Alight Read online

“You usually talk about the gods,” I say. “Magic beings that don’t actually do anything for us. Now it’s just one god? Well, which one is it?”

  I hope that, for once, our sparse memories will work in my favor. Forcing him to name something he can’t recall will make him look stupid in front of everyone, maybe shut him up.

  Aramovsky smiles at me with his big, beautiful, fake smile.

  “The God of Blood, Em.”

  That sounds ridiculous. I laugh, look around expecting others to be laughing with me, but only a few are. Most stare at him wide-eyed, like he’d just said something brilliant.

  I’d hoped he would leave this nonsense up on the Xolotl. Aramovsky is going to be a problem.

  “No prayers,” I say. “Everyone, eat.”

  Aramovsky bows to me. “As you say, great leader.”

  He steps down and sits. People gather around him.

  Laughter and talking slowly return. So much hope in this room. Pure joy.

  The circle-stars seem happiest of all. Coyotl and the bigger Visca are wrestling. They strike each other so hard I wince at the sound, but they laugh madly at each impact. Bawden has figured out how to belch on command. Every time she does, circle-star kids howl with delight and try to imitate her. Those children are skinny, but they will grow taller, fill out, gain the thick muscle so familiar on the teenage circle-stars.

  Farrar is rooting through every green bin as if he’s searching for something very important. He looks up, meets my gaze, then runs to me.

  “Em, do you have anything sweet?” His hopeful expression makes him look like a child. Wide smile, wide nose, dark eyes and that big jaw…Farrar is pretty. Everyone here is pretty: I wonder if the Grownups somehow modified their “copies” to fit a vision of what they thought they should be, rather than what they are.

  I shake my head. “I don’t think protein bar and hard biscuit sound sweet.” I offer him the half-eaten grain bar. “Want to try this? It tastes nutty.”

  He takes a bite, chews, thinks, hands it back to me, then leans in close.

  “It’s just…well, you’re the leader. I thought maybe someone brought you cookies.”

  He says that word the way Gaston said cloud cover and Spingate said microorganism.

  “Sorry. If I had any, I would share them with you.”

  He snarls, smacks a closed fist against an open palm. I know it’s only a gesture of frustration, but it scares me a little.

  I notice Bishop is still holding his bin, still walking from person to person, offering more food. He stops in front of Aramovsky, who is sitting at the foot of his coffin, and offers the tall boy a package. Aramovsky takes it and sets it on a pile of unopened packages on the floor—his food, and food from the others around him.

  Bishop is making sure everyone has enough, and Aramovsky is hoarding?

  I think of when I was first walking down the Xolotl’s endless hallway with Bello, O’Malley, Spingate, Aramovsky and Yong. We were starving, talking about the food we dreamed of. Aramovsky wanted cupcakes.

  I whisper in Farrar’s ear.

  “Maybe there’s something sweet in Aramovsky’s pile, even if it isn’t labeled like that. The people who packed the food could have made a mistake.”

  Farrar runs down the center aisle toward Aramovsky. Children scramble out of his way. Aramovsky sees the big circle-star coming and moves a hand to cover up his collection.

  That wasn’t nice of me, but it’s fun to watch them argue about something unimportant. And it makes me happy to give Aramovsky some grief. It shouldn’t, but it does.

  Two little girls run up to me and throw themselves down, somehow landing cross-legged. One is Zubiri, the dark-skinned tooth-girl who calmed me when I fought against O’Malley and Bishop putting me in my coffin. There are no leaves in Zubiri’s jet-black hair. No blood, no scratches, no bruises, no scars. Like most of the younger kids, she hasn’t suffered that much.

  The other girl I don’t recognize. She’s got hair just as black as Zubiri’s, but her skin is light and her eyes are so thin I can barely tell they’re open. She’s also a little chubby. The symbol on her forehead is a circle inside of a circle: a double-ring, the same as Aramovsky’s.

  “Hi, Em,” Zubiri says.

  “Hi, Zubiri. Who is your friend?”

  “This is B. Walezak,” Zubiri says. “Our cradles were next to each other.”

