Sleeping Jenny (19 page)

from the latest satellite images. Right now they're plotting the safest and fastest course to Paradise 15.”

Opal tugged on the hem of her tunic and turned to her nanny. “I want some chewy tarts.”

“Of course, dear.” The older woman pulled a wrapper out of her pocket, and Opal snatched it from her fingers.

I shook my head, rolling my eyes when no one looked. This was a poor excuse for a tour group. Good thing I was interested enough to think of questions. “How long do you think it will take to reach Paradise 15?”

Jax raised his eyebrows. “Good question. We're thinking somewhere between two hundred and fifty to two hundred and sixty years, based on the flight speed of a small scout ship.” He watched me carefully, perhaps gauging my reaction to see if the number of years scared me.

It didn't. I put both hands on my hips. “For someone who's been frozen for three hundred, it could be worse.”

“Of course.” He sighed like he'd held his breath. “When are we going to see the animals?” Opal whined from behind us. Her nanny shushed her.

Animals? They have real animals? Like Martha's cat?
Excitement rushed up my legs and zapped my heart. I almost giggled with glee.

Jax crouched down on his knees to meet Opal in the eye. “Very soon, dear.” He patted her head and she stuck her tongue out. He responded with a sweet smile and straightened up.

“If you'll follow me…” Jax turned and started down the corridor. Not wanting to get too close to Opal, I walked beside him, letting the girl and her nanny trail behind us.

The scrawled letters spelling
Sophie
peeked out from his rolled-up sleeve in red and blue ink. My eyes kept darting to them, but my lips remained sealed.

Jax stopped along an airtight door and pressed a code into a panel. The sides parted and arctic air rushed out. I grabbed my shoulders, rubbing my hands up and down my arms.

“Don't worry. We won't stay in here long.” Jax showed us into a lab. Metal tubes, each big enough to fit a sumo wrestler, lined the walls. He pressed another code into a keypad, and the metal lining twisted away. I expected to see frozen bodies, like in a horror movie, but instead, rows of small glass vials lined the center.

Mist poured from inside the tube as he reached in and pulled out one of the vials. A label lay just beneath his fingertips.

“Amur Leopard?”

“That's right. Here we have DNA for every species to ever have walked the Earth.” His blue eyes sparkled as if the cool air had sharpened them. “Even dinosaurs.”

Although I was impressed, Opal kicked one of the tubes in the back, making a resonating
thud thud thud
behind us.

I took the vial in my hands. “It seems so fragile.”

Jax nodded. “We also have the protein sequences stored on a hard drive, but it will be easier to work with actual cells once we get to Paradise 15.”

The thuds grew louder as Opal grew more impatient.

“Opal, honey, don't break anything.” Her nanny pulled on her arm.

She yanked away, chewing her candy. “This is boring.” She popped the last bite in her mouth and threw the wrapper on the floor.

I thought Jax would do something to scold her, but he smiled smoothly. “Let's get to the animals, shall we?”

We left the cool storage room and took an elevator down three levels. I couldn't imagine how far we'd traveled underneath the city.

Wake up, Jenny
. Now was the time to get answers, not daydream and gawk.

I cleared my throat, trying to sound professional. “What species do you plan on bringing back first?”

“We must assess the ecosystem on Paradise 15 and determine which species would thrive. We can't simply bring back African lions without first examining the plant species. Herbivores, such as blue wildebeest, need edible plants to survive in order to feed the carnivores like the lions. It's a complicated web of life that we must work at to get the right balance. It may take generations before whole ecosystems are created.”

The elevator beeped, and we stepped into a long walkway with rows of cells on either side.

“Of course, first we have to make sure we
can
bring them back.” Jax's lips curled like a secret rested on his tongue. Behind him, I could have sworn I heard a monkey hooting.

Opal pushed by me, and her pigtails whipped the air.

“Opal, wait!” Her nanny cursed under her breath and launched after her.

“Nice kid.” I turned to Jax and gave him a sly smile, opening the door for any snide comment of his own.

