Across the Universe

“What’s she trying to do, drink it all up?” Doc asks, reaching into the watery mess for the girl.



I stand back, horrified. “No,” I whisper. “She’s screaming.”



13



AMY



PAIN.



Cold so cold it burns, but not with a burning that cauterizes, no, a burning that razes, decimates.



Pain.



My stomach muscles seize. Can’t vomit empty.



Eyes see only blobs. Some bright. Some not. No focus.



Mucus slips down my nostrils, down the back of my throat. Choke. Gag. Cough.



Water sloshes in my ears, muffling the intonations of deep, male-voiced speech around me.



Hands lift me from the slush of my glass coffin, and it feels as if they are rescuing me from quicksand. The cryo liquid clings to me, pulling me back into my watery grave, dragging cold fingers across my skin.



They lay me on something cold, hard, and flat. A funnel-like mask is fitted over my nose, and air so warm it hurts blows into my nostrils, reminding my lungs to work. Hands press something sticky onto my skin, and shortly thereafter, my muscles cramp painfully.



Two gentle hands hold the sides of my head still, while two rough fingers rip open my eyelids. No, I think, I don’t want more eyedrops. But plop! plop! The cold liquid falls onto my eyes. I blink painfully, my tears mixing with the goo they’ve put there.



The rough hands go for my mouth next. At first, I don’t know what’s happening, and I let my lips part easily. Then I realize that the person is doing something, and cold liquid drips down my throat, but I don’t know what it is, so I clench my teeth and shake my head, but my neck isn’t used to moving, so my head just sort of rolls around for a bit.



The gentle hands steady my head again. A face peers into mine. A boy—about Jason’s age, but taller and broader and more muscly than Jason had been. Dark olive skin; milk-chocolate eyes with flecks of cinnamon that are narrow at the ends, almond-shaped. It’s a handsome face, one I want to trust. As I stare at him, a sharp pain pierces my head; I am not used to focusing my eyes on anything.



The boy speaks, and while my ears are still too blocked to hear anything clearly, his tone is kind and reassuring as he taps my jaw. I let my chin drop—a nod, yes—and then part my lips for him. A warm, viscous syrup that tastes almost like peaches, but with an alcoholic bite, drips down my tongue, coating my throat. Some of the soreness fades.



The boy peers down into my face.



“Mmgnna gedyup,” he says. I find that I can’t understand him. He nods at me, like he’s trying to tell me it’ll all be okay, but that’s not true—it won’t be okay, how could anything ever be okay again?



The boy grabs my right hand; the rough hands grab my left. And before I can make my neck move—no!—they jerk me up into a sitting position.



I feel as if I am breaking in half.



Once, I was ice.



Now, I am pain.



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.



15



AMY



I AM AWAKE. BUT I DO NOT STRETCH, YAWN, OR OPEN MY EYES. I am not used to doing any of that. At least, not anymore. So I lie here, becoming aware of my senses. I smell mustiness. I can hear someone breathing softly, as if asleep. I feel warmth, and it is not until I realize this that I remember I am no longer frozen.



My first thought: how much of the dreams and nightmares was real?



Even now, the dreams I had while frozen are fading, becoming fuzzy memories, like dreams do. Did I really dream for three centuries, or did I dream for the few minutes between fully waking and unfreezing? It felt like centuries, dream upon dream piling up in my head—but dreams are like that, time isn’t real. When my tonsils were taken out, I had dozens of really detailed dreams, but I was only under the anesthesia for an hour or so. Besides, I couldn’t have dreamt when I was frozen—that’s impossible, dreams can’t flit through frozen neurons.



But what about those stories of patients who are awake during surgery, even though the anesthesia is supposed to knock them out?



No. Ignore that. It’s not the same. I could only have dreamt in that small time when my body was melting but my soul hadn’t yet. If I start thinking about time, and how much passed, and how aware I was of it passing, I’ll drive myself crazy.



I force my eyes open. I can’t be haunted by dreams—whether they’re centuries old or not—if I am awake.



The crinkle of my eyelids feels new to me, and I revel in opening my eyes.



And then—oh—I strrrrretch. My muscles burn. I can feel them all tightening, the muscles at the small of my back, the ones running along the sides of my calves, the slender muscles wrapped around my elbows.