Alight (The Generations Trilogy #2)(8)

Like a shadow, O’Malley silently sits down beside me.

“I was able to access the lower decks,” he says. “You need to see this.”

Farrar and Aramovsky are yelling at each other. Everyone is watching them, laughing at the argument. I quietly follow O’Malley to the back wall and through the stairway door.

“Once a door is unlocked, we can leave it that way if we close it and don’t press the handprint or turn the wheel,” he says.

We descend past Deck Two to Deck Three. As Gaston told me, the door has a wheel with a half-circle symbol on it.

“Try and open it,” O’Malley says.

The pilothouse door has a gear symbol. That door wouldn’t open for me, so I doubt this one will, either, but I try. The wheel spins easily—the door unlocks.

“I thought so,” O’Malley says. “Locked doors will mostly only open for people who have the matching symbol, but there are a few exceptions. I think you can open some doors because Matilda was in charge of the Grownups—I’m pretty sure the other empties can’t open any door that has a handprint lock.”



Empties. That word makes me instantly angry and I don’t know why. O’Malley seems surprised he said it, embarrassed, but I can tell he’s just as clueless to its meaning as I am.

“Anyway,” he says, “let me show you what I found.”

O’Malley pulls the door open. Inside is a small room with three waist-high white pedestals, the same kind that were in that spherical room where I first saw Brewer and Matilda—the place she called the Crystal Ball.

I instantly want to knock the pedestals over, smash them…if Matilda’s face appears, or Brewer’s, I will do just that. We need to leave the Grownups behind, forever.

O’Malley steps to the middle pedestal. Sparkles flare up above it, just like they did in the Crystal Ball, but instead of Brewer’s red-eyed face, I see the words GAMBIT PRIV, and below them, small images: O’Malley’s face, and Aramovsky’s, and…mine?

I’ve seen myself only once, a brief reflection in the shuttle’s polished hull. That reflection showed dirt and blood, dust and damage, all the bruises I suffered in our fight to escape. Messy hair, split lip, black eye, scratches from my fight in the woods and being dragged through the thicket.

The tiny face above the pedestal, though, has no marks. No cuts, no blood. It’s me, but older. The last of the girl I am is gone—what I see is all woman, striking and confident.

O’Malley’s and Aramovsky’s images look older, too. So…manly. The image makes O’Malley look even more handsome than he already is.

“I don’t understand,” I say. “Is that us?”

“Maybe it’s how the Grownups thought we would look in a few years. Or how our progenitors looked when they first designed us, set us to growing in the coffins?”

It’s so strange to look at an older version of myself. Glossy black hair hangs in luxurious curls rather than being pulled back into my severe braid. Smooth light-brown skin. Lips a dark shade of red. Eyelids painted pink.



But that face…it’s not real. It is the face of a doll, dressed up the way its owner wanted.

“You’re beautiful,” O’Malley says.

The word makes my breath catch. I glance at him—he’s not looking at me, he’s looking at the image. That isn’t me, it’s Matilda, how she would look if she wiped me from existence.

“A picture of me is beautiful, but the real thing isn’t?”

His eyes flick to me, widen.

“Well, no…that’s not what I’m saying.”

“That’s exactly what you said.”

He shakes his head. “You’re beautiful, too, Em. When those bruises heal, you’ll look amazing.”

But I don’t look amazing now. I don’t want to talk about it anymore, so I change the subject.

“Those words, gambit priv. What do they mean?”

“No idea. When I walked up to the pedestal, this is what appeared.”

He reaches out and touches the image of my face. Next to it appear two symbols in gold: circle-star, circle-cross. Two symbols in silver: the gear and the half-circle. And one symbol in white: the double-ring.

There are no plain circle symbols at all—no empties.

“I think gold means you can access any door with those symbols,” O’Malley says. “Silver might mean you can access some doors with that symbol.”

“And white means I can’t access those areas at all?”

He nods. “I think so.”

I touch the floating picture of O’Malley’s face. The symbols and colors are the same as mine, except for the gear, which for him is white. He can’t access anything with a double-ring or a gear.



Then I touch Aramovsky’s face: gold for the double-ring, white for everything else.

Why just our three faces? No image of Spingate or Gaston. The shuttle will fly for Gaston, but has areas he can’t access? Why? When Grownup Aramovsky died, he was with Matilda. Did they have some connection? And what about Grownup O’Malley—is that monster still alive, too?

The Grownups kept things from each other. They fought, they murdered, they kept themselves divided. I don’t want to be anything like them.