Across the Universe

14 ELDER

“MOMMA?” THE GIRL WHIMPERS IN A RASPY, UNUSED VOICE. “Daddy?”

Her brilliant green eyes are shut again; her sunset hair sprawls across the metal examination table in a matted, wet mess.

“How long will she be like this?” I ask Doc.

“A day. Maybe more. She wasn’t reanimated correctly. They are supposed to be removed from their cryogenic containment boxes before the process begins, and then they are supposed to be warmed in a reanimation bath, not left out on the table to melt. It’s a miracle she’s alive.”

I swallow, hard. It feels as if a rock is moving down my throat.

Doc picks up the end of the box connected to the tubes that had been down the girl’s throat. “Someone pushed the button,” he says. “It’s not supposed to be pushed until after the body’s prepped for reanimation. This disconnects the power.” He looks up at me. “She was unplugged. If we hadn’t gotten here in time…” He glances at the girl now. “She would have died.”

Shite. My stomach sinks to my shoes and stays there. “Just like that? Dead?”

Doc nods. “I have to com Eldest.”

“No, but—”

“You won’t be in trouble. You didn’t do this. In fact, I’m glad you’re here. Eldest told me you’ve begun learning about strong central leadership. This is the sort of thing that will teach you leadership.”

The girl’s chest moves up and down, but that is the only sign of life she’s willing to give me. Funny how different her body looks outside the ice. She seems smaller, weaker, more vulnerable. The ice was her armor. I want to protect her now, cover her curves instead of run my fingers over them.

I put my hand on her shoulder, marveling at the differences in our skin tones. She opens her eyes.

“Cold,” she whispers.

Doc stares down at the girl. “This is a frexing nightmare.”

I want to say, how can this be a nightmare, with her here? But then she whimpers, a soft pathetic bleat like the lamb I once had as a pet, and the rock is back in my throat.

Doc gets the girl a hospital gown, the kind with no back, but she cries when we lift her arms through the sleeve holes. Then he covers her with a blanket. She keeps her eyes shut, and at first I think she’s sleeping, but her breathing is rough, uneven, and I know she’s keeping herself awake, listening to us.

We don’t say much.

When Eldest storms into the cryo level, he brings all the fear back with him. He looks at her, he looks at me, and then he looks at Doc.

“Was it him?”

“No!” I protest immediately.

“Of course not,” Doc says. Then, to me, “He’s not talking about you.” He turns back to Eldest. “It’s impossible, and you know it. You’re being paranoid.”

“Who are you—” I start, but they both ignore me.

“It was a malfunction,” Doc says. “The power glitched on her box.” He holds up the electrical black box that had been on the top of Number 42’s cryo container. Its light still faintly blinks red.

“You’re sure of that?” Eldest asks.

Doc nods. “Of course I’m sure. Who would come down here, unplug a random girl, and leave? It was just a malfunction. The machinery’s old. I’m constantly having to repair it. She got unlucky, slipped through the cracks.”

More lies. I wonder how much of anything Doc says is true. After all, he had been checking her cryo chamber earlier today. And he was a lot more freaked out before Eldest showed up, when he told me someone pushed the button to unplug her.

The girl on the table moans.

“Who is she?” Eldest asks, his attention diverting to the girl.

“Number 42.”

“Was she—?”

“Nonessential.”

“Amy,” the girl croaks.

“What?” I kneel beside her, close to her cracked lips.

“My name is Amy.”

Eldest looks down at her. Amy opens her eyes — a flash of new-grass green — but shuts them again, flinching at the fluorescent light.

“Your name is immaterial, girl.” Eldest turns to Doc. “We need to figure out who reanimated her.”

“Where are my parents?” Her voice is a whisper, choked with pain. The others don’t even notice her.

“Can we put her back in?” Eldest asks Doc. Doc shakes his head no. His eyes are sorrowful.

“Don’t freeze me again!” Amy says, panic edging her voice. Her voice cracks from disuse, and she coughs.

“We couldn’t if we wanted to,” Doc tells Eldest.

“Why not? We have more freezing chambers.” He looks past Doc’s shoulder to a door on the other side of the room. I hadn’t noticed it before, but I log it away in my memory, to explore later.

“Regenerative abilities deteriorate greatly across multiple freezings, especially when reanimation hasn’t been done properly. If we put her in another cryo chamber, she might not ever wake up.”

“I want Daddy,” she whimpers, and even though I know that she is more woman than girl, she seems very much like a child now.

“Time to go to sleep,” Doc says. He pulls a med patch from his pockets and rips it open.

Amy’s eyes fly open. “NO!” she shouts, her voice cracking on the word.

Doc approaches her, and she flings her arm up gracelessly like a club, crashing into his elbow. The med patch falls to the ground. Doc picks it up and tosses it into the bin, then opens a drawer and pulls out another med patch. “It will make you feel better,” he explains to the girl as he tears this one open.

“Don’t want it.” Her eyes are pinpricks of black in pale green circles.

“Hold her down,” Doc tells me. I just stand there, looking at her. Eldest shoves me aside and pushes his weight against her shoulders.

“Don’t want it!” the girl screams, but Doc has already slapped her arm with the patch, and the tiny needles prick her skin like sharp sandpaper, sending meds into her system.

“Don’twannagosleepagain.” Her words slur together and are hard to understand. “Don’ wan… na,” she says, her voice dropping. A few small tears mixed with eyedrops linger on her lashes. “Not… sleep,” she says, even quieter and slower. “No… no more… sleep.” And her eyes roll back into her head, and her head sinks down amidst her sunset hair, and she loses all consciousness.

I stare at her, and even though her chest is moving up and down in steady breaths, she looks more dead now than she did in the ice.

I wonder if she dreams.