Page 78 of Across the Universe (Across the Universe 1)

It doesn’t have to be like this. I may be awake, and it may be impossible to put me back inside a cryo chamber. . . but that doesn’t mean I can’t see my parents.

I stand. This time, I don’t look for my parents’ faces in the ice. This time, my eyes seek out the tiny black box at their heads, the one with the blinking green light. The one with the switch under the cover.

It can’t be that hard. Flip the switch. That’s all I have to do. I will stand here and wait. I will pull them from the box when it melts so that it won’t drown them. I will help them climb out of their coffins. I will wrap them with towels, and I will hug them, and they will hug me. Daddy will whisper, “Everything will be okay now,” and Mom will whisper, “We love you very much. ”

They’re essential, a small voice whispers in my mind. I see the row of flags on the bottom of the door, the symbol for the FRX, the Financial Resource Exchange. They are a part of a mission that’s greater than me.

Mom’s a genetic splicer, a biological genius. Who knows what life we’ll see on this new world? She’s needed.

But Daddy—he’s with the military, that’s all. He’s a field analyst. He’s sixth in command, let the five in front of him be essential, not him. They can take care of the new world; Daddy can take care of me.

“I’m the failsafe. ” I can hear Daddy’s strong, proud voice in my mind, just like the day he told me we’d be a happy frozen family, wasn’t I excited? “That’s my mission—if anything goes wrong, I’ll be there. ”

A glorified backup plan. They needed him in case something went wrong. But what if nothing went wrong?

If I leave them Mom, maybe they won’t mind that I take Daddy back. He’s not really needed.

My hand is already on the box over Daddy’s head. I run my finger across the biometric scanner at the top. The light blinks yellow. Access denied. I don’t have high security clearance; I’m not important enough to be able to open up the box and flip the switch and wake Daddy up.

But I can smash it. The whole idea plays out in my mind—my eyes wild and my hair swinging as I beat the box with my fists until it shatters and I can press the button and melt Daddy.

It’s such a ridiculous image that I laugh. A high-pitched hysterical laugh that breaks with a dry sob.

I can’t wake up Daddy. He’s needed. I know he is, even if I don’t want to admit it. I’m proof enough that he’s needed—they wouldn’t have let me come if he weren’t. He and Mom knew what it meant when they signed up for the ship. I remember that first day. They were both willing to say goodbye to me so they could be on this ship. Daddy had already arranged it so that I could walk away from them. When he hugged me before he was frozen, he was hugging me goodbye. He never expected to see me again. He didn’t even pack me a trunk. He gave me up so that he could wake up on another planet.

I can’t take his dream away.

If he can say goodbye to me, I can say goodbye to him.

Besides, I’m not so selfish as not to remember my status. I was the nonessential one, not them. If food won’t grow or animals won’t live, Mom will make it happen. If there’s a bunch of evil aliens already on the new planet, Daddy will take care of them.

Either way, they’re the difference between a whole planet of people living and a whole planet of people dying.

I can’t take them away from that. I can’t kill their dreams, and I can’t kill the future inhabitants of the planet I won’t reach until I’m older than them.

I can wait. I can wait fifty years until I see them again.

I slide their trays back into their cryo chambers and push the doors shut, then head silently back to the elevator and my lonely room.

I can wait.

44

ELDER

“WHAT’S THAT NOISE?” I ASK, ONLY NOW NOTICING THE churning sound.

Eldest glances over his shoulder, where the room makes a hard right angle. “The water pump’s back there. ”

I frown. The water processor is on the Shipper Level, not here. But then I remember the blueprints Orion showed me before Amy woke up. There was another water pump on the fourth level in the diagram.

“This is old,” I say.

“How do you know that?” Eldest asks sharply, but I ignore him.

I step forward, inspecting it. It’s nowhere near as big as the pump on the Shipper Level. There’s a control panel and, above that, a nozzle. The pump on the Shipper Level is used to recycle, purify, and distribute water. This pump is just designed to mix something into the water. An empty bucket rests beside the pump, a thick, syrup-like substance coating the inside.

“What’s that water pump for?” I ask.