  I offer my hand. “Nice to meet you, B. Walezak.”

  The girl stares for a second, then giggles and hides her face behind Zubiri’s shoulder.

  Zubiri rolls her eyes dramatically. “Oh, Walezak, you have to learn how to talk to people.”

  I’ve spoken with Zubiri only a few times. Somehow, she seems older than me. Maybe more mature is the right word. That’s good, I think. Soon, she will have to do her part. All the kids will.

  Like a shadow, O’Malley silently sits down beside me.

  “I was able to access the lower decks,” he says. “You need to see this.”

  Farrar and Aramovsky are yelling at each other. Everyone is watching them, laughing at the argument. I quietly follow O’Malley to the back wall and through the stairway door.

  “Once a door is unlocked, we can leave it that way if we close it and don’t press the handprint or turn the wheel,” he says.

  We descend past Deck Two to Deck Three. As Gaston told me, the door has a wheel with a half-circle symbol on it.

  “Try and open it,” O’Malley says.

  The pilothouse door has a gear symbol. That door wouldn’t open for me, so I doubt this one will, either, but I try. The wheel spins easily—the door unlocks.

  “I thought so,” O’Malley says. “Locked doors will mostly only open for people who have the matching symbol, but there are a few exceptions. I think you can open some doors because Matilda was in charge of the Grownups—I’m pretty sure the other empties can’t open any door that has a handprint lock.”

  Empties. That word makes me instantly angry and I don’t know why. O’Malley seems surprised he said it, embarrassed, but I can tell he’s just as clueless to its meaning as I am.

  “Anyway,” he says, “let me show you what I found.”

  O’Malley pulls the door open. Inside is a small room with three waist-high white pedestals, the same kind that were in that spherical room where I first saw Brewer and Matilda—the place she called the Crystal Ball.

  I instantly want to knock the pedestals over, smash them…if Matilda’s face appears, or Brewer’s, I will do just that. We need to leave the Grownups behind, forever.

  O’Malley steps to the middle pedestal. Sparkles flare up above it, just like they did in the Crystal Ball, but instead of Brewer’s red-eyed face, I see the words GAMBIT PRIV, and below them, small images: O’Malley’s face, and Aramovsky’s, and…mine?

  I’ve seen myself only once, a brief reflection in the shuttle’s polished hull. That reflection showed dirt and blood, dust and damage, all the bruises I suffered in our fight to escape. Messy hair, split lip, black eye, scratches from my fight in the woods and being dragged through the thicket.

  The tiny face above the pedestal, though, has no marks. No cuts, no blood. It’s me, but older. The last of the girl I am is gone—what I see is all woman, striking and confident.

  O’Malley’s and Aramovsky’s images look older, too. So…manly. The image makes O’Malley look even more handsome than he already is.

  “I don’t understand,” I say. “Is that us?”

  “Maybe it’s how the Grownups thought we would look in a few years. Or how our progenitors looked when they first designed us, set us to growing in the coffins?”

  It’s so strange to look at an older version of myself. Glossy black hair hangs in luxurious curls rather than being pulled back into my severe braid. Smooth light-brown skin. Lips a dark shade of red. Eyelids painted pink.

  But that face…it’s not real. It is the face of a doll, dressed up the way its owner wanted.

  “You’re beautiful,” O’Ma
lley says.

  The word makes my breath catch. I glance at him—he’s not looking at me, he’s looking at the image. That isn’t me, it’s Matilda, how she would look if she wiped me from existence.

  “A picture of me is beautiful, but the real thing isn’t?”

  His eyes flick to me, widen.

  “Well, no…that’s not what I’m saying.”

  “That’s exactly what you said.”

  He shakes his head. “You’re beautiful, too, Em. When those bruises heal, you’ll look amazing.”

  But I don’t look amazing now. I don’t want to talk about it anymore, so I change the subject.

  “Those words, gambit priv. What do they mean?”

  “No idea. When I walked up to the pedestal, this is what appeared.”

  He reaches out and touches the image of my face. Next to it appear two symbols in gold: circle-star, circle-cross. Two symbols in silver: the gear and the half-circle. And one symbol in white: the double-ring.

