Across the Universe by Beth Revis Read Free Book Online Page B

the fourth level.
    And now that he’s said it—yeah, I really do. “Here, let me see that.” I push Orion out of the way and tap on the wall floppy, searching. It takes me a few minutes, but then I find what I’m looking for. “Let’s see what the designers put there,” I say, grinning in triumph.
    A blueprint flashes on the screen, but it’s much more complicated than the diagrams of the ship’s levels. I squint up at the lines, trying to trace pipes and electrical wiring and separate them from the walls and doors. The image is so big that I either have to zoom in and scroll, or zoom out and squint.
    “I don’t understand any of it,” I say finally, throwing my hands up.
    “I started with the elevator.” Orion scrolls the blueprint up, and suddenly I recognize the building whose blueprints I’m seeing. The Hospital. He points to the fourth floor. “There’s a second elevator.”
    “There’s no second elevator!” I laugh. I’ve spent my share of time in the Hospital, and there’s only one elevator there.
    “At the end of the hall, there’s another elevator. The blueprints don’t lie.”
    “All the doors on that floor are locked,” I say. I know. I’ve tried them all. And they’re not locked with biometric scanners—I could get past those with a swipe of my thumb. No, those doors have old-fashioned Sol-Earth locks, made of metal. Harley and I once spent a week trying to break in until Doc caught us.
    Orion’s shaking his head. “Not the last door. That one’s open. And there’s a second elevator there.”
    I laugh again. “There’s just no way. If there was some secret elevator leading to a secret level of the ship, I’d know.”
    Orion just looks at me. His silence is an accusation: Would I really know?
    Eldest has kept things hidden from me before. Maybe there is another level.

7
    AMY
    I HEAR SOMETHING .
    A creak. My door is open, my little morgue door is pulled open, and it’s brighter here, I can see a tinge of light through my sealed-shut eyelids, and now something, someone is pulling out my glass coffin.
    Something makes my glass coffin lift up; there’s a sensation in my frozen stomach like being pushed on a swing, and I try to hold on to the feeling, assure myself it is real. Did they lift the lid off? I can hear—I can hear!—muffled cadences of speech through the ice. Growing louder! The sounds are not just vibrations through the ice, they’re sounds! People are talking!
    “Just a little more,” a voice that reminds me of Ed says.
    “The ice melts quickly.”
    “It’s the—” I don’t catch those words—a whooshing sound washes over me.
    And warmth. I feel warmth for the first time in 301 years. Not ice—but a tingly sensation, crackling against the nerve endings in my skin, washing me with a feeling I thought I had lost forever. Warmth!
    “Why hasn’t she moved yet?” says the first voice again. It doesn’t sound like harsh, careless Ed now, but gentler Hassan.
    “Add more gel.” Something is being rubbed into my skin. I realize that, for the first time in over three centuries, someone is touching me . Gentle hands knead my cold flesh with a goo that reminds me of the Icy Hot lotion I used on my knee when I twisted it at a cross-country race my freshman year. I am so happy I might explode.
    And that’s when I realize I can’t smile.
    “It’s not working,” says the gentle voice. It sounds sad now. Defeated.
    “Try—”
    “No, look, she’s not even breathing.”
    Silence.
    I will my lungs to pump air; I will my chest to move up and down with the rhythm of life.
    Something cold—I never want to feel cold again—is pressed against the top of my left breast.
    “No heartbeat.”
    I concentrate all my will on my heart—beat, dammit! Beat! But how can you tell your heart to beat? I could no sooner have told it not to beat before I was frozen.
    “Should we wait?”
    Yes! YES. Wait—I’m coming. Just give me some time to thaw, and I will rise from the