“What if they catch you?” Parvin asks.
Anton transforms a piece of nyxia into one of his trademark knives.
“I’ll keep these nice and sharp.”
“This is great,” Katsu says. “Just like when the Russians landed on the moon.”
Everyone looks at him. Jaime laughs for what feels like the first time since we landed.
“They didn’t land on the moon, Katsu,” he says.
Katsu looks skeptical. “I read about it. It happened in the 1960s.”
“That was America,” Anton says. “But the cosmonauts got to space first.”
“Exactly.” Katsu nods enthusiastically. “Send in the cosmonaut!”
“All right,” Morning cuts in. “Does everyone agree that Babel’s the enemy?”
There’s another awkward, stretching silence. Parvin looks less stubborn, and eventually she nods. Murmured agreement echoes. If we’re going to face them, it has to be together.
“And does everyone agree we’ll explore our options with the Imago?”
More nods.
“Good,” she says. “We’re agreed. Shoulder to shoulder.”
This time the whole group echoes the phrase.
There’s an edge in Morning’s voice that’s contagious. We’re all tired of being pushed around, and it finally feels like we’re ready to push back. Back in Detroit, there were basic lessons that every kid learned growing up: where to go, what to say, when to vanish. One of those rules was that a person fights hardest when they’re cornered. Babel has us right where they want us, but they don’t see the rush of adrenaline, the fists balled up and ready for a fight.
We all take a second to wish Anton luck. The Russian politely asks us to quit blowing smoke up his ass. Morning laughs and brings down the barrier. I watch the group drift apart, and it’s not hard to see the difference:
Purpose. We walk around like we have a good reason for every single step.
Chapter 14
A New Song
Emmett Atwater
Night comes, and it’s hard not to notice that Kit’s on edge, frustrated. Babel came down hard on him. He moves around the base and tries to reclaim his authority, saying we’ll have to start our digs early the next morning. I can’t help wondering if Babel relayed the fact that we had a secret meeting while he took care of the trucks. But I have no idea what kind of surveillance they have here.
We don’t give him much reason to be suspicious. Jazzy leads the group through a game called Signs. I’ve never played before, but it’s actually kind of fun. The group sits in a circle, passing an invisible ball with specific hand signals, while the person in the middle spins around trying to catch the right person at the right time. Morning’s signal is someone pulling an arrow from a quiver and firing. I use a waffling shake of the hand.
Surprisingly, Morning is really terrible at the game. I can’t help laughing when she finds herself in the middle of the group, struggling to get out of the circle. Kit tries to remind us to get some sleep, that we’ll need our energy for the early morning. But for me there’s a lightness stretching over Foundry that has everything to do with Isadora’s absence. Noor was staring daggers at me two days ago, but now she doesn’t even seem to care about Isadora’s vendetta against me. I’m thinking about Isadora in Sevenset, trying to convince the Imago of my guilt, when Jazzy takes the seat next to me.
“I did what I could to explain,” she says. “Isadora … I know how she’s feeling, it’s awful, but I know you, Emmett. If I had to trust anyone in this base to tell the truth, it’d be you. I told them that. Ida wouldn’t listen. She’s obsessing over the idea of getting back to Loche. But Noor and the others are coming around. We know that whatever happened wasn’t your fault.”
Her kindness humbles me. “Thanks, Jazzy.”
She smiles. “What are friends for?”
Across the room, Katsu has unearthed a dusty game of Post-Apocalyptic Risk. He tries to drag some of the others into the fun, but I notice Morning leaning against the tunnel to Hive-3. She’s changed into her tank top and sweats. Sunlight has brought back the rich color of her light-brown skin. My eyes trace the bare shoulders, her dark collarbones. The look she’s giving me is enough to spin my mind back to space, to her room, to our first collision.
“I think I’m going to sleep,” I tell Jazzy. “Catch you tomorrow.”