  There are no plain circle symbols at all—no empties.

  “I think gold means you can access any door with those symbols,” O’Malley says. “Silver might mean you can access some doors with that symbol.”

  “And white means I can’t access those areas at all?”

  He nods. “I think so.”

  I touch the floating picture of O’Malley’s face. The symbols and colors are the same as mine, except for the gear, which for him is white. He can’t access anything with a double-ring or a gear.

  Then I touch Aramovsky’s face: gold for the double-ring, white for everything else.

  Why just our three faces? No image of Spingate or Gaston. The shuttle will fly for Gaston, but has areas he can’t access? Why? When Grownup Aramovsky died, he was with Matilda. Did they have some connection? And what about Grownup O’Malley—is that monster still alive, too?

  The Grownups kept things from each other. They fought, they murdered, they kept themselves divided. I don’t want to be anything like them.

  “Can we change this, so everyone has access to everything?”

  “I tried,” O’Malley says. “It won’t let me do much of anything.”

  He faces the pedestals, licks his lips. He’s acting so strange. What has him so anxious?

  “Shuttle, where are we?” he asks.

  A soft voice purrs from the walls.

  “Omeyocan.”

  Black spots form above all three pedestals. The spots fuzz with sparkles of every possible color, then solidify. I’m looking at a planet: blue, green and brown. It spins slowly. It is exactly what I saw up on the Xolotl.

  “Shuttle,” he says, “I need to change access privileges.”

  “Chancellor, O’Malley, Kevin Patrick, speak the access code to continue.”

  His first name is Kevin? I like that name. But I like O’Malley more.

  “I think some info is available to anyone,” O’Malley says. “But most of the questions I ask, it wants a code that I don’t know.”

  The shuttle obviously recognizes him. It must think he is the Grownup O’Malley, after an overwrite. Maybe it will make the same mistake with me. On the Xolotl, Matilda seemed to be in charge.

  I face the pedestals.

  “Shuttle, do you know who I am?”

  “Savage, Matilda Jean, Empress.”

  Empress?

  O’Malley laughs. He rolls his eyes, smiling. “Your Highness. Should I bow?”

  I punch his shoulder.

  “Shuttle,” I say, “what do our symbols mean?”

  “Speak the access code to continue.”

  “If I’m the empress, I don’t need a code. What do our symbols mean? What is this city?”

  “Gambit-level information requires verbal confirmation of access code, Empress. Speak the access code to continue.”

  “Told you,” O’Malley says.

  “What else is on this deck?”

  “Nothing as far as I can tell. I think the rest of this deck’s space has machinery…maybe to take care of what’s below us, on Deck Four.”

  His voice wavers when he speaks. He sounds anxious, and perhaps a little afraid. Whatever he’s afraid of, it’s down there.

  “All right,” I say. “Show me.”

  His lips press into a flat line. “Come on.”

  I follow him down to the last deck. There is a wheel-door, just like the others, but this one has a circle-cross in the hub.

  “I was able to open it,” he says. “According to the symbols in the pedestal room, I think you can, too.”

  He waits for me to do so. Now I’m a little afraid, as if his anxiety is contagious.

  I grip the wheel. It spins easily. I pull the door open and step through.

  I am looking into a long space undivided by walls or doors. There is nothing here, in fact, save for what lies on the floor.

  Two long columns of brown coffins, clean and shining, covered in carvings of jaguars, pyramids and suns.

  O’Malley and I return to the top deck. People are playing, talking, even napping inside the white coffins.

  I catch Bishop’s eye, tilt my head toward the pilothouse. He nods, picks up his axe and follows us.

  Before we reach the pilothouse door, the wheel spins. Gaston and Spingate step out. They don’t look as rested as I’d hoped, but they look happy, and that’s something.

  “Back inside,” I say. “I need to talk to you both.”

  We enter. Bishop starts to swing the door shut behind us, but it stops halfway: smiling Aramovsky is blocking it with his body.

  “Are we making plans?” he says. “Good. We need to discuss the spiritual needs of the people.”

