Alight (The Generations Trilogy #2)(24)

Farrar, Spingate and Coyotl start up the ramp. Bishop stops at the base. So do I.

Spingate turns. She’s beyond exhausted.

“Em, come on—you need to see Smith.”

“In a minute,” I say. “Just go.”

She doesn’t need to be told twice. She drags herself through the door.

Bawden and Visca return. I send them into the shuttle, leaving Bishop and me alone once again.

He can barely meet my eyes—he’s ashamed. At the hole in the wall, he panicked and he knows it. He wanted to protect me, but I sent him into the tunnel first, exposing myself to danger so he could get away.

He tilts his head toward the shuttle door. He wants me to go inside. He needs to be the last one out here.

“Bishop, we should talk about what happened at the waterfall.”

“What happened is we were stupid,” he says. “We were selfish, only worrying about ourselves. People could have been hurt.”

As if I didn’t feel guilty enough about that already.

In at least one way, Bishop and I are the same: we have a need, an urge to protect everyone. I don’t understand why sometimes I can’t think straight when I’m around him—or O’Malley, for that matter. What I do know is that my selfish actions almost got our friends killed.



I glance up at the shuttle, out to the vine ring—no one else is here. I reach out and take his hand.

“We just have to be smarter,” I say. I think about him kissing me. I want him to do it again. “We won’t do anything like that around other people.”

He stares at our hands for a moment, fingers intertwined. He gives me one short, firm squeeze, then pulls away.

“We won’t do anything like that, period,” he says. “We’re fighting to keep everyone alive, Em. I can’t lose sight of that, not even for a second.”

When we kissed, there was this look in his eyes—he couldn’t get enough of me. That look is gone. I feel like everything is ruined.

I trudge up the ramp.

This is what happens when you let your emotions control you? Well, never again.

At the shuttle door, O’Malley is waiting for me. He’s wearing black coveralls. A scabbard hangs from his waist, the jeweled handle of his knife sticking out. And…he has boots. My leg hurts so much I’d almost forgotten about my poor feet, beat up from the long hike, punctured by dozens of thorns. A Mictlan patch—just like the symbol on our ties—is stitched in metallic thread on O’Malley’s left breast. He’s holding a black blanket. When I stumble in, he wraps it around me.

“Welcome home, Em.”

He’s clean. His hair is combed, glossy black and perfect. It surprises me how good it feels to see his face.

I glance back down the ramp at Bishop, notice the contrast between the two boys: one scrubbed and neatly dressed, as if our living nightmare never happened, the other shirtless, bloody and bandaged, a walking testament to what we just endured.



O’Malley’s smile fades. “Bad news. Aramovsky got into Deck Four.”

His arm around my shoulders, he guides me into the coffin room. I see the familiar faces of Gaston, Beckett, Smith, Visca and the others. I see Zubiri, Walezak and the kids we found wandering the halls of the Xolotl.

I also see faces I don’t recognize. Hundreds of them. No, not hundreds, I already know the exact number—168.

Aramovsky, godsdamn him…he opened the coffins.

Little faces on little bodies. Kids dressed in clean, perfectly fitting white shirts, red ties, and black pants or red and black plaid skirts.

More mouths to feed.

Everything catches up with me in a crashing wave of despair that washes away the last of my strength. The room spins. I’m tired, so tired.

“O’Malley, get me out of here. Take me to Smith.”

I don’t care what she does to me, as long as she gives me more of that gas and puts me under.





My eyes flutter open. I’m lying on firm padding. I see something white, close above my face…too close—I’m in a coffin again.

I am trapped. Someone put me in here Matilda put me in here she won’t take me she won’t I’ll fight and have to get out have to get…

No. It’s not like that. I think I remember people putting me in here. O’Malley. Yes, that was it. And Smith. I’m not trapped, but this tiny space is squeezing in on me.

“Um…can I get out?”

“Yes, hold on.”

Someone is nearby. Such a relief. I close my eyes and take deep breaths, try to control myself. So confined in here, so tight.

The white above my face splits down the middle, slides away to the sides. Spingate grins down at me. She’s dressed in black, just like O’Malley.

“Hello there, Sleeping Beauty!”

Someone else leans in next to her, smiling at me. It’s Smith, the skinny circle-cross girl with the short brown hair who was in Bishop’s group back on the Xolotl. She’s also wearing the black coveralls. Her gray eyes are so pretty.



“Your leg was badly wounded,” she says. “Spingate did a good job binding it, but there was only so much she could do in the field. You lost enough blood to make you dizzy. Or maybe you were just exhausted and stressed.”

“Leaders don’t get stressed,” I say.