Without waiting for my reply, Amy pushes past me and into the shuttle.
The shuttle is eerily silent. Dust motes move in the air. Even our footsteps are muted.
I half expect Orion to be casually sitting in the cryo room, waiting for us.
But of course he’s not.
“In here,” Amy says in a whisper, approaching the gen lab door. The air inside the shuttle is musty and stifling. How could we have ever considered living here instead of outside?
Amy presses her thumb against the biometric lock. She lets out the breath she’d been holding as the door zips open.
We step inside.
“Where is he?” Amy asks. She stares at the cryo chamber. Before, Orion’s face was frozen against the glass. But now—now there’s nothing behind the little window. No cryo liquid. No Orion.
“That’s impossible,” I say.
Amy looks around the gen lab, as if she thinks Orion is going to jump out from behind the Phydus pump and say “Boo!” But I walk to the cryo chamber, dread twisting me up inside. The counter on the cryo chamber blinks 00:00:00. Out of time.
The door opens with a whoosh and a hiss of released air and pressure.
Orion is crumpled on the floor of the chamber. His skin is red and raw, and he looks like a heap of flesh, not a person. But he shivers, and that is the only way I know he’s alive.
Amy gasps, and I glance at her. Her eyes are open wide with horror, her hand covers her mouth. She hates Orion, but she’s not heartless. No one could look at this shell of a man and not feel pity.
“Orion?” I say softly.
One shaking hand reaches out, still damp and shimmering ever so lightly with the blue of the cryo liquid.
I take the hand. It’s soft—not soft in a sweet way, but soft in the same way that a wet sponge is soft. When I try to help him stand by pulling on his arm, Orion opens his mouth, and a raw, gasping, breathless scream emits from his lips. It sounds like a death rattle.
He’s dying.
The idea hits me all at once, so suddenly that I nearly gag at the thought, but I know it’s true.
He’s dying.
As Orion struggles to stand, all his muscles weak and atrophied, my mind flashes back to the moment when we froze him. We—I—just shoved him in the cryo chamber and turned it on. We didn’t prepare his body. No electric pulse scanners on his skin to help him adjust to reanimation. No drops in his eyes or cryo liquid in his blood. His regular clothes still on.
Past our gripped hands, blood leaks out of the cuff of his shirtsleeve. His skin is fused with his clothing, and it rips away as easily as wet paper.
Amy shoves a wheeled metal table toward us, and as soon as Orion’s fully upright, I help him shuffle two steps so he can sit on the low tabletop.
His back hunches. His hair, still dripping sparkling blue cryo liquid, hangs down in clumps. He’s heaving, as if he’s just run a great distance, sucking at the air with every ounce of energy he has. His fingers curl like claws, and he raises them to his face.
That’s when I notice his eyes.
They are open and bulging, the same way they were when he was frozen. There’s a pale blue film over his irises, though, like cataracts but a brighter color, the same blue of the flecks in the cryo liquid. His clawed hands run down his face, over his now-closed eyes, stopping at his mouth.
He mumbles something into his fingers.
Beside me, Amy is shaking. Her own eyes are wide open, staring at this animalistic shadow of a man.
Orion’s hands drop to his side.
I lean down, trying to meet his eyes. But I can’t. His eyes don’t focus.
He’s blind.