Zubiri stands on her tiptoes, pulls on my hand. I bend toward her—she kisses my cheek, then runs into the room.
This little girl isn’t afraid of the coffins, but I can barely even look at them? Some leader I’ve turned out to be.
Zubiri sits cross-legged in the aisle. She takes a deep breath. She’s already relaxed and resting.
Very soon I can rest, too, but not yet: the other door awaits.
“Gaston, Spingate, come with me.”
Bishop is still in the corridor, still holding the thing called Matilda. O’Malley stands with him. As I move past them, they follow me, falling in with Spingate and Gaston.
I stand in front of the strange door.
“Gaston,” I say, “get up here.”
He does. He looks at the wheel’s hub, then at me. The sly, self-confident smile again lights up his face.
“Open it,” I say.
Gaston puts his hands on the wheel. Left hand presses down, right hand presses up: the wheel turns.
“It’s good to be me,” he says.
There is a heavy click, and then this final door opens.
FORTY-TWO
I don’t know what I expected to see, but I did not expect a blank room.
There is nothing in here, nothing but a black, sparkly floor and four black, sparkly walls. This can’t be right.
What have I done?
I walk in. There has to be something here. There has to be.
There is not.
I turn to the others. Spingate and Gaston are standing in the doorway, looking around. Bishop still holds the monster that is myself.
“There’s nothing here,” I say. “What do we do now?”
I feel lost. I led everyone here. I have made a horrible mistake. This shuttle must be where the monsters wanted us to go. Matilda tricked me. The monsters will catch us, take us away. We will all die, we will all be overwritten. Our brief, fear-filled lives will cease to exist.
Gaston smiles. Not his arrogant smile, not the joking grin he has when he tries to annoy Bishop. This smile is genuine. It is sweet. It is a smile of pure wonder, the smile of a twelve-year-old boy who remembers something truly astounding.
He walks forward. The room comes alive.
Lights flash everywhere, not just on the walls and floor and ceiling, but in the air itself. Streams and streaks of color swell and move, turn and twist. Red and blue and green and yellow, lines and dashes, glowing dots. It overwhelms my senses.
A new voice speaks from nowhere and everywhere all at once, a voice that is neither male nor female.
“Welcome, Captain Xander.”
Gaston walks up to me. He has never been this handsome. Joy radiates from him, makes me want to hug him, kiss his cheeks. Lights play across his face. Glowing dots dance on his eyebrows, his lips, moving when he moves as if they are a part of him.
He takes my hand and squeezes it tight.
“Em…you did it,” he says. His eyes gleam. He looks at me like I am his hero. “You saved us. Spingate and I will take it from here.”
What does he mean? “I…Gaston…I don’t—”
“Xander,” he says. “My name is Xander.”
He raises his right hand above his head. Yellow and green lines bathe his fingers and palm, as if he’s wearing a glove woven from light.
He again flashes that stunning smile at me, gestures to the room that has come alive.
“Em, you got us here,” he says. “No one knew what to do, but you did.”
The madness of this room makes no sense to me. Shouldn’t I understand some of this?
O’Malley sees my dismay, and speaks for me.
“You’re right, Gaston, Em got us here. Do you know what to do next?”
The glowing boy shrugs. “Not yet, but I have some ideas. I think I know how to fly. I just have to remember.”
Spingate stands next to him. She, too, is painted in light.
“I’ll help Xander,” she says.
I look at my hands and see that they’re normal. There are no lights on me. There are none on O’Malley, either, or on Bishop.
Spingate looks tired and drained, but elated as well. She glows like a living torch. She is so happy it’s impossible not to fall in love with her all over again from simply looking at her face.
“Go talk to the others, Em,” she says. “Tell them everything will be okay. Tell them…tell them that we’re going home.”
Home. She’s right. The Xolotl, with its Garden and its coffin rooms, its pigs and Grownups and butchery, this place is not ours. Neither is the dead planet the monsters left behind so long ago. Those places were never our homes.
We were created to live on the planet below.
We were made to walk on Omeyocan.
An arm around my shoulders. O’Malley, guiding me out of the strange room. I walk with him. I stop at the wheel door and look back.