by Scott Sigler
“So…close,” it says.
The hand drops to the floor, limp.
Aramovsky’s monster is dead. I turn to face mine.
Matilda hasn’t moved. Neither has my spear.
If she dies, I am forever free.
I press the spear tip forward. Hands still covering her eye, she backs up until she bumps into a metal wall and can retreat no more. Her face isn’t human, but I recognize her fear.
Matilda is terrified. Like with Aramovsky standing at Latu’s grave, her fear excites me, it feeds me. I feel it tingling across my skin and fluttering in my belly.
This vile thing created me just so she could destroy me, but I will destroy her.
My hands tighten on the spear. All it will take is one strong thrust….
She shudders. She is so afraid. She bleeds.
My joy at her fear, it fades, it drains.
She is me.
No…she is not me. I am not her.
A hand on my shoulder. I glance and see O’Malley. His knife, knife hand and sleeve are soaked in red-gray. Red blood—his blood—spills down from a gash on his cheek to stain the collar of his white shirt.
“Em, don’t,” he says quietly. “We need her.”
It takes me another second to realize he’s really there, not a product of my imagination. I keep the spear tip pressed against Matilda’s chest. My eyes have adjusted; I can see more now. My people are in here with us. Bishop and his dust-faced warriors, El-Saffani, Spingate and Gaston, Coyotl and Okereke, Cabral and Borjigin, all of them. Farther back, Smith and Beckett, and all around them a countless cluster of terrified children.
I’m almost afraid to believe what I see. “We made it?”
O’Malley nods. “The monsters attacked. They didn’t have bracelet weapons. I don’t know why. They tried to grab us. Because we were in groups of four, everyone was able to fight them off. We killed some of them—it was bad, Em.” He closes his eyes for a moment. “We were bad.”
When he opens his eyes, I see something in his face, an expression I haven’t seen before. Whatever he experienced out there in the Garden, whatever he did, he’s trying to push it away.
“The monsters ran,” he says. “We went back and got the kids. Your plan, Em…your plan worked.”
My people are alive.
“Did we lose anyone?”
He nods. “Harris, a circle. He’s dead.”
Harris. All I knew of that boy was that he didn’t seem to trust me. I don’t think I even had a chance to talk to him. And now he’s gone.
I notice Bishop watching me. He’s still panting. Is that from exertion, or the emotions of killing yet again?
I face Matilda.
“You’ve lost,” I tell her. “You will take us to Bello, then to the shuttle.”
Her one eye glares out. She’s trembling, clearly in great pain, but she stands up straight like a leader should. She refuses to back down.
“I will not take you anywhere. And your friend Bello is dead. You are too late.”
She says it mockingly, accusingly, as if it’s my fault Bello is gone. Bello didn’t hurt anyone, didn’t even argue with anyone. A boulder of anger tumbles through me, rolling and unstoppable…this can’t be, it can’t.
I lean in so close I smell Matilda’s rotten stink. I move the spear tip up to where her throat should be. I press the point into the disgusting folds of skin.
“Liar,” I whisper. “You tell me where Bello is, then you take us to the shuttle, or I will end you.”
My creator slowly shakes her head.
“You are me, and I am you,” she says. “You know I am telling the truth.”
Tears well up in my eyes even as my fury grows. I’m almost sure Matilda is telling the truth…almost. I could keep asking her, I could torture her, but if Bello really is dead, then every minute I spend here is a minute the rest of my people are in danger. The Xolotl is massive; we know nothing about it, while our enemy knows every inch. My people will not be safe until they are on Omeyocan.
I know I will hate myself for this decision, but there is no choice. For the second time, I choose the safety of the group over the life of just one person.
“The shuttle,” I say. “Take us to it.”
Bishop runs to my side. “Em, no, we have to find Bello first. This thing is lying. Bello can’t be dead, she can’t—”
“Be quiet,” I say in a voice not so different from Matilda’s.
