Alight (2 page)

“
You
did it,” I say. “You flew us to Omeyocan.”

He steps back. His smile—part charm, part arrogance—is as wide as ever: Gaston is impressed with himself.

Despite his joy, it’s clear he also has had no rest. His black hair hangs down his face, partially hiding his eyes.

“It was
amazing,
” he says. “Once the pilothouse lights hit me, I remembered my creator’s training from when I—I mean
he
—was little. Some of my blanked-out areas seemed to clear.”

I don’t know how that’s possible. I have “blanked-out areas,” too. We all do. When our brains search for memories we know should be there, they usually return only whispers and echoes. We were never meant to know anything for ourselves. We are
receptacles,
shells, created to house another person.

If he can “remember” how to fly, maybe our blank areas aren’t
permanently
blank, like Matilda told me they were.

Gaston and Spingate look exhausted. I’m sore and scratched, bruised and beaten, but I don’t feel tired at all.

“How long did I sleep?”

“Only the two hours it took us to land,” Spingate says. “The shuttle told us the coffin gas does something to our brains, lets you sleep far deeper than you could on your own. We can take it in the pilothouse, too. You’d still be sleeping if I hadn’t told the shuttle to give you the wake-up injection.”

That sting in my neck. Not a knife, not a snake, not a bite…just a needle. I think about Brewer, how he tried to use a coffin needle to murder me, then I push that thought away. We don’t need to worry about him anymore—we’re
home
.

“What’s it like outside?”

Gaston’s little hand reaches over to Spingate’s. Their fingers lock.

“We don’t know,” he says. “It was dark when we landed. The shuttle had a preprogrammed landing path that took us down a big, circular hole of some kind. Maybe to protect us from wind, I’m not sure. It was nighttime when we flew in, and there was heavy cloud cover.”

He says
cloud cover
like he’s proud of the words, like it was an obstacle that not just anyone could overcome.

“So you haven’t been outside at all?”

Spingate shakes her head. “You deserve to be the first.”

They waited for me, out of respect. I don’t know what to say.

“I’ll go with you,” she says. “The shuttle says the air is safe for us.”

For
us,
but not for the Grownups who made us. We were designed to be able to survive down here. And in that lies our safety; even if the Grownups could reach Omeyocan—which they can’t, because this was the last shuttle—this planet’s very air would kill them.

Spingate holds up her left arm. Her forearm is wrapped in a sheet of gold, intricately carved and studded with black jewels. It reminds me of the bracelets the Grownups used to kill El-Saffani, but somehow I know it’s not a weapon.

“Gaston found this in storage,” she says. “It’s called a
bracer
. I can use it to scan for things that could hurt us, things like
microorganisms
or
toxins.
”

She speaks those words the same way Gaston said
cloud cover
—new, important words that she is proud of knowing.

There’s no reason to wait any longer. We have nowhere else to go. The Birthday Children will survive on Omeyocan, or the Birthday Children will die here.

My stomach lets out a loud growl. An instant later, I wince at the pain—I’m so hungry it
hurts
.

“We have food,” Gaston says. “The deck below has storerooms full of tools, clothes and lots of food.”

“What’s a
deck
?”

“A floor,” Spingate answers. “Except on a ship, it’s called a deck.”

It never occurred to me this shuttle had more floors.

“Show me,” I say.

We walk to the rear of the coffin room. The back wall is red, like the side walls. Up close I see the thin, almost invisible outline of a door. In that door is the faint shape of a handprint with a gear symbol in the palm.

Gaston presses his hand to the print. The door silently swings inward, revealing a metal staircase spiraling down. We descend. Ten stairs below is another door—the handprint here is also a gear. Spingate leads us in.

The corridor looks long, perhaps as long as the shuttle itself. There are doors on my left marked
STORAGE 1
through
STORAGE 6,
and on my right labeled
LAB 1
through
LAB 3
. At the end of the corridor is a door marked
MEDICAL
. The storage rooms have handprints with gears and half-circles. The labs, only gears. Medical’s handprint is a circle-cross.

“We didn’t have time to look at the labs,” Gaston says. “Just the”—an eye-scrunching yawn pauses his words—“just the storage rooms.”

The first storage room holds floor-to-ceiling racks of black bins. Gaston opens one: black coveralls made from heavy cloth. I think back to the
Xolotl,
to the hundreds of mutilated, tortured bodies dressed in similar outfits. It would be nice to change out of my torn rags, but the black clothes are some uniform of the Grownups, and right now I don’t want to think about the Grownups.

Four rooms hold racks of green bins. Gaston opens one of the bins; it’s full of small white packages with black letters that spell out
GRAIN BAR.
A second bin’s packages are labeled
CRACKERS.

“All the bins are full,” Gaston says. “There’s enough food to last us—
all
of us—for about thirty days. Isn’t that great?”

He thinks thirty days is a long time? It will go by very quickly.

The final room holds neat racks of tools. One of Matilda’s memories rushes up, where she first saw pigs—these are the kind of tools people use on a farm. Other racks hold bins filled with smaller tools, the kind used to fix things, to make things. I see another bracer, like the one Spingate is wearing.

I’m sure there will be a need for all of these tools, but until we know what awaits us outside the shuttle, there is something we need even more.

“What about weapons?”

Spingate shakes her head. “No bracelets. Nothing.”

Damn.

“As soon as you get some rest, learn about the labs,” I say to her. “Are there more floors? I mean
decks
.”

“Two more,” Spingate says. “But they have half-circle handprints on the doors. They won’t open for us.”

A half-circle: the symbol on O’Malley’s forehead.

“We asked the shuttle what’s down there,” Gaston says. “It says it doesn’t know.”

