like I could fall off the face of the world – I missed them now that they were gone.”
“I smothered a snicker. 'So Spensa talks to the stars, and you talk to…slugs.'"
“What did it change when any of us were gone? The DDF still churned out more cadets. If they ran out, they’d lower the age to take the pilot’s test and bring them in younger and younger. We’d keep sending groups on missions like this, never knowing if they’d come back, because our survival as a group mattered more than the individuals. I didn’t disagree with that; I saw the logic to it.
But I still wondered: if we didn’t matter as individuals, then what were we saving the group for?”