Alight (The Generations Trilogy #2)(114)

Despite all the cleaning and painting, this place still smells faintly of smoke and scorched flesh. Every time I come in, I look at the spot where O’Malley died.

Springers and kids alike study at the floor pedestals. Some are learning math and science, some are helping develop Borjigin’s plan for the city.

Spingate, Gaston and Zubiri are standing on the platform. Spingate’s belly is curved with the life growing inside of her. She walks funny now, has to in order to balance the weight—Smith says the baby is overdue.

Gaston has grown something, too: a beard. It is thick and black, and it annoys Bishop. As big as Bishop is, all he can manage is a thin blond scraggle. Gaston is fond of saying that facial hair defines being “manly,” and will continue to say so until it stops enraging Bishop.

And then there is Zubiri.

Most of her face has been repaired. Smith is still working on replacing her missing teeth. Five of them are in and set, three more to go. I’m told that after the next operation, Zubiri should have her smile back. The one thing she can never have back, though, is her left arm.

She lost it in the battle. It was torn off in the spider crash, severed just above her elbow. Smith could do nothing for that. Coffins can do miracles on skin and bone, fixing up that which is damaged, but regrowing body parts is beyond the technology’s abilities.



Spingate looks up from her work. She sees Muller, smiles.

“Grandmaster Zubiri,” she says, “can you go to the shuttle and bring me back the bracer from storage? And Em, I need Zubiri back here sooner rather than later—would you mind if Victor gives her a ride?”

Zubiri and Muller—I correct myself, Victor—stare at each other. I’m not sure they even remember I’m here.

“I don’t mind at all,” I say. “Just don’t be gone all day.”

“We won’t,” the two of them say in unison, and they rush out of the room before we can change our minds.

We’ve learned that Zubiri is brilliant. Genius is the word Spingate uses to describe her. Perhaps someday soon Zubiri will lead these research efforts instead of Spingate, but the girl’s mind isn’t always on her work. Maybe if she hadn’t had her arm ripped off and her face smashed so hard she needed eleven reconstructive surgeries, maybe if she didn’t wake up every night screaming in horror as she relives that moment, then she could concentrate more.

And, of course, maybe if she wasn’t in love with a boy.

Gaston is staring at an image of stars hovering above a pedestal. He waves us to join him.

I step onto the platform. It’s wide enough that Barkah and Lahfah can come up with me. Borjigin stays on the floor, looking at his messageboard and talking to D’souza.

“So, I’m here,” I say to Spingate. “What’s so important that Barkah and I both had to come?”

She looks at the Springer, as if wondering if she made a mistake to ask for him. She shakes her head, chasing away that thought. Whatever this is, it must affect both species equally.



“Zubiri fixed the power supply in the hole,” she says.

I look to the red wall in the room’s center, realize that a heavy black cable is running up from the hole, over the wall and under the pedestal platform. A cable just like it burned up in the fire.

“Spin, that’s great! Does that mean the telescope is working?”

“Sort of,” she says. “First I have to tell you what we found in the hole. Only Zubiri, myself and a few other young gears have been down there—until today. Today we needed Okereke to take the heavy cable down and connect it. He saw things in the walls that the rest of us hadn’t noticed.”

She picks up a box that is sitting on the platform. It’s filled with dirty objects.

“Borjigin, I need your expertise,” she says, and pulls out a piece of masonry from the box. “Can you tell me what this is?”

He and D’souza join us on the platform. The bit of masonry is flat on two sides, broken on the other. It looks like a small chunk of a corner of a building, but the angle is wider than ninety degrees.

“A piece of Springer building,” Borjigin says. “One-hundred-twenty-degree angle. Their specific type of concrete. You can tell because they like to mix in wood mulch.” He points to several small air spaces in the concrete. They look like slots where wood splinters would fit in perfectly.

Spingate nods. “That’s what I thought, too. It was found in the dirt walls of the hole, the layer just below the floor of this room.”

Borjigin nods. “Of course. The Grownups leveled the Springer city and built on top of it. There’s going to be all kinds of debris buried beneath Uchmal.”

Spingate seems nervous. She takes another piece from the box, offers it to him.



“This was below that layer,” she says. “What is it?”

It’s flat on one side, melted and torn on the other. It’s not masonry. I’ve never seen anything like it.

Borjigin stares at it. He turns it over.

“I don’t know what it is,” he says. “Some kind of composite. A support beam, maybe. I haven’t seen this material in any Springer architecture, and it isn’t in anything built by the Grownups. You said it was below the Springer layer?”

Spingate nods, reaches into the box.

“The whole layer is full of it. Okereke found this as well.”