Alive (27 page)

The kids are dirtier now, grease and grass stains on their clothes. As for those who are my age, their shirts are torn, streaked with dust and blood. They carry clubs of bone. They have fought to get here, faced down nightmares to earn this moment.

Then I see that girl, Zubiri, the tooth-girl with the dark skin. She walks to me. Her eyes are round, terrified discs.

“Em, are we going to die?”

“No, honey,” I say. “It will be all right. I have to show you something scary, but I’ll be right by your side, so don’t be afraid.”

I take her by the hand. I push down my revulsion at the thought of all those coffins, and I lead her to the room.

My people spread out. They wander around. They collapse in the aisles. To my horror and amazement, most of the children crawl into coffins and lie down. People are everywhere—the circles, circle-stars, circle-crosses, the tooths and the double-rings. Every last one of them is exhausted. They have given everything they have to give, and now, hopefully, their efforts are at an end.

Aramovsky is sitting on the floor of an outer aisle, his back against the red-carpeted wall. He isn’t looking at anything. He’s just staring. His shirt is bloody, torn and—finally—wrinkled. At last he looks like one of us, but is he? He stabbed his progenitor, drove the spear into the ancient Aramovsky’s leg. If our Aramovsky hadn’t done that, would the two of them have already been gone by the time Bishop ripped through the thicket? Our Aramovsky does not look well. Once we make it to Omeyocan, I’ll have to keep an eye on him. If he needs help, I will help him.

Zubiri tugs on my hand. “What’s scary, Em?”

I point to the coffins.

She laughs. “Oh, those? Those are beds.”

Zubiri stands on her tiptoes, pulls on my hand. I bend toward her—she kisses my cheek, then runs into the room.

This little girl isn’t afraid of the coffins, but I can barely even look at them? Some leader I’ve turned out to be.

Zubiri sits cross-legged in the aisle. She takes a deep breath. She’s already relaxed and resting.

Very soon I can rest, too, but not yet: the other door awaits.

“Gaston, Spingate, come with me.”

Bishop is still in the corridor, still holding the thing called Matilda. O’Malley stands with him. As I move past them, they follow me, falling in with Spingate and Gaston.

I stand in front of the strange door.

“Gaston,” I say, “get up here.”

He does. He looks at the wheel’s hub, then at me. The sly, self-confident smile again lights up his face.

“Open it,” I say.

Gaston puts his hands on the wheel. Left hand presses down, right hand presses up: the wheel turns.

“It’s good to be me,” he says.

There is a heavy click, and then this final door opens.

I
don’t know what I expected to see, but I did not expect a blank room.

There is nothing in here, nothing but a black, sparkly floor and four black, sparkly walls. This can’t be right.

What have I done?

I walk in. There has to be something here. There
has
to be.

There is not.

I turn to the others. Spingate and Gaston are standing in the doorway, looking around. Bishop still holds the monster that is myself.

“There’s nothing here,” I say. “What do we do now?”

I feel lost. I led everyone here. I have made a horrible mistake. This shuttle must be where the monsters wanted us to go. Matilda tricked me. The monsters will catch us, take us away. We will all die, we will all be
overwritten
. Our brief, fear-filled lives will cease to exist.

Gaston smiles. Not his arrogant smile, not the joking grin he has when he tries to annoy Bishop. This smile is genuine. It is sweet. It is a smile of pure wonder, the smile of a twelve-year-old boy who remembers something truly astounding.

He walks forward. The room comes alive.

Lights flash everywhere, not just on the walls and floor and ceiling, but in the air itself. Streams and streaks of color swell and move, turn and twist. Red and blue and green and yellow, lines and dashes, glowing dots. It overwhelms my senses.

A new voice speaks from nowhere and everywhere all at once, a voice that is neither male nor female.

“Welcome, Captain Xander.”

Gaston walks up to me. He has never been this handsome. Joy radiates from him, makes me want to hug him, kiss his cheeks. Lights play across his face. Glowing dots dance on his eyebrows, his lips, moving when he moves as if they are a part of him.

He takes my hand and squeezes it tight.

“Em…you did it,” he says. His eyes gleam. He looks at me like I am his hero. “You saved us. Spingate and I will take it from here.”

What does he mean? “I…Gaston…I don’t—”

“Xander,” he says. “My name is
Xander
.”

He raises his right hand above his head. Yellow and green lines bathe his fingers and palm, as if he’s wearing a glove woven from light.

He again flashes that stunning smile at me, gestures to the room that has come alive.

“Em, you got us here,” he says. “No one knew what to do, but
you
did
.”

The madness of this room makes no sense to me. Shouldn’t I understand some of this?

O’Malley sees my dismay, and speaks for me.

“You’re right, Gaston, Em got us here. Do you know what to do next?”

The glowing boy shrugs. “Not yet, but I have some ideas. I think I know how to fly. I just have to remember.”

Spingate stands next to him. She, too, is painted in light.

