Across the Universe

71 AMY

THE DOOR AT THE END OF THE HALLWAY IS LOCKED.

“How are we—?” I stammer. “What are we going to do?”

Elder kicks the door in.

He rolls his thumb on the scanner, punches the button, and then we’re going down, down, so achingly slow.

I rub my pinky until it hurts, thinking about all the promises I made with Daddy. “What are you doing?” I ask Elder as we sink past the first floor.

“Checking the biometric scanner log-ins,” Elder says. He taps on the floppy. “Harley came down midday yesterday. I came down after dark. This morning, Doc and Eldest came down, and it looks like they’re still there, in the other lab. But look — there’s no record of Orion scanning the elevator pass — it just shows Eldest’s log-in again, but he was in the lab then.”

He passes me the floppy. Sure enough, Eldest/Elder is recorded once after Doc and then, fifteen minutes later, it shows up again.

“He figured out a way to trick it,” I say. Could this elevator go any slower?!

“You can’t,” Elder mutters, stuffing the floppy into his pocket. “It scans your DNA. You can’t trick it.”

The doors slide open.

Cold hits us like a blast.

Dozens and dozens of frozens lie exposed, their trays pulled out, the condensation already fogging the glass coffins, obscuring the bodies frozen inside. All the doors swinging open have freshly painted Xs on them. Elder was right. The killer was marking his victims, preparing for one last kill, one fell swoop to kill every frozen person in the military.

I have only one thought.

“DADDY!” I scream, knocking past Elder and racing to the cryo boxes. I rush to the aisle with the forties, and there, midway down, is my father’s frozen body. I wipe away the condensation and stare at his face for just a moment.

I am gripping the cold glass lid, and I’ve got enough adrenaline inside me to pick it up and throw it down on the concrete floor. I want to. I want him to wake up, to break him out of the ice, to make him hold me against his warmth.

I want this.

I glance at the electrical box near his frozen head. The light is green, not red. Orion just pulled the trays out, he didn’t unplug them as he had unplugged me.

Thuds and crashes surround me. Elder is running up and down the aisles, cramming all the other frozens back into place and slamming the doors shut behind them. I push Daddy’s frozen slab back into the cryo chamber and swing the door shut. The red X painted on the door mocks me. I turn the handle down and lock it in place. I allow myself one last look at the door labeled 41, then I sprint down the aisle to the next exposed frozen.

It doesn’t take long. The doors are shut, all the frozens safely returned to their frozen state.

And no Orion in sight.

“Why did he do this?” I ask, panting from the effort.

Elder’s breath rises in faint clouds from his lips. “I was in the way.” He’s thinking as he speaks, realizing the truth as he answers. “Pulling out all the doors while I was here… that would have woken me up — that would have been much noisier than marking the doors with paint. And once they were marked… of course I’d run to you, and he’d have plenty of time to just pull out the frozens he’d already marked….”

“But why?” I say. “Why bother? Surely he knew we’d go straight here, see what he did… He didn’t even really unplug them, but pulled them all out.”

Elder pauses. “It’s almost like he was testing us.”

“What do you mean?”

“He’s showing us his plan. He’s waiting to see what we do. Would we let them melt, or shove them back in?”

“Of course I wouldn’t let my daddy melt!”

Elder stares at me. “I don’t think the test was for you.”