Alight (The Generations Trilogy #2)(30)

And that means tomorrow, as soon as it’s light, we have to go outside the walls again.





The sun is about to rise. Most everyone is still asleep. I am in the pilothouse with my friends: Spingate, Gaston, O’Malley and Bishop. And, unfortunately, Aramovsky.

I don’t want him here, but what choice do I have? If he’s with me, he’s not talking behind my back. And as much as I hate to admit it, he’s smart. I won’t ignore good ideas just because they come from someone I don’t like.

We stand around Gaston’s map. Somehow, the area shown seems smaller than before.

“We all know how much trouble we’re in,” I say, concentrating on not looking at Aramovsky when I do. “You are the people I trust to help me make decisions. I think we need to send a party to the fire pit.”

“But a spider was in the jungle,” O’Malley says.

I nod. “It was also inside the city walls. If it’s a threat no matter where we go, we might as well try to find the people who know what food is safe to eat.”



Spingate hugs her shoulders. Everyone else looks rested. She looks like she hasn’t slept at all.

“It’s not just the spider,” she says. “We heard many animals. And the people who made that fire might be hostile.”

We’re desperate. If they are hostile, can we take food from them? How far are we willing to go to survive?

“We should focus on the mold,” Spingate says. “The labs on Deck Two have scientific equipment, and pedestals with instructions on how to use it. I’m studying the mold, trying to find a way to neutralize the toxin. I worked on it all night.”

No wonder she’s so tired.

“Brewer knew about the mold,” I say. “Is there any information about it in the pedestal’s memory?”

She shakes her head.

“How convenient,” Aramovsky says.

I shoot him a glare, but he ignores it, continues.

“You and your cure, Spingate. How long will it take?”

She shrugs. “Maybe ten days. Maybe twenty. Maybe never.”

“Keep working on it,” I say. “You can do that while the rest of us look for other solutions.”

Gaston gestures to the countless buildings laid out on the map. “We’ve only looked in the warehouse, right? Other buildings could have uncontaminated food. We need to search them. And as far as we know, there are people in this city, we just haven’t seen them yet.”

He drags his fingertip through the map, leaving a glowing line from the dot that represents the shuttle, through the streets we used to reach the warehouse, then to the waterfall. I see his point—we’ve explored only a tiny portion of this city.

“The warehouse bins were sealed,” O’Malley says. “The mold got in anyway. If we find more food, odds are it will be in the same condition.”



“Still worth a try,” Gaston says. “We should explore.”

Maybe that’s dangerous, too, but there are a lot of us. And Gaston is right—we have to try everything.

“We’ll send teams to search buildings around the landing pad,” I say. “We’ll assign lookouts, keep the teams close enough that they can run to the shuttle if the spider is spotted. We can do that in addition to sending a team to the fire pit.”

O’Malley crosses his arms, purses his lips in thought. “There are thousands of buildings. If only there was a way to see if some were more important than others. Gaston, the landing pad had to have power to rise up, right?”

Gaston nods. “I think it has its own small power plant. Nuclear, probably. When the shuttle came in range, I think the power plant activated.”

O’Malley opens his mouth to speak, but Gaston cuts him off.

“Before you throw out your genius idea, O’Malley, I already asked the shuttle if it could detect other buildings with power. It said that capability had been erased—like almost everything else I’ve asked it.”

O’Malley puts his hands on his knees, bends so he’s looking down the north-south street at eye level. “Maybe the shuttle has bad memories like us. Maybe it’s recovering them, just like we are. Ask it again.”

Gaston rolls his eyes. “All right, fine, O’Malley. Let’s do it one more time, just for you. Shuttle?”

“Yes, Captain Xander?”

“Highlight any buildings or areas that have power.”

A small circle lights up below the shuttle icon, and so does one other spot—the massive ziggurat at the city center.



“But…wow, it worked,” Gaston says. “O’Malley, I take back half the bad things I’ve ever said about you.”

This seems strange to me. It was almost like O’Malley already knew what the shuttle would find. Did he remember an access code for the pedestals on Deck Three? No, that can’t be—he would have told me right away if he had.

“Let’s test our luck,” Gaston says. Then, in an overly sweet voice: “Shuttle, love of my life, my true north, do you know what that building is?”

“Yes, Captain Xander. That is the Observatory.”

Bishop’s face wrinkles. “What’s an observatory?”

“A place to see stars,” Gaston says.