I start with the door to the left of the hatch. The keypad has both letters and numbers. I try typing in 27 first, but an error code flashes across the screen — ERROR: PASSCODE MUST BE FOUR DIGITS OR MORE. I try 0027 next, and when that doesn’t work, I spell it out: t-w-e-n-t-y-s-e-v-e-n. Nothing.
I move to the right, past the hatch, and try the password on each of the other two locked doors.
Still nothing.
Frustrated, I recount the number of the people on the list, but it’s still twenty-seven. I run back to the elevators and grab a floppy from the table there, checking the official record of frozens against Orion’s list. Twenty-seven.
The significance of who Orion listed isn’t lost on me — he’s trying to remind me that the number of frozens in the military indicates trouble for those born on the ship. He thought this was a good enough reason to try to kill them all, including my father. And while, yes, twenty-seven military personnel out of a hundred frozens may be large, Orion’s still a psycho to think my father would be okay with enslaving anyone.
I try the stupid doors one more time, but they still stay locked. Whatever the passcode is for opening the doors, it’s not 0027 or t-w-e-n-t-y-s-e-v-e-n.
Frustrated, I take the elevator back up to the Hospital and — after locking my door, just as I promised Elder — I stare at the wrinkled paper until I fall asleep.
For the first time in a long time, I dream about Jason, my old boyfriend back on Earth. In my dream, Jason and I are at the party where we met. Even though in my memory, the party is full of laughter and dancing and fun, in my dream all I see is cigarette smoke and jocks who splash their red plastic cups of beer on me. When Jason and I meet outside, it starts to rain — but it’s not romantic warm summer rain. It’s spitty, cold, sharp rain. My father would have called it “pissing rain,” and it stings my skin and gets in my eyes.
When we pull apart, Jason says, “I love you now that I can’t have you.”
And I say, “You were my first everything.”
But Jason shakes his head. “No, I wasn’t.”
And before I can figure out what he wasn’t my first of, he kisses me.
It’s sloppy and wet and awkward and our teeth clack together and his tongue feels like a dying fish in my mouth, flopping around.
I pull back — but it’s not Jason kissing me, it’s Luthor.
“You’ll never escape,” he says.
I want to run away, but my muscles are frozen as Luthor steps closer. His mouth opens in a wide grin, and his teeth are all black and rotten. I open my mouth to scream, but before I can, his lips crash against mine.
I wake up, struggling against my tangled quilt. My face is damp — with sweat or tears, I can’t tell. As soon as I escape my bed, I run to the bathroom and splash cold water on my cheeks, still gasping from the scream I never sounded in my nightmare.
I grip the sides of the sink with both hands, unable to stop shaking. I don’t recognize the girl in the mirror. Eyes red, lips cracked, fear spilling out. I don’t like admitting how much Luthor scares me. I wrap my arms around myself, squeezing them tight against my body. Why should I be so afraid of him when he hasn’t even really done anything? Is almost a good enough reason for fear?
Yes.
The room caves in around me. What I want to do is run, but I’m too afraid of what lurks in the dark, in the places where there’s nothing but cows and sheep and no one to hear me shout for help.
And that pisses me off.
It’s not just Luthor, though he’s the biggest part of it. It’s the eyes that glared at me in the City. It’s the way some of them, like Harley’s mother, Lil, still flinch when they see me. It’s the fact that it will be this way for the rest of my life, and there’s nothing I can do to stop it, no more than I could jumpstart the ship’s engine. I can’t change what I am or where I came from, and because of this, they’re never going to accept me.
I dress quickly — so quickly that I mess up my hair wrap and have to do it over again. I doubt anyone’s awake yet, it’s so early, but I don’t want to risk it. I make sure the paper I found last night is tucked securely in my pocket and then I am out the door, through the silent Hospital, and racing down the path. When I reach the grav tube dais, the solar lamp clicks on, momentarily blinding me. I press the wi-com on my wrist and activate the grav tube.
The winds start up, and for a minute I think about jumping out, just comming Elder and asking him to come get me. A few strands of my hair float up. Then the winds accelerate and even more hair escapes from my scarf, reaching up like thousands of tiny arms. For one instant my toes are on the ground but my heels are lifted, and then whoosh! I’m sucked up into the tube. I shut my eyes. I don’t want to see the Feeder Level shrink away as I soar higher and higher. I don’t open them again until the winds die down and I step out onto the Keeper Level.
I try to smooth the scarf over my hair, then give up and rip it off, stuffing it into my jacket pocket. I don’t have to hide my hair from Elder anyway.
I open my mouth to call for him, then snap it shut, realizing something.
For the first time in three months, I didn’t start my day by talking to my parents on the cryo level.
When I woke up sad and lonely and empty inside… I came straight here.
Straight to Elder.
Just like Victria went straight to Orion.
Orion was wrong about me. It’s Elder who’s my safe place. Elder’s my home.
The Keeper Level is silent. I’m going to feel like an idiot if I’ve come all the way up here and Elder’s not around. But as I cross the Great Room, I can hear soft snoring. Elder’s bedroom door is open. I lean through the doorway.
He looks younger asleep, the exact opposite of the fierce aging that yesterday’s chaos spread across his face. The room is messy in a way only a boy’s room can be messy: clothes everywhere, despite the fact that he’s got a “hamper” that automatically cleans clothes right there. There’s a musky scent in the room, something that doesn’t exactly smell like Elder, but that reminds me of him even more. You could drop me anywhere in the universe, blindfolded, and I’d know this was his room just from the smell.
I step over piles of clothes and sit on the edge of his bed, near his feet. Elder’s bed dips, and his eyes flutter open.
“Amy,” he says in a sleep-heavy voice, warm and smiley, drawing the syllables out so that my name ends with “meeee.”
“Amy!” he shouts, sitting straight up in bed. “What the frex — how’d you — why are you here?”
I grin. “I found this,” I say, tossing the folded paper I found in my cryo chamber at Elder’s lap. He reaches for it, stretching in a way that reminds me of a cat.
“What is it?” he asks as he reads the page.
“It’s a list of everyone in the military who’s frozen on the cryo level. I double-checked it against the official records.” Elder looks confused, but then I add, “It’s the next clue Orion left for me… for us.”
Elder stares at the paper, brow furrowed in thought. “The last clue was about adding things up.”
“Yeah,” I say. “I counted — there are twenty-seven people on that list. But I tried twenty-seven — the number, spelling it out — it didn’t work. None of the doors opened.”
I don’t know what I expected from Elder — for him to suddenly remember another locked door somewhere on the ship or for him to magically add up the list to something other than twenty-seven, but all he does is say “Hmmm,” and toss the paper back to me. He slides out of bed, and once he’s past the covers, I see that he’s not wearing pants. In fact, all he has on are a pair of boxer shorts — made of thin white linen and considerably shorter and tighter than the boxers boys wore on Earth. I stare openly. When I’d raced up here and plopped onto his bed, I hadn’t thought about what he’d be wearing — but now—