When I exhale for the first time, my breath mists in the air. It’s almost freezing in here. Jaime moves forward until he’s standing beside a central console. Blue light runs between the glowing numbers of a keypad. He eyes it for a second before looking back up at the faces.
“How many of them are there?” Jaime asks.
“Maybe thirty on each side? More?”
Jaime looks up into the face of a sturdy-looking marine. He has thin, graying hair and a small scar just above one eyebrow. “They’re all asleep.”
“It’s like in comic books,” I say. “Cryogenic chambers.”
“Just waiting to be activated,” Jaime says, glancing back at the console.
“Babel built them into the base. Right under the Imago’s noses.”
The sound of an echoing click has us both whipping around. Kit stands by the entrance, pistol raised like a professional gunslinger, eyes dead-set on us.
Kit steps inside the hidden room, eyes turning the scene over. It takes him about two seconds to realize we’re the ones responsible for the breach. My heart hammers in my chest.
But Kit’s shoulders relax. He lowers the weapon and sets it back in the holster.
“Oh,” he says, smiling. “It’s just you.”
Jaime and I exchange a glance as he comes sliding forward, gesturing to the walls around us. “Pretty cool, isn’t it? Babel never ceases to amaze.”
I glance Jaime’s way again. He’s a mix of confusion and anger. Clearly, he doesn’t know how to approach this new development. I decide to take the reins.
“Like something from an episode of the Illuminauts, man. Never seen anything like it.”
Kit’s eyes widen. “You’re not going to believe this, but that’s all I’ve been watching down here. Just finished season seven. You know, the one where they go back in time to find the captain?”
“You’ve got access to your Neverland account down here?”
Kit smiles at that. “We’re not that advanced. I just chose a few uploads before launching. They knew I’d be alone down here. I’ve been binge-watching it for a while. You guys want to catch a few episodes?”
I gesture back to the walls, to the sleeping marines.
“Why watch it when you’re living it?”
Kit smiles even wider. “Fair enough. Yeah, I come down here and visit them every few days. They’re the closest thing to company I’ve had at the base.”
Jaime finally summons the courage to ask the obvious question, the one that’s digging under our skin. “Why are they here? I mean, why send us if they have marines?”
“Just a backup plan,” Kit replies. “You know, if things go south. All I have to do is type in the right code and the marines activate. It takes six hours for them to fully recover from the freeze, but after that? They’re ready to rock and roll.”
“Cool,” I say, lying through my teeth. The frozen battalion isn’t cool. It’s just one more sign of Babel’s true intentions. “So what happens if nothing goes wrong?”
Kit shrugs. “Nothing. We ship them back into space and wake them up there. Like I said, they’re just the backup plan. If something happens, would you rather be on your own down here, or have seventy trained marines rallying for a rescue mission?”
Jaime glances my way before nodding. “It’s smart.”
“Right?” Kit waves us deeper into the chamber. “Come here. This is the best part.”
Our footsteps echo. The ghostly faces watch us pass. A shiver runs down my spine as Kit stops us in front of one of the last marines. He has a narrow face, high cheekbones, and a wash of blond hair. There’s something eerily familiar about him.
“Who is he?” Jaime asks. “A commander or something?”
Kit nods up at the marine. “He’s my dad.”
I stare at the sleeping soldier in disbelief. “Your dad?”
“I told you guys,” Kit replies. “I’m a space brat. Spent almost my whole life out here. Dad and Mom are both with Babel. He’s a lieutenant. She’s a techie on the space station. Bugs the hell out of her that we’re both down here. Says she doesn’t like us in the line of fire.”
Kit seems to realize he’s been rambling. I watch his eyes trail to the floor before he shrugs his shoulders again. “We should get back. Don’t want to throw off the environment down here. I’d hate for my dad to melt because we were dicking around.”
He leads us back through the chamber and up the tunnel. I stay quiet, because at least seven different truths are hammering their way into me. Babel’s plans are bigger than we imagined. Kit might think these marines are some final option that won’t get activated, but Babel’s too smart for that. My guess is they have more marines—maybe one more batch at each of their other bases.
They’re already on Imago soil. They’re already making preparations.
War is coming.
And then there’s Kit. He’s just a kid like us. His dad’s down here. His mom is up in space. I keep wanting to slap the toxic-waste symbol on Babel and call them what they are: a poison. It’s easy to forget that some of their employees have no clue what’s really happening. Maybe the marines do. Maybe they don’t. At the end of the day, Defoe and Requin are the real enemies. More and more it’s feeling like a cut-the-head-off-the-snake situation.
“We’re going to keep tonight between us,” Kit says as we pull ourselves up into the med bay. “I really don’t care that you were down there, but some of the Babel higher-ups might. I’ll keep it out of my reports if you don’t talk to everyone else about it. We definitely can’t risk the Adamites finding out about any of this.”
“Tell the Adamites?” I ask, smiling. “We’re smarter than that.”
Kit nods again. “You guys want to watch some Illuminauts?”
