Page 75 of Godslayer
Power.
The kind of power a god covets.
But can only be found inside a woman.
Like me.
19 - FINN
Xi and I are silentas we leave the room and make our way back down to the lobby of the Maiden Tower. But instead of returning to the tunnels under the tower to hide the decay of the city, he leads me outside, pausing in the courtyard to continue our conversation.
“I would like to show you what I’m talking about when I say ‘augment’. Would that be OK? Or would you like to wait for Jasina?”
Wow. Is this guy predictable, or what? Did he really think that I didn’t understand why he was trying to separate us?
Maybe he did.
“No, Xi. That can wait. Before I discuss anything else with you, I want to see those cocoons. The ones with the women inside them that Jasina and I saw on the screen.”
“The woman you saw is not Clara.”
“Nobody said she was.”
“Hmm,” is his response. Which is a passive-aggressive way to call me a liar.
“I want to see how you’re making them—how you’re makingus. That’s why I want to see the cocoons.”
“They’re called pods, by the way. But very well. If you would like to see how I make Spark Maidens—” he does little air quotes when he uses this term. “—I am happy to oblige. It’s not typically a process I share with outsiders, but you’re not really an outsider. You’re an Extraction Master. The highest level of human male possible in this realm.”
I sigh, already tired of him and all the little plot points he’s dropping in this conversation. Little tidbits to intrigue me. To make me ask questions. To make me desire answers.
“I understand, Finn. You are in possession of yourself. You don’t like to be controlled. Possibly because the lies you were told, the betrayal—it’s all still very raw, isn’t it?”
“Are you reading my mind?”
“No,” he says. “I’m not capable of doing that. But you’ve been very sheltered. You haven’t learned how to hide your feelings or adjust your body language and expressions. I’m a god. I don’t need to read your mind to predict your thoughts, I just need to watch you carefully. It’s a power I can give you as well. If you like.”
“If I agree to become your champion?”
“Details. Details.” He stops walking, panning a hand to a door that leads into a building that doesn’t match up with one in Tau City, so I don’t have a name for it.
“What’s this place?”
“The Reconstitution Center.”
“What does that mean?”
“It’s where I make my people. Isn’t that what you wanted to see?”
“I mean the word. Reconstitution.”
“It’s easier to show you. Come with me.”
Immediately upon entering the building I recognize it from the plates where Jasina and I were watching. It’s many stories tall, almost like a tower. And there are many levels. But insteadof each level having a floor of rooms, there are just the cocoons. They line each level in the hundreds. Maybe even in the thousands.
Bustling around the cocoons there are many women. Older, like the Matrons from Tau City, except they are not dressed like Matrons. They are actually dressed like men. Shabby men. Down-city men. Wearing pants and long shirts.
“The worker bots aren’t reliable when it comes to caring for the clones,” Xi says. “So I have humans overseeing the pods.”
