Chapter 45
Aryl

Ver and I press forward through the sand, toward the factory. I expect Jaha to call after us, to try again to convince us to come with her, but she doesn’t.

“There