Bishop’s face grows hard, icy. He stands too close, this angry man, painted dark red-gray and streaked with blood. His fists clench. I see his pulse dancing in his temples.
I am aware that the others are watching. O’Malley, Spingate, Gaston and Aramovsky, Bawden and Coyotl and all the rest. I’m aware of that, I sense it, but my world has narrowed to a single point of focus: Bishop.
I stare straight into his dark yellow eyes.
“Step back,” I say. “The decision is made.”
Maybe he will hate me. Maybe the others will, too, but the group’s safety matters more than Bello’s life. And, our survival is infinitely more important than what the group thinks of me.
Bishop’s nose flares. His lip curls.
He steps back.
I focus my attention where it belongs: on my creator.
Matilda’s one good eye sparkles.
“Very good, little one,” she says. “You project such authority, as I did when I was your—”
I push the spear tip a tiny bit farther. The point pokes into her diseased flesh, cutting off her worthless words.
“The shuttle,” I say again. “Take us there, or die.”
Matilda stays so very still.
“No, little one,” she says. “I know who I was at your age. I know you better than you could ever know yourself. You can’t murder me.”
I told myself that when I saw her, I would kill her. I want to push the blade into her throat, I want to feel her terror again, maybe hear her beg—but my arms refuse to obey.
She’s right: I can’t do it.
But I have to get my people to safety. The monsters could be regrouping. They will come at us again, and this time, they might use those bracelets.
“If you don’t show me where the shuttle is, then you pay for what you have done to us,” I say. “Maybe you’re right. Maybe I can’t kill you. Good thing for me that I don’t have to. Bishop, take care of this.”
In the dim light, Bishop smiles. He is angry and frustrated. The chance to unleash his rage on a target—any target—seems to satisfy him in a deeply wicked way.
Bloody bone-dagger clutched in his right hand, he steps closer.
Matilda looks at Bishop, then at me, then at him again.
He raises the bone.
Matilda lifts both hands up, palms out, as if that will stop the blow. The ruin of her eye gleams wetly.
“I’ll take you! I’ll take you to the shuttle!”
I put a hand on Bishop’s chest. His skin is hot to the touch.
He looks at me. His face slowly returns to normal. He lowers the weapon.
Matilda trembles uncontrollably. She is alone and at our mercy.
“Bishop,” I say, “give this thing one chance. If she doesn’t take us to the shuttle, or if you think she’s tricking us, kill her.”
He nods.
I face my creator. “You will never have my body, so either take us to the shuttle, or die in the body you have.”
Her shoulders droop and her head hangs down. I do not know how I know, but this monster’s will has finally broken.
We have won.
FORTY
Bishop carries Matilda cradled in his arms, as if she weighs nothing at all.
She’s led us into unknown areas. We run across a flat surface, which means we’re moving down the length of the cylinder instead of up or down the curve. Everything is dark. Thin lines of glowing colors stretch across the floor—it’s enough light to keep me from panicking, but barely.
El-Saffani is once ag
ain out in front. Bishop, O’Malley and I are a few steps behind them. The rest follow, including the three lines of kids. Some of them are crying, whining for mothers and fathers that don’t exist, but they stay in their ranks and they keep pace. That’s all we can ask for. Bawden and Visca bring up the rear, my ash-covered warriors making sure no one attacks us from behind.
All of this is catching up with me. The march to the Garden, the fighting, the fact that I have been going for so long, making all the hard decisions…I am so tired. Every muscle screams at me to lie down, to give up, but we can’t stop now: we must escape before it’s too late.
“Keep moving,” I call to the others. “Keep moving.”
We are all close to quitting. The fighting in the Garden must have been bad. We leave a trail of blood behind us. There isn’t time to fix our wounds. I should have had us grab fruit to eat as we run, but I didn’t think of it and now it is too late to go back.
