Across the Universe

68 ELDER

THE CRYO LEVEL IS SILENT, A DEEP, PENETRATING SILENCE that makes me feel like a trespasser in a private place.

“Harley?” I call. Where is he? He is supposed to be guarding this floor, protecting the sleeping frozens.

Silence answers.

I start walking through the aisles of cryo chambers, then I start jogging, and by the time I reach the seventies, I’m racing past the rows, shouting Harley’s name. My panic is weighed down by a sinking feeling in the pit of my stomach. With each pounding step, I ask the same question:

What if the murderer has moved on to awake victims?

I round the corner, fully expecting to see Harley’s body on the floor, a pool of blood, the murderer fleeing the scene.

Nothing.

I’m being stupid. He’s probably at the hatch. My heart is pounding. When I wipe the sweat from my neck, my fingers brush my wi-com button. I jab it quickly.

“Com link: Harley,” I pant as I head toward the hatch.

Beep, beep-beep. My heart thuds. If he doesn’t answer, I’ll go back, grab a floppy, locate him and—

“What?” Harley’s voice is sullen, impatient.

“Where are you?” I shout.

“On the cryo level.”

“I’m here, where are you?”

“At the hatch.”

I sigh with relief. Of course. Of course he’s at the hatch. My previous panic makes me feel stupid and frexing mad. I turn down the hallway and there he is, his face pressed up against the bubble glass window.

“What are you doing?” I shout. “Why aren’t you out there, guarding them?”

“You left me here all day!” Harley shouts right back. “Shite, I was bored, okay?”

“Amy’s parents are here, all those helpless people down here, and all I asked you to do was sit and watch them. Was that too hard for you?”

Harley narrows his eyes at me. “Don’t be such a chutz,” he says. “Just because you’re going to be Eldest some day doesn’t mean you can order me around.”

“Don’t even play at that. How long did you wait before you came back here to look at the stars? Or did you wait at all? Did you even check to see if there were any melting bodies before you turned your back on them? I seem to remember that the last guy died on your ‘watch.’ ”

Harley rushes me, grabbing me by my shirt collar with both hands and shoving me against the wall opposite the hatch. “How long did you keep them from me? When did Eldest first show you them?”

“What, the stars?”

“The stars, the stars, of course the frexing stars!”

“I only saw them a few days ago.”

“Lies!” Harley rams me further into the wall. I twist and struggle against him, but even though my fingernails scrabble against his hands, he doesn’t relinquish his grip. “You and Eldest, always so close.”

“Like I had a choice!”

“Maybe if she could have seen the stars, she wouldn’t have died!” Harley screams at me, his face scrunched in rage — and tears glistening in his eyes.

“What are you — Who?” I struggle to piece together what is going on.

“Kayleigh!” Harley says in a surge of grief. He lets me go, and I slide against the cool metal wall a few inches. “Kayleigh. Maybe if she had seen the stars, she wouldn’t have given up.”

Harley backs up to the hatch door. He places both palms against the door and presses his face to the glass window.

“No good, no good,” he mutters.

“What’s no good?” My voice is even, calm now. I’m remembering how Doc locked Harley up for weeks last time, certain that he’d try to follow Kayleigh in death. How closely the nurses watched his meds, how Doc always made sure Harley took the extra ones.

“Harley, why don’t you come with me? I’ll spend the night down here; you go back to your room and rest.”

“You want it all to yourself, don’t you?” Harley snarls.

“What? No!”

His face crumples. “I know, I know. You’re my friend, I know.” He turns back to the window. “But still, it’s no use. There’s no frexing point.”

“No point to what?”

“Doesn’t matter how long I stare. We’re never going to land, are we Elder? We’re never going to get off this frexing ship. We’re all going to live and die in this metal cage. 74 years and 263 days. Too long… too frexing long… This is the closest I’ll ever get to the outside, isn’t it?”

I want to tell him no, that he’s wrong, but I know that’s a lie. And I understand now, oh, how I understand why Eldest lies and makes the people all raise their children with the hope of planet-landing. If we don’t have that, what do we have to live for? Does it matter if it’s a lie if it keeps us alive? Taking away the chance for planet-landing has left Harley nothing more than an empty, desperate shell.

Harley has sunk all the way to the floor. He has a canvas there, but it’s covered with muslin, and I don’t have the heart to ask him what he’s painting. Instead, I leave him here, the closest to freedom he can ever be.

I’m not going to be the one to drag him away from the stars.

Back by the cryo chambers, I hobble together a pile of lab coats and a stray blanket and make something of a nest for myself in front of the big open room. I cannot stay awake, but I hope my presence forestalls the murderer — and if not, I hope that I’ll at least awake when the elevator dings. I’m so exhausted—so exhausted — and the weight of the ship, the stars, the hopelessness, Phydus, Amy, and Harley all crash on me at once.

I wake to the smell of paint.

Harley, I think.

I struggle with the lab coats I am lying on. Their arms drag me down, but I eventually disentangle myself from them.

“Harley?” I ask, breathing deeply.

I turn from the elevator to the cryo chambers behind me.

At first I think it is blood, but as I step closer to the cryo chambers, I see that it is only red paint — thick, not-yet-dry red paint. Dripping giant Xs mark some, but not all, of the cryo chamber doors. I touch the one closest to me — number 54—and leave a red fingerprint in the paint. Looking down this row, I see six doors marked with Xs; the next row only has three, but the row after that has twelve.

My immediate thought is that this is the killer’s doing, that he has marked the people he plans to unfreeze next.

I shake my head. Could the killer have been down here, while I slept beside the elevator? No — it must have been Harley.

But just in case…

I creep down each hall, looking for someone who might still be here, counting the marked doors. Thirty-eight doors are marked in total, and none of them give any indication of who painted them.

I envision the killer here, silently marking the doors of his victims while I slept. I shake my head again. Paint means Harley. This is Harley’s revenge for our shouting match last night; this is Harley trying to scare me or spook me, or he’s just being stupid.

Harley, it has to be Harley.

I can’t have let the killer stroll past me while I slept. I can’t have.

“Harley?” I call.

Nothing.

I run straight to the hallway, to the hatch, but before I get there, I know something is wrong.

The muslin-covered canvas is gone. Paint is splattered everywhere. For one sickening moment, I think that this is a crime scene and that the paint smears all over the floor and wall are blood splatters from a murder, but then I shake myself all over, and I whisper, “No,” because if this was a murder, then Harley would be dead, but he’s not here.

The control box beside the hatch door is broken.

The cover to the keypad has been pried off, and thin wires extend from the box through the shut door of the hatch.

Harley is inside the hatch, holding the keypad in his hand. He’s already tapping out the code.

I pound on the hatch door. Harley gives me a watery smile.

“I can get closer,” he says.

“Don’t!” I shout, banging against the glass.

Harley turns toward the hatch. He finishes the code on the keypad. The hatch slams open and Harley is sucked out into space.

For a moment, he looks back at me, and his farewell is in his smile. Then he turns to the stars.

And he is gone.

The hatch door swings shut, leaving emptiness.

Harley is gone.