Jazzy doesn’t seem to notice how quickly I stand. But as Morning and I lock eyes, everything else fades. I cross the room and Morning slides ahead of me, moving into the underground. She looks back, and my heart just about slams through my rib cage.
I catch her at the door to her room. She turns, pulling me down by the collar and into a kiss. It’s the opening chord. There’s nothing but the taste of her, the sound of us.
A second kiss chases a third. Our hands play background music. She works my suit away from one shoulder. I reach around and lift her up. The rhythm of our song speeds up, the notes dancing faster. I let my lips graze her neck. Her fingers dig into my shoulder blades.
“We have to actually get in the room,” she says.
I kiss her neck again as she reaches back for the handle and shoves her door open. She laughs when I trip my way inside, but silences my protest with the boom of kiss after kiss. I pin her on the bed, but she twists her legs around my waist, curling us, pinning me instead. Her dark hair falls over one shoulder, and she looks down at me like a queen.
She takes me back before the Tower of Babel, back to a time where there was only one word for beautiful. We walk through all the notes we like best.
The weight of each touch and the tremble of each kiss shatter me into song.
But Babel exists to ruin beautiful things.
An alarm shakes through the silence of the room. It’s still nighttime. Morning’s on her feet first. It takes about twenty seconds for us to get dressed and spill out into the hallway. We move as a single unit. It would be easy to feel like there’s some magical spell over us, some difference that marks us as a single unit to the other Genesis members. But it’s more basic than that; it’s instinct. We share a quiet determination to see all of this through to the end.
There’s an agreement now that we will survive this, and we’ll survive it together.
Overhead we hear the unmistakable sound of gunfire. It’s heavy artillery, and each shot shakes through the walls. Anton’s pulling out knives, and I realize I left my claws back in my room. Morning’s moving, though, so I’m moving. The rest of the Genesis crew pours out of the other two hives. We head toward the entrance, and the sound of gunfire booms louder.
Outside, light floods in every direction. An emergency system has activated, and it’s like spotlights roaming a prison yard. Kit stands about thirty meters away, his gloved hand raised, the digital interface flashing red and blue in the air. He presses a finger to one of the buttons, and another round of volleys fires from above. Each boom swallows the night.
I squint past Kit and realize there are bodies on the ground. Even at a distance, we can tell they’re Imago. Both forms lie motionless, staggered along the outskirts of the base. Morning tries to shout something, but the sound of the gunfire cuts her sentence in half. Kit looks almost possessed as he directs the base’s defense system to fire on the last standing Imago.
The uninvited guest waits inside a nyxian cube that looks a lot like the one Morning summoned earlier. It’s about the size of a shed. We watch as consecutive shots absorb into the material uselessly. The Imago fighter doesn’t even flinch as shot after shot tests his defenses. He stands there, pacing inside the nyxian boundaries, waiting for Kit to come closer.
“Stand aside.”
It’s such a forceful command that I duck to the right before I even get a look at who said it. Speaker comes striding through our ranks. Bally stands back, watchful. We’ve only really seen the smiling, quiet version of Speaker. The transformation is stunning.
He lets a wicked mace drag through the air at his side. It’s
a threat, a promise. Kit’s still jabbing at his digital display when he notices Speaker approaching. Words are exchanged, but it’s too loud for us to hear them. We watch as Kit’s face pales. He flips a switch to kill the gunfire. A false sense of quiet follows. My ears strain after smaller sounds. The soft crunch of grass and dirt under Speaker’s feet. The distant buzz of the nyxian barrier. Seeing a new opponent approach, the Imago raises his weapon and points.
Speaker doesn’t slow his stride. He walks right up to the barrier and kneels. We watch as he plucks a few strands of grass, leans forward, and tosses them at the cube.
I can just barely make them out as they cross the barrier and drop way faster than they should. Morning frowns over at me, and I almost miss Speaker’s next movement. He rounds the barrier, backs up a few steps, and starts to run.
