Alight_ Book Two of the Generat - Scott Sigler Page 0,41

“Might means military. Soldiers or police. People who protect the order of things.”

I think of Bishop and the others, of how they are always the first to face any danger, of how without them we would all have been overwritten by now.

“Soldiers help keep people safe,” I say. “People who keep us safe would be part of the ruling class.”

“They weren’t.” No hesitation in O’Malley’s voice, no doubts. “They did the bidding of the primary symbols.”

So Grownup O’Malley would have been in charge of Grownup Bishop? Interesting.

O’Malley points to the circle-cross. “That symbol was for doctors, nurses, people involved in the health of others.”

The dead Brewer boy in the coffin, he had the circle-cross on his forehead. Is Brewer a doctor? Perhaps he was in charge of the receptacles. That might explain how he had control over our coffins, how he was able to wake us up, to lock out Matilda and the others for all those centuries.

I wait for O’Malley to continue. He doesn’t. He looks down, unable to meet my eyes.

“Stop stalling,” I say. “Explain my symbol. What was my role in their society? What special skills am I supposed to have?”

He lets out a slow breath. His blue eyes shimmer with tears. Maybe he fakes emotions at will, but he isn’t faking this.

“Circles don’t have special skills,” he says. “Your role was to do whatever the other symbols told you to do. Em…the circles were slaves.”

Like a key sliding into a lock, that word destroys barriers in my mind. Matilda’s memories—fractured, distorted, but still real—flood in. I am in school, carrying a tooth-girl’s things for her while she walks five steps ahead of me, laughing with other tooth-girls…

…I am in class—no, waiting outside of class, with other circles, being taught basic math by an old woman while my tooth-girl—my owner—is in the classroom learning physics…

…I am in the cafeteria, on my knees, wiping food off the floor, food that my owner knocked over just so she could see me pick it up while she and her tooth-girl friends laugh at me, call me a stupid empty over and over again…

…I am in a small room in a church where every person I see is a circle, except for the pastor, a woman in red robes with a double-ring on her forehead, who is saying that service is the life the gods planned for us and that if we do it well, if we serve, if we obey, then we will be rewarded after death when we go to the Black Mountain…

…I am outside the church, talking to an older circle-boy while I wait for my owner to finish her own service in a church that is far more beautiful than mine, and the boy looks around carefully before he asks if I’ve ever heard of the god called Tlaloc, the one who can empower the soldiers and doctors and workers to rise up against the rulers…

…the feeling of anger, of humiliation, of hatred at belonging to someone else, at having no rights, the need to do something about it, anything, no matter what the cost…

“Em?”

O’Malley is staring at me.

“Em, are you all right?”

No. I’m not. I finally had that moment I wanted, that flashfire, just like my friends had. Gaston gets to fly, and I get this?

I share my creator’s memories. For the most part, I am those memories. Matilda didn’t wear chains, she didn’t live in squalor, but she was a slave nonetheless. She was property.

“On the Xolotl, it seemed like Matilda was in charge,” I say. “How could a slave be in charge?”

“Because she led a rebellion. The details of it are erased, but I’m pretty sure she started the war on that ship.”

I thought she was a monster, inside and out. Maybe things aren’t so simple, so cut-and-dried. All those mutilated bodies, the butchered babies…only someone who is pure evil could do that. And yet, a part of me—the part of me that is her, perhaps—understands why she would start that war.

“She didn’t want to be a slave,” I say. “She didn’t want anyone to be a slave.”

For the first time, I truly understand my creator.

O’Malley gently grips my shoulders. “Now you know why we can’t tell the others.”

“We have to.” My voice is thin, drained of life. “Everyone wants to know what the symbols mean.”

He cups my face in his hands, doing to me what I did to him only moments ago.

“Em, please. I was trained to counsel leaders, how to know what