With a harsh clank of steel and a tooth-rattling shudder, the landing pad stops.
I stand on wobbly legs. The landing pad’s edge is still circular, but now it is ringed by a pile of vines three times taller than I am. The sun beats down on us, lights up what looks like pointy, yellow hills rising all around. Not hills, but rather shapes…I almost know what they are. Or rather, Matilda knew what those are.
Then Bishop is beside me.
“Em, come on! You’ve got to see this!”
He takes me by the hand, pulls me so hard my head flops back. I stumble along behind him, still clutching my spear.
In seconds we reach the vine ring. At the top stand Farrar and Coyotl. Bishop scrambles up, pulling me along behind him. My feet sink into the thick plants, but find enough purchase to let me ascend.
I reach the top and look out.
This can’t be…
In all directions, as far as I can see, what I thought were pointy hills are not hills at all. They are buildings, overgrown with thick yellow vines, bluish trees and other strange plants. Some of the buildings are pyramids, so tall they scrape the sky.
We are standing in the middle of a vast, ruined city.
I don’t know how long the four of us stand atop the vines, staring out. Long enough for Spingate and the other circle-stars to join us.
The immensity of it all. The sky is like a dome above us, so big I could never reach the edge even if I walked forever. The buildings, the land, the trees and vines…this place is a million times bigger than the Xolotl, which was the biggest thing I had ever seen.
It’s so overwhelming. I fight an urge to run back to the shuttle’s familiar, confined area. I can tell the others feel the same.
“Spin,” I say. “What is this place?”
I hear her mumbling, speaking quietly to Gaston back in the shuttle. While I wait, I stare. Tall pyramids block my view in most directions. Where they do not, the city seems to go on and on.
“The shuttle doesn’t know,” Spingate says.
“But Gaston said the shuttle told him to land here,” I say. “How can it know where to go and not know what this city is?”
She has no answer.
Coyotl is on my right. He points toward the horizon. “Are those birds?”
Several somethings fly over the city. Maybe birds, but we’re too far from them to make out what they are.
There is no sound save for the breeze sliding past leaves—it sounds like this city is hissing at us.
“No movement on the streets,” Bishop says.
Streets seems like a strange term for what we see: wide, straight spaces between the buildings and pyramids, but those spaces are so choked with vines they look like the flat bottom of steep valleys instead of a place where people might walk.
“Abandoned,” Farrar says. “Where are the people who made all this?”
Coyotl turns, looks behind us. The thighbone slips from his hands, thumps on the vines and rolls down the inner slope.
I turn, and am just as stunned. The shuttle lies before us, sitting on its bed of yellow leaves in the middle of the vine ring. Beyond the shuttle, towering buildings block a view of the city—far beyond those buildings is a pyramid so massive the sky itself seems to balance on its point. All the buildings are covered in yellow, but not the tip of this pyramid, which is an orange-brown.
“I don’t like this,” Farrar says. “Should we go back to the shuttle?”
A loud growl answers him. We all look to Bawden—the sound came from her belly.
She shrugs. “I’m hungry.”
So am I. We all are. There is so much to explore here it might take us a lifetime. Don’t rush anything, O’Malley said. We have to carefully think about what we should do next. This place appears abandoned, but I have been alive long enough to know that things are not always as they seem.
We return to the shuttle, which gleams beneath the hot sun. I can’t believe I once thought of the shuttle as large. Nestled in this sprawling city, it is nothing but a toy.
We enter to the sound of laughter and excitement. So many happy voices—music to my ears. Everyone is awake, older kids and twelve-year-olds alike. Some are alert, others are still groggy from the gas.
I have Spingate seal the doors behind us.
In the coffin room, Gaston and Okereke hold green bins, from which they are passing out white food packages. Okereke is a circle, like me, short and thick with muscle. He has the darkest skin of any of us, almost as black as that of the monsters.
Bishop takes the bin from Gaston and pats him on the back. Gaston looks to me for the next job. I tilt my head toward the pilothouse.
“You and Spingate get some sleep,” I say. “We’ll all stay here until you’re rested. I need your input to figure out what we do next.”