They adjust their grips on their bone-clubs, then step inside.
The moment they enter, lights snap on. It is a corridor that runs left and right, a corridor of red cloth walls and a black metal floor. I can’t see anything other than the red corridor wall opposite me.
The twins step inside and dart right, disappearing for a moment. Seconds later, they pass in front of me, silently heading the other way.
O’Malley walks up the ramp to stand at my left. Bishop moves slightly to stand at my right, Matilda still cradled in his arms. Along with Gaston and Spingate, we wait, both hopeful and full of dread at what El-Saffani might find inside.
This has to be it. It has to: we have nowhere else to go.
El-Saffani returns to the opening.
“No one here—” Boy El-Saffani says.
“—it looks safe,” Girl El-Saffani says.
Boy El-Saffani points to his left, my right, toward the shuttle’s nose.
“A door that way, locked tight,” he says.
Girl El-Saffani points to her right, my left. I’ve never seen her so excited.
“That way is a big room,” she says. “With hundreds of coffins.”
Coffins? No, that can’t be. Hundreds of us, hundreds of coffins…I’m so tired, and this is starting to confuse me. I won’t lie in a coffin again, no matter what…I will not.
But if there are hundreds of coffins, that means the room is big—big enough for all of us. It doesn’t make any sense to leave our people outside the shuttle, exposed if the monsters come.
“O’Malley, get everyone up here,” I say. “Let’s get them inside.”
Bishop leans close to me. “Post guards at the bottom of the ramp, Em. In case we’re attacked.”
I nod, annoyed at myself. “Yes, of course. O’Malley, tell Coyotl and Farrar to stand guard at the base of the ramp. El-Saffani, join them.”
The twins rush out of the shuttle and take up their positions.
O’Malley runs to the others, waving and calling them all to him.
Spingate and Gaston step into the shuttle. They go left, toward the room with all the coffins. I don’t stop them.
Bishop, Matilda and I remain on the platform.
He holds her out to me like she is some kind of offering.
“We don’t need this anymore,” he says. “Do you want me to kill it?”
I do. I want that very much. I want him to smash her, stomp her head in so I can see her brains spill across the platform. Her one eye looks at me.
“Go ahead,” she says, her voice croaking, spent.
Images flash in front of me, conflicting visions: Bishop strangling the life out of this thing, and Yong, terrified…dying.
(Kill your enemies…)
“Go ahead,” Matilda says again. “If it was anyone other than me, you’d have already told your Bishop to cut my throat.”
It would be so easy. I don’t even have to touch her, I can just tell Bishop to do it.
Yong, gasping for breath, his eyes asking me Why? over and over again.
(If you run…)
We’ve made it. No one needs to die.
I shake my head. “You’re wrong, Matilda. You are a prisoner, I won’t kill a prisoner.”
Her eye narrows—she doesn’t have a mouth, but I know she’s smiling.
“I’m not wrong,” she says. “You won, little leader. I wasn’t that much older than you when I handed out my first death sentence. I know you would kill your enemies, because that’s what I would do.” The eye closes. Her voice becomes a regretful whisper. “It’s what I did.”
(Be forever free…)
She ordered people’s deaths? I think of all the bodies in the Xolotl, all the sacrifices and the mutilation. A shudder ripples across my skin. All those bodies…were they because of her?
My knife sliding into Yong’s belly. The rage I felt, the hatred. He thought he could hit me? He thought he could take away my leadership?
Finally, that confused, desperate moment with Yong becomes clear. My memories crystalize, come into sharp focus.
I know what I did.
And I am horrified by it.
When Yong attacked me…I stabbed him. I remember pointing the knife, I remember the small step forward as he came in.
I remember jamming the blade into his belly.
And, I remember sneering when I did it.
Stabbing him felt…it felt good.
Yong’s death was no accident: I killed him.
Guilt pours over me like an icy waterfall. I killed Yong. My brain played some kind of trick on me, hid the truth away, but now that I’ve seen it for what it is, I will never be able to un-see it. I don’t know if it was right or wrong. He attacked me. I don’t know what would have happened if I hadn’t stabbed him, I will never know, but there is no denying the fact that when he came at me, I cut him down.
It’s all too much to handle. I need someone to help me understand. Perhaps the only one who can is the creature who made me.
“Matilda, did you ever kill anyone?”
She coughs. “I told you I did. So many people.”