Alight (19 page)

Up here we are no longer sheltered from the wind. It whips us, snaps at our black coveralls. The sun is already heading down to the horizon—the climb took us longer than we had hoped. The fabric that kept us cool now keeps us warm, but our hands and faces feel the wind’s biting chill.

The last layer is the smallest one, of course. We stand upon a plateau, a square as long as ten of us lying head to feet. In the center is a stone slab, and, rising up from it, a tall, smooth stone pillar. On it, the six gold symbols, each taller than Bishop. From top to bottom: circle, circle-star, double-ring, circle-cross, half-circle and gear.

Inside the empty space of the gear, a plaque with a red handprint. In the palm, a golden double-ring.

All around us, the city seems tiny. Insignificant. At ten layers up, the tops of the tallest pyramids were at eye level. At twenty, everything looked small and we could see a long, long way. Here at the top, thirty layers above the streets, the city below no longer looks real. The Observatory is more like a mountain than a building.

I can see well past the city walls. Trees, vines and the ruins of six-sided buildings blend together, a broken yellow jungle that stretches out and out and out. To the west, far off, mountains rise up. To the north, a sparkling lake with steep cliffs all around. To the northeast is a wide clearing, crescent-shaped like a quarter moon. Maybe someday soon that clearing will be farmland for us, giving us a place to grow crops where we don’t have to clear the jungle.

The same wind that whips at us is driving those dark clouds toward us. Hidden flashes of lightning flicker within. I hope it doesn’t rain.

Aramovsky fights away his fatigue, stands to his full height. Atop the city’s tallest building, our tallest boy looks important…
regal
.

“The gods have called to us,” he says, almost yelling so that we can hear him over the wind. “They paint a picture of what has been, and what is to come. They will—”

“Hold on,” O’Malley says. He’s at the layer’s edge, looking down at his feet. “What do you all make of this?”

He’s standing on a black line, so faded none of us noticed it. It’s a curve. We all glance around the plateau and see it: the curve is a circle that goes all the way around, touching the edges of the square plateau. And inside it, a second circle.

At first I think it’s Aramovsky’s double-ring, but then I see a dot on the outer circle. The dot is also black. There are four of them. If I were to draw lines from plateau corner to plateau corner, the dots are where those lines would intersect the outer circle.

And on the middle ring, there are two dots, one on either side of the stone pillar.

Two rings: four dots on the outer ring, two on the inner.

I look at Aramovsky. “Do you know what it means?”

He walks around, staring down. “This entire building
has
to be a religious place, some kind of temple, so this symbol is clearly related to mine.”

He sounds like he’s trying to convince himself, and failing at it. He has no idea.

The wind bites into me.

“Try the handprint,” I say to him. “I want to get out of here.”

He walks to the pillar, but doesn’t press the handprint. Instead, he tilts his head back and raises his arms to the sky.

“Oh gods, you have chosen for us to be here in this divine place, so that we may live out your plans and—”

Bishop grabs Aramovsky and shakes him.

“Just
press the damn thing
already!”

Aramovsky’s grand moment is ruined. He’s far more worried about his safety than his speech. He presses his hand against the plaque.

Nothing happens.

A wave of relief washes through me. This entrance, if that’s what it is, is broken, or Aramovsky is the wrong kind of person. Whatever the reason, we can’t get in. I don’t have to learn what horrors Matilda planned on committing once she took over my body.

A grinding sound. It stops and starts. Silence. We listen for more, but hear only the wind’s lonely howl.

The plateau trembles beneath us. We are so high up. If the Observatory collapses…

The pillar shudders. The rectangular slab beneath it rises up, each corner supported by a golden column that reflects the red sun’s final light. The bottom of the slab reaches eye level, then shudders to a stop.

At our feet, in the space below where the slab was, an intricate metal staircase spirals down into the darkness.

—

If I never see steps again, it will be too soon.

As we descend, the dark stone walls start to glow. Dimly, but enough that we don’t need our flashlights. The sound of the wind fades away. Soon we hear only our breathing and our boots stepping on metal stairs.

