Page 39 of Godslayer
And now I’m thinking about the dead canal. “I don’t know,” I halfheartedly tell Finn. “Probably just… moving building materials, or something?”
“Yeah, maybe,” he mutters. But he doesn’t sound convinced.
“What do you think happened to the spark?”
“Huh?” We’re just coming down to the first floor, so Finn is distracted by all the activity.
“The canal. It was black and dead. What happened to it?” I ask. Then suck in a breath and hold it as a bot comes within a few feet of us.
But it just keeps going like all the others we’ve seen so far.
“Well,” Finn says, letting out his own breath of relief. “There was a war, obviously. That’s why the place is a mess. You know what the weird thing is, though?”
“What?”
“The city has no spark, it’s a total disaster, but the workers still work.” He looks at me now. “If there’s no spark here, where do they get power from?”
“Power? What do you mean?”
“Well, they’re not alive, Jasina. They’re… machines. So they run on spark.”
I don’t know why this never occurred to me. I hadn’t even thought about how the workers got power. I guess I thought it came from food. That’s howweget power.
“And I bet it takes a lot of spark. Look at those carts, they don’t even have wheels.”
Yes, carts that hover instead of roll are unusual. But I’ve seen so many strange things over the past few weeks, I guess I just accepted it as normal now. Which is a terrible thing. Because it means I’m not paying attention. And now that I am, this thing with the workers needing spark to function—it’s unsettling.
“Don’t you think it’s weird?” I ask. “That spark is like a lifeforce? And that it powers things that aren’t alive?”
“You know what’s weirder than that?” Finn replies. “That weeatthings. Like… living things. That’s weird. And when you think about it too hard, it’s kinda gross. Even if it’s just carrots. A carrot isalive. Even coffee beans are alive.”
“And sugar,” I say, picturing the pastries I used to yearn for when I was just a down-city girl coming up city for Little Sister etiquette lessons. Which feels like another life now.
“Yeah. Sugar too. That’s a plant. It comes from beets.”
“I think we should change the subject,” I say.
Finn laughs. “It’s weird though, right? That everything has to feed off ofsomething.”
“Weird in a bad way. Ominous. Foreboding. Maybe even sinister.”
Finn just laughs. While we’ve been having this conversation, we’ve walked under the canal and crossed over to the other side. And while there are still puddles of water here, it’s not nearly as bad as the flooding on the train station side of things.
We make our way through various metal structures and past several dozen busy workers, until finally we find the stairs that lead up to the Little Sister dorm inside the Maiden Tower.
“Want a ride?” Finn asks, pointing to his back.
I do. I really do. I want to cling to him, and for him to cling back. I want to stop now. I want to get off this adventure and go home.
And there it is.
The truth.
This is what’s bugging me. I want to go home. And even though Finn telling me that this was the plan, after we’re done saving the factory cities from Extraction by blowing up towers, I hadn’t let myself dream about it.
And now I am.
I’m dreaming about home. I know my friends are gone—they all died when Gemna and I shattered the glass wall that I think was some kind of Looking Glass, but can’t be sure. And my Auntie—the traitorous bitch—also dead. Probably. Though I didn’t actually see it.