Matilda has us following a blue line. The ceiling is somewhere high above, the walls are hidden by shadows. The echoes of our footsteps tell me this area is big…bigger than the Garden, bigger than anything we have ever known. We don’t have time to explore, and even if we did I wouldn’t want to know what the darkness holds.
“Monster,” I say to my creator, “how much farther?”
“We are the same person,” she says. “You should call me by our name.”
“How much farther?”
She sighs, seems to wince at the same time. The fight was bad for her, too. She’d been waiting at the hidden opening she used to attack Bello and me. She knew we would come: she is me, after all, and attacking the Garden is exactly what she would have done in the same situation. She laid a trap for us, but she hadn’t planned on our ability to organize and work together, or on our ferocity. Maybe in her mind, we are still kids—it should have been easy for her kind to overwhelm us.
Things did not go how she expected.
When I poked my spear through the thicket wall, the blade pierced her shoulder. An accident, but at least we finally had some luck go our way. Matilda has lost a lot of blood. And then there is her ruined eye. She’s in great pain, doing her best to not show it.
“The shuttle is close,” she says. “Can’t you see your people are exhausted, little leader? We have time to stop and rest.”
I sense she’s lying about time, but telling the truth that the shuttle is near. I think she’s trying to stall. It doesn’t take the brilliance of Gaston or Spingate to know why—her friends are preparing to come after us…or are already on the way.
Up ahead, the dim blue line on the floor splits in two. Part of it keeps going straight, part of it angles off to the left. El-Saffani stops there, looks back at us.
A dried-up black hand reaches out, points a thin finger to the left.
“That way,” Matilda says.
In the darkness, El-Saffani’s cracking red-gray paste makes the twins look identical, neither boy nor girl but some combination of both. I point down the path to the left, and they go rushing on ahead.
We all follow them.
It’s still too dim to see, but the echoes of our footsteps change: we have entered a smaller room.
Lights come on.
Too bright, so bright it burns. I shield my eyes, blink as something starts to take shape.
Something…long.
Unlike everything else on board the Xolotl, there are no runes or carvings.
It is not made of stone.
It is smooth, sleek, gleaming metal. It is big enough to hold all of us a dozen times over.
The shuttle.
If we can figure out how it works, Omeyocan is ours.
FORTY-ONE
Memories roil in my head. My brain searches for words to describe the things I see. The shuttle’s tail is off to our left. The tapered nose points to the right. A long, thick tube—thicker than four or five of us standing on each other’s shoulders—connects them. At the tube’s middle is a wide metal platform. A ramp—running perpendicular to the shuttle—leads from the floor to that platform.
We are perhaps a hundred steps away from the shuttle.
The gleaming hull is smooth as glass, even where the platform is: I don’t see a way in.
I look around. We’ve passed through an archway of heavy, rust-free metal. Like all the archways before, this one is dense with images, but these are images I have not yet seen: planets, groups of stars, long cylinders and some things I don’t recognize.
This room isn’t much taller than the shuttle’s tail. Above it, a curved ceiling of crisscrossing white bars. A short distance from the shuttle’s nose stands a second archway—the biggest I have seen yet, big enough for the entire shuttle to pass through. The doors within it are metal, not stone.
I wonder if the blackness of space is beyond them.
“Bishop, bring the monster. Everyone else, stay here.”
We run to the ramp. The ramp’s surface is sharp, maybe to keep people from slipping. Small, hard points dig into the soles of my feet, reminding me how sore and swollen they are.
We stand on the platform.
“Matilda, tell us how to get in.”
Her head lolls over Bishop’s thick arm. I don’t know if she’s faking or dying. Her half-limp hand points to a spot on the shuttle’s hull. There, I can make out a thin-lined square about the size and height of my face.
“Do we press it?” I ask. “Tell us how it works.”
Shriveled shoulders shrug. “I don’t know. I’m just an empty.”
