Carve the Mark (Carve the Mark, #1)

by Veronica Roth

covered with screens that showed whatever was above us—in this case, the Shotet sky. Pipes and vents crowded the space from all sides—it was only big enough for one person to move around in, really, but along the back wall were emergency jump seats, folded into the wall. I pulled them out, and Akos and I sat. I helped him fasten the straps across his chest and legs that would keep him steady during launch, and handed him a paper bag in case the ship’s movement made him sick. Then I strapped myself in. All through the ship, the rest of the Shotet would be doing the same thing, gathering in the hallways to pull jump seats from the walls and buckling each other in. Together we waited for the ship to launch, listening to the countdown on the intercom. When the voice reached “ten,” Akos reached for my hand, and I squeezed, hard, until the voice said “one.” The Shotet clouds rushed past us, and the force bore down on us, crushing us into our seats. Akos groaned, but I just watched as the clouds moved away and the blue atmosphere faded into the blackness of space. All around us was the starry sky. “See?” I said, lacing my fingers with his. “It’s beautiful.”