“Harley?” I call. Where is he? He is supposed to be guarding this floor, protecting the sleeping frozens.
Silence answers.
I start walking through the aisles of cryo chambers, then I start jogging, and by the time I reach the seventies, I’m racing past the rows, shouting Harley’s name. My panic is weighed down by a sinking feeling in the pit of my stomach. With each pounding step, I ask the same question:
What if the murderer has moved on to awake victims?
I round the corner, fully expecting to see Harley’s body on the floor, a pool of blood, the murderer fleeing the scene.
Nothing.
I’m being stupid. He’s probably at the hatch. My heart is pounding. When I wipe the sweat from my neck, my fingers brush my wi-com button. I jab it quickly.
“Com link: Harley,” I pant as I head toward the hatch.
Beep, beep-beep. My heart thuds. If he doesn’t answer, I’ll go back, grab a floppy, locate him and—
“What?” Harley’s voice is sullen, impatient.
“Where are you?” I shout.
“On the cryo level. ”
“I’m here, where are you?”
“At the hatch. ”
I sigh with relief. Of course. Of course he’s at the hatch. My previous panic makes me feel stupid and frexing mad. I turn down the hallway and there he is, his face pressed up against the bubble glass window.
“What are you doing?” I shout. “Why aren’t you out there, guarding them?”
“You left me here all day!” Harley shouts right back. “Shite, I was bored, okay?”
“Amy’s parents are here, all those helpless people down here, and all I asked you to do was sit and watch them. Was that too hard for you?”
Harley narrows his eyes at me. “Don’t be such a chutz,” he says. “Just because you’re going to be Eldest some day doesn’t mean you can order me around. ”
“Don’t even play at that. How long did you wait before you came back here to look at the stars? Or did you wait at all? Did you even check to see if there were any melting bodies before you turned your back on them? I seem to remember that the last guy died on your ‘watch. ’ ”
Harley rushes me, grabbing me by my shirt collar with both hands and shoving me against the wall opposite the hatch. “How long did you keep them from me? When d
id Eldest first show you them?”
“What, the stars?”
“The stars, the stars, of course the frexing stars!”
“I only saw them a few days ago. ”
“Lies!” Harley rams me further into the wall. I twist and struggle against him, but even though my fingernails scrabble against his hands, he doesn’t relinquish his grip. “You and Eldest, always so close. ”
“Like I had a choice!”
“Maybe if she could have seen the stars, she wouldn’t have died!” Harley screams at me, his face scrunched in rage—and tears glistening in his eyes.
“What are you—Who?” I struggle to piece together what is going on.
“Kayleigh!” Harley says in a surge of grief. He lets me go, and I slide against the cool metal wall a few inches. “Kayleigh. Maybe if she had seen the stars, she wouldn’t have given up. ”