by Scott Sigler
Gaston moves to my side.
“Em,” he says, “who are they?”
I have no idea.
But I think on Brewer’s words, and I remember what he said.
Don’t forget to take your little friends.
Little friends. This is what he meant.
Another body turns the corner, one we see clearly because he is head and shoulders taller than the others.
It’s O’Malley.
A smile breaks across his face, wider than I have ever seen. He is alive. He is beautiful.
He awkwardly slips past the children, careful not to bump them. They grab at him for comfort, slide in behind him to hide, their eyes never straying from the frightening images of Bishop and El-Saffani.
O’Malley walks to me.
Bishop steps aside.
O’Malley opens his arms and pulls me in.
“Em, we didn’t know if you’d make it back.”
He squeezes me tight, lifts me off my feet. For a perfect moment everything goes away. He smells of sweat. His body is warm and firm. I will protect this body, protect him—I will not let Matilda take O’Malley.
I glance at Bishop, wondering how he might react to the hug, but he is making a point of looking the other way.
I hear more people approaching.
O’Malley sets me down as Spingate, Beckett and Smith come rushing around the corner. They slide past the kids. Spingate runs to Gaston and almost knocks him over with her flying embrace.
She squeezes him far harder than O’Malley squeezed me.
“I didn’t know,” she says. Her voice cracks, her words sound wet. “You were gone, and…I didn’t know…if you…”
Gaston hugs her back, pets her thick red hair.
“We’re fine,” he says. “Everyone made it.”
Beckett stands there, smiling and awkward, unsure if he should hug someone, shake hands or just stay quiet. The lanky Smith greets Aramovsky first. She laces her fingers together, presses her palms against her sternum, and she bows her head. The gesture is disturbingly formal, almost…subservient.
If there was another vote, she would choose Aramovsky. Those others that seem to hang on his every word, they would as well. With Spingate, Gaston, O’Malley and Bishop behind me, though, it doesn’t really matter. Whatever Aramovsky’s plans might be, they will have to wait until I have us all down on Omeyocan.
Spingate lets go of Gaston and launches herself at me, crushes me in a tight hug.
“Em! I’m so happy to see you. Did you find anything?”
I hug her back, almost as hard. She smells nice. She smells like home.
“We did.” I gently push her away. “What are you all doing here? You were supposed to stay in the coffin room.”
Spingate throws up her hands, gestures to the children. There must be twenty of them in the hall now, maybe more.
“They just started showing up,” she says. “Those closed archway doors by our coffin room? They opened, all up and down the hall. Kids walked out. We gathered up as many as we could and put them in our room, but we could see more in both directions. We came this way. O’Malley sent Coyotl, Farrar, Opkick and Borjigin the other way.”
She points down the hall where we left Yong.
“When we got here, it was all lit up, like someone had turned on the lights. There were kids wandering around. We went down the hall until it ended at another melted door, so we think we’ve found all the kids we can. We were about to head back to our coffin room when we heard you coming.”
The first girl we saw walks up to me. Her legs are skinny. She has the bony knees I thought I had when I woke up.
She reaches out and takes my free hand in hers. She stares up.
There is a jagged circle on her forehead. The black symbol complements her dark brown skin and eyes. There are a few dust smudges on her shirt, but no blood, no grease, no sweat stains and no dirt. She hasn’t fought. She hasn’t feared. She hasn’t killed. She is clean, unblemished in any way.
She is what we were all supposed to be.
I squat slightly so I can look her in the eye.
“What’s your name?” I ask.
She smiles. “Zubiri. I think. That’s what it said on my bed.”
To her, it wasn’t a coffin, it wasn’t a cradle, it was just a bed.
“That’s a nice name,” I say.
My friends and I woke up before her. We’re larger, physically older, but after what Matilda told me I think I know how this works.
“Zubiri, how old are you?”
“I’m twelve,” she says, perking up instantly. “Today is my birthday.”
I can’t help but smile.
“Happy birthday.” I look at the other clean faces staring my way. “Happy birthday to you all.”
Once again, everything has changed. My friends and I thought we were twelve years old. We’re not, not after what we’ve been through. But these kids are, at least as far as they know. Twelve-year-old minds in twelve-year-old bodies.
Brewer entrusted these kids to us. He felt we could get them to the planet below. I still don’t know his story. I don’t know why he fought Matilda. I don’t know who was in the right and who was in the wrong. I will probably never know. But Brewer seems to understand me—I think he knew I wouldn’t be able to leave these children behind.
They were made to walk on Omeyocan.
They are coming with us.
If anyone gets in our way, they will learn that the Birthday Children—together, as one people—are extremely dangerous.
The kids are already wandering around the hall. My stomach churns when I see that two of the boys are giggling while they throw chunks of dried blood-slush at each other.
I turn to Bishop. His dust-caked face seems calm, as if he’s waiting for orders.
“Bishop, can you get these kids organized? We have to move fast.”
He glances at O’Malley with cold eyes. Is he jealous of the way O’Malley hugged me, the way I was jealous when I thought Bishop was looking at Spingate? Part of me hopes he’s not, and another part hopes he is. Both parts, though, can wait—we all have important work ahead of us.
