Alight (The Generations Trilogy #2)(27)

Everyone my age is dressed in coveralls and boots. Okereke and Johnson, Borjigin and Beckett, Bawden and Farrar. Even Bishop, who stands by the shuttle door, red axe at his side. They all wear black. I can’t help but think of the Grownups we left back on the Xolotl.

Gaston is standing on a small stage made from empty food bins. He sees me and steps down.

As I walk toward it, people close in behind me. I’m surrounded. I step up on the stage. For once, I am taller than most of the people here.

I look out at the mass of faces. They’re waiting for me to tell them what happens next, that everything will be fine. I see everyone except Spingate. Where is she? I’d feel better if she was here.



“Uh…thank you all for coming.”

First thing out of my mouth and it’s so stupid. Where else would they be? Silence makes me nervous, so I fill it.

“Hello to you new kids. I know this is scary, but I was just like you not long ago—frightened, confused, no idea of what was happening. Try to relax, you’re with us now. See the people in black? They’ve been through far worse than this. We—”

A little hand goes up: Zubiri’s.

“Yes?”

“Food,” she says. She puts her arm down, stands. No smile this time. She’s as serious as Bishop. “What are we going to do about food?”

That’s something we’d all like to know.

“We’re working on it. There are animals here we can eat, it’s just a matter of figuring out how to catch them. And we haven’t even started looking at plants yet. It might be—”

Aramovsky raises his hand. I know he’s going to try and cause trouble, but I just answered Zubiri’s question—I can’t have people think I’m ignoring only him.

“Yes, Aramovsky?”

“Who built the fire? Other than having us cower in the shuttle, what have you done to protect us from this threat?”

He’s doing it again, asking me questions to which he knows there are no answers. He’s trying to make me look bad.

“We don’t know they’re a threat.”

“You didn’t find any food,” he says, not hiding his disgust. “Now the fire-builders—whoever they are—probably know we’re here. Sounds like your trip was a failure.”

“We found water,” I say. “Without fresh water we’d all die. Does that sound like a failure?”



“Water we can’t get to is the same as no water at all. How are you going to kill the spiders that guard it, Em?”

Why does he have to be so difficult? I hate him.

“We don’t know yet,” I say. “We will find a way. Now, about our food situation. Gaston, assuming we eat small meals, how long will the shuttle’s supplies last?”

Gaston glances across the room, at Borjigin, the half-circle wisp of a boy with big teeth and straight hair as black as his coveralls. When I left for the warehouse, he and Opkick were doing inventory on the storerooms.

“Twelve days,” Borjigin says. “If we stretch it.”

I feel some of the pressure ease out of the room. A bubble of calm sets in: we’re in bad shape, but we’re not going to die tomorrow.

Then, that bubble bursts.

“It’s worse than that.”

Spingate. She’s standing in the back wall’s open door. She must have been on Deck Two, maybe in one of the labs. She holds up a white package: CRACKERS.

“This came from a bin we opened when we landed, not even two days ago.”

She waves her bracer above the package.

The jewels flash orange.

“Contaminated,” she says. “Enough to make us sick. Maybe even enough to kill us. Everything in the open bins is contaminated. We have to assume the only safe food is in bins that are still sealed. Even those might go bad.”

I look at Gaston.

“How many bins did we already open?”

He hesitates before answering. “About half of them.”

We have, at most, seven days’ worth of food left. Not enough time to farm. Maybe enough to learn to trap those small animals, but how many of those would we need—every single day—to feed three hundred people?



Gaston looks nervous, like he thinks the crowd is about to attack him.

“Not my fault,” he says. “We didn’t know about the mold.”

Beckett stands up. The tan-skinned redhead has said almost nothing since my group merged with Bishop’s, but he’s suddenly so mad he can’t help himself.

“Why did you open so many bins, Gaston?” Beckett points to the gear symbol on his own forehead. “A real scientist would have tested first, made sure there was no reaction from the environment!”

Gaston huffs. “You’re a real scientist?”

“I wouldn’t have ruined half our food!”

Grumbles of agreement, even a few shouts—Gaston couldn’t have known, yet people blame him anyway.

This room is growing angry, fast.

Bawden points at some of the new kids. “The food would last longer if it wasn’t for all of these new empties.”

The coffin room falls quiet.

That word again.

O’Malley was embarrassed he said it. Bawden is not.

I don’t know the names of all the Xolotl kids, but I recognize their faces. On their foreheads, symbols: circles, yes, but also circle-stars, half-circles, gears, circle-crosses and a double-ring. On the foreheads of the new faces, though, I see only one symbol.