Alight_ Book Two of the Generat - Scott Sigler Page 0,2
the Birthday Children will die here.
My stomach lets out a loud growl. An instant later, I wince at the pain—I’m so hungry it hurts.
“We have food,” Gaston says. “The deck below has storerooms full of tools, clothes and lots of food.”
“What’s a deck?”
“A floor,” Spingate answers. “Except on a ship, it’s called a deck.”
It never occurred to me this shuttle had more floors.
“Show me,” I say.
We walk to the rear of the coffin room. The back wall is red, like the side walls. Up close I see the thin, almost invisible outline of a door. In that door is the faint shape of a handprint with a gear symbol in the palm.
Gaston presses his hand to the print. The door silently swings inward, revealing a metal staircase spiraling down. We descend. Ten stairs below is another door—the handprint here is also a gear. Spingate leads us in.
The corridor looks long, perhaps as long as the shuttle itself. There are doors on my left marked STORAGE 1 through STORAGE 6, and on my right labeled LAB 1 through LAB 3. At the end of the corridor is a door marked MEDICAL. The storage rooms have handprints with gears and half-circles. The labs, only gears. Medical’s handprint is a circle-cross.
“We didn’t have time to look at the labs,” Gaston says. “Just the”—an eye-scrunching yawn pauses his words—“just the storage rooms.”
The first storage room holds floor-to-ceiling racks of black bins. Gaston opens one: black coveralls made from heavy cloth. I think back to the Xolotl, to the hundreds of mutilated, tortured bodies dressed in similar outfits. It would be nice to change out of my torn rags, but the black clothes are some uniform of the Grownups, and right now I don’t want to think about the Grownups.
Four rooms hold racks of green bins. Gaston opens one of the bins; it’s full of small white packages with black letters that spell out GRAIN BAR. A second bin’s packages are labeled CRACKERS.
“All the bins are full,” Gaston says. “There’s enough food to last us—all of us—for about thirty days. Isn’t that great?”
He thinks thirty days is a long time? It will go by very quickly.
The final room holds neat racks of tools. One of Matilda’s memories rushes up, where she first saw pigs—these are the kind of tools people use on a farm. Other racks hold bins filled with smaller tools, the kind used to fix things, to make things. I see another bracer, like the one Spingate is wearing.
I’m sure there will be a need for all of these tools, but until we know what awaits us outside the shuttle, there is something we need even more.
“What about weapons?”
Spingate shakes her head. “No bracelets. Nothing.”
Damn.
“As soon as you get some rest, learn about the labs,” I say to her. “Are there more floors? I mean decks.”
“Two more,” Spingate says. “But they have half-circle handprints on the doors. They won’t open for us.”
A half-circle: the symbol on O’Malley’s forehead.
“We asked the shuttle what’s down there,” Gaston says. “It says it doesn’t know.”
I can tell it bothers him greatly that he can’t access those decks. I heard the shuttle call him Captain Xander—how can there be parts of the shuttle that won’t open for him?
We can worry about that later. I’m consumed by my need to get outside, see Omeyocan.
“Spingate, wake up the circle-stars. And O’Malley.”
She nods. “Right away. Anybody else?”
“Smith,” I say. “Tell her to learn all she can about that medical room.”
Smith seems to know how to treat cuts and scrapes. I think it has something to do with her forehead mark: a circle-cross. She’s the only one our age with that symbol. Two of the younger kids have it, though, so maybe soon Smith will have help healing our sick and wounded.
Gaston and Spingate look like they might pass out at any moment. I will make sure they rest, just not right now.
“I know you’re both tired, but I need you a little while longer before you can sleep.”
“Whatever it takes,” Gaston says instantly.
Spingate simply smiles at me, as if to say, I will always help you, no matter what.
I’ve only been alive for a few days, yet I love these two so much it hurts. Spingate and Gaston—my friends.
“Spin, you’ll come with me outside. Gaston, while we’re gone, wake up everyone else and also prepare a meal. We should all eat together.”
I lift the spear slightly, let it fall back to the hard floor with a soft clomp.