Page 28 of A Million Suns (Across the Universe 2)

Elder shakes his head. “That’s not possible; the cams down there were destroyed before Orion started to . . . ”

Started unplugging the other frozens.

For several moments, nothing happens on the screen. I’m just about to ask Elder if it’s paused or broken when there’s movement at the corner of the video.

A shadow first, snaking across the floor like a clawed hand.

And then . . .

“That’s me,” Elder whispers.

I glance at him, unsure of why his tone is so high and worried.

“Let’s—uh. Let’s not watch this. I don’t think we should watch this. ” His hand moves to stop the video, but I snatch it away.

“Why?” I demand.

Elder bites his lip, worry smeared across his face.

The Elder on the screen creeps forward. There’s no sound to the video, which makes it even weirder when on-screen Elder stops as if he’s heard something. After a moment, he turns to the square door that looks like it belongs in a morgue. He twists it open and slides the tray out.

And then I’m not looking at Elder anymore. I’m looking at me.

That’s me, frozen in ice. So still. I look dead. Horror curls my lip. That’s my flesh, my body. Naked. That’s Elder, looking at my naked body.

“Elder!” I screech, and smack him upside his head.

“I didn’t know you then!” he says.

“I didn’t know you were such a creeper!” I shout back.

“I’m sorry!” Elder ducks away from me.

The Elder on the screen looks up suddenly, drawing our attention back to the video. But after listening, head cocked like a worried bird, the Elder on-screen dips his attention back to me. He raises a hand—I notice that it’s shaking slightly—and places it on my glass box, just over where my heart is. Then he jumps—clearly startled by whatever sound he’s hearing in the background—and dashes off-screen.

“You just left me there?” I ask. I knew he had, he’d confessed it to me already—but to see it like that. To see me, left there so carelessly, helplessly.

Elder looks miserable. He’s not watching the screen at all; he’s just watching me, this look on his face like he wishes I’d scream and punch at him and just get it over with.

But I’m not mad anymore . . . at least, I’m not as mad as I am sad. And slightly disgusted. I don’t know how to put into words that sick, bile taste on the back of my tongue, so I don’t say anything, I just turn back to the screen.

For several minutes, nothing happens. I watch as a thin trail of condensation leaks from the edge of my glass coffin and drops with a tiny, silent splash on the floor. I’m already melting.

Suddenly, I don’t want to see this. I don’t want to watch myself wake up. I can’t relive drowning in cryo liquid, gagging on the tubes in my throat. I shut my eyes and turn my face away, even though it will take much, much longer for the me on-screen to melt all the way. But then Elder sucks in a breath of surprise, and my eyes fly back to the screen.

There’s another shadow there, wider and longer, creeping slowly toward my frozen self. A shaft of light highlights the side of his neck, the part where a spiderweb of scars reaches behind his left ear.

Orion.

The first thing he does is slam me back into the cryo freezer. He locks the door shut and turns to leave.

But then he pauses.

He stares for a long moment off-screen, in the same direction Elder had walked away in, and he taps his fingers across the top of the cryo chamber, thinking. Then, slowly, deliberately, he pulls me back out of the cryo chamber. He looks down at me for a moment.

And then he walks away.

Orion told me that he got the idea to unplug the frozens from watching Elder unfreeze me. And this is it. This is the moment when he realized how easy it would be to kill people who can’t fight back.