Across the Universe

38 ELDER

“BUT IT’S OKAY,” I SAY. “WE’VE GOT EVERYTHING YOU NEED here on the ship. You won’t have to worry about clothes or anything.”

Harley punches me in the arm.

“What?”

Amy hugs her stuffed animal and picks up the notebook, pencils, book, and photograph she’s selected from her parents’ boxes. “I’m done here,” she says in a hollow voice.

Harley helps me load the trunks back into the locker. He keeps shooting me these looks and waggling his eyebrows at Amy, but I have no idea what he means by it.

Click. Whoosh. Thud.

Amy drops the stuffed animal and books, the pencils clatter on the floor, and the photograph drifts down. “I know that sound,” she breathes, and she’s off, running down the aisle toward the rows of frozen bodies.

“Amy, wait!” Harley calls, but I just chase after her. She skids around the corner in the row of sixties.

“Hurry up!” she screams.

I round the corner. Fog is rising from a glass box resting in the center of the aisle.

“Did you do this?” I ask, even though I know the answer.

“Of course not!” Amy says, her voice raspy, as if she’s trying to say everything at once. “Is she going to wake up like me?”

I glance at the box — there is a woman inside, a taller, heavier woman than Amy with dark kinky hair and darker skin than mine. The light at the top of the box blinks red. I look at the black electrical box. The switch inside has been flipped.

I jab my finger into my wi-com button. “Com link: Doc. Now!”

“What is it?” Doc’s voice fills my wi-com.

“Doc! There’s been another one! There’s another box out here! Come quick!”

“Wait, what?”

“Down in the cryo level. One of the other frozens. She’s been pulled outside. The light is red!”

“I’ll be right there.”

Doc disconnects the link. I hope he’s close. If he’s in the Hospital, he’ll be here in minutes — if he’s in the City or on the Shipper Level, it will be longer.

“What’s going on?” Harley asks.

“Someone’s done to this woman what they did to me,” Amy says. “Someone just unplugged me, left me here to die.”

“So will she wake up?” Harley asks.

“I don’t know. I think if we flip the switch back, put her back in… but I don’t know. I’m afraid to mess with it. It looks so simple, but…”

“Don’t let her wake up,” Amy says softly. “It’s bad, being frozen, but it’s better than waking up alone.”

My heart jerks. She still thinks of herself as alone.

“Elder?” a voice calls.

“Here!” I call back. “Number… ” I glance at the open door. “Number 63!”

Doc races down the aisle. He shoves Harley aside as he bends over the glass box. He wipes away the fog blurring the glass. “She’s not been out long,” Doc says. “She’s hardly melted at all.”

“That’s good, right? Right?” Amy’s fingers press against the glass box, like she’s trying to reach through the ice and hold the woman’s hand.

“Good,” Doc says. He bumps into me. I step back. Doc leans over the glass, looking at the electrical box. He plugs a floppy into a wire on the box and reads the numbers that pop up on the screen. He grunts, but I can’t tell whether it’s a good grunt or a bad grunt. He taps some more numbers onto the floppy, then unhooks it before flipping the switch. The light fades from red to green.

Doc shoves the glass box into the cryo chamber. He slams the door shut and pulls down the latch. A trace of cold swirls up around us, the only evidence that Number 63 was out at all.

“She’s fine,” Doc says. “You caught her in time.”

“Guys?” Harley calls. I look behind me in surprise — Harley has walked down the aisle and away from us, on the other side, out of sight.

“How did you know she was here?” Doc asks.

“I heard it,” Amy says.

Doc’s face scrunches in concentration. “That means whoever did this was down here when you were. Why were you down here, anyway?”

“I wanted to show Amy her parents’ trunks,” I say before Amy can mention how we were going to look at her parents. I somehow think admitting we were going to mess with the cryo chambers may not be a good thing to do now.

“Uh… guys?” Harley calls from two rows over.

“I don’t like this,” Doc says. “Whoever was down here when you were must have known you were here, must have known you would hear what was happening. Other than you three, did anyone else come?”

Amy and I glance at each other. “Not that I know of,” she says.

“Me neither.”

“Guys!” Harley shouts.

“What?!” I shout back.

“Come to the twenties row. Now!”

Doc starts walking, but Amy and I know better: we run. The urgency in Harley’s voice wasn’t false. Something is wrong.

When we round the corner, it’s clear what Harley was shouting about.

Another box lies in the center of the aisle. But this one has melted. And the man inside is already dead.