Total pages in book: 146
Estimated words: 144277 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 721(@200wpm)___ 577(@250wpm)___ 481(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 144277 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 721(@200wpm)___ 577(@250wpm)___ 481(@300wpm)
Delta’s voice comes booming through the screens. “Good evening citizens of Delta City. This is your god speaking.”
I startle, looking up at Tyse. “He’s here! Delta! He’s here!”
Tyse is shaking his head. “No. He’s not here. It’s a recording.”
“It is time for the evening harvest,” Delta is saying. “Please be ready by the count of twenty. Nineteen. Eighteen—"
“Harvest,” Tyse sneers. “What a word.”
“A harvest? Like an apple from an orchard?” One moment it makes no sense, the next, it does. My hand flies up to my mouth. “No.” I look at Tyse. “He’s stealing their spark? Just sucking it out of them like… blood.” Ew. I make a face.
“Look.” Tyse is pointing to the screens. Every single view is of people, inside their homes, hooked up to tubing. “I guess Delta was tellin’ the truth,” he says. “There is no Extraction ceremony on his farm. There are no Spark Maidens. There’s no Maiden Tower. There’s no ten years of high livin’ to erase the guilt of sending a single woman into the tower to feed the growin’ god on the other side of the doorway. No. That’s a fantasy. Not even a bad one compared to what this fucker’s doin’ here. Because he just takes it whenever he pleases. Evening harvest? Did ya hear that part? Evening. Like he does it in the mornin’ as well. Hell, maybe he does three, four, ten times a day for all we know. What a complete piece of shit. I mean, I knew he was bad, but this? It’s like stealin’ souls.” He’s shaking his head as he looks at the screens. Then his face screws up. “Ut oh.”
I turn, looking at the screen. “Ut oh, what?”
“Look. This one didn’t make it home in time.”
“Five. Four. Three…”
Oh, no! He’s right. There’s a woman running down a street, like she’s trying to make it home before the countdown ends. She’s not gonna make it. “What will happen?”
“Two. One.”
And then, a female voice in a strange, automated tone, says, “Harvest begins now.”
I gasp, watching as the young woman on the street stumbles forward, grabbing at her heart like she’s having an attack.
“No,” I breathe. Then look up at Tyse. “You don’t think he’s punishing her for not being hooked up?”
Tyse’s lips lift up in a sneer. “Oh, that’s exactly what I think. Fuckin’ Delta. Tryin’ to make himself out to be so benevolent, when he’s doin’ this?”
We turn back to the screen of the woman and find her face down on the ground. Having passed out, or something, while we weren’t watching. There’s blood seeping out from her open mouth. “Isn’t anyone gonna help her?”
Tyse scoffs. Like this answer is obvious.
But then, movement. People are coming. “There they are.”
“No,” Tyse says. “It’s bots. Look closer.”
He’s right. When they come out into the light, they are the gleaming white bots we saw in the train station. They pick the woman up by her arms and legs, carrying her like a sack until they’re out of sight.
“Look. She’s not the only one.” Tyse is pointing to a screen again, but this time, it’s on the other side of the room. The view on these screens is still mostly showing the people in the homes. Women and girls lying on beds or couches as glowing, cyan-blue spark travels through the tubing and disappears into the walls.
But there are maybe a dozen that show bots carrying more women and children off. The ones who didn’t make it back in time.
“He killed them?” It can’t possibly be true.
“Not sure,” Tyse says. “Maybe… maybe he’s set it up so they have to be harvested or or they die? But then again… yeah. Maybe he just killed them.”
I swallow down some bile. “I feel like I’m gonna be sick.”
“I think we’ve seen enough. Let’s just go, Clara.”
“Yeah. You’re right. I’m sorry I came up here now.”
“I’m sorry for being right.”
“About what?”
He smiles at me, which puts all the upside-down things in my world right-side-up again. “I told ya he was an asshole.”
Which only makes me sigh. And wonder, as we make our way all the way down the stairs again, if this is just the way of the world.
Is it all just… bad? Is everything evil? Is there no good left?
What is the point of a world like that?
This can’t be all there is.
There has to be good somewhere.
But no. I’m not sure that’s true. Because as Tyse and I descend the stairs of the tower, the cyan-blue glow below us is so bright, there’s no way to miss it.
It’s spark—vast quantities of it—filling up all the glass vats that were empty when we passed earlier.
Only the canal back home compares with what I’m looking at, but the canal was not pure spark. It was spark infused water. And no one was harvested to get it that color. The stuff in these vats, it’s… viscus. Thick. And a little bit gross, but I don’t know why I feel that way.