At the last second, nyxia punches down from his left hand. He uses the spring to launch himself skyward. The surprised Imago flinches as Speaker dives through the top half of the barrier. My jaw drops about as fast as Speaker does. It’s an impossible speed. He jabs the mace down, and there’s a disgusting crunch. The entire barrier blinks out of existence.
“Holy crap,” Katsu whispers.
Speaker looks down at the motionless Imago, then back to Kit.
“Are there any more?”
Kit toggles the interface. “I only counted three bogeys coming across the barrier.”
Speaker turns and kneels over the body. Most of our Genesis crew stand there, waiting for an explanation. Bally comes forward to calm us down, but I find myself drifting to Speaker’s side. Morning follows. He’s still kneeling there, breathing heavily. The bright spotlight makes one thing abundantly clear: all three of the unwelcome Imago are dead.
“Speak?” I ask. We stop a few feet away. He looks back, and his face is gaunt, covered with flecks of blood. He shakes his head sadly.
“It’s a great shame to die this way after all we’ve done to preserve our kind.”
Morning offers a hand. Speaker allows himself to be helped up. Nearby, I can see gaping holes in the bodies of the other two Imago. Kit’s activation of the base’s defense system tore through them, probably caught them by surprise. Speaker reaches down and removes a nyxian weapon from his victim that looks alien to my eyes, but more than sharp enough to do the job.
“They came here for you,” he says.
His words set off alarm bells. “You mean … Isadora sent them?”
“Isadora?” Speaker frowns. “No, I apologize. Not you personally, Emmett. The entire group. They came here hoping to capture one of you.”
“Why?” Morning asks. “We were promised safety.”
He nods. “By the Daughters, by our people, and by all of Sevenset.”
Morning gets to the truth just before I do. “So they’re a separate group.”
“After we signed the treaty with Babel,” Speaker confirms, “this cult formed. They did not agree with our plans, our dreams. It was not enough for them to welcome miracles into this world. They wanted more than they are due. We call them slings.”
“Slings?” I ask.
“Slingshots,” he explains. “Our civilization’s primary function is permanence. The society is placed above the individual. We act in the interest of all, rather than ourselves. The slings choose to go against that.”
We watch as he reaches down and rolls back the fallen Imago’s sleeve. The tattoo along the bared wrist shows two moons in orbit. Speaker looks up at us.
“They think it’s their calling to go to your world. Slings are selfish. They actively ignore the treaty, all the progress between our species, to benefit only themselves. I believe their ultimate goal is to capture one of you and use you to launch themselves into the stars.”
Morning nods. “They think if we came down from space, we know how to get back.”
For a second, Speaker’s face falters. There’s the slightest hint of fear.
“That is how they see you. But you are not tools. You are our welcome guests. We have rejected the slings since the very beginning. But it was … unwise not to be more honest about the potential danger they pose. I don’t think we expected them to act so early in your stay. Please accept my apologies. We will not make this mistake again.”
“Speaker,” Morning cuts in. “You protected us. That’s all that matters.”
“And if your defense system had not sensed their approach? Would I still be sleeping? Would three of you have been taken?” He sighs deeply. “Best to not think on such things.”
Too fast to follow, he manipulates the nyxia. It’s not a perfect match, but I can tell what he’s formed is the same shape and idea as a shovel. I start to manipulate my own, but Speaker shakes his head. “We do not have many rules about death,” he says. “But there are some. When one man kills another, he will be the one to bury him.”
Morning and I exchange a glance and decide not to push. Their world, their rules. His spade bites into the dirt. As kind and quiet as Speaker has been to us, he makes this look like familiar work. It’s not hard to figure out that he’s buried men before. Morning goes back to talk with the rest of the group. Most of them are moving back inside, thankful the threat is over.
But I can’t bring myself to leave Speaker. He agrees to let me help bury the other two bodies, acknowledging he wasn’t actually the one who killed them. We dig a second grave, then a third. At the completion of each one, Speaker whispers a quiet prayer.
