K. Bello’s skin is white. Are people supposed to be that pale? Maybe she’s sick. Bello has long blond hair, so thin that if you walk by her coffin a few strands slowly move as if hit by a breeze. The symbol on her forehead is a single circle, exactly like mine.
The last one, J. Yong, is another boy. His tan skin looks smooth and soft. He has thick black hair, as black as Aramovsky’s but straight rather than curly. It hangs down to his eyes, covering his symbol. I brush the hair back to see it: a black circle with a solid five-pointed star inside.
Savage, Spingate, O’Malley, Aramovsky, Bello, Yong. Other than Brewer, I don’t know the names of the dead and I don’t care to.
Broken eggs don’t matter.
Everyone—corpses and the living alike—wears the same style of clothing: button-down white shirt, red tie, black pants or a red and black plaid skirt.
And there is something else: everyone is beautiful. Beyond beautiful…perfect.
O’Malley is the most attractive of the boys, but it’s a close thing. All three of them have strong features, square jaws, thick necks, muscular bodies. If they were awake, I bet they could run forever. I bet they could lift anything. They could probably lift me as easily as they can breathe.
Spingate and Bello have curvy shapes, beautiful hair, flat stomachs and firm legs. They are flawless. I can’t remember any details of my school, but I am haunted by echoes of feelings I had looking at older girls like them. I felt so awkward. I knew I would never have a body like theirs. Those girls always looked so confident.
Now I have firm legs and a flat stomach, just like Spingate and Bello, just like those girls I can’t quite remember. I have breasts, too, but I still don’t feel confident because this isn’t me. Having the body of a woman doesn’t change the fact that I’m still a kid.
Spingate is standing next to Bello’s coffin, gently stroking the unconscious girl’s hair.
“Em, I don’t understand,” she says. “Why are they still asleep?”
My past is a vague whisper, shades and hints of events that might have actually happened, or might have been a dream. The only reality I can count on is what happened after the needle struck home.
Pain woke me. Pain, fear and blood. There is no blood on Spingate.
“I don’t know why,” I say. “What woke you up?”
She thinks. “A tingling. All over my body.”
“Did it hurt?”
She shakes her head, pauses, then nods. “A little. Maybe. No, not really.”
I look into O’Malley’s coffin. There is no white tube. Maybe one is in there, somewhere, hidden behind the white fabric.
Or, maybe…the needle was for me alone.
Spingate suddenly claps her hands, hops up and down. Her red curls bounce.
“A mild shock,” she says. “That’s what woke me. Electricity.”
She walks around the room, studying the pictures carved into the stone walls, examining the coffins, even staring up at the ceiling. I don’t know what she hopes to find, so I turn my attention back to O’Malley.
I am suddenly afraid he will never wake up. Or what if he’s not real at all…what if I’m still in my coffin, dreaming? But if O’Malley isn’t real, why does looking at him make my throat feel so dry?
“I found something over here,” Spingate says. “I think these are controls of some kind.”
I nod, but don’t look. I wrap my hand around O’Malley’s firm shoulder. There is something comforting in the denseness of his body.
I squeeze his shoulder, ever so slightly.
He doesn’t move.
Wake up…please wake up.
I give him a little shove.
Still he doesn’t move.
I lean in, ready to shake him hard. As soon as I do, a thousand tiny needles drive through my skin. My arm moves on its own, yanking my hand away from O’Malley—the second I let go of him, the needle-pokes stop. I look at my hand, not sure what just happened.
“Found it!” Spingate calls out. “Did they wake up?”
O’Malley is twitching a little. His face is no longer peaceful. His brow wrinkles and his closed eyes squint, as if he’s beginning a nightmare.
“No,” I say. “He’s moving, but still asleep.”
“I’ll give them all a little more.”
I hear a buzz: O’Malley sits up like a shot. A button pops from his strained shirt and sails off to land soundlessly somewhere in the dust. He is terrified, confused. His wide-open eyes stare into nothing.
His eyes are blue.
I hear screams of fear and confusion. Aramovsky and Bello are awake. Aramovsky lurches out of his coffin, lands hard in a billowing puff of dust. Bello sits up, her eyes squeezed tight, her hands reaching out blindly to ward off a threat she can’t see and can’t stop.
Yong rolls out of his coffin, the move fast and graceful even though his eyes are still closed. He lands on his side, hands over his ears, elbows together and touching his tucked-up knees.
I look back to O’Malley.
He squints and blinks against the light, but he is looking right at me.
The survivors are awake.
The eggs have hatched.
SEVEN
They don’t know their names. They don’t know why they’re here. They don’t know where we are.