“I’ll help Xander,” she says.

I look at my hands and see that they’re normal. There are no lights on me. There are none on O’Malley, either, or on Bishop.

Spingate looks tired and drained, but elated as well. She glows like a living torch. She is so happy it’s impossible not to fall in love with her all over again from simply looking at her face.

“Go talk to the others, Em,” she says. “Tell them everything will be okay. Tell them…tell them that we’re going
home
.”

Home. She’s right. The
Xolotl,
with its Garden and its coffin rooms, its pigs and Grownups and butchery, this place is not ours. Neither is the dead planet the monsters left behind so long ago. Those places were never our homes.

We were
created
to live on the planet below.

We were made to walk on Omeyocan.

An arm around my shoulders. O’Malley, guiding me out of the strange room. I walk with him. I stop at the wheel door and look back.

Spingate and Gaston shine like a pair of angels. The black walls and black ceiling have vanished. In their place, I see many pictures floating free, so realistic you could reach into them, touch whatever was there. One picture shows the chamber outside this shuttle. Another, the dark hallways we just walked through. Another, the brown and blue and green planet below. And yet another shows a long, spinning copper cylinder…the massive ship we are still inside of.

O’Malley pulls gently, gets me moving again. He guides me to the shuttle’s entryway, where Bishop is waiting, Matilda still cradled in his arms. The platform is empty. At the bottom of the ramp, El-Saffani, Coyotl and Farrar stand guard.

Bishop leans in close. “O’Malley and I talked,” he says. “Do we do it in the new coffin room, where everyone can see, or outside the shuttle?”

Matilda has given up the fight. She lies limp, awaiting her fate. She looks at me, her one good eye a swirling red jewel.

My legs won’t hold me up much longer. They shake from fatigue. I need to find some space in the aisle between the coffins. I need to lie down, I need to sleep.

Wait…Bishop asked a question.
Do we do it in the new coffin room?

“Do we do what, exactly?”

He lifts Matilda slightly, answering my question by showing her to me anew.

“Gaston can fly the shuttle,” he says. “So we don’t need her anymore.”

Matilda’s body shivers; I hear the sound of bone scraping on bone.

“Bishop is asking if you want to kill me quietly, or execute me in front of the others,” she says. “Do it in front of the others, little leader—it is important you show people what happens if they cross you.”

The way she’s speaking now…she thinks she’s helping me. She thinks she’s dying. I am her legacy, the part of her that will live on, and she wants that part to succeed, to have power. Matilda is telling me what she would do if our positions were reversed.

Some people do not approve of being sacrificed.

That’s what she wants: she wants me to sacrifice her, make an example out of her so that everyone will fear me. Fear, and obey.

All the bodies, all the death, the massacre of the
Xolotl
. How much of that was by her command? Matilda doesn’t really think she murdered anyone at all; she thinks her butchery served a greater purpose.

If this woman is me, how did she become like this? Did something happen to her after her twelfth birthday that turned her into an obscenity? She is an appalling creature that shouldn’t be allowed to exist.

If anyone deserves to die, it is Matilda.

But if I give that order, will it end with her? Who might be next, and for what crimes? Matilda today for mass murder, and because she is a threat to us. If Aramovsky challenges my leadership again, does that make him a threat?

The question isn’t if I have the power to order death, because I obviously do. The question is: if I use that power now, will I use it again?

The answer terrifies me worse than anything I’ve seen or experienced so far, because I can’t deny the hard truth: the answer is yes.

I shake my head. I am not her. I am not Matilda. I am
Em,
and Em has a choice to become something better.

I point down the ramp. “Leave her there. She led us to the shuttle. She did what we asked, so we let her live.”

O’Malley and Bishop stare at me like I’m crazy.

“She is our
enemy,
” Bishop says. “She wants to erase you.”

O’Malley nods vigorously. “Bishop’s right. Matilda has to die.”

They
agree
? The two boys don’t agree about anything, yet they find common ground when it comes to murdering a prisoner? Bishop I get, he sees things in simple terms, kill-or-be-killed terms, but I thought O’Malley was more…complex. Disappointment wriggles uncomfortably in my chest.

“I said
no
. We’re getting away. No one else dies. Once we’re down on the surface, she can’t follow us. She won’t be able to hurt us anymore. My decision is final.”

Matilda nods, understanding. “I’d forgotten,” she says. “Sacred Cinteotl bless me, I’d forgotten how idealistic I once was.”

I’m sparing her life, and she’s mocking me?

A scream—a battle cry—makes me jump.

El-Saffani, racing away from the base of the ramp, leaving Farrar and Coyotl to stare. The red-gray-caked twins, screaming, waving bone-clubs over their heads, sprinting toward the archway. There, a pair of wrinkled, coal-black monsters walking in, each step a twitching, jittering, painful effort. One monster carries an axe. The other a jeweled scepter.

They have found us.

“El-Saffani,
come back!
” My shout echoes through the room, but if the twins can hear me over their own violent howls, they don’t respond.