An empty? What is she talking about? Is she lying about not knowing how it works? Is she stalling again? No, I sense that she’s telling the truth. We came all this way and now we can’t get in. We’re running out of time. We have to do something, and fast.
I need someone smarter than me to figure this out.
I look back to our group. A hundred steps isn’t that far away, but beneath this room’s sprawling ceiling my people look so small. The children stand packed together with my friends surrounding them, protecting them.
“Spingate, Gaston, get up here!”
The two sprint to join me. I turn back to the gleaming shuttle, to examine that square—and for the very first time in my life, I see myself.
A beat-up girl’s reflection stares back at me in wide-eyed disbelief.
Those eyes…they are brown.
Strands of heavy black hair hang down my face, drape across my shoulders. The braid that Bello lovingly made is now a tattered mess. Red-gray ooze has dried on my cheek and chin. My upper lip is split and bleeding. One of my eyes is swollen, the skin there discolored and blacker than Gaston’s was when I first met him. I see a growing, shiny lump on my forehead. I am covered in cuts, scrapes and bruises. Ripped shirt, scratched skin, bloody and beaten…
…I am beautiful.
Not “beautiful” as in what I could be when all of this goes away, but rather what I am right now, with these badges of bravery spotting my skin. Someday these wounds will heal, and I will see myself as Matilda intended me to be, but for now this face—the battered face of a fighter, a warrior—is mine and mine alone.
Spingate and Gaston thump up the ramp.
I have to tear my attention away from my reflection. It is a hard thing to do. I point at the hull’s gleaming surface without looking at it.
“That square is the way in,” I say. “Matilda claims she doesn’t know how to open it.”
Spingate caresses the metal, slides her hands across the lines almost like she’s smoothing out invisible wrinkles. Her fatigue and fear vanish. Here is a puzzle: her whole being responds instantly.
She puts her hand on the square, pushes it in, then turns it. The square slides away inside the shuttle, revealing the same kind of plaque we saw in the door that led down to the haunted room—black glass with the imprint of a hand, and in the center of that hand, a jagged circle.
No, wait…I finally recognize that symbol—it’s a gear.
I cup Spingate
’s elbow.
“Spin, put your hand on it.”
She licks her lips, takes a breath, then presses her palm to the imprint.
Nothing happens.
Gaston nudges me, grins.
“Well, I guess it’s time for me to be the real hero, huh, Em? Should I give it a try?”
He’s got a splatter of red-gray across his chest, and his right ear is a sheet of blood that stains his shirt collar. Fighting monsters and running through an unknown ship haven’t dulled his arrogance, not in the least.
I nod at him.
He rubs his hands together like he’s trying to warm them, flicks his fingers outward once, twice, three times, then presses his hand to the black imprint.
The shuttle vibrates.
More lines appear in the metal, emerging out of nowhere as if the hull is splitting. The lines form a rectangle, taller than Bishop and wider than it is tall. Like the small panel Spingate pressed, it recedes slightly back into the ship.
A vertical line forms down the middle of this rectangle, cutting it in half. Without a sound, the halves slide away.
The shuttle has opened.
It is dark inside.
“El-Saffani,” I say, my voice a bark that echoes through this cavernous room. They both sprint to the ramp. In seconds, they are at my sides. Oddly, neither of them are bloody; the battle must have missed them. I point my spear into the shuttle’s darkness.
“Find out what’s in there.”
They adjust their grips on their bone-clubs, then step inside.
The moment they enter, lights snap on. It is a corridor that runs left and right, a corridor of red cloth walls and a black metal floor. I can’t see anything other than the red corridor wall opposite me.
The twins step inside and dart right, disappearing for a moment. Seconds later, they pass in front of me, silently heading the other way.
O’Malley walks up the ramp to stand at my left. Bishop moves slightly to stand at my right, Matilda still cradled in his arms. Along with Gaston and Spingate, we wait, both hopeful and full of dread at what El-Saffani might find inside.
