Read Online Across the Universe by Beth Revis - Free Book Online

series of haystacks at different times of the day. He showed me the last painted haystack, the one covered in snow, the one at sunset. Harley went loons over it, saying how the artist was so brilliant to paint stuff with different light, and I said that was stupid, there’s light or there isn’t, and he said I was stupid, on Sol-Earth there were things like sunrise and sunset because the sun moves like a living thing and isn’t just an overrated heat lamp in the sky.
    This girl’s hair is more brilliant than the rays of the sun on Sol-Earth captured by an artist Harley said was the most genius man ever to live.
    I reach out to touch the glass that traps her inside, and only then do I realize how cold it is. My breath is rising in little clouds of white. My fingertips stick to the glass.
    I stare down at her. She is the most beautiful thing I have ever seen, but also the strangest. Her skin is pale, almost translucent white, and I don’t think it’s just from the ice. I lay my hand on top of her glass box, above her heart. My skin is a dark shadow over the luminescence of hers.
    This girl is definitely not monoethnic. She’s not like anyone else on Godspeed. Her skin, her hair, her age— my age!—her very shape... short, but slender with an enticing curve to her breasts and hips.
    How can this girl fit into the monoethnic no-differences-at-all world Eldest says provides perfect peace?
    My eyes devour her body, then drift back to her breasts. The ice is a little foggy there, teasing me, but I can see enough to know they’re lush, and even if they’re frozen, I imagine that if they were warmed up...
    “ Elder! ” I jump away from the clear box, as startled as I would have been if the beauty inside had suddenly awoken.
    But it’s just Doc.
    “What are you doing down here? And how did you get down here in the first place?” Pause. “How did you even know about this place?”
    “I took the elevator.” I try to appear brilly, but my heart’s banging around in my chest.
    “You shouldn’t be down here.” He frowns. He touches the wi-com button behind his left ear. “Com link: Eldest,” he says.
    “No! Don’t com Eldest! I’ll go!” I say, but I don’t want to go, I want to look more at the girl with sunset hair.
    Doc shakes his head at me. “It’s dangerous down here. Touch those buttons,” he nods toward a little black electrical box at the frozen girl’s head, “and you could wake her.”
    I look at the box. It’s simple. On the top are three buttons: ELECTRICAL PULSE, CHECK DATA, and, under a clear protective case with a thumbprint scanner, a yellow button labeled “REANIMATION.” Wires extending from it go back into the glass box; I follow the tubes with my eyes to her perfect cherry mouth.
    “I won’t touch it,” I say, but Doc’s already turned away from me.
    “Elder’s down here,” he says, and I know those words aren’t for me, but for Eldest, who must have connected to Doc’s wi-com. “Yes,” Doc says. Pause. “I don’t frexing know.” He eyes me again, a cold, evaluating look I have not seen since the days I was his patient. Doc touches the wi-com, and Eldest is disconnected. I know it won’t be long before Eldest comes down here and drags me back to the Learning Center.
    “Who is she?” I ask. I want to know all I can, while I can.
    Doc narrows his eyes at me, but he bends down, looks at the front of the metal door. “Number 42. I was examining all the forties today, just a visual check that all is clear.” He shakes his head. “I should have finished before going up to the Ward,” he mutters to himself.
    “The forties?”
    Doc looks up at me. “They’re all numbered.”
    “Yes, I can see that.” I can’t keep the impatience from my voice. “But what does it mean ? Why are there numbered doors and frozen people here?”
    Doc stares down at the girl with sunset hair. “You should ask Eldest that.”
    “I’m asking you .”
    Doc turns to me. “I’ll tell