“Brewer, tell me how to get to the shuttle.”
The monster shakes his head. “If they found you, then you found them. As the cleaning flea said to the dirty elephant, Perhaps I missed a spot. Surely I can’t let you sully a pristine, perfect planet if you’re not smart enough to figure things out for yourself.”
I whip the spear down, a short arc that rips through Brewer’s head in a spastic cloud of sparkles. The blade clonks against the pedestal top, taking a chunk out of the white stone.
“Stop playing games with us! We’ve already lost three people. The longer we stay, the more that will die. Let us go!”
He gazes at me for a long time.
“Maybe I kept you all in your husks because I didn’t think you would survive outside of them,” he says. “But you have. I tried to kill you, little Savage, and yet here you are. Maybe I was wrong…maybe you can make it off this ship. If you do, you deserve to create a world in your own image, not ours. Those that don’t know history aren’t poisoned by it. I will wipe the records clean. And when you go, don’t forget to take your little friends. I’ll start waking them up now.”
Little friends? Does he mean there are more of us?
“Brewer, you—”
A sparkle-wave ripples his face. His image bloats into a black cloud, then vanishes.
Brewer is gone.
Bishop nudges my arm. “Em, what did he mean?”
The air above the right-side pedestal flickers, glows.
A black face with red eyes appears, but it is smaller and slimmer than Brewer’s. Rage billows within me when I recognize it—it’s the female monster from the Garden.
She stares at me like I am the only one here.
“You found your way to the Crystal Ball,” she says. “It used to be my favorite place. In a way, I suppose I should be proud.”
That voice, the voice of death. So similar to Brewer’s—old and hissy and ancient and wrong—but different, so different, in a way that makes me start to shake.
I realize why the voice is familiar: I know this creature.
My teeth grind as I fight to get my body under control. I can’t show weakness, not now. I squeeze the spear shaft so tight it makes my fingers hurt.
“I am the leader of our group,” I say. “Who are you?”
The new monster shakes her head. “You haven’t figured it out yet? That’s too bad. You are the leader of nothing. You are nothing. You aren’t even a person.”
Why does her voice terrify me so? I know her, I know this thing. I know she hasn’t always looked like this, I feel it in my chest, but I can’t put the pieces together.
“I am a person,” I say. “We all are, including Bello. Give her back to us.”
“You are property,” the creature says. Her eyes narrow, the swirling red eyes squeezing into thin slits. “You are an empty shell waiting to be filled, an egg with no yolk. You will lay down your weapons and stop fighting us, and you will do it at once.”
That voice…that voice…
My breaths are ragged gasps ripping in and out. My head hurts. A realization is bubbling up through my mind, pushing away the muddy thoughts, and now that I almost have it I suddenly, desperately don’t want to know. I want my brain to stop, to leave it alone, but it’s too late for that. Cold stiffness spreads through me, swirls in my belly and turns my heart into a frozen lump.
Bishop’s hand on my arm, reassuring, supporting—whatever we face next, he will face it with me.
I shake my head. “We will not lay down our weapons.”
“You should,” the monster says. “It’s a big ship, but there is nowhere to run.”
“If we run, you will hunt us. If we kill you, then—”
“Then you are forever free,” the monster finishes.
She knew what I was going to say, yet I’ve never spoken those words out loud. I’ve only thought them. A new strain of anxiety swirls inside me, a sense of foreboding and despair. The mud is sinking, retreating, a hard knowledge is solidifying…it’s almost here, almost here and I don’t want to know I don’t want to know.
I scream at her, a three-word roar so loud it could shake the stars themselves.
“Who…are…you?”
“You still don’t know? Amazing.”
The truth erupts, stabs through me like a thousand spears shredding my flesh. I finally understand my fear, and I know why this thing is death.
I recognize her voice, because it is mine.
“My name,” she says, “is Matilda Savage.”
THIRTY-FIVE
The monster is me.
I am the monster.
I want to shout out that this thing is a liar, but there is no point. At the core of all that I am, I know she is telling the truth.
How can this be? How can I be in two places at once? How could I look like that?
Everything goes black. Falling. I feel Bishop’s hands around my waist, lifting me. I must weigh nothing at all, it seems so easy for him. My feet find the floor. I stand on my own, woozy, head swimming.
I look for my spear.