Something about the bodies has me shedding my rust. Not that we had it easy here or anything, but the mindset Babel forced on us in training kicks back into gear. We are not safe in this world. A thousand unknowns threaten to swallow me, to grind my bones into fine powder.
When Speaker finishes, we sit there together, eyeing the unmarked graves.
“What did you say to them?” I ask.
I can still see the way they looked before he put them in the ground. The slack mouths and the open eyes. My mind echoes a vision of Kaya under her dark shroud.
Speaker answers, “It’s a poem. Written by a soldier who died in battle.”
“Can you—I mean it’s okay if you can’t—but can you share it?”
He nods once. His voice deepens, almost on the edge of song:
What weigh those things now, that so bent you here?
Much is made of men
Who rise like prayers from parted lips.
I make him repeat the poem twice. It’s as perfect as it is sad. Speaker drifts back into silence. But the words remind me of a song that I love. I ask him to wait while I duck back inside Foundry. I dig through my knapsack and pull out my player. It takes a few minutes to hunt through artists, but I manage to find it. An old beat with stark lyrics. I offer Speaker the earbud and he actually sniffs it. I hide a laugh, showing him how it works. His ears are a bit wider and he has to hold his earbud in place. Together, we listen.
The chorus comes slow, voices dropping down to the beat and lyrics center stage. Speaker nods along when we reach the bridge, as the words come quicker and a trumpet thunders in some studio background. When the song finishes, he asks me to play it again. I put it on repeat, and we listen until the sun rises, until we feel as far away from the dead as we ever will.
Chapter 15
The Cosmonaut
Emmett Atwater
The days that follow are routine.
But out here that just means that no one dies, no one abandons us, and no one tries to kill us. We go about the business of completing the task Babel recruited us for, the one we thought would bring us infinite riches when we first signed on the dotted line.
We dive down into black pits and fill Babel’s already overflowing bank accounts. The wild part is that—compared to the rest of what’s happened—digging feels like doing worksheets did back in school. It’s the everyday, boring stuff. We’re changing the global economics of our entire world, and it amounts to vocab practice or textbook annotations. Again, I wonder how I can ever go back and reclaim any kind
of normal on Earth
The routine goes like this: Arrive. Unpack. Flirt a little. Feel guilty that I’m flirting with the fate of multiple worlds on the line. Flirt some more. Drill down into darkness. Gut the planet. Get that money. Pack it in neat boxes. Sleep with one eye open. Rinse and repeat.
Only a handful of moments break through the standard routine. Beckway returns on the sixth day. He tells us that Isadora and Ida are safe. We’ve been rotating teams in their absence, taking larger crews to two separate sites, and getting more rest because of it. The setup was kind of nice, but the news from Beckway reminds us their absence isn’t a good thing, at least not for me. They’ve been invited to the Sanctum by the Daughters. It’s a great honor. He explains that the Daughters are the ruling queens of Sevenset. One appointed as the representative of Glacius and the other on behalf of Magness. I miss the mini-lesson on the Imago government, though, as the news drives through me like an iron spike. Isadora has been accepted by the most powerful members of Imago society. The closer she is to them, the more power she has. My life might be in her hands already, and I just don’t know it yet.
One morning, our routine is thrown off when Parvin announces that Holly’s gone missing. Speaker finds her a kilometer away from the base. She manipulated her nyxia into an ax and started felling trees. By the time we found her, she had enough firewood for a few days. Speaker reminds us that there is a treatment in the works, but the sight drives home just how lost Holly is to us right now.
On the eighth day of mining, we finally reach capacity. It’s the day Anton has been preparing for. Kit shows us the maps of the area. We’ve hit just about every mine within a 150-kilometer radius. Black dots spiral around a second Babel emblem well to the north. Kit highlights the marked tower.
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