At least there’s no “art” on these walls.

Down and down we go. Bishop first, then Visca, then me, Spingate, Aramovsky and finally O’Malley. We hold our weapons at the ready. I don’t know how long we descend. Long enough that I’m sure the sun has set, that the Observatory’s long shadow has once again engulfed the shuttle.

Finally, the stairs end at a small room with a stone floor. In one wall, a door made of vertical metal bars. Some kind of metallic mesh hangs behind the bars. Next to the door is a plaque with a red handprint: a gold double-ring marks the palm.

This place has a stale odor. It smells like my coffin room did when I first woke up.

I point to the plaque. “Aramovsky, open it.”

He glances at Bishop, then quickly presses his hand to the print.

We again hear that sound of struggling machinery, then the bars and mesh rattle, kicking off a brief cascade of rust as they slide to the right, revealing a small room.

“It’s an elevator,” O’Malley says.

I remember those. My heart pounds at the sight of it. I don’t want to be sealed up in that tiny space, but what choice do I have? We came here to find answers. If that means getting into a cramped elevator, I have to do it.

“Everyone, inside,” I say.

It’s a tight fit. Bishop keeps his axe close to his chest so as not to accidentally cut anyone. Visca stands his sledgehammer in the corner. Aramovsky and Spingate are armed only with the knives strapped to their thighs, although they have to adjust their black bags to make room. My spear is a bit too tall for the low ceiling; I have to hold it at an angle.

O’Malley slides the bars back into place, shutting us in. No plaque in here. No controls that I can see.

Without warning, the cage
drops
. We grab each other out of fear. We’re dropping fast. I shut my eyes tight, stifle a scream. My insides feel like they’re floating, rising up.

We’re going to smash into the ground. I should have never got in here,
never,
we’re going to die I’m going to die trapped in this tiny box.

Spingate’s fingers intertwine with mine, clasp tight.

“Breathe, Em,” she says softly. “We’re fine.”

I suddenly feel heavier.

“We’re slowing down,” she says.

Heavier still…

The cage bounces slightly. It has stopped.

Spingate all but collapses on me, hangs on me, laughing. I don’t know how to react—a little while ago she thought I might kill her because of her symbol.

She shakes her head, then kisses me on the cheek.

“I’m sorry, Em. I said awful things in the lab. I barely even know where to start with the red mold, and there just isn’t enough time. And then all the horrible pictures and carvings on the way up here…it made me so upset. So many images of people killing my kind.”

I nod. I understand, and also, I don’t. I’ve used the phrase
my kind,
too, so I can’t hold that against her, but aren’t we
all
the same kind?

She kisses my cheek again, hugs me tight. “I know that statue isn’t you. You’re not like Matilda. You would never do anything like that.”

The elevator door slides open to darkness.

As one, we reach into our bags for our flashlights.

Bishop and Visca go first, as always, axe and hammer at the ready, flashlight beams probing the darkness. The rest of us follow. Our lights play off a curved ceiling made of large stone blocks. Carvings cover the stone walls. These images we’ve seen before: ziggurats, cartoonish people, jaguars, suns.

Not that far from the elevator, our flashlights light up the soft gleam of dusty metal—golden coffins. Four of them, on golden risers so their closed lids are waist high. Laid out side by side, their surfaces are richly detailed with gemstones and the same images we see on the walls. The dust here is thin, not like the thick stuff that coated everything back on the
Xolotl
.

These coffins have no nameplates.

Past the coffins is a raised platform with five white pedestals. To our left, a tall black “X” mounted into the floor. Thick shackles dangle from the top of each arm. A bar runs between the tops of those arms—hanging from that bar, some kind of ornate, black crown. On the wall just behind the X, a colorful, carved mural: an old man shackled to that same X, wearing that same crown, a young man in red robes before him, driving a knife into the old man’s chest. To our right, deep shadows filled with racks of bins similar to what we saw in the food warehouse, except these bins all look empty and many are scattered about.

In the room’s center, there is a hole about as wide as I am tall. A waist-high, red metal wall surrounds it. A flexible black tube—as thick as my arm—runs from inside that hole, over the wall and under the pedestal platform.

