Across the Universe - Beth Revis [72]
Doc shoves the glass box into the cryo chamber. He slams the door shut and pulls down the latch. A trace of cold swirls up around us, the only evidence that Number 63 was out at all.
“She’s fine,” Doc says. “You caught her in time.”
“Guys?” Harley calls. I look behind me in surprise—Harley has walked down the aisle and away from us, on the other side, out of sight.
“How did you know she was here?” Doc asks.
“I heard it,” Amy says.
Doc’s face scrunches in concentration. “That means whoever did this was down here when you were. Why were you down here, anyway?”
“I wanted to show Amy her parents’ trunks,” I say before Amy can mention how we were going to look at her parents. I somehow think admitting we were going to mess with the cryo chambers may not be a good thing to do now.
“Uh... guys?” Harley calls from two rows over.
“I don’t like this,” Doc says. “Whoever was down here when you were must have known you were here, must have known you would hear what was happening. Other than you three, did anyone else come?”
Amy and I glance at each other. “Not that I know of,” she says.
“Me neither.”
“Guys!” Harley shouts.
“What?!” I shout back.
“Come to the twenties row. Now!”
Doc starts walking, but Amy and I know better: we run. The urgency in Harley’s voice wasn’t false. Something is wrong.
When we round the corner, it’s clear what Harley was shouting about.
Another box lies in the center of the aisle. But this one has melted. And the man inside is already dead.
39
AMY
“OH.”
I hadn’t meant to say it out loud.
But I know this man.
Mr. Kennedy had worked with my mom, and I’d always thought he was a little creepy. He was one of those old men who never got married but who thinks that because he’s old, he can be a pervert and get away with it. He was always looking down my mom’s shirt or getting me to pick up something off the floor whenever I came to the lab to visit my parents. Mom always laughed it off, but I wondered what Mr. Kennedy did at home with his memories of my mom’s wrinkled cleavage or my panty line.
And now he’s dead, floating in the cryo liquid with his eyes opened and his irises milky. His skin is sallow, as if soaked with water like a sponge. His mouth is slack, and his cheeks sag, creating tiny water-filled balloons at his jaw.
“Number 63 was a distraction,” Elder says.
“I don’t think so,” Doc says. “This one has been out for a while.” He lifts the lid of the glass box up, and Harley and Elder help him set it down on the floor. Doc dips his finger into the liquid Mr. Kennedy floats in. “The water’s cool, but not cold. He could have been unplugged yesterday, last night at the latest.”
Elder catches my eye. While we were running through the rain, laughing, Mr. Kennedy was drowning. As that couple made love on the bench by the pond, Mr. Kennedy was dying. As I stripped off my wet clothes and stood in the steamy shower, as I fell asleep gazing at the dark fields, Mr. Kennedy was swimming in death.
Another thought: Harley was here the same time the killer was.
“Why?” I ask.
Doc taps on his thin computer thing. “Number 26. A man named—”
“Mr. Kennedy,” I say.
“Yes.” Doc looks at me, surprise on his face.
“I knew him before.”
“Ah. I’m sorry,” he says, but in an offhand manner, as if he’s just saying it to be polite. “Number 26—”
“Mr. Kennedy.”
“Mr. Kennedy was a weapons specialist.”
“Really?” I ask. Even though Mr. Kennedy worked in the same department as my mother, I’d never known that he had anything to do with weapons. My mother didn’t. She worked on genetic splicing. She dealt with DNA, not weapons.
Doc nods. “He was well learned in bio-weaponry. It says here he worked with the government to develop eco bombs.”
“Who is doing this?” Elder asks. “Who is unplugging all these people? First William Robertson, then the woman, Number 63, now this guy.”
“And me,” I add.
Elder’s brow furrows as he stares at me.
“Two victims—two near misses,