I can tell it bothers him greatly that he can’t access those decks. I heard the shuttle call him
Captain
Xander—how can there be parts of the shuttle that won’t open for him?

We can worry about that later. I’m consumed by my need to get outside, see Omeyocan.

“Spingate, wake up the circle-stars. And O’Malley.”

She nods. “Right away. Anybody else?”

“Smith,” I say. “Tell her to learn all she can about that medical room.”

Smith seems to know how to treat cuts and scrapes. I think it has something to do with her forehead mark: a circle-cross. She’s the only one our age with that symbol. Two of the younger kids have it, though, so maybe soon Smith will have help healing our sick and wounded.

Gaston and Spingate look like they might pass out at any moment. I will make sure they rest, just not right now.

“I know you’re both tired, but I need you a little while longer before you can sleep.”

“Whatever it takes,” Gaston says instantly.

Spingate simply smiles at me, as if to say,
I will always help you, no matter what.

I’ve only been alive for a few days, yet I love these two so much it hurts. Spingate and Gaston—my
friends
.

“Spin, you’ll come with me outside. Gaston, while we’re gone, wake up everyone else and also prepare a meal. We should all eat together.”

I lift the spear slightly, let it fall back to the hard floor with a soft
clomp
.

“It’s time to see our new home.”

W
e gather just inside the shuttle’s main door.

My circle-stars: Bishop, Farrar, Visca, Coyotl and Bawden. They wear nothing but filthy cut-off pants. On the
Xolotl,
they covered themselves in a paste that made them all the same color—gray. Now that material is flaking away, showing the different skin tones beneath.

We don’t have bracelets like the ones Grownups used to kill El-Saffani, but the rack of farming supplies means we are not completely unarmed. In our hands, tools have once again become weapons.

“Maybe you should stay here, Em,” Bishop says. “You could help O’Malley explore the rest of the ship.”

He holds a red axe he took from the storage room. I think about him swinging it as hard as he can, powerful muscles driving the sharp blade into a living thing, and I have to suppress a shiver.

“I’m going,” I say, adjusting my grip on my spear. “I need to know what’s out there.”

He wants to protect me. His concern makes me feel warm inside, but I will not sit back while my people face danger.

The flesh around his left eye is swollen and bruised. When he put me in the coffin—trying to save my life—I went crazy and punched him. I feel horrible about that. Such seriousness in his face. I want to reach out and touch his blond curls, but now is not the time. When I first met him, he smiled easily, seemed so happy and confident. Not anymore. He killed two Grownups. Taking those lives changed him. I hope he can find his smile again, but if he feels inside the same way I do, I doubt it.

At the back of the coffin room, I see the door in the red wall open. O’Malley and Spingate step out, walk down the center aisle to join us. He’s holding the knife I used to kill Yong. Somehow, that weapon became his.

“I’ll take a good look around the shuttle while you go outside,” he says. “But…are you
sure
I shouldn’t come with you?”

Does he want to see the planet, or does he also want to protect me? It doesn’t matter; we need to learn all we can as fast as we can. Besides, he’s made for
thinking,
not
fighting
.

“I’ll be fine. I have Bishop with me.”

O’Malley looks down, and I cringe inside. I meant to say
I have the circle-stars with me,
but that’s not what came out.

If he’s hurt, he recovers quickly, grins at me.

“Just be smart,” he says. “We have all the time this world has to offer—don’t rush anything.”

Our ordeal has affected him, too, but not like it has Bishop. O’Malley’s blue eyes are vibrant, filled with excitement for our new adventure. Brittle bits of leaves cling to his brown hair. Dried blood stains his ill-fitting white shirt, especially at the collar below the nasty cut on his left cheek. He suffered that wound in the Garden, during our fight with the Grownups. I wonder what he had to do back there. I wonder if he—like Bishop and I—now knows how it feels to kill.

O’Malley looks at Bishop, then offers the knife, hilt-first.

“Take it,” O’Malley says. “If I’m staying here, you need it more than I do.”

Back on the
Xolotl,
the two boys came close to killing each other. Will they get along better now that we’re on Omeyocan?

Bishop lifts his axe slightly.

“I like this better,” he says.

The two boys have been “alive” for only a few days, yet they are both already marked with wounds that will become scars. In that, they aren’t alone. My fingertips touch my split upper lip, the bump on my forehead, trace my cuts and scratches and bruises. We earned these badges of bravery.

Our creators designed our bodies. Our faces are theirs—these scars are the only things we can truly call our own.

Bishop isn’t the only one with a new weapon.

White-haired, pink-skinned Visca holds a sledgehammer that is almost as tall as Gaston. Farrar chose a long-handled shovel. He is the largest of us save only for Bishop, and I bet the point—or edge—of the thick shovel blade could do horrible damage to flesh and blood. Bawden has an axe just like Bishop’s. I find myself wondering how long it takes hair to grow: the first hints are showing on her shaved head, dark-brown skin giving way to stubble. With most of her dust gone, there is no ignoring the fact that she wears nothing but a tattered skirt. Her nakedness makes me want to look away; she doesn’t seem to notice it.

Coyotl made the strangest choice of all—he still holds the thighbone he used against the Grownups. His skin has a bright hue, as if he spent far too long in the sun.

I meet Spingate’s gaze. Her eyebrows rise in a silent question.

It is time.

“Open it,” I say.

The shuttle doors slide apart.

The morning sun is a blinding, reddish ball creeping above the high tree line. I lift a hand to block out the light, feel the sun’s heat against my skin.

A breeze caresses us, carrying new scents. My head spins as Matilda’s fractured memories rush to the surface, try to put names on what I smell:
damp wood, burned grass
and something like
mint
.