Alight (The Generations Trilogy #2)(5)

I push the spear tip into the plants. It sinks in a little, then clonks against something hard.

“Bishop, come help.”

He kneels beside me. His big hands rip at the blue vines and yellow leaves. That minty smell grows stronger. He clears the plants from a small area, leaving only crumbly brown dirt. He wipes that away as well, revealing flat metal.

I walk to a new spot, push the spear tip into the vines: clonk. I move to my right, do it again, hear the same sound.



The tree line…those leaves go straight up, a sheer curved wall of pale yellow surrounding a perfectly circular clearing. That can’t be right…can it?

Bishop stands. “Farrar, Coyotl, come with me.”

The three boys jog toward the wall of trees.

I turn back to Spingate.

“We’re standing on metal,” I say. “What is this place?”

Wide-eyed, she blinks. “I don’t know. The shuttle told us where to land, so we landed. I’ll see what Gaston can find out.”

Her lips move, but I can’t hear what she says. She cocks her head, hearing a voice meant only for her.

She’s so exhausted she didn’t think to ask about where we landed? Until this moment, neither did I. We were all so focused on escaping the Xolotl we didn’t give much thought to what awaited us on Omeyocan.

Spingate nods.

“Gaston says the shuttle doesn’t know much, but this isn’t a clearing—it’s a landing pad.”

So Omeyocan isn’t an unexplored wilderness after all. Did the Grownups build this? If so, when, and are those builders still here? This planet is ours, but that doesn’t mean we won’t have to take it away from someone else.

“Em!”

Bishop is shouting at me from the tree line. Coyotl and Farrar are leaning to the left and right, respectively, pulling apart the yellow trees. Only they aren’t trees at all, they are vines, the same kind I’m standing on—and in the shadows behind them, a metal wall.

Spingate tugs on my sleeve. “Gaston says he figured out how to make the landing pad rise up.”

It takes me a moment to process what she just said. I start to tell her no, but before the word comes out, a violent tremor knocks me off-balance, throws me down on the vines. Spingate falls to her hands and knees. The ground beneath me lurches upward, then stops so suddenly it tosses me into the air—I crash back down onto the soft plants. Another vibration shakes my bones, then we rise up, fast. Screams of metal hurt my ears.



“Spingate! Tell Gaston to make it stop!”

Another shudder knocks her flat, but she isn’t afraid. Her eyes are wide with wonder—she’s laughing.

“Gaston says it’s okay. Just hold on!”

The ground presses into me: we’re moving faster now.

At the edges of the clearing, the vines seem to pour down the sides, bunching up at the bottom like falling rope, but the vines aren’t falling—instead, the ground is coming up beneath them. Bishop, Coyotl and Farrar are still on their feet, lithely dancing away from the sprawling mass of plants.

What I first thought was the clearing’s edge is actually vine-covered walls, walls that shrink before my eyes. We’re rising to the top of this…this tube.

I suddenly feel lighter. We’re slowing.

With a harsh clank of steel and a tooth-rattling shudder, the landing pad stops.

I stand on wobbly legs. The landing pad’s edge is still circular, but now it is ringed by a pile of vines three times taller than I am. The sun beats down on us, lights up what looks like pointy, yellow hills rising all around. Not hills, but rather shapes…I almost know what they are. Or rather, Matilda knew what those are.

Then Bishop is beside me.

“Em, come on! You’ve got to see this!”

He takes me by the hand, pulls me so hard my head flops back. I stumble along behind him, still clutching my spear.

In seconds we reach the vine ring. At the top stand Farrar and Coyotl. Bishop scrambles up, pulling me along behind him. My feet sink into the thick plants, but find enough purchase to let me ascend.



I reach the top and look out.

This can’t be…

In all directions, as far as I can see, what I thought were pointy hills are not hills at all. They are buildings, overgrown with thick yellow vines, bluish trees and other strange plants. Some of the buildings are pyramids, so tall they scrape the sky.

We are standing in the middle of a vast, ruined city.





I don’t know how long the four of us stand atop the vines, staring out. Long enough for Spingate and the other circle-stars to join us.

The immensity of it all. The sky is like a dome above us, so big I could never reach the edge even if I walked forever. The buildings, the land, the trees and vines…this place is a million times bigger than the Xolotl, which was the biggest thing I had ever seen.

It’s so overwhelming. I fight an urge to run back to the shuttle’s familiar, confined area. I can tell the others feel the same.

“Spin,” I say. “What is this place?”

I hear her mumbling, speaking quietly to Gaston back in the shuttle. While I wait, I stare. Tall pyramids block my view in most directions. Where they do not, the city seems to go on and on.

“The shuttle doesn’t know,” Spingate says.