Bishop nods. “I can,” he says. “Do you want me to do it my way?”
“I wouldn’t have asked you if I didn’t.”
The gray-caked mouth twitches with the slightest of smiles. He draws himself up to his full height and starts yelling.
“New kids! Form two lines, right arm straight, right hand on the right shoulder of the person in front of you. Don’t make me ask twice!”
The wide-eyed children practically fall all over themselves scrambling to comply. In seconds, the mob forms two neat lines. Without a word, Bawden and Visca take up positions behind them. The twins take their usual place out front.
Bishop smiles at me. “What now, Em?”
“Back to the coffin room,” I say. “As fast as we can go.”
His chest swells as he draws in a huge breath.
“You will all follow El-Saffani! Match the pace of the person in front of you, and if you fall behind, you’ll have to answer to me. Understand?”
Twenty-odd heads nod rapidly. I wouldn’t want to answer to Bishop, either.
“Good,” Bishop says. “El-Saffani, move out!”
The kids and the circle-stars take off, moving as a single unit. I’ll say one thing for Bishop: he’s great at getting people to march.
Gaston and Aramovsky run along behind them, as do Smith and Beckett.
That leaves me standing alone with O’Malley.
“The kids are a problem,” he says quietly. “We have maybe fifty in the coffin room. If Coyotl found as many in his direction as we found here, there might be a hundred, total. Maybe more. If the monsters come, how are we going to defend that many people?”
A memory bubbles up through the mud, a memory of a man’s face. Pieces of it, anyway, vague images. A black mustache. Soft, loving eyes, eyes that could also be hard, separated by deep furrows and
a flaring nose.
That voice in my head…it belongs to him.
He is my father.
And yet he is not. Those vague memories are a lie. That was Matilda’s father, not mine. I don’t have parents, because I wasn’t born—I was created.
I was hatched.
The man is not my father, yet his words bounce around inside my brain. His words are the only real connection to my past.
And his words feel right.
“We’re not going to defend anything,” I say. “We attack, O’Malley. When in doubt, attack, always attack, never let your enemy recover.”
O’Malley gives me a curious look.
“What does that mean?”
“It means we’re going to the Garden. Every last one of us. We’re going to find Bello. We’re going to find the way off this ship, and if the monsters get in our way, we are going to kill them and be forever free.”
I meet his deep-blue eyes. He’s observing me, measuring me.
“Em, sometimes you’re kind of scary.”
I nod. “Thank you.”
“And what do you mean, off this ship? We’re in a building.”
“Come on, let’s move. I’ll tell you everything when we’re all together. I have a plan.”
We run downhill.
THIRTY-SEVEN
I stand on Okadigbo’s coffin.
The room is so full of people I can’t see the floor. They sit cross-legged in the aisle of dust, they sit on coffins, they stand with their backs to the walls. Faces stare up at me, both familiar and new. I tell them what I know. I describe what must be done.
O’Malley counted. The numbers are hard to accept. I was a leader of twenty-two people; now I lead a hundred and thirty.
How will we take care of these kids? I don’t know. Neither does O’Malley. We have to figure it out. We will not leave a single person behind to have their newly hatched minds wiped out by the evil that runs this ship.
I understood Brewer’s riddle. If they found you, you found them. There is much more to this “building” than we first knew. Beyond the doors that Brewer melted shut to keep our older selves away, beyond the Garden’s walls, there lie seemingly endless sections of this ship.
If they found you, you found them.
When we opened the door to the empty section, as Brewer called it¸ we broke his seal. Did Matilda know that someday kids might escape the coffins, and if they did, they would eventually wind up in the Garden? Maybe. Maybe she waited centuries for someone in a white shirt and a red tie to go there, so she would know there was finally a way through Brewer’s defenses.
Matilda got Bello in the Garden. We will find the path the monsters used to attack us there, and we will use that same path to attack them.
We will capture a Grownup. We will make that monster tell us what we need to know: the location of Bello, the location of the shuttle and how to use it.
The faces look up at me. I tell them about Matilda, Brewer, the husks and the receptacles. I tell them about the Xolotl and the Crystal Ball. I tell them about Omeyocan, and the shuttle that will take us there if we can find it.
I tell them we are being hunted.
I tell them what the Grownups will do to us if they catch us.
And then I tell them my plan.
As I expected, Aramovsky doesn’t like it.
“That’s ridiculous,” he says. “You’re going to get us all killed. Even if we do survive, the gods will be furious at our insolence.”
He’s using bigger words now. All the older kids are, including me. It happened gradually, I think, but now I’m noticing it—especially when Aramovsky talks. He doesn’t like my plan? Something tells me he wouldn’t have liked any plan I put forth. He wants to contradict me no matter what I say, so that the people who think he is “chosen” will pay more attention to him.
He objects, but as I figured, his objection doesn’t really matter right now—because my friends believe in me.
“It will work,” Bishop says. “We can beat them, I know we can.”
The circle-stars grunt. They thump their chests. Bishop has their backing, and I have his. As long as that holds, there’s nothing Aramovsky can do. The five circle-stars in this room are itching for a fight, and that’s what I aim to give them. Only El-Saffani isn’t here: the twins are in the hall, preparing.
