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)
“Xi,” I say.
Jasina’s face screws up. “What?”
“That’s what this place is called. Xi Factory – Dimension 702. The voice in the Looking Glass room said it.”
“It’s a weird name.”
“Yeah. I wanna go look.” I nod my head at the bookcase. “I wanna see the Maiden Tower.”
Not the Little Sister dorm—the Maiden Tower.
I get how it sounds. But it sounds that way because that’s how I meant it. “I need to know, Jasina. I need to know if there’s a Clara here.”
“What if there’s a ‘you’ here? What if there’s a ‘me’ here?”
“I think we should know that.”
“Is that why you want to know if Clara’s here? Or are you hoping—”
“No,” I say. Pointing at her to cut her off. “I already told you, she’s my greatest failure.”
“So you’re what? Looking to save her if she’s here?”
I want to deny this, but I can’t. So instead, I redirect the conversation. “I want to save everyone, Jasina.” But it comes out on a yawn, so I have to start again, making it a question this time. “Don’t you wanna save everyone too?”
“Then why are we blowing people up, Finn?”
“We’re not. I mean, we are, but only a small number of people are living inside the Extraction Tower. And I can justify sacrificing them because… they know. Not the entire family, but the Extraction Master knows. So if he’s sending girls into the tower to appease a god that doesn’t even exist, then he’s evil, Jasina.”
“What about your father? Was he evil too?”
I’ve thought about this a lot as well. And while I really want to say no, because I knew him, he raised me, he was good to me, and in the end, he rebelled—I can’t. So I nod. “Yes. Even him. Because he officiated several Extractions over the course of his duties. At any point he could’ve said no.”
“He would’ve ended up the same way.”
By which she means, dead. “Yeah. But there’s a line, ya know? A line so bright you cannot miss it.” These words coming out of my mouth were plucked straight from the Extraction Master’s speech during extraction. “A line so bright you should not cross it. And if ever there was a line so bright that should not be crossed it’s the one where sacrificing a young woman for her spark is on the other side.”
Jasina sighs again. Her eyes slowly migrate back over to the bookcase in question. “OK. Let’s go.”
“Yeah?”
“Yeah,” she says. “I wanna see it too. I wanna see inside the tower. We can’t get in from the outside. The secret passage is the only way.”
“We can’t set the self-destruct either. Not unless we wanna hang around here for twenty-one days. That’s when it says it’ll be done. “
“Done,” she says, echoing my last word. “What’s that mean, exactly?”
I shrug. “I guess those workers are fixing things downstairs? Making it habitable again?”
Of course, I leave out the one thing we’re really thinking about. The only thing that matters. The people. I don’t think there’s gonna be a ‘Clara’ on the ninth floor of the Maiden Tower. But I need to see it for myself before we leave here because there is no reason for a city to exist without people.
Where are they? What happened to them? And if they’re truly all gone, where will they get more?
Jasina looks at the bookcase, her gaze lingering on it a moment too long before looking back at me. She sighs heavily. “OK. We agree then? We should go look?”
I hate this mood, this vibe in the room. It’s a mixture of creeping hopelessness and a sense of foreboding. She looks wasted. Like she could sleep for weeks and still need more. I don’t like it. I want to stop everything and let her rest. So I smile, trying to boost her up and keep her going. “Unless…”
Her brow crinkles up. “Unless what?”
I waggle my eyebrows at her. Kinda motioning to the couch. “We can take a little break and have a little fun. We know that couch, right?”
She spits air so hard little pieces of hair fly up around her face. “Only you, Finn Scott, could be thinking of sex at a time like this.”
I shrug up one shoulder, still grinning like an idiot. “Just one of my many talents.”
“Sorry, but I’m gonna have to say pass on the danger sex.”
“Damn,” I mutter. Chuckling at the same time. Which makes her smile. And that was the whole point of the offer. While I would not turn down sex—like probably ever. At least with her. I’m not really serious. I just want to see her smile.
Because we both feel it.
Something is happening, and we have no idea what it is, or what it means, or where it’s gonna take us—but we feel it. We’re on a path here, and at this point, I don’t think veering onto the road less taken would even matter. We’ve set something in motion with this tower blowing stuff.