Alight_ Book Two of the Generat - Scott Sigler Page 0,8

a mistake.”

Farrar runs down the center aisle toward Aramovsky. Children scramble out of his way. Aramovsky sees the big circle-star coming and moves a hand to cover up his collection.

That wasn’t nice of me, but it’s fun to watch them argue about something unimportant. And it makes me happy to give Aramovsky some grief. It shouldn’t, but it does.

Two little girls run up to me and throw themselves down, somehow landing cross-legged. One is Zubiri, the dark-skinned tooth-girl who calmed me when I fought against O’Malley and Bishop putting me in my coffin. There are no leaves in Zubiri’s jet-black hair. No blood, no scratches, no bruises, no scars. Like most of the younger kids, she hasn’t suffered that much.

The other girl I don’t recognize. She’s got hair just as black as Zubiri’s, but her skin is light and her eyes are so thin I can barely tell they’re open. She’s also a little chubby. The symbol on her forehead is a circle inside of a circle: a double-ring, the same as Aramovsky’s.

“Hi, Em,” Zubiri says.

“Hi, Zubiri. Who is your friend?”

“This is B. Walezak,” Zubiri says. “Our cradles were next to each other.”

I offer my hand. “Nice to meet you, B. Walezak.”

The girl stares for a second, then giggles and hides her face behind Zubiri’s shoulder.

Zubiri rolls her eyes dramatically. “Oh, Walezak, you have to learn how to talk to people.”

I’ve spoken with Zubiri only a few times. Somehow, she seems older than me. Maybe more mature is the right word. That’s good, I think. Soon, she will have to do her part. All the kids will.

Like a shadow, O’Malley silently sits down beside me.

“I was able to access the lower decks,” he says. “You need to see this.”

Farrar and Aramovsky are yelling at each other. Everyone is watching them, laughing at the argument. I quietly follow O’Malley to the back wall and through the stairway door.

“Once a door is unlocked, we can leave it that way if we close it and don’t press the handprint or turn the wheel,” he says.

We descend past Deck Two to Deck Three. As Gaston told me, the door has a wheel with a half-circle symbol on it.

“Try and open it,” O’Malley says.

The pilothouse door has a gear symbol. That door wouldn’t open for me, so I doubt this one will, either, but I try. The wheel spins easily—the door unlocks.

“I thought so,” O’Malley says. “Locked doors will mostly only open for people who have the matching symbol, but there are a few exceptions. I think you can open some doors because Matilda was in charge of the Grownups—I’m pretty sure the other empties can’t open any door that has a handprint lock.”

Empties. That word makes me instantly angry and I don’t know why. O’Malley seems surprised he said it, embarrassed, but I can tell he’s just as clueless to its meaning as I am.

“Anyway,” he says, “let me show you what I found.”

O’Malley pulls the door open. Inside is a small room with three waist-high white pedestals, the same kind that were in that spherical room where I first saw Brewer and Matilda—the place she called the Crystal Ball.

I instantly want to knock the pedestals over, smash them…if Matilda’s face appears, or Brewer’s, I will do just that. We need to leave the Grownups behind, forever.

O’Malley steps to the middle pedestal. Sparkles flare up above it, just like they did in the Crystal Ball, but instead of Brewer’s red-eyed face, I see the words GAMBIT PRIV, and below them, small images: O’Malley’s face, and Aramovsky’s, and…mine?

I’ve seen myself only once, a brief reflection in the shuttle’s polished hull. That reflection showed dirt and blood, dust and damage, all the bruises I suffered in our fight to escape. Messy hair, split lip, black eye, scratches from my fight in the woods and being dragged through the thicket.

The tiny face above the pedestal, though, has no marks. No cuts, no blood. It’s me, but older. The last of the girl I am is gone—what I see is all woman, striking and confident.

O’Malley’s and Aramovsky’s images look older, too. So…manly. The image makes O’Malley look even more handsome than he already is.

“I don’t understand,” I say. “Is that us?”

“Maybe it’s how the Grownups thought we would look in a few years. Or how our progenitors looked when they first designed us, set us to growing in the coffins?”

It’s so strange to look at an older version of myself. Glossy black hair hangs in luxurious curls rather