The Girl Who Fell From The Sky - Rebecca Royce Page 0,70

rot or rusted metal or body odor. It smelled, if anything, like a space station, all acetone, charged ions, and industrial lubricant. Weird, right?

We went up. I wanted to reach out and grab for a handrail, but Astor kept both of my hands firmly in his. He had to be going up backwards.

“I am able to climb stairs, you know,” I said after about ten steps.

“These are unusual stairs,” he said, “and I know the way. You would not want to take a wrong step.”

“Why? What would happen if I did?”

He squeezed my hands. “Nothing I want to think about.”

“Why is it so dark in here?” I asked, only sort of meaning to change the subject. “It feels like the tunnels, where you guys live, but it doesn’t smell right for that, and we are, unless I’m just completely turned around, going up.”

“You are correct that we’re ascending, and this structure isn’t part of our electrical system. It’s powered from a different source.”

From the outside, the building had seemed about four stories tall, but it felt like we climbed much longer than that. I couldn’t shake the feeling that it was a magical place, and also a deeply familiar one. I just kept putting one foot in front of the other, matching my pace to Astor’s. He kept our ascent slow, and oddly, my heart never complained. I never struggle with breath. What care my husbands took with me, to keep me safe.

I wasn’t sure when I started to notice my feet. Like, notice them visually. Which meant light. I’d climbed maybe for several minutes without realizing I could see what I was climbing—creaky wooden stairs without railings. Old. And walls of sleek, shielded metal. A cool, greenish light peeked out from tiny pinprick lamps set into the walls.

I knew this place. I knew exactly what it was. My mouth went dry, and I couldn’t summon words.

At the top step, Astor pushed open what from our angle looked like a trap door and hoisted me up through it. Sunlight poured in from what was essentially the roof, a curved dome of transparisteel encircled by dozens of panels lit in a variety of colors. Buttons. Holographic data maps. Control panels.

“Astor,” I said, sitting on the floor, which was really a wall, and gazing up at a space that was both familiar and heartbreaking. “This is a spaceship command bridge.”

“I figured as much,” he said, kneeling beside me. “Isn’t it beautiful?”

“You knew?” I could hardly speak the words. “Do they all know? Everyone?” There I had been with my grand revelation, but it was worthless. They’d known.

He shook his head. “Not really. Most people don’t come here, don’t think about it. If they came here, they wouldn’t know what they were looking at and they’d dismiss it as…magic. But I know. And Torrin knows. From their reactions, I think Mattis and Nox did, too. Or they suspected. We don’t discuss this. Our father brought Torrin and me here when we were boys. Explained it. We’d come from the stars, but we could never go back. Our crimes were the crimes of our ancestors. They’d follow us, kill us for things done hundreds and hundreds of years ago.”

For a second, I thought about arguing about that. But then I thought of my brother. Truth was, he might do something like make an example of these people to have some sort of scene to support the Republic.

“Do you think anything in here could fix your watch? The one thing I can’t do is read what the things say. So I don’t actually know what they do. It makes me crazy.”

I stared at the equipment. This was like being in a museum. I could read what the things said, but I doubted any of it would work, and if it did, then I didn’t think it could connect to my watch. I touched a monitor.

“This one would have shown them if there were any ships in front of them.” I moved to the left. “And this one would have helped them communicate.” That was about the extent to which I understood any of it. “I don’t really know how things work. Just how to call someone to fix them. This is old machinery, meaning I’m not sure that it could still connect to the things we use now.”

He nodded. “I wanted you to see it. I sort of hoped that there might be something. I want to fix this for you. To show you that