Aramovsky is at my side.
“Our two Grownups were together when we found them.” His voice is smooth, calm and low, the hiss of a smiling snake. “The circles and the double-rings working together. You and I, working together. This was meant to be. Remember how I told you I wanted to help you lead? This is a sign, Em—a sign that can’t be ignored.”
He doesn’t even know the proper terms. He means Spirit and Service working together. Did my progenitor and his cooperate to create this nightmare?
I feel ill. Aramovsky makes me sick. This place makes me sick. This entire planet makes me sick. We woke up in coffins and fought our way off an orbiting tomb only to inherit a city of death.
O’Malley approaches. “Get away from her, Aramovsky. She doesn’t need your whispered lies.”
The tall boy grins. “Because whispering in her ear is your job?”
O’Malley’s right hand flexes, fingers opening and curling. Like a crawling animal, the hand drifts toward the jeweled handle of his knife.
Bishop moves in, his steps noisy only because he wants us to hear him coming.
“The sun will set soon,” he says. “We should continue on—I don’t like the idea of being on these steps at night.”
Neither do I, but should we continue? This place is evil, and we’re not even inside yet. O’Malley is ready to attack Aramovsky. Aramovsky suddenly thinks he and I are destined to rule together. And the look on Spingate’s face—she’s scared of me, scared and disgusted.
I stare at her until she looks away.
Arrogant tooth-girl. I wonder what she thinks of “stupid empties” now? Special girl, rich girl. I remember people like her laughing at me. One of her kind owned me. I remember being afraid to say anything, knowing that my owner could punish me, beat me if she wanted to, that I had no rights. Girls like Spingate liked having power. Now the power has changed hands—of course she’s scared. She should be.
My thoughts pause. A moment of blankness, of floundering confusion. What am I thinking? Am I taking joy in Spin’s fear? Hatred of her and her kind bubbles and boils, but that hatred isn’t mine—it’s Matilda’s. Spingate has done nothing to me.
Those things she said to me in the lab…is she suffering the same turmoil as I am? Is her sudden prejudice against my kind actually from her progenitor? If I have legacy memories, then Spingate probably does, too.
These emotions aren’t ours.
“Spin, that statue isn’t me. It will never be me.”
She sniffs. I can tell she wants to believe me, but it must be hard while seeing these images of her kind being tortured, skinned, slaughtered, and with my oh-so-heroic face lording down from above.
“In a way, it is you,” she says. “Matilda was your age once. You have her mind.” Spingate points to the statue. “Like it or not, that’s what you could become. This search isn’t just about food or the mold, not anymore. If this building can tell us about our past, help us understand how Matilda turned into a monster that sacrifices gears and halves, that’s information we need.”
Alone, she starts up the thin steps.
Five more steep flights to go.
We follow her up.
—
At the twenty-seventh plateau, the lush vines start to thin. By the twenty-eighth, they don’t grow at all, leaving the orange-brown stone exposed. It’s colder up here. The wind whips at us. I see heavy clouds coming in from the north, but for now the skies above remain clear.
The lack of vines means we see all the images. We can’t even look away, because many are carved into the flat fronts of the stairs themselves.
We wobble and shudder as we finish the climb. I think I make it up the final steps on willpower alone, because my body gave up on me about three layers ago.
My legs feel like boiling goo. They burn, they sting. O’Malley is grunting and wheezing—I wonder if he’s going to throw up. Aramovsky is worse off: he looks like he might keel over and die at any moment, but that horrid glow remains in his eyes. Even Bishop and Visca are tired, trails of sweat cutting skin-toned streaks through the plant juice on their faces. They have made this climb twice in two days—too much for anyone, even a tireless circle-star.
Up here we are no longer sheltered from the wind. It whips us, snaps at our black coveralls. The sun is already heading down to the horizon—the climb took us longer than we had hoped. The fabric that kept us cool now keeps us warm, but our hands and faces feel the wind’s biting chill.
The last layer is the smallest one, of course. We stand upon a plateau, a square as long as ten of us lying head to feet. In the center is a stone slab, and, rising up from it, a tall, smooth stone pillar. On it, the six gold symbols, each taller than Bishop. From top to bottom: circle, circle-star, double-ring, circle-cross, half-circle and gear.