The only thing they know for sure is that today is their birthday.
Aramovsky is the loudest, demanding information more than asking questions. I get the feeling that he thinks maybe Spingate and I were the ones who put him in the coffin in the first place.
Yong keeps glancing at his own arms, flexing them slightly, a smile teasing the corners of his mouth when his muscles strain the white fabric. Between those glances, he glares at all of us like we’re not to be trusted, like we know what’s going on and we’re playacting together to keep him in the dark.
Bello is very quiet—she seems afraid to talk. She’s the smallest of us. She looks fragile. I’m sure the boys could have broken out of their coffins if they had awoken to darkness and pain. Spingate, too, maybe, if she hadn’t convinced herself it was impossible. But Bello? She would have been trapped in there forever, until she died and shriveled up like Brewer.
O’Malley watches me and Spingate, but he doesn’t seem suspicious, or angry. When someone talks, he looks at them the way Spingate looks at the tool or the jewel-controls: he’s analyzing, he’s measuring.
I tell the others what happened between the time I got out of my coffin and when Spingate shocked them awake. Since she and I have been up for maybe thirty minutes more than they have, it doesn’t take long to cover everything.
When I stop talking, I wait for them to respond. They don’t. Spingate doesn’t make a sound. She pretends to study the jeweled rod so she doesn’t have to look at anyone.
“That’s it,” I say. “That’s all we know.”
The four newcomers stare at me. I woke up alone, had to figure things out for myself. In a way, they have it harder: they awoke as a blank slate, naturally assuming the people waiting for them would explain what was happening. Which, of course, Spingate and I can’t do.
O’Malley scratches at his temple. His deep-blue eyes drill into me.
“So that’s all you know,” he says. “That’s it?”
I nod.
“Then you don’t know much.”
He doesn’t say it accusingly. It’s a fact.
“We,” I say. “We don’t know much.”
He nods slowly. “We. Yes, we.”
There is strength in that word.
Yong shakes his head and looks off, disgusted.
Bello stares at every person in turn, as if she’s waiting for someone to do something. To do anything. No one does. Her eyes are striking, green at the outer edges that blends to an orange-brown around the black dot of the iris. Finally, her eyes settle on me.
“So, Em…what now?”
I wait for someone else to speak, to know what we should do next. The other five are obviously waiting for the same thing.
“Spingate,” I say, “is there anything else on those controls you found? Can we…I don’t know…call for help or something?”
She shakes her head. “I think they were for adjusting the…oh, what’s the word…ah, yes, for adjusting the environment in the coffins. I don’t think the controls do anything else.”
I was afraid of that. “Then we have to leave this room.”
Bello wrings her hands together, left clutching right, right clutching left, over and over.
“We should stay put,” she says. “We don’t know what’s out there. We should wait for grownups to come and get us.”
Grownups. Like the word we, the word grownups has power. Grownups would know what to do, would tell us where to go.
Yong spreads his hands, a gesture that takes in the whole room.
“What grownups?” he says. “Do you see any grownups here? I don’t. Someone put us in this place, probably those same grownups you’re crying for.”
“We don’t know that,” Bello says, her hands wringing faster.
Yong spits into the dust. “Don’t be an idiot. We’re in a dungeon, there isn’t time for your stupidity.”
“Stop it,” I say, my voice sharp like it was when I yelled at Spingate to be quiet. “There’s no reason to be mean.”
Yong turns his cold gaze on me. I see his eyes flick to my forehead, see those eyes narrow in thought, like he’s almost got something, then that something is gone.
“Sure,” he says with a smirk. “Let’s all play nice, because that will make things better, right?”
I feel something I haven’t felt yet: anger. I don’t like the way Yong looks at me, the way he seems to dismiss me.
We hear a grumble, a muffled sound that rolls fast, then slow, then faster and louder.
All heads turn to where that sound came from: Spingate’s stomach.
“Oh,” she says. Her hands cover her exposed belly. She blushes. “Sorry. I guess I’m hungry.”
The last word seems to unlock something in me, reveal a pinching emptiness in my middle. It was there all along, I think, but my brain didn’t process it. Maybe I was too busy thinking about all the other things that are wrong to realize that I’m starving.
I see other hands on other bellies. Everyone is hungry.