Across the Universe

69 AMY

I WAKE UP WITH THE PAINTBRUSH STUCK TO MY FACE. Harley would laugh if he could see me now, call me his Painted Fish.

By the door, there is a flashing red square of light. It’s the button to the small rectangle metal cubicle beside the food cubicle. When I push it, the tiny door zips open and a big blue-and-white pill pops out. So that’s what that door was for.

The Inhibitor medicine. The medicine that keeps me sane.

I stare at it, disgusted. It sticks in my throat as I swallow it. It burns going down, and fills my belly with a sense of revulsion and urgency that leaves me sick to my stomach. I push in the button to the food door, and it leaves me a pastry filled with something that is almost eggs and that oozes with something that is almost cheese. I’m done after a bite. I’m tired of almost. I want something real.

I return to my wall. Taking Elder’s advice, I ignore my name and my list of characteristics. What can I or anything about me have to do with murder?

With my name gone, I see it, standing out before me as brightly as if the words were written in different colored paint.

The military.

Each victim, even the woman who hadn’t died — all of them had worked for the military. Tactical specialists, offensive operations, bio-weaponry. They were frozen for their ability to kill — and they were the ones being killed.

But why me? Why was I unplugged? I have nothing to do with that.

Elder had said, Maybe you weren’t meant to be unplugged, maybe you were an accident or something.

An accident…

Maybe the murderer had meant to unplug someone else…

Someone else in the military.

Like Daddy.

I jump up and race to the door, my heart thudding. Everything falls into place if the killer meant to kill Daddy, not me. He’s killing people with fighting backgrounds.

The door slides open, and I crash into Orion.

I start to mutter my apologies and step around him to go to the cryo level and tell Elder what I’ve figured out, but Orion grabs my wrist with viselike strength.

“Let me go,” I say. He’s gripping me just where the men held me down before Harley saved me, his fingers pushing into the same bruises.

“Harley painted this,” Orion says in his soft voice. I stop trying to pull away from him and notice the muslin-covered canvas in his hands. “He told me to give it to you when I gave him some wire.”

“What is it?” I ask, curious.

“A painting. For you.”

Orion releases my wrist and presses the canvas into my arms. As I look down at it, he fades into the shadows.

I step back into my room, set the canvas up on my desk, and peel off the muslin, which sticks a little to the still-wet paint. It is the most beautiful painting I’ve ever seen. It’s a self-portrait — Harley floats in the center of the canvas, surrounded by sky and stars, his face upturned in an expression of rapturous joy, his arms spread wide as if he’s about to wrap me in a hug. A tiny koi fish swims amongst the stars around his ankles.

My fingers tremble as I touch the painted Harley’s face, but I snatch them back: the paint isn’t fully dry. In his face, I see something I’ve only ever seen once before, and that was when he was talking about Kayleigh.

Somewhere, hidden under the paint, I understand what Harley meant by giving me this.

He was saying goodbye.

So when Elder bursts into my room a moment later to tell me that Harley has killed himself, I am not surprised.