Page 19 of Shades of Earth (Across the Universe 3)

Still, when I unfroze him, I didn’t think he’d keep me locked up in the shuttle. The cryo chambers are all empty now, like forgotten shells washed up on a beach.

All except one. Orion’s.

My eyes drift to the door to the genetics laboratory on the far side of the cryo room. I slip easily through the crowd of formerly frozen people as I drift toward the gen lab. As soon as I reach the door, I type in the entry code and roll my thumb over the biometric scanner. Few people have access to this room, but Elder made sure that I could enter whenever I wanted.

Once I’m inside, the door zips shut behind me.

I am alone now with my thoughts and relative silence.

And Orion.

I stride forward, to his cryo chamber. Unlike the ones my parents woke from, this chamber is a self-contained unit. It stands upright, and a little circular window shows the man inside the ice.

My steps slow as I grow closer to him.

I don’t want to admit it, but I am starting to see Orion in Elder’s features. My gaze flicks to the large cylinder on the other side of the room, where dozens of tiny fetuses could be plucked from golden goo and turned into another clone of Elder.

Not another Elder . . . just another person with the same body. Elder’s mind is nothing like Orion’s.

I could never love Orion.

When Elder pulled me from my cryo chamber, he didn’t realize that he would wake me up and I’d never be able to be frozen again. But Orion knew. And he knew when he pulled Robertson and Kennedy out of their chambers that they would die choking on the tubes and cryo liquid in their throats, their eyes bulging and their hands clawing at the glass.

He knew.

I glance down at the timer under Orion’s face. 05:23:34 . . . 33 . . . 32 . . . 31 . . .

I bend over and quickly punch in the numbers to bring the timer back up to 24:00:00.

Twenty-four more hours of being frozen. Elder was able to program it to count down more time, but the timer is finicky. I check it every day now.

I force myself to stare into his frozen face, his iced-over eyes. I don’t want him to be here at all, separated from the new planet by nothing but ice.

But if I can’t see the new world yet, at least I can make sure he can’t either.

10: ELDER

I let myself have one moment of fresh air before sealing the bridge door shut behind the ten soldiers off to face the new planet. I don’t know how long I stand there, my forehead pressed against the cool metal.

It’s already begun.

I can feel what little control I had over the situation slipping through my fingers.

I shut my eyes, exhale loudly. I can’t let myself think this way. I can’t let myself live in Orion’s fears.

Noise swells from the cryo room, interrupting my dark thoughts. At first I think it’s just the natural volume of fifteen hundred people cramped together in one giant room, but then a voice screams in fury over the sound of all the others. I jerk up and race to the cryo room.

“What happened?” a woman’s voice shouts as I push my way through the crowd gathered around the last row of cryo chambers.

Amy stands in front of a tall Earthborn woman with long, thin arms and a giant head of bushy hair. The woman’s voice is muted by thick, snotty, gasping sobs as she wails again, “What ha-happened?”

Amy throws up both her hands and tries to take a step back, but she’s trapped by the rows of cryo chambers. The frozens are clustered around her, and my people are staring at them with nervous wariness in their eyes.

Amy says something in a voice too low for me to catch, but the woman’s answer is pitched so high everyone in the cryo room can hear: “He was murdered?!”

Oh, frex.

I pick up my pace, shoving aside the people in my way as I head toward Amy and the woman. When I reach her, Amy jerks her head at the screaming lady and whispers, “That’s Juliana Robertson. ”