His face was devoid of any malice. “Her mother is one of our biggest benefactors. Thus, Opal's very important to us. A visit now and then is nothing compared to the political backing we'll have once her mother appeals to Congress on behalf of our cause.”

The Timesurfers were very important to Jax.
Willing to suffer anything important
. As important as my dreams were to me.

Jax caught my stare. He raised one eyebrow as if I'd unpeeled a layer of his true self and liked what I saw. “I think you'll appreciate enclosure thirty-three-A the most.”

Curiosity ate my composure until my legs itched to run ahead like Opal as I followed Jax to a large set of double doors. Jax input a code, and the panels parted, revealing a meadow the length of my street back home. Long grass and wildflowers grew under simulated sunlight. Bird song lilted in the sweet air, and a sparrow hopped on a nearby branch of a crabapple tree.

Jax spread his arm over the landscape. “A microcosm of the Northeastern grasslands.”

A whinny echoed over a hill and seized my heart until my legs felt like mush. I collapsed to the ground, tears blurring my eyes. A horse, white as a unicorn, crested the hill. The mare stared down at us through thick eyelashes.

I gasped in a sob, thinking of Thunderbolt. Had anyone ridden him after I was frozen? Or did he waste away, his muscles growing weaker with each year, waiting for my return? This horse could have been his distant cousin, so sharp was her gaze, as if it stared directly into my soul. If I whispered my regrets to this magnificent creature standing before me, would my message reach through time and touch Thunderbolt?

Jax knelt beside me and took my hand. “Was I wrong to bring you here?”

“No, no, no.” I wiped my cheeks with my sleeve. “It's just… I had a horse back when…you know.”

“I know.” Jax's eyes grew soft as a blue sky. He squeezed my hand in his. “I read it in your profile. You'd be surprised how much is archived from our pasts.”

Sniffing up tears, I pushed myself up. My legs wobbled, but Jax held me steady.

“Would you like to get closer?”

“Hell, yeah.” I steeled my nerves, trying to bring myself back from the blubbering mess I'd become. Jax walked me up the hill and put his hand on the mare's muzzle. She pushed into his touch, neighing softly. I felt her warm breath on my cheeks.

Jax laughed. “Jennifer, meet Snow.”

I reached out and ran my fingers along Snow's neck, the familiar sensation of coarse, dusty hair on my palms. The earthy smell of hide brought fresh tears to my eyes. “It's been so long since I touched one.”

This was my dream. In a simulated meadow in a secret facility underneath a skyscraper choked city, I'd finally found what I'd been looking for.

“Wonderful, isn't it?” Jax smiled beside me and suddenly the Timesurfers' plan didn't seem so farfetched. This horse felt more real to me than anything in that strange land of skyscrapers and hovercrafts. “I promise you. We will bring them back.”

A scream broke the moment, tearing through my bliss like a knife through a satin sheet. We both turned toward the door and the horse pulled away and galloped down the hill behind us. My chest ached to see the horse leave, but the nanny's look of horror on her red-blotched face stole my attention.

She staggered toward us. “There's been an accident. It's Opal.”

“Oh, geez. Where is she?” Jax looked more scared than when we'd hung off the side of the high-rise.

“The monkey room.”

Jogging toward the door, Jax pressed a wrist band on his arm and shouted into it, “Medics needed immediately in cell fifty-seven-A.”

He disappeared around the corner. Should I stay put or follow? The nanny stared at me like all this was my fault. Maybe it was. I rushed by her, following Jax down the corridor.

My heart hammered in my chest and I wished I'd actually
tried
to run in gym. There were so many cells, each one a different ecosystem. As I ran, I could see blurred trees, furry hides, and bright feathers through the small windows of the different cells. So many things to look at and no time to see any of them.

I reached the door seconds after Jax turned the corner and stopped in my tracks. Vines hung from the ceiling, and a pungent scent of sickly sweet blossoms choked my throat. How big were those monkeys?

I shoved down my fear.
Jax and Opal are in there, and they may need my help
. I ducked underneath the vines and stepped into a jungle. Humidity beaded on my face and palm fronds brushed my legs as I trudged ahead. The leaves grew so thick that I had to brush them back again and again, thorns pricking my arms. A parrot squawked above me, and I jumped back, feeling foolish. The vial with Amur Leopard printed on it surfaced in my memory and I blocked it out. Surely Jax would keep the dangerous animals secured.