  Bishop glances at me, but when he does, skinny Aramovsky slides through the door and into the room. It would have been one thing to say he couldn’t come in—it’s entirely another to make him leave. Which, of course, Aramovsky knows.

  Bishop shuts the door.

  The first time I entered the pilothouse, the walls were black. Now it’s as if there are no walls at all. It looks like I’m standing in the middle of the clearing that ends in a tall, circular wall of piled vines. I see the shapes of the strange buildings beyond, and I seem to float high above yellow vines even though the pilothouse floor feels just as solid as it ever did.

  Bishop leans the flat of his axe against his hip. He’s waiting for me to speak, as are the others.

  “O’Malley accessed the shuttle’s lower levels,” I say.

  Gaston glares at O’Malley. O’Malley is expressionless, as he always seems to be during discussions like these.

  I don’t mention the room with the pedestals. If Aramovsky is going to make everything his business, I don’t want him messing around in there. I quickly describe the room we saw on Deck Four, making sure my friends understand these are not simple white coffins, but rather the same kind in which we all first awoke.

  Bishop looks angry. Spingate and Gaston seem shocked.

  Aramovsky is delighted.

  “How wonderful,” he says. “Did you open them?”

  Bishop huffs. “Of course she didn’t. Em wouldn’t do something that dangerous without me and the circle-stars there.”

  “Dangerous,” Aramovsky says. “Ah, I see. Those new coffins might hold Grownups instead of people like us. Don’t worry, Bishop, I have absolute faith in you—if there are Grownups, I’m sure you’ll find a way to kill them all.”

  Bishop snarls. “I did what I had to do.”

  “You had to murder?” Aramovsky’s hands close into fists, open, close into fists. “Is killing the only thing you’re good for, Bishop?”

  “Stop it,” I snap. “Aramovsky, your progenitor would have overwritten you, don’t you get that? Bishop saved you.”

  “I didn’t need to be saved. I was made to join with my creator. Now he’s dead—his thousand years of wisdom and knowledge, lost forever.”

  Aramovsky makes it sound like we’re not as important as the people who wanted to erase us.

  �
�We have the right to survive,” I say. “The Grownups think we’re property, shells to be filled up. They are wrong!”

  I realize I’m yelling. I take a deep breath, try to calm myself. Aramovsky is so infuriating.

  “We shouldn’t open them,” O’Malley says, so calmly it makes my yelling seem all the louder.

  Aramovsky holds up his hands as if to say, What choice do we have? “We must open them. And quickly. We don’t know what dangers we’ll face on this planet—there is strength in numbers.”

  “There is hunger in numbers,” Spingate says. “Our food won’t last long as it is. And as far as we know, there could be people in there who look just like us but have already been overwritten—Grownups in young bodies.”

  If that’s the case, would they accept us? Would they try to take over, marginalize us, because they think they know better how to live, how to run things?

  Or maybe they would just kill us. We’re only receptacles, after all; empty vessels have no rights.

  Gaston nods in agreement. “Spingate is right about our food situation. How many coffins were there?”

  O’Malley answers. “One hundred and sixty-eight.”

  The number frightens me. Once upon a time, I led five people. If those coffins open—if the people inside are like us—I could be responsible for almost three hundred.

  “That would more than double our numbers,” Gaston says. “Our food will be gone in half the time.”

  Spingate frowns. “The Grownups sure seem to like multiples of three. Or maybe twelve. Were any of the coffins cracked open, like back on the Xolotl?”

  O’Malley shakes his head. “I didn’t see any damage. They all looked sealed.”

  “Leave them that way,” Bishop says. “At least until we find more food. Whoever it is, if they’re in the coffins they aren’t eating anything. And they aren’t a threat.”

  O’Malley picks at the scab on his cheek.

  “What if the shuttle decides to wake them up?” he says. “Or what if someone up on the Xolotl can do it somehow? Gaston, you’ve been talking to the shuttle. Ask it about the coffins.”

  Gaston sighs. “Shuttle, what do you know about the coffins on Deck Four?”

  The honey-sweet voice answers from the walls.