“Honestly, I’m trying to go back to sleep,” I reply. “Bad enough I had this clown waking me up to play doctor.” Jaime shoots me a well-timed middle finger. “I might hit you up later, though, if it’s an open invitation. I never finished the series.”
“Sounds good.” Kit runs a hand through his thick blond hair. “I’ll let you two clean up down here. Sleep well.”
He slides back into the hallway. Jaime turns to me, ready to say something, but I silence him with a look. We put everything back in its proper place before moving through the silent tower. The common room is empty now. Parvin and Holly must have found their way back to their rooms. I shiver a little, thinking about those empty eyes. The thought links back to the frozen marines. There’s too much happening, too many pieces spinning out of our control.
We’ve just made it back to the hive when more movement has us jumping. Anton’s door opens, and someone way too tall to be Anton slips out. We both stumble back until stray light flashes over Alex’s face. He nods at the two of us as he walks past.
“Hey,” he says. “Night owls, huh?”
He doesn’t stop to chat. I stare after him. My first thought jumps right to what Anton and Morning have been brewing. I can’t help feeling a little jealous as I watch Alex stroll back through the dark corridors. He’s in on their plan, but not me? The idea has me scowling.
“What was he doing down here?” Jaime asks.
I shrug it off, remembering I’ve got my own secrets now. “Not sure.”
Instead of separating, Jaime and I agree to go to his room. It’s not hard to piece together Babel’s plans with a clue this big. Jaime states the obvious: “They want more than nyxia.”
All the pieces are starting to click neatly into place.
“They want to get rid of the Imago,” I whisper. “They want the whole planet.”
We’re the last team to leave on the second day. Morning lets us sleep in, a reward for pitting two mines in the time it took the other groups to complete one. I was half expecting Holly to be roaming around Foundry fixing windows or something,
but Kit informs us that she went obediently with her crew to work the mines. Her unexpected transformation still hangs over the place. I imagine everyone’s going to be a little more cautious out at the work sites today.
There’s some small relief in walking around Foundry without Isadora waiting in every shadow. But now there are other shadows, other games being played. Jaime and I agreed to keep quiet for now, especially inside Foundry. We need to fill Morning and the rest of the crew in on what’s happening as soon as possible, but we’re also not sure how much we can share in front of Speaker. What if the Imago find out and cut us off entirely? Or maybe they’ll decide we deserve the same treatment as Babel’s first landing party.
As we make our way to the truck, I pull Morning aside.
“Hey. Last night, Alex was in Anton’s room. He’s in on the plan?”
Morning considers our surroundings, clearly weighing the possibility of being monitored.
“Let’s talk about this later.”
“But why involve him and not me?”
Morning frowns before realization hits. She starts laughing.
“You already solved your own riddle. Alex was leaving Anton’s room.”
“Right,” I reply. “After discussing the plan?”
She rolls her eyes. “You really didn’t notice? Up in space? Anton and Alex.”
“Anton and Alex…”
“Are together. They like each other.”
My mind traces back through details. The fear and grief on Anton’s face the night we landed. The relaxed look the two of them wore when they safely reunited in Foundry. Really, I can’t remember a time that the two of them weren’t together up in space.
“I feel like a lurch now.”
“Subject change?” Morning suggests.
I nod at her, thankful for an out. “How about what we did down in the mine? How the hell did you learn to do that?”
Morning shrugs. “Not much to talk about there. I figured it out about twenty days into the competition: the substance responds to a circular movement. I have no idea why.”
Jaime leans out of the truck. I realize the rest of the team has already loaded up.
“When you two finish flirting, I’d like to actually get going,” he snarks.
We table the talk for now. The third mine has us heading due east. I retreat to the back of the truck, joining Speaker and the others, and our lessons in Imago culture continue. We learn a little about everything. The nearest moon, Magness, is volcanic. Speaker explains that children make a game out of memorizing the changing patterns in the red veins.
“At least, when there were children,” he adds sadly.
He’s impossibly patient with us, answering every question. I like that he doesn’t just give the bare-bones explanations. He actually teaches us, and his only request is that we teach him in return. When he asks, I have a hard time explaining where I live.
“It’s a big city,” I say. “With everyone stacked right on top of each other.”
“And it’s called Detroit?”
I nod. “Motown. The D. I lived there my whole life.”
“And you said it’s like the Sixth Ring?” he asks.
Of all the comparisons, this one makes the most sense to Speaker. The city of Sevenset. We studied it on Genesis 11, but Speaker’s descriptions have worked to fill in the missing gaps in our education. The Imago first built the seven rings for protection. A wall-inside-a-wall-inside-a-wall kind of thing. The outer ring grazes three of the world’s five continents, but the inner rings were built over the sea, spread across hundreds of kilometers. Each consecutive ring has a smaller diameter until you arrive at the Sanctum, which sits at center. Speaker informs us that 95 percent of the Imago live in Sevenset.
Hearing that number reminds me: Babel’s main plan is attack. If they can expose Sevenset, they’re exposing almost the entire population. The game we’re playing matters more than I realized. It takes a few minutes to refocus on the present, on the now.