I emerged in a clearing with a fancy jungle gym in the center. Opal lay face up on a pile of dirt, her eyes closed. A red welt throbbed on her forehead. Jax knelt beside the girl, feeling her pulse.

I squatted beside him, horrified. “Is she all right?”

“Her pulse is steady. Looks like she got knocked out.” He shook his head, “I should have been here supervising.”

My face stung with guilt. I'd distracted him. “I'm sorry.”

“Don't be sorry. It's my mistake.”

The nanny rushed in, wringing her hands. “It all happened so fast.”

“What
happened?” Jax looked around, but the jungle gym was clear. Whatever
had
happened scared all of the monkeys away.

“She was chasing them around and pulling their tails, and all of a sudden one of those little devils fought back. It turned on her, smacking her in the face.”

I gritted my teeth, trying to keep my mouth closed. It wasn't the monkey's fault. That was the problem with the world, and in three hundred years it hadn't changed. No one respected nature. People's desires always came first.

“I'll have my medics take her to the emergency center.” Jax placed a hand on Opal's forehead.

Men in blue uniforms rushed in behind us carrying a stretcher. One of them nodded to Jax. “We'll take it from here.”

One medic lifted Opal onto the stretcher while another attached an oxygen mask to her face and another read vital signs in her eyes.

“Next time we should stick to stuffed animals.” The nanny followed them out of the monkey cell, leaving Jax and me alone.

“Are we safe here?”

“Of course we're safe. These monkeys are the size of my foot. She must have really egged them on.”

I was worried, not only for Opal, even though I didn't like her, but for Jax and the Timesurfers. It was never good to bite the hand that fed you. “Will she be okay?”

Jax sat cross-legged in the dirt and ran both hands through his hair until it stood up even more than usual. “Yeah, she'll be fine. I'll send a nice package home with her, give her some candy, and with some luck she'll forget it ever happened.”

Even though he'd already said it wasn't my fault, guilt still burnt my cheeks. “If it wasn't for me, you would have been here to stop her.”

“It's not you. It's just…” His voice trailed off and he covered his face with both hands. I heard a plaintive holler behind us, then silence.

I scanned the ferns around us. Nothing moved. My curiosity won over my fear. I sat beside him and whispered, “What is it, Jax?”

He took in a deep breath, like he needed more air to say it out loud. “She reminds me so much of Sophie.”

Sophie? A six-year-old girl?
Somehow, I'd pictured her to be a six-foot-tall model with silky auburn hair and very large breasts, wearing a bikini.

My fingertips brushed the tattoo on his arm. I knew if I asked who she was it would change everything. “Sophie?”

“My daughter.”

His words stunned me into silence. I knew he had a few years on me, but to already be a father?

“I was born as
Jack
Upton. I changed my name to fit in here. Jennifer, I was frozen too.”

I stared at Jax like he was a stranger all over again. “What year?”

He pried his hands off his cheeks and turned to face me. His face had paled, and redness rimmed his eyes. For the first time, he looked vulnerable. “Two-thousand-twenty-three.”

“That's impossible. I had our family robot search the cybernet for others like myself…”

“When I joined the Timesurfers, I had my records erased to remain anonymous.”

“I didn't know you could do that.”

“It's not easy, but the Timesurfers have a lot of resources. You'd be surprised what they can do to keep their own safe.”

So many questions buzzed in my mind. I settled for the simplest one. “How old are you, really?”

“I was twenty when I was frozen, and I've been awake now for three years. Time is all relative when you've slept for centuries.” He laughed. “In a way, you're older than me because you were frozen longer.”

I didn't find his comment funny. “Why didn't you tell me?”

“My life before cryo isn't something I talk about often. This world is so different than the one I left, sometimes whole days go by when I can pretend not to remember.”

Jax's voice wavered. What had he left behind? I didn't want to cause him any more pain. “You don't have to tell me.”