Bishop, Coyotl, Visca, Farrar and Boy El-Saffani used O’Malley’s knife to cut the legs off their tattered pants, which are now roughly the same length as the short skirts of Bawden and Girl El-Saffani. I think the circle-stars also cut themselves to make fresh dust-paste: they are coated head to toe in a red-gray that is almost the same color as the scarred monster’s blood.
Shirtless, bare-legged, with paste caked on their exposed skin, on their faces, even mashed in their hair, the circle-stars all look the same. We can barely tell the boys and girls apart.
O’Malley has his knife back. He fiddles with it, absently moving it from hand to hand. He has that look on his face again, like he wants to tell me something but doesn’t want to say it in front of the others.
“Out with it, O’Malley.” I say. “What are you thinking?”
He glances around the room, sees that everyone is waiting for him to talk.
“The bracelets,” he says. “We didn’t go after Bello before because the monsters can hit us from a distance. That’s still the case, so why attack them now?”
Heads nod, arms fold across chests. I understand why he wanted to ask that question in private, but I have an answer.
“The Grownups want us alive,” I say. “Their lives depend on it. They don’t recognize us, at least not right away. I think that will give us time to use our speed, to reach them before they figure out who they need.”
“You think?” Spingate says. Her arms are crossed, too. “What if you’re wrong? What if they just shoot us?”
Bawden thumps her fist against her chest.
“Then we die,” she barks. “We die attacking, not hiding in this room like cowards.”
The circle-stars roar their approval. Bawden’s beautiful brown skin is invisible—she is reddish-gray, she is painted for war.
I continue.
“Our best chance to survive is to never be alone. Older kids will stay in groups of four. Don’t get separated, even if there is fighting. Beckett and Smith will protect the younger kids.”
Over a hundred small heads turn to look at those two. Strawberry-blond Beckett smiles uncomfortably. Skinny Smith tries to look fierce. She can’t fully hide her fear.
We are almost ready, but Aramovsky won’t give up.
“They are monsters.” He turns as he talks, looking to his supporters. “The gods sent them. We need to talk to them, beg them for mercy. I have seen what they can do. Unless you want to wind up as a pile of chopped-up arms and legs and severed heads, listen to me. And what good does it do us to stay in groups of four? If you want a fight, Em, the circle-stars have their clubs, so send them.”
I hop off the coffin and walk to the open archway. I wave El-Saffani in.
They enter. Boy El-Saffani carries a double armful of thighbones. Girl El-Saffani passes them out to each of the older kids, starting with Beckett and Smith.
I take one, then hop back up on the coffin: bone in one hand, spear in the other.
“Now we all have clubs,” I say.
I toss the bone at Aramovsky. He catches it on reflex, stares at it.
“We all go, Aramovsky. We all fight.”
On top of Okadigbo’s coffin, I am taller than anyone else in the room.
Maybe I am not as good a speaker as Aramovsky, but I’ve been paying attention. I’ve watched how people react to different things. I’ve recognized that certain words have power, that they dictate how people feel, how they respond—I will use those words now.
“Aramovsky is right about one thing,” I say. “There are monsters here. If they weren’t sent by the gods, then we have a right to defend ourselves. If the gods did send t
hem, then we will prove ourselves worthy. No one is coming to rescue us. No one is coming to save us. We will not cower in this room waiting for someone else to decide if we live or die.”
So many faces gaze up at me, eyes big and wide, bodies leaning slightly my way. These people are terrified. They desperately need a sense of hope.
There is a final word of power I want to use, one related to rescue but also different, stronger. If I use it correctly, I know everyone will follow me no matter where I lead them.
“We will not be hunted,” I say. “We will not be erased. I know this is a lot to handle, especially for the new kids, but we are going to the Garden. We will save Bello if we can. We will attack. We will either win our freedom, or we will die.”
I raise the spear high, and I use that final word.
“If we can’t be rescued, then we…will…escape.”
THIRTY-EIGHT
Together, we march on the Garden.
I have the spear.
O’Malley has the knife.
Everyone else carries a bone-club. Everyone except for the kids. Kids …is that what we should call them? That’s what we were, that’s how we thought of ourselves, but we’re not. We are not kids, we are not teenagers, we are not adults. We are a mixture of all those things.
We move as one, thanks to Bishop’s ability to organize. My friends are both out in front and bringing up the rear. Between them, over a hundred white-shirted kids marching in three long, neat rows.
Are we still afraid? Very. All around me, young faces etched with fear, but now other emotions as well. There is rage that they would use us up and cast us away, take over our bodies and make us just like them. There is a sense of belonging, in that we all fight for each other as well as for ourselves. And there is the newest feeling of all—hope—given to us by the promise of our own planet.
We belong down there. It’s what we were made for.
We are trapped on a ship where monsters want to kill us. The monsters have been here a thousand years: now that they know we are awake, they will find us. We are hungry, and in the one place we know of that has food, the monsters are waiting.
They won’t be waiting long.
We will not be used. We will not let them change us. They think we are property?