Page 27 of A Million Suns (Across the Universe 2)

“So,” I say aloud to painted Harley, “just where is this clue Orion says is here?”

I’m hesitant to touch the paint—I don’t want to do anything to damage it. Instead, I scan the painting with my eyes, looking for some hidden message from Orion.

I get lost in the image—there’s Harley’s face, and the stars, and the tiny koi fish swimming around his ankle. There are all the memories. How can someone I knew for so short a time have left such an indelible print on my soul? Seeing him look this way, so happy and free, makes me remember that something about Harley, that spark, that joy, that something that makes me wish he was still here, now.

I force my eyes to unfocus, to look past the image and into the paint. But there’s nothing there.

I run my hands along the paint-splattered sides of the canvas. Nothing.

Then I flip it over.

I’ve never really looked at the back of the painting before. But now that I do, I notice a faint, almost invisible sketch made with a piece of charcoal or pencil from the looks of it. I squint, lean in closer, then pick the whole painting up and hold it up to the light.

A small animal—this isn’t Harley’s sketching; his pictures were much more realistic. This cartoonish creature looks a little like a hamster, but with huge, exaggerated ears . . . a bunny. And beside it, a circle . . . or, rather, a flattened circle that’s more of an oval. In the center of the circle is a tiny square that looks like one of those super-thin memory cards Mom had for her fancy camera. It’s stuck to the canvas with something tacky, but when I slip my fingernail under the edge of it, it pops right off.

I hold the object up on the tip of my index finger. Black plastic encases a thin gold strip of metal woven with silver threads of circuitry. What is this? It seems so familiar. I turn it over, but the other side is just hard plastic.

And then it hits me—I have seen something like this before. I rush to my desk and pick up the small screen that showed Orion’s first video. Connected to a small port in the corner of the screen is an identical piece of square black plastic. The thing from the back of Harley’s painting is like a memory card . . . if I could just figure out how to swap it with the one already there.

I squint at the back of the painting again, hoping for some other clue. And there, just under the sketch, are tiny words, barely legible.

Follow me down the rabbit hole.

“Curiouser and curiouser,” I say.

It takes Elder about 2. 5 seconds to reach my room after I com him.

“What’s wrong?” he asks, skidding through the door.

I laugh at the way his eyes search my room, looking for a dragon to slay for his damsel in distress. “How’d you get here so quick?”

“I was in Doc’s office. ”

The

laughter fades. In the quiet, I’m reminded of the name he called me, freak, and the shape of Elder’s lips as he formed the word.

“Listen, Amy, I’m sorry. ” I start to open my mouth, but Elder continues. “Seriously. I never meant to say that. I’m really sorry. ”

“I’m sorry too,” I say, looking down at my hands. It’s silly for me to dwell on one word said in anger when we have the whole ship to think of.

Silence spreads between us, but at least he doesn’t look away from me.

“So,” Elder says finally, “what’s wrong?”

“Nothing’s wrong,” I say. “Just . . . strange. I found this. ”

I hold out the small black chip I peeled from the back of Harley’s painting and the screen I found in Dante’s Inferno.

“A mem card and a dedicated vid screen!” Elder says, laughing. “I haven’t seen these in years! Floppies pretty much replaced them. ”

“How do you use this mem card thing?” I ask, offering it to him.

“A dedicated vid is just a digital membrane screen,” Elder says as he gently pops out the original memory card and replaces it with the new one. The square chip snaps to the screen as if there was a magnetic pull between them. “It’s like a floppy, but you have to have a mem card in the back to make them work. ” He places the old mem card on the edge of my desk, then flips the dedicated vid over and swipes his finger across the screen. A glowing square pops up.

“Here, let me,” I say, taking the video screen from him and pressing my thumb onto it. The glowing box fades away, replaced with a video that starts playing automatically.

“That’s . . . that’s the cryo level,” I whisper. The angle makes it look like security camera footage.