Alight (The Generations Trilogy #2)(45)

Spingate joins us. Her eyes squint, like a memory is working its way up from the depths.

“I…I think it’s a representation of something,” she says. “An atom. It’s…I think this represents a carbon atom.”

She points to the six dots on the rungs, one at a time.

“These are electrons, I think. And that dot in the middle, that’s the nucleus.”

I look around the room, my flashlight beam seeking out this symbol on the ceiling, the walls, the coffins. I don’t find it.

“All right,” I say, “so what does it mean?” I ask her.

She shrugs. “I have no idea.”

Another useless symbol of the Grownups.

Aramovsky walks to the black X. He seems mesmerized by it.

I look down into the hole. The shaft’s round wall is nothing but dirt, packed with stones that show white cracks and scrapes from when this hole was dug. Far below, I think I see the bottom: something metal. A machine, perhaps. The black cable runs into the center of it.

Spingate steps onto the pedestal platform. The moment she does, I hear a hum. It’s coming from the black cable.



The five pedestals begin to glow.

“Welcome, Grandmaster Spingate.”

The voice comes from nowhere, from everywhere. Just like in the shuttle’s pilothouse, lights suddenly play off Spingate’s skin. Her face glows like that of a goddess. She smiles wide: a new puzzle for her, a new problem to solve. Her frustration, fear and anger are gone—or at least temporarily forgotten.

“Do you have a name?” she asks.

“Much of my memory has been erased. I believe I was referred to as Ometeotl.”

“Good enough,” she says. “Can you show me a diagram of this building?”

Lights flash. In the space above the hole, a glowing version of the Observatory appears. The building spins slowly, giving us a look at all four sides.

“Thank you,” Spingate says. “This place is called the Observatory, is that correct?”

“Yes, Grandmaster.”

Spingate nods. That title, Grandmaster, doesn’t surprise her. Maybe her lab referred to her by that name, just like the Deck Three pedestals called O’Malley Chancellor.

“Observatories are for telescopes,” Spingate says. “Is there a telescope?”

The fake ziggurat flashes. The sloping sides become transparent. We see hundreds of rooms and intersecting corridors, but the main feature is a long cylinder that starts at the building’s base and rises up at an angle to end just inside one of the sloping walls.

The cylinder glows brightly. It is enormous. So big, in fact, I can only come to one conclusion—this Observatory was built specifically to house it.



Spingate steps off the platform and walks to the glowing ziggurat. She continues to shine, lit up so brightly our flashlights are almost useless. She leans on the red metal wall, her eyes tracing the cylinder’s length.

“I’ve seen an image like this before,” she says. “It’s hard to remember but…someone I knew was trained to use this telescope. Someone I went to school with.”

Spingate rubs at her face. We all watch, we all wait, because we all know what she’s going through—bits of memories are pushing their way to the surface.

She stops rubbing. Hands still pressed against her face, she slides her fingers apart slightly. One eye looks at me.

“Em, our school. We were all being trained to live and work on the Xolotl.” She points at the image of the telescope. “Some people were trained specifically for that. The girl…she was a gear…what was her name?”

Spingate makes fists, grinds them into her temples.

She stops—she has it.

“Okadigbo,” she says. “One of the dead kids in our original coffin room on the Xolotl.”

I also know that name, because Brewer mentioned her: Where is Okadigbo? Is she still alive, or did you kill her again?

“She trained for years,” Spingate says. “I can’t remember what her classes were, exactly, but it was all she worked on.”

The few memories any of us have end at the age of twelve. If Okadigbo had been studying for years, when did she start?

The Observatory, built to house a telescope.

This city, built to support the Observatory?

If these things are true, everything we’ve seen is dedicated to one thing: the telescope. Why? What does it mean? What does it do?



Spingate reaches out with shaking hands. Her fingertips sink into the glowing ziggurat. She turns it this way, then that, tilting, looking.

“The telescope has a name,” she says. “I can’t quite…dammit, what was it called?”

O’Malley walks to stand next to her. He reaches a fingertip out, traces it down the length of the cylinder.

“It’s called…,” he says, searching for the word, “…it’s called…is it the Goffspear?”

That word is a hammer smashing into my brain. A word of power. Beyond power. It might be the most important word there is. Looking at the faces of my friends, I know it hits them just as hard.

“Chancellor, is Adept Okadigbo present?”

“She’s not,” I say, answering before O’Malley can. I don’t know what an adept is. Right now I don’t care. This building, or system or computer, or whatever it is, is expecting Okadigbo. If it knows she’s dead, it might shut down.