Speaker explains that, over time, the rings transformed into a ranking system when their duo of queens—the Daughters—moved the throne permanently to the Sanctum. He doesn’t say it directly, but there are enough clues to connect the dots: there aren’t many women left in their world. Babel told us they’d stopped reproducing. Is the lack of women the reason why?
“When the queens consolidated power, proximity to the Sanctum became one of our most valuable commodities,” Speaker explains. “I was born on the Fourth Ring. It has taken most of my life to earn my place on the Second. One must earn his way forward.”
It’s a surprise to hear him describe the lower rings with such disdain. Never mind that he came from there and grew up there. His words about the Sixth Ring leave me annoyed, even a little cold.
“You know the place I live is like your Sixth Ring,” I explain. “Except all of Detroit isn’t separated by rings. The people from the different rings all live near each other. And they walk down the street and see people from every ring. If you go downtown, everyone mixes together.”
Speaker considers that. “Sometimes a person visits another ring, but they cannot live there. So in Detroit they live in harmony? The honored and the dishonored? Together?”
“Not really,” I say, picturing the suits and sunglasses on every street corner. “No, not really at all. I guess we do live on different rings, but we’re so close we have to pretend like we don’t. Kids in class would talk about vacations sometimes.”
Speaker frowns. “Vacations?”
“Vacations…it’s like time off from work. You go to nice places and stuff? My family couldn’t exactly afford too many of those, you know? I guess where I come from, you can go your whole life just sticking to people in your ring. And leaving other people to talk to the people in their ring. But I promise you one thing, my neighborhood doesn’t have any first-ringers, and it’s always been that way.”
“But you can change that, Emmett,” Speaker says confidently. “As with my people, your people move from ring to ring. You can return as a member of the third or even the first.”
“That’s why I came. Babel offered to take me all the way from sixth to first.”
Speaker gasps. “Then you must be excited to go home. To take a new place.”
I nod half-heartedly. “If we make it back. You saw what happened to Holly.”
Speaker frowns. “An accident. I promise you, Emmett, as I have promised the others: we will do everything in our power to restore Holly. I am hopeful she will recover.”
His eyes roam the distant hills. Hoping for a distraction, I ask Azima to tell Speaker about where she grew up. Her face lights up as she describes her family, her younger cousins, and her selfless mother. She describes market tables stacked with passion fruit, cafes that trade in smoke and laughter. I know my corners of Detroit, but it’s clear that Azima was and still is the very definition of an explorer. There’s not a stone in her old city that she’s left unturned.
Jaime describes his home too. Zermatt. A valley town in Switzerland that sits in the shadow of the Matterhorn. Orderly streets, cold winters, roaming tourists. He spends all his time talking about how things work there, all the rules and structure that make the whole place tick like a well-tuned clock. I can tell Babel’s betrayal is still gutting him. They’ve rewritten the rules, and Jaime can’t wrap his mind around the fact that they’ll do whatever they want to do.
We arrive at the mine as Speaker asks Anton about his home. The Russian doesn’t answer. He just shakes his head, hops down from the truck, and starts the survey process.
Morning distracts us by describing San Jose. She likes the city, but spent all her time in the parks outside it. She describes trees like most people describe their friends. Embarrassed, she digs in a pocket and holds up a smooth stone for us to see.
“It’s from my favor
ite waterfall,” she says. “This spot in Alum Rock Park. I couldn’t resist bringing a little bit of home with me.”
I love learning about Morning, but thinking about home feels like trying to hold on to the wind. Will we ever get back? And when we do, what happens then? I can’t help thinking about the possibilities as the third mine gets charted, as our drill digs down three hundred meters.
I decide to bury the harder questions with it.
We spend hours pitting the thing. Nyxia rains down through the tunnel, then gets gathered up the conveyor shafts and repackaged for manipulation. We don’t break any records, but that’s because everyone’s a little cautious after Holly’s accident. I’m enjoying the mindless work when Morning calls me back to the surface.
I climb down off the drill and find the others already gathered by the truck’s monitor. There’s a voice patching through the comm system. Morning’s playing with switches, testing this and that, until finally she gets an image to appear. Parvin’s face fills the screen. We didn’t even know there was a way to talk to the other crews. She looks exhausted and worried.
“It’s Beckway,” Parvin crackles. “He left.”
Speaker was standing a polite distance away, but the announcement has him rushing over. He looks like he’s struggling to find something diplomatic to say, and failing.
“Why would he leave?”
“He didn’t tell us,” Parvin answers, shaking her head. “He disappeared an hour ago. He took Isadora and Ida with him. They’re gone, Morning.”
Morning’s eyes flick my way. Isadora has made one thing perfectly clear. There’s one person she wants to punish. Morning nods over at Anton, and he slips away from the group, circling the grounds. I notice he’s carrying both knives at the ready.
“Who are Isadora and Ida? Why them?” Speaker interrupts. “Beckway’s task was to care for your entire group. There are only a few reasons he would have left some of you vulnerable in favor of protecting others.”
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