I start down the ramp, make it two steps before a boy’s hand locks down on my arm. O’Malley, holding me, but I yank my arm free and hear my shirtsleeve rip. The ramp’s hard points dig into my running feet. Bishop thunders along behind me.

I’m halfway down when Spingate’s shout stops me. She leans out of the shuttle entrance.

“Em, get everyone inside! We can see the hallway, more of them are coming! Gaston thinks the shuttle will protect us!”

Down the ramp. My feet slap against the metal floor. El-Saffani halfway to their target. I look to the archway: my heart turns to ice.

The two monsters weren’t alone.

Hundreds of them pour through, their movements stilted and halting, as if each step brings a bolt of agony. An army of ancient darkness, of diseased bodies that should have died centuries ago.

And on some of their arms—silver bracelets with a long point that ends at their wrist.

I stop. Bishop stops next to me, Matilda still in his arms.

“It’s about damn time,” she says, her voice full of appreciation and—possibly—
hope
that she might live through this after all. “Captain Xander finally broke out the guns.”

Bishop’s roar makes my best sound like a whisper.

“El-Saffani,
stop
!”

His voice echoes off the floor, the ceiling, the walls. Again, the twins don’t hear. They charge, bellowing, brandishing their clubs.

The pieces click together with a nearly audible
snap
. We beat the Grownups in the Garden because they didn’t bring the weapons, because they wanted to take us alive. But now we’ve got the shuttle, their only way to reach Omeyocan. How could I have been so stupid? They would rather kill most of us than let us strand them here forever.

The monsters raise their arms. Bracelets glow with a white heat.

The twins almost make it.

A crackling sound I’ve never heard before, like a living animal boiled in oil, then narrow cones of shimmering energy blaze from the bracelet tips. A white flash silhouettes El-Saffani: their backs are black shadows against a blinding light. I see this for a split second, then I can see
through
their backs.

The El-Saffani battle cry ends forever—a hundred bloody pieces scatter across the floor, rolling and flopping to a wet stop at the monsters’ feet.

A howl rips from my lungs, launched so hard and so instantly that my throat shreds and burns.

Those butchers murdered my friends.

Tears well up. Despair crushes me, compresses me, but I clench my teeth and force it away. There is no time.

I grab Matilda’s wrist, yank her out of Bishop’s arms. The ancient creature falls hard to the floor.

“Everyone, back inside!” I sprint up the ramp. The circle-stars are so fast they pass me by. O’Malley and I rush in. As soon as I’m through the door, I scream to my right. “Gaston! Get us out of here!”

Coyotl and Farrar run to the coffin room. Bishop and O’Malley stay with me in the corridor.

The floor vibrates: shuttle doors closing. Through them, at the base of the ramp, I see Matilda Savage. She’s lying on one hip, looking at me with her single swirling red eye.

My creator’s stumbling, shambling people close in. They point their arms at me, the white glow of their bracelets building to a blinding shimmer.

The shuttle doors hiss shut. One second I am at the edge of death, the next there are red metal walls a hand’s width from my face. I hear something hit the shuttle with a sizzling sound, but nothing comes through.

Gaston’s voice booms from everywhere and nowhere at once, comes from the shuttle itself.

“Get in those coffins!
Get in and lie still!”

I’m being pulled—Bishop drags me toward the big room.

I won’t go into the darkness again, I
can’t
.

My hand is a fist: my punch drives square into Bishop’s eye. I think of Latu in the fraction of a second before Bishop grabs my forearms so hard I feel bones bend.

Gaston’s voice, roaring:
“Hang on, we’re going home! Get in the coffins or you’ll die!”

I try to yank my hands free, but Bishop’s grip might as well be the metal bars that once held me in my coffin.

“Bishop
let me go
I can’t go in there
I can’t!
”

I am lifted, thrown over his wide shoulder. He carries me into the coffin room.

I punch at him, try to kick him. I rake his back with my fingernails.

“Don’t you
dare,
Bishop! Don’t you leave me in the dark!”

I rake him again, feel his blood on my fingers. I’m in the aisle now, coffins on my left and my right. People who aren’t already in coffins are scrambling to find empty ones.

Hands grab my wrists—it’s O’Malley.

“Em, stop it! It will be all right!”

I lift my head, see deep-blue eyes drowning in helpless fear. I feel my face twist into a wicked snarl. I hurl my hate at him.

“O’Malley,
kill Bishop!
He’s trying to trap me in the dark and I’ll die
I can’t go back there!
”

I fight and kick and twist, but the two boys are far stronger than me. Why don’t they understand? Things
bite
in the darkness; the shadows want to hold me down and suffocate me. I’ll be trapped again, trapped
forever
.

This is a trick of Brewer’s. He’s working with Matilda to capture us all, to capture
me
and erase my mind. They will overwrite me, but that’s not enough for them: they are going to put me in the
dark
first, to punish me, and—