Alight (The Generations Trilogy #2)(47)

The smell connects: burned toast, the same thing I smelled at the fire pit, and at the tunnel beneath the wall. We’re not alone—the people from the jungle are here.

I hesitate. We can confront them, but they could be violent and Spingate is with us. If anything happens to her, we have no hope of beating the mold. Attack, attack, always attack. My father’s voice again, but this time he’s wrong. We don’t know how many enemies we face…and we don’t know what weapons they have.

“Bishop,” I say, keeping my voice low, “get us out of here.”



He moves halfway to the racks, putting himself between us and the unknown danger. He crouches, axe in one hand, flashlight in the other.

Visca at my side, his voice calm but insistent: “Em, get in the elevator.”

I do as I’m told, watching the shadows all the way, waiting for someone to come rushing out of them. I enter the elevator as quietly as I can. Aramovsky, O’Malley and Spingate follow. I can feel their fear.

Visca silently walks up to Bishop, taps his big shoulder. Without either of them looking away from the racks, they walk backward right into the elevator.

Bishop shuts the door.

The cage rises.

“All I saw was that bin,” Spingate says. “Did anyone see anything else move?”

“I didn’t,” Bishop says. “But it seems like this cage is the only way in and out.” He glances up. “Whoever was down there, if they weren’t alone, they could have friends waiting for us to step out—everyone be ready to fight. We need to stay together, get off this building and then back to the shuttle as fast as we can.”

Aramovsky shakes his head. “We can’t leave. We have to go back down, finally learn who we are. This building, this temple…we need to bring everyone here. We need to live here.”

Live in a building covered in images of human sacrifice? Get answers from a machine voice that is either wrong or lying? And then there’s the obvious—someone was down there, someone who was watching us.

The fire-builders.

Aramovsky is almost right. We might have to come back, but not for the reasons he thinks. We have five days of rations left. If we don’t find food soon, if Spingate can’t beat the mold, then we will capture the people in the Observatory and force them to tell us what they know. I will come back here with all the circle-stars.



“We return to the shuttle,” I say. “The Observatory isn’t safe.”

Aramovsky starts to protest, but I thonk the spear down on the cage floor.

“No one is allowed to come here,” I say. “No one.”

Heads nod. Even Aramovsky’s.

The cage’s rise slows. I feel lighter. Then it stops. The doors open. We see the stairs leading up.





Wind roars down the wide streets, channeled by the buildings on either side. Rain blasts us from all directions, but we dare not stop.

We are being hunted.

Visca carries Spingate in his arms. O’Malley stumbles more than runs, the last of his energy long since spent.

Up ahead, Bishop waves madly for us to come his way. He’s at the street corner, half-hidden by the base layer of a small ziggurat. He can’t call to us, because the spider is so close it might hear even over the wind-driven rustle of a million leaves.

Visca reaches him first, Aramovsky right on his heels. O’Malley falls hard. I drag him to his feet, shove him on. Then Bishop is there, tosses O’Malley over one big shoulder, grabs my hand and yanks me around the corner.

I’m thrown to the ground next to Spingate, who silently sobs, her elbow clutched to her chest. Before I can get up, O’Malley lands hard next to me. Visca covers us with a thick sheet of vines.



“Stay still,” Bishop hisses. “Be silent.”

Seconds pass. I stare through the vines out to the dark street. Clouds transform Omeyocan’s twin moons into hazy, glowing spots of blue and maroon. The few trees growing up from ziggurat plateaus bend beneath the stiff wind. Our coveralls keep our bodies mostly dry, but the rain runs down our faces and under our collars.

No one was waiting for us atop the Observatory. It was pitch-black, the stars blocked by heavy clouds. Halfway down, the skies opened up. Steep steps were treacherous enough before rain made the vines slick, before high winds blasted us. We only had two layers left when Spingate fell and cracked her elbow on the stone. She thinks it’s broken.

We followed Visca’s route back from the Observatory, but this time we weren’t alone. Over the wind, we heard a whine—the sound of the spider that almost caught us at the city gate. It’s looking for us, and it’s getting closer.

The whine is much louder now.

“What are we doing?” Aramovsky whispers from behind me. “We need to get to the shuttle!”

Bishop’s hand shoots through the vines, grabs him by the throat.

“Be…quiet.”

We’ve changed directions so many times I have no idea where we are, but Visca says we’re not far from the shuttle. If we can lose the spider, we’ll soon be safe.

The deluge pours down, unstoppable. I stare out at the dark intersection as the whine grows louder still, and wonder if maybe—just this once—I should pray to Aramovsky’s gods.

A flash of movement: the spider is visible for only a moment as it rushes down the street we were just on, and then is gone from sight.