“Anton?” he asks. “Is it already time to go?”
For a while, I don’t respond. My back is pressed against the glass. My mind is racing through the details. Isadora. We let down our guards for a night, and she could have killed me for it. But she didn’t. She spared me. Alex rustles again, sitting up.
“Emmett?”
“It’s nothing,” I say. “Get some sleep.”
He nods those golden curls and turns back over. At some point, I force myself to walk back to my bed. I lie back down, but sleep never comes.
The next morning we gather in the main sanctuary. Morning winks at me, but I’m still lost in a dream state. Did last night even happen? Is there more to Isadora’s plan?
Speaker enters. Isadora and Ida trail him.
Their presence echoes through our ranks. Morning reacts immediately. She cuts across the group until she’s standing between Isadora and the rest of us. I have to crane my neck to get a look at the piece of torn white fabric Isadora is holding in her hands. It’s proof that last night wasn’t just a dream. She waves it like a white flag.
“We come in peace.”
“No,” Morning says. “You don’t get to walk in there with us. You left this behind. You promised one of ours harm. We don’t forget that easily.”
Isadora just waves the shirt again. “Take this as a token of my new intentions.”
“It’s fine,” I say, startling Morning. “Let her come with us.”
Morning stares back at me. “Fine? She—”
“Could have killed me last night.”
Those words ice the room. Everyone except Morning. She stares her fury at me before whipping it back in Isadora’s direction. I take a step forward and set a hand on her shoulder. She tries to shrug it off, but I pull her closer, doing my best to be a calming presence.
“She didn’t, though,” I explain. “Last night she could have killed me, but she didn’t.”
Isadora shows the fabric again. “I don’t have to like him to know you’re my best way out of here. If I wanted him dead, he’d be dead. Keep the fabric if it helps you remember that.”
“He’s alive for now,” Morning says. “Right? As long as it serves your purposes, but what about twenty days from now? Or two years from now?”
“If there’s a two years from now,” Isadora replies, “we’ll all be thankful to be alive.”
Morning’s not convinced. “I don’t believe you.”
“That’s your right.” Isadora sets a protective hand on her stomach. “But I started feeling kicks last week. It’s a boy, I think. Just a feeling. I’ve had morning sickness too. Some cramps. The more the baby—I don’t know, the more real the baby gets, the less I care about Emmett. I don’t like him and I don’t like you, but I’m going to get my baby back to Earth. If that means swallowing my pride and my hate, go ahead and pass the bottle.”
There’s a second where Morning looks ready to fire back, but I squeeze her shoulder. She looks up at me, and Parvin takes advantage of the hesitation.
“I’m convinced,” she says. “Welcome back. Speaker? We were heading somewhere?”
He nods. “The Daughters wait in the throne room.”
And just like that we’re back on the move. Morning stays tight at my side, but I think these are the first steps toward something necessary. We have one less thing to fear.
Everything around us is old stone. Absurdly wide and absurdly high, as if monsters made the castle so they could slouch through every door and into every hall. A basic slate colors the walls and floors, accented only by an occasional painting. I stop short as we pass by a vase of sunflowers etched against a baby-blue backdrop. The piece almost looks like a Van Gogh. My mind skips back to middle school art classes, most of which were spent pretending I wasn’t looking at Sherry Taylor. Everything about Earth feels like it happened in another life, to someone else.
The real masterpieces wait in the next hallway, speckled by light from stained-glass windows. Speaker pauses us before the series of portraits. Fifteen of them hang from the walls.
Our own portraits stare back at us. Rendered with delicate precision. Our features look a little exaggerated, even a little heroic. I find mine and smile. My eyes look harder than I remember, like they’re carved out of stone. The painter took my skin a shade too dark, but also left my hair looking a lot neater than it’s ever looked. I couldn’t ever afford the twenty-dollar artists at the fair, so to see myself in a portrait is stunning, unimaginable.
“Who painted these?” Azima asks, standing before her own.
“Feoria’s work,” Speaker answers. “She has quite an eye, doesn’t she?”
I glance over. Red flushes up his neck. I smile at him and he can’t even hold the look. Feoria must be his favorite. She’s one hell of a painter. Anton grins down at us from the far right. He looks like he’s causing trouble, and I say a silent prayer that he is, that he’s still alive and an unpleasant thorn in Babel’s side. Longwei’s looks the most badass, of course. Somehow Feoria’s adjusted the painting so his right eye glows out from the black nyxian scar.
I tap his shoulder and nod to it. “That’s a framer.”
He shakes his head and smiles.
“How’d she paint these?” Alex asks, staring up at his own face. “The other day was the first time she saw us, wasn’t it?”
Speaker smiles. “Thesis captured an image of you all waiting in line at our first encounter. It was a moment our people wanted to remember. Feoria decided to take things a step further. She wanted to complete these portraits before you arrived. I believe yesterday’s meeting with you was the first time she’s left her studio.”
We stand in front of our portraits a while longer, long enough for me to start thinking about the faces that aren’t there. Kaya and Bilal and Loche and Brett and Roathy. Faces the Imago will never see because Babel chose to play God. They deserved portraits too, every single one of them. A darker thought follows that one: the Imago started all of this.
