Spingate and Gaston shine like a pair of angels. The black walls and black ceiling have vanished. In their place, I see many pictures floating free, so realistic you could reach into them, touch whatever was there. One picture shows the chamber outside this shuttle. Another, the dark hallways we just walked through. Another, the brown and blue and green planet below. And yet another shows a long, spinning copper cylinder…the massive ship we are still inside of.
O’Malley pulls gently, gets me moving again. He guides me to the shuttle’s entryway, where Bishop is waiting, Matilda still cradled in his arms. The platform is empty. At the bottom of the ramp, El-Saffani, Coyotl and Farrar stand guard.
Bishop leans in close. “O’Malley and I talked,” he says. “Do we do it in the new coffin room, where everyone can see, or outside the shuttle?”
Matilda has given up the fight. She lies limp, awaiting her fate. She looks at me, her one good eye a swirling red jewel.
My legs won’t hold me up much longer. They shake from fatigue. I need to find some space in the aisle between the coffins. I need to lie down, I need to sleep.
Wait…Bishop asked a question. Do we do it in the new coffin room?
“Do we do what, exactly?”
He lifts Matilda slightly, answering my question by showing her to me anew.
“Gaston can fly the shuttle,” he says. “So we don’t need her anymore.”
Matilda’s body shivers; I hear the sound of bone scraping on bone.
“Bishop is asking if you want to kill me quietly, or execute me in front of the others,” she says. “Do it in front of the others, little leader—it is important you show people what happens if they cross you.”
The way she’s speaking now…she thinks she’s helping me. She thinks she’s dying. I am her legacy, the part of her that will live on, and she wants that part to succeed, to have power. Matilda is telling me what she would do if our positions were reversed.
Some people do not approve of being sacrificed.
That’s what she wants: she wants me to sacrifice her, make an example out of her so that everyone will fear me. Fear, and obey.
All the bodies, all the death, the massacre of the Xolotl. How much of that was by her command? Matilda doesn’t really think she murdered anyone at all; she thinks her butchery served a greater purpose.
If this woman is me, how did she become like this? Did something happen to her after her twelfth birthday that turned her into an obscenity? She is an appalling creature that shouldn’t be allowed to exist.
If anyone deserves to die, it is Matilda.
But if I give that order, will it end with her? Who might be next, and for what crimes? Matilda today for mass murder, and because she is a threat to us. If Aramovsky challenges my leadership again, does that make him a threat?
The question isn’t if I have the power to order death, because I obviously do. The question is: if I use that power now, will I use it again?
The answer terrifies me worse than anything I’ve seen or experienced so far, because I can’t deny the hard truth: the answer is yes.
I shake my head. I am not her. I am not Matilda. I am Em, and Em has a choice to become something better.
I point down the ramp. “Leave her there. She led us to the shuttle. She did what we asked, so we let her live.”
O’Malley and Bishop stare at me like I’m crazy.
“She is our enemy,” Bishop says. “She wants to erase you.”
O’Malley nods vigorously. “Bishop’s right. Matilda has to die.”
They agree? The two boys don’t agree about anything, yet they find common ground when it comes to murdering a prisoner? Bishop I get, he sees things in simple terms, kill-or-be-killed terms, but I thought O’Malley was more…complex. Disappointment wriggles uncomfortably in my chest.
“I said no. We’re getting away. No one else dies. Once we’re down on the surface, she can’t follow us. She won’t be able to hurt us anymore. My decision is final.”
Matilda nods, understanding. “I’d forgotten,” she says. “Sacred Cinteotl bless me, I’d forgotten how idealistic I once was.”
I’m sparing her life, and she’s mocking me?
A scream—a battle cry—makes me jump.
El-Saffani, racing away from the base of the ramp, leaving Farrar and Coyotl to stare. The red-gray-caked twins, screaming, waving bone-clubs over their heads, sprinting toward the archway. There, a pair of wrinkled, coal-black monsters walking in, each step a twitching, jittering, painful effort. One monster carries an axe. The other a jeweled scepter.
They have found us.
“El-Saffani, come back!” My shout echoes through the room, but if the twins can hear me over their own violent howls, they don’t respond.
I start down the ramp, make it two steps before a boy’s hand locks down on my arm. O’Malley, holding me, but I yank my arm free and hear my shirtsleeve rip. The ramp’s hard points dig into my running feet. Bishop thunders along behind me.
I’m halfway down when Spingate’s shout stops me. She leans out of the shuttle entrance.
“Em, get everyone inside! We can see the hallway, more of them are coming! Gaston thinks the shuttle will protect us!”
Down the ramp. My feet slap against the metal floor. El-Saffani halfway to their target. I look to the archway: my heart turns to ice.