Visca and Bishop move through the room, flashlights in one hand, weapons in the other. We give them a few minutes, then everyone starts exploring.

I walk to the red wall. Engraved in the metal is a large black symbol. It’s like the one from the plateau on top of this building, but slightly different. Two rings, four dots on the outer ring, two in the middle ring, but there is also a thick dot in the middle—right where the stone pillar was.

“Aramovsky, take a look at this.”

Maybe with the center dot, he’ll recognize it.

He stands at my side, staring at it. He shakes his head—he doesn’t know what it is. At least now he admits it.

Spingate joins us. Her eyes squint, like a memory is working its way up from the depths.

“I…I think it’s a representation of something,” she says. “An atom. It’s…I think this represents a carbon atom.”

She points to the six dots on the rungs, one at a time.

“These are electrons, I think. And that dot in the middle, that’s the nucleus.”

I look around the room, my flashlight beam seeking out this symbol on the ceiling, the walls, the coffins. I don’t find it.

“All right,” I say, “so what does it mean?” I ask her.

She shrugs. “I have no idea.”

Another useless symbol of the Grownups.

Aramovsky walks to the black X. He seems mesmerized by it.

I look down into the hole. The shaft’s round wall is nothing but dirt, packed with stones that show white cracks and scrapes from when this hole was dug. Far below, I think I see the bottom: something metal. A machine, perhaps. The black cable runs into the center of it.

Spingate steps onto the pedestal platform. The moment she does, I hear a hum. It’s coming from the black cable.

The five pedestals begin to glow.

“Welcome, Grandmaster Spingate.”

The voice comes from nowhere, from everywhere. Just like in the shuttle’s pilothouse, lights suddenly play off Spingate’s skin. Her face glows like that of a goddess. She smiles wide: a new puzzle for her, a new problem to solve. Her frustration, fear and anger are gone—or at least temporarily forgotten.

“Do you have a name?” she asks.

“Much of my memory has been erased. I believe I was referred to as Ometeotl.”

“Good enough,” she says. “Can you show me a diagram of this building?”

Lights flash. In the space above the hole, a glowing version of the Observatory appears. The building spins slowly, giving us a look at all four sides.

“Thank you,” Spingate says. “This place is called the Observatory, is that correct?”

“Yes, Grandmaster.”

Spingate nods. That title,
Grandmaster,
doesn’t surprise her. Maybe her lab referred to her by that name, just like the Deck Three pedestals called O’Malley
Chancellor
.

“Observatories are for telescopes,” Spingate says. “Is there a telescope?”

The fake ziggurat flashes. The sloping sides become transparent. We see hundreds of rooms and intersecting corridors, but the main feature is a long cylinder that starts at the building’s base and rises up at an angle to end just inside one of the sloping walls.

The cylinder glows brightly. It is enormous. So big, in fact, I can only come to one conclusion—this Observatory was built specifically to house it.

Spingate steps off the platform and walks to the glowing ziggurat. She continues to shine, lit up so brightly our flashlights are almost useless. She leans on the red metal wall, her eyes tracing the cylinder’s length.

“I’ve seen an image like this before,” she says. “It’s hard to remember but…someone I knew was trained to use this telescope. Someone I went to school with.”

Spingate rubs at her face. We all watch, we all wait, because we all know what she’s going through—bits of memories are pushing their way to the surface.

She stops rubbing. Hands still pressed against her face, she slides her fingers apart slightly. One eye looks at me.

“Em, our school. We were all being trained to live and work on the
Xolotl
.” She points at the image of the telescope. “Some people were trained specifically for that. The girl…she was a gear…what was her name?”

Spingate makes fists, grinds them into her temples.

She stops—she has it.

“Okadigbo,” she says. “One of the dead kids in our original coffin room on the
Xolotl
.”

I also know that name, because Brewer mentioned her:
Where is Okadigbo? Is she still alive, or did you kill her again?

“She trained for years,” Spingate says. “I can’t remember what her classes were, exactly, but it was all she worked on.”