Katsu nods up at his portrait and grins. “She got my good side.”
Morning rolls her eyes before turning to Speaker.
“Thank you. These are wonderful.”
“Come. The Daughters await.”
We follow him through the endless halls. Our path wraps back around the building, descending a generous staircase, and directing us toward a gaping hole in the distant wall. Only when we’re twenty meters away do we notice that the hole is actually a mouth. Flaming eyes hover above the black. Scales ripple out from the gleaming pits, forming a long snout above twisting teeth. Speaker gestures to the doorway.
“Emmett, this is the creature you saw your first night in Grimgarden. A century.”
The yawning jaw stretches from floor to ceiling, ten meters. Maybe bigger.
“Why are they called that?” Jazzy asks.
Speaker answers, “If they survive for one hundred years, they transform.”
“Into what?” Azima asks curiously.
“Something bigger,” Speaker replies. “Something much bigger.”
Teeth scythe down like swords. Speaker leads us through the maw of the beast like it’s not the most terrifying decoration we’ve ever seen. There’s ten meters of pure dark. On both sides, something swallows the light before we burst back into a room filled with sunshine.
There’s no roof overhead. The covering of static flickers in the distant sky. A bridge leads us over a man-made river and onto a wide marble platform. Every five meters, the marble rises by a step. It also narrows, a single meter at a time. We climb thirty or forty steps before getting our first sighting of the Daughters.
Ten thrones ring a final marble platform. The Daughters watch us ascend. I walk on the far right, putting Ashling straight ahead of me. The queen who greeted us on the open plains has her veil of thick hair pinned aside. Sh
e wears a deep ocean-blue dress that matches her eyes.
Feoria sits on her left. Her gaze is still burning holes in everything.
But the real surprise is Jacquelyn. She doesn’t stand off to the side like an adviser would. Instead she sits in one of the thrones. A queen in her own right. It was easy to think of her as more human than Imago, but her position in one of the thrones sends a strong statement.
Feoria begins. “Ashling and I have invited you here in confidence. The plan we share with you today is no small matter. Please respect the nature of these secrets, and understand we spent years working through this with our very best advisers.”
Ashling nods at that. “We’re sympathetic with your position. We assume your cooperation depends on our plan’s viability. We’re confident we can find common ground.”
Parvin steps forward. “We just want to know whose hand we’re shaking.”
With a nod from the Daughters, Jacquelyn stands. She lifts one of our confiscated knapsacks, putting it on display. After she’s sure we’ve all had a good look, she flips the pack and unsheathes a knife. We all watch as she works away the bottom padding. There’s a few seconds of fabric giving way before her blade strikes metal. Jacquelyn widens the hole and lets a small silver device fall to the floor.
“Have any of you seen these before?”
The entire group offers her blank stares.
“We knew you were Babel’s way into the city,” she explains. “We assumed they would use your entrance to undermine our current defenses. Each one of your packs came with one of these built into the lining. Babel calls them vanguard devices. It’s multifunctioning tech. They’re designed to go into a territory before actual troops do. They scan for population and movement. Babel’s always wanted a look behind our veil. Now they have it. Full readouts of our population for each of your ring visits.
“Each of these devices will also ping strategic locations back to Babel. Their coordinates act as homing beacons. Babel will launch their attack on our city, and these are designed to disable our defenses from within.” Jacquelyn directs our attention to the static in the sky overhead. “Their plan is to remove the exterior shield and use that open window to drop missiles on each of Sevenset’s rings. Missiles that are coordinating with these devices.”
Another piece fits into the puzzle. The intercepted information Parvin decoded: uplink complete. Rahili’s quick work must have synched her base up with the devices hidden in our bags. David Requin’s reasons for sending us to Ophelia Station make more sense now.
“If you know all this,” Parvin asks, “why did you let us enter the city at all?”
“Our fishing boats will bloody the water sometimes,” Jacquelyn says. “Blood is a sign of weakness. Something is vulnerable. Fishermen use it to lure in bigger catches. Our entire plan depends on the destruction of Sevenset. If Babel thinks we’re wounded and weak and on the run, what do you predict they’ll do?”
Parvin is nodding now. “Come down in force.”
“Sevenset destroyed. Our society on the run. How could Babel resist?”
It’s not hard to trace that to the next logical conclusion.
“Empty ships,” I say.
“Empty ships,” Jacquelyn confirms. “Babel will sweep down for the kill. And we will let them. They’ve always wanted to be our conquerors, so we’ll let them conquer a land they don’t know is already doomed. While that happens? We take to the skies.”
“They’re already down here,” I reply. “We saw marines in cryogenic chambers under the bases.”
“Of course,” Jacquelyn says with a smile.
Parvin cuts back in. “And you’re just going to let your people die on the rings?”
“Of course not,” Feoria replies fiercely. “We have a plan for all of this.”
Jacquelyn removes a nyxian device from her pocket. She sets it down on the tiered step in front of us. An image is cast into the air. Blue light resolves into a map.
We all recognize Magnia. Sevenset sits northeast of center, its rings linking three separate continents. A word from Jacquelyn brings up eight marks scattered across the different regions. I can see faint lines tracing their way from Sevenset to the marked points.
“Each of these represents a launch station,” she says. “I cannot express the immense difficulty of developing these centers without alerting Babel. Every measure of stealth technology we possess was necessary. Thousands of our people labored in secret. Many died to achieve this. Each launch bay holds thirty shuttles. Each shuttle holds two passengers. It was the best we could do in the time span Erone gave us. Two hundred and forty ships, ready to launch into space.”
As we watch the layers of their plan unfold, it’s impossible to ignore how genius this is. The Imago have thought of everything. Azima’s curious voice overrides Parvin’s.
“So why not just fly to Earth?” she asks.
Jacquelyn shakes her head. “We have many technological advantages over Babel. Space travel isn’t one of them. The Imago aren’t a people who have ever reached for the stars. There haven’t been any space races. No fears of overpopulation, either.”
Azima pushes back. “But you have nyxia, right? How hard can it be?”
“The mechanics and the science are beyond us,” Jacquelyn answers. “But we are using nyxia to our advantage. The craft we built work simply. They’ll launch through the atmosphere. Once they’re in orbit, they’re designed to seek out other nyxian objects.”
“Babel’s ships,” I think aloud. “Genius.”
Jacquelyn blushes. “It was Erone’s idea. Once they find the ships, they’ll operate on a standard seek-and-attach program. Our individual ships are designed to function as air locks. Attaching and sealing onto the hull of their ships. Babel comes down. We go up.”
Katsu actually bursts into laughter.
“I’m sorry,” he says. “I was just imagining the look on Defoe’s face.”
I hear Jaime whisper, “It’s literally perfect.”
Parvin glances back at Morning, who nods her approval.
“I think we can work with this,” she says.
Jacquelyn strides forward. “So you agree to an alliance?”
Parvin nods. “Like I said, we just wanted to know whose hand we were shaking.”
She holds out both fists. Jacquelyn smiles at the familiar gesture. They dap up in agreement, twist their wrists, and bump fists again. Smiles sweep through the entire group. It’s not hard to see why Isadora came to us. She made the smart decision. I’m guessing the Imago shared their plan with her already. If she knew all this, there were two options: join us or fight her way back to Babel. This was the right choice.
Feoria holds up a hand for silence. “We have one more thing to show you.”
Both Daughters stand and march past us. Jacquelyn gestures for us to follow. They lead us halfway down the queenly staircase before turning to the right.
There’s a hidden ledge there, slipping through the stone walls, leading outside. We file after them until we’re in the bright of day, looking down on an open-air courtyard.
It’s full of Imago. The ranks aren’t as tight and precise as they were on the Seventh, but there’s still something majestic about them. The gathered crowd has dressed in their finest. It takes a few seconds to realize what connects them: they’re all so young.
My eyes trace down the rows. A handful of them look like teenagers. At the top end, there might be some in their thirties. Beckway and Bally stand in the front row, their faces full of pride. “The Remnant,” Jacquelyn says. “Fifty of our youngest, brightest citizens.”
Some whistle up. Others wave. It finally hits home. This is their only plan for avoiding extinction. Launch into space. Defeat their sworn enemy. Cross the universe. Land on Earth.
We do what we have to do to survive.
�
��What about the other rings?” Morning asks.
“Seven other stations,” Jacquelyn answers. “One assigned to each ring. The name of every citizen has been entered in a lottery. Sixty names from every ring will be chosen. We’ve already started evacuating. We expect Babel’s attack to come tomorrow.”
“Do you see now?” Feoria asks, sweeping out one hand. “The difference between our way and the slings? We’ve forged our best path forward. This is our future. They can’t go without your help. You are the Genesis. We place our fate in your hands.”
I look back at the rest of the crew, more sure than ever.
“We’re going home,” I say firmly. “And we’re taking them with us.”
The world is reduced to tutorial and preparation. It’s amazing that the Imago think they’ve predicted Babel’s attack down to the hour. Jacquelyn tries to run us through the tech side of things, but only Parvin and a few others can actually keep up.
Morning hammers out the details of our agreement. The Daughters argue back and forth with her, making sure there’s an understanding of how this alliance will extend from the second we leave the Sanctum to when—if all goes well—we land back on Earth. It’s smart. Pops would call it CYA: cover your ass. I stand by as they negotiate. Morning is forceful about keeping our crews together from start to finish.
“We’ll man our own boat,” she says. “Babel trained us for it. We work best as a crew.”
Jacquelyn shakes her head. “And risk losing all of you?”
“That’s my point,” Morning argues back. “We survive together. Shoulder to shoulder.”
Jacquelyn starts to protest, but Feoria cuts her off.
“Let them. We owe them the right to choose.”
Jacquelyn heaves a sigh. “Only if I come with you. I don’t have time to run you through the schematics, the breakaway formations we’re using on the surface, the rendezvous points. Either I’m on board with you or it doesn’t happen at all.”
Morning accepts that. “That’s fine.”
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