Alight (The Generations Trilogy #2)(40)

Bishop, O’Malley, Aramovsky, Spingate, Visca and I made good time. We left at sunrise. It is now a few hours past midday. Visca’s roundabout path took us south, then west, then south again, then west again, adding several hours to the trip—but we saw no sign of spiders. We’ll follow that same path back, which means we’ll get home well after sunset. Once we enter the Observatory—if we can enter—every minute we spend inside is another minute of darkness on our return.



I brought O’Malley because I need him. Manipulator or not, the shuttle recognizes him as a “Chancellor.” Any systems still working in the Observatory might do the same.

Spingate insisted on coming, saying she had exhausted the capabilities of the shuttle’s tiny lab. Either she gets more information somewhere else, or she won’t be able to stop the red mold. We think we need Aramovsky to get in. As for Bishop, I wouldn’t even consider making this trip without him. That left Gaston as the main person I could trust. He’s in charge of the shuttle while we’re gone. Borjigin and Opkick are helping him.

The towering Observatory is so big it hurts to think about it. We count thirty layers, one on top of the other. The base layer itself is taller than most of the city’s buildings, and so wide and long a hundred smaller pyramids could easily fit on it. There is something solemn about this monument that touches the sky, something…frightening.

I wonder if Aramovsky can comfort me and take away my fears the way he comforts Coyotl.

If this place doesn’t have answers, we have no choice but to go beyond the wall. Somewhere on this planet there is food for my people—I will find it. If I have to track down the fire-builders and take food away from them, I will.

Wide steps run up the ziggurat’s south face. At the top, faint and faded at this distance, I see the last layer and its pillar of six symbols glimmering in the sunlight. Twenty-five layers up, I can just make out that big vine-covered statue we saw on the pilothouse map.

Spingate’s head is tilted so far back she seems to be staring straight up.



“I can’t believe this,” she says. “To build such a thing…the Grownups are amazing.”

Aramovsky nods. Before he can mutter some nonsense about gods, I speak.

“We can believe it, because it’s right there in front of us,” I say. “Save your disbelief for things we can’t see.”

I meant that as a dig on Aramovsky. He doesn’t seem to notice.

So many vine-choked steps. My legs ache just looking at them. It will take us hours to reach the top.

“We’re wasting daylight,” Aramovsky says.

He’s right. I take a last, deep breath, resigning myself to the work that lies before us.

“Bishop,” I say, “take us up.”

He and Visca lead the way. With vines wrapped around their black uniforms, they look like shadows moving across the yellow leaves that blanket the ziggurat’s orange-brown stone. Spingate, O’Malley, Aramovsky and I stand out more. We should wrap ourselves in vines, too. Maybe later—vines would add weight, and this damn spear will be heavy enough by the time we’re done.

The steps are wide but thin, and painfully steep. I have to raise my knee almost parallel to the ground to move from one to the next. I’m careful, as more often than not my foot lands on leaves and vines that want to squish out from under when I put my weight on them. The stone beneath is unforgiving—even a short fall could break bones.

I count as I climb: the ziggurat’s bottom layer has one hundred steps. By the time I reach the first plateau, my legs are already screaming.

Twenty-nine layers to go.

My eyes trace the steps that lead to the second plateau—yep, another hundred. At the ninety-fifth, Bishop stops and turns to me.



“Em, don’t be afraid of what you’ll see next—the woman is just a carving.”

We take the last five steps side by side.

I reach the second plateau and am grateful for his warning. A snarling woman in red robes is carved into the wall at the base of the ziggurat’s third layer, vines on either side of her held apart like drawn curtains. Bishop must have tied them off. A vine-covered block of stone sits in front of her. She’s plunging a knife down. She looks so real.

Bishop nods toward the woman. “When we came up, we thought we saw something behind the vines. It was her.”

Some of her color has chipped or flaked away, but if I had just glanced I would have thought she was moving, thought she was alive.

The woman has a double-ring on her forehead.

I walk to the block. Through the vines covering it, I see a carved man, on his back, hands chained to the block’s sides. The two images are meant to be viewed together—the red-robed woman driving a knife into his chest. The man’s face is forever frozen into a twisted mask of pain and terror.

A vine covers his forehead. I push it aside. His symbol is a half-circle.

“There’s more carvings,” Bishop says. “All the way up, on every plateau. We didn’t look at many. After the first few, well…we stopped looking at anything but our feet.”

Aramovsky walks to the carving. He runs his fingers down the woman’s robes, as if they were cloth instead of stone.

“This is important,” he says.

He closes his eyes. His brow furrows. I think back to when O’Malley told me I was a slave, how it felt to have blocked memories suddenly flare to life.