Like the light.
Like me.
I never thought about how important the sky was until I didn’t have one.
I am surrounded by walls.
I have just replaced one box for another.
20
ELDER
ELDEST AND I DON’T TALK AS WE DESCEND IN THE ELEVATOR to the cryo level. We particularly don’t talk about how the alarm on the table on the fourth floor lay open and smashed, its guts spewing from it and spilling out on the floor. Broken. Useless.
When the doors slide open, the lights are already on.
“Back here!” Doc’s voice calls.
Eldest’s strides are long, although uneven with his limp, and I have to rush to keep up as we go down the aisle with the numbered doors. I seek out Number 42, but we’re going too fast for me to find it without stopping.
We round the corner and start down the aisle numbered 75-100.
One of the little doors is opened. The tray table has already been extended, and a cryo box lays on it. Doc is standing in front of it, his back to us, bent over the box, but even though he blocks our view, I can tell that something is wrong.
Eldest doesn’t hesitate as we approach.
I do.
The man inside the box is dead, floating in water with blue spar
kles. His arms are bent, his fingers curled into claws, and I know he died trying to escape the box as the cryo liquid melted. I know because his eyes are open, and his mouth is a gaping maw, and his face is twisted in anger and defeat. There is a pool of blue-specked cryo liquid on the floor underneath him, and red marks around his too-pale throat.
Eldest and Doc lift the lid together. The dead man inside bobs, his fingers and nose and knees pushing up at the viscous layer of the water.
“Who was he?” I ask.
“Number 100. ” The last box in the row, the last person cryogenically frozen.
This means nothing to me, but Eldest sucks in his breath. Doc nods at him in a knowing way.
The dead man’s head jerks and I jump back, startled. But Doc is just pulling at the tubes in the man’s mouth. With each yank, his body twitches violently. Water splashes from the box. I step back, but it still splatters on my boots. I go over to the table at the end of the aisle and pick up Doc’s floppy, running my finger along the edge to turn it on. The screen glows. I rest my thumb on the scanner square, and a message flashes: “Eldest/Elder override: full access granted. ” The screen fills up with images—icons, folders, notes. I search for Number 100, and after tapping around a bit, I find it: the dead man’s folder.
NAME: WILLIAM ROBERTSON
NUMBER: 100
OCCUPATION: LEADERSHIP SPECIALIST
STATUS: ESSENTIAL TO OFFENSIVE ORGANIZATION
PRIOR EXPERIENCE: UNITED STATES MARINES, ACTIVE DUTY IN WAR OF—
Eldest snatches the floppy from my hands. With a swipe of his finger, he blacks the screen.
“Pay attention,” he growls. He jerks his head toward Doc, who is finally reaching the end of the tubing. A small electrical panel pops out of the dead man’s mouth, and he sinks further beneath the cryo liquid.
“Well?” Eldest says. “Was it a malfunction? Another one?”