“My creator,” he says, and steps forward.
Is he crazy? Are they doing something to him to make him act like this? I grab Aramovsky’s wrist and try to pull him back.
The tall monster waves his fingers inward—a kind, inviting gesture.
“Come,” it says. “It is right for you to join me.”
Aramovsky acts like he doesn’t even know I’m pulling on his arm. He steps toward the creature, dragging me along.
Off to my right, I see a flash of movement…Matilda, reaching for my fallen spear.
I let go of Aramovsky and launch myself at her, punching and kicking. My fist hits something soft, something that squishes from the blow. I hear my creator’s cry of pain and she falls away. I snatch up my spear: its familiar solidity instantly comforts me.
I point the tip at Matilda, hold it so close to her chest that we both know the message—if she moves, I strike. Her hands press to her right eye. Darkness and gnarled fingers don’t completely hide the damage. Her eye used to bulge out; now it sags like broken fruit. A thick, yellowish-gray fluid seeps down her face, glistens in the dim light, gathering on the disgusting vertical folds that cover her mouth.
I look back to Aramovsky. He stands in front of the tall monster. They embrace: bloody, white-shirted arms wrap around wrinkled coal-black skin, wrinkled coal-black arms wrap around the bloody white shirt.
Aramovsky rests his cheek on the monster’s black chest.
The thicket behind me suddenly rattles and shakes like it was hit by a storm. Something big and strong and heavy tears through it. A flash of gray and red, of muscle and scattering leaves. A thighbone cuts through the air, a blur of white that passes right over Aramovsky’s head and smashes into the monster’s face.
The thighbone cracks in two, one piece spinning into the darkness, the other still held in Bishop’s hands.
The tall monster’s legs go slack. It sags back, sliding out of Aramovsky’s arms. It turns as it falls, landing facedown.
Bishop steps forward. He holds the broken bone in one hand. The jagged tip points down like the blade of a misshapen knife.
Aramovsky looks dazed. He sees his creator flat on the floor, trying to crawl away.
Bishop raises his bone-dagger high.
Aramovsky’s hands shoot out to block the blow, but he is too late.
The broken thighbone punches deep into the black monster’s back.
Everything stops.
Bishop’s panting breath is the only sound.
He is bleeding from the shoulder, from the forehead. His red blood runs thick trails through the dark dust that covers his skin.
He stands there, staring down, chest heaving, then grabs the bone and yanks it free.
The tall monster trembles. With painful effort, it slowly rolls to its back. It ignores Bishop, stretches a shaking hand toward Aramovsky.
“So…close,” it says.
The hand drops to the floor, limp.
Aramovsky’s monster is dead. I turn to face mine.
Matilda hasn’t moved. Neither has my spear.
If she dies, I am forever free.
I press the spear tip forward. Hands still covering her eye, she backs up until she bumps into a metal wall and can retreat no more. Her face isn’t human, but I recognize her fear.
Matilda is terrified. Like with Aramovsky standing at Latu’s grave, her fear excites me, it feeds me. I feel it tingling across my skin and fluttering in my belly.
This vile thing created me just so she could destroy me, but I will destroy her.
My hands tighten on the spear. All it will take is one strong thrust….
She shudders. She is so afraid. She bleeds.
My joy at her fear, it fades, it drains.
She is me.
No…she is not me. I am not her.
A hand on my shoulder. I glance and see O’Malley. His knife, knife hand and sleeve are soaked in red-gray. Red blood—his blood—spills down from a gash on his cheek to stain the collar of his white shirt.
“Em, don’t,” he says quietly. “We need her.”
It takes me another second to realize he’s really there, not a product of my imagination. I keep the spear tip pressed against Matilda’s chest. My eyes have adjusted; I can see more now. My people are in here with us. Bishop and his dust-faced warriors, El-Saffani, Spingate and Gaston, Coyotl and Okereke, Cabral and Borjigin, all of them. Farther back, Smith and Beckett, and all around them a countless cluster of terrified children.
I’m almost afraid to believe what I see. “We made it?”
O’Malley nods. “The monsters attacked. They didn’t have bracelet weapons. I don’t know why. They tried to grab us. Because we were in groups of four, everyone was able to fight them off. We killed some of them—it was bad, Em.” He closes his eyes for a moment. “We were bad.”
When he opens his eyes, I see something in his face, an expression I haven’t seen before. Whatever he experienced out there in the Garden, whatever he did, he’s trying to push it away.
“The monsters ran,” he says. “We went back and got the kids. Your plan, Em…your plan worked.”
My people are alive.