That name again…
“Tlaloc,” I say. “I remember that name. Who is it?”
Matilda leans back. “You’re lying. You don’t remember that name. You can’t remember things like that, it’s not part of the process.” She’s more agitated than angry now. She seems worried. “Do you remember anything else?”
I do. I remember the smell of pork chops. I remember how it felt to be mocked and ridiculed. I remember that Tchaikovsky was a musician. I remember the trip to the farm. But if Matilda is this upset about that name, Tlaloc, telling her more could make her panic. She wants me to come to her: that gives us a little bit of time, time we probably won’t have if she comes after us instead.
“Not really,” I say. “Hints of things, vague emotions, but…I don’t remember anything.”
Matilda’s sigh of relief makes her face-folds flutter.
“That’s good,” she says. “Brewer obviously made mistakes in the process, but it is not too late. The longer you are away from me, the more memories of your own you form, the more likely the overwrite will fail and we will both die. Come now and I promise you that I will be humane to your friends.”
Humane…the same word I used when Bishop and I killed the pig. More wisps of memory filter in from that trip to the farm. The farmer told us that when they slaughtered the pigs, they tried to do it as quickly and painlessly as possible. He called that “being humane.”
Kill them fast or kill them slow, the pigs all wound up dead. That’s all we are to Matilda…livestock.
She is a monster, a thousand-year-old abomination. She wants me to fulfill my “destiny,” a destiny defined by her.
“We are not your property,” I say. “Our lives are our own.”
The ugly thing shakes its head.
“Sooner than you think, hunger and thirst will drive you to me anyway,” she says. “Throw down your weapons, come to me now, and at least your friends will live. If we have to hunt you, they will all die. Last chance, girl—what is your answer?”
In that moment, I know that if I ever come face-to-face with Matilda, I will kill her.
We are the Birthday Children, and we will find a way to survive.
“My answer is never,” I say. “And one more thing—you always were a bitch, Savage.”
I look over to El-Saffani, point at the three pedestals.
“Break those, then follow me.”
I turn my back on Matilda and walk to the ladder. I hear her screaming at me, saying something about how I must listen, how I must obey, how I’m not old enough to really understand.
I start up the rungs, leaving behind the sounds of destruction.
THIRTY-SIX
We run downhill.
We run past the severed arms, the mangled bodies, the piles of skulls.
The more I know, the more all of this makes sense.
Brewer is one of the monsters, one of the Grownups, one of the “Cherished.” Maybe those are all the same things. His copy, his receptacle, died—murdered by the woman that is me—leaving him stranded in an ancient, twisted body. A journey of over a thousand years, and at the end he will simply wither and die. He has no hope.
I might go crazy, too.
We reach the intersection where our two tribes met. We turn left. We are again tiny insects crawling in the long, straight hallway that runs along the inside of a giant cylinder. We are heading back to our people.
What happened on this ship? Some people do not approve of being sacrificed, Brewer had said. There was a revolt, a war. Many died. Did everyone on this ship have a copy? Was everyone promised a new life on Omeyocan?
The answers don’t really matter. Choices have consequences. The Grownups made choices that destroyed their lives. Our choices are yet to be made, our lives are yet to be lived—if we can get away from here.
We run and run and run. Matilda’s monsters will start hunting us soon, if they aren’t already. We have to get to our friends before her kind gets to them first.
Brewer didn’t tell us where the shuttle was. He didn’t have time. Matilda pushed him out somehow, or maybe broke his pillar, I don’t know. He was toying with us, though, and in his toying was a hint—I know how to find the shuttle, and, hopefully, we will also find Bello.
Before, I wasn’t sure if I should be the leader. I’m sure now. Among all of us, I am unique. I think, I don’t simply react. I make decisions when doing so is hard. I know what it means to kill. I will make sure we do what must be done, even if I have to force those who disagree with me into cooperating. I’m going to get my people out of here and get them out alive—if they want to vote for someone else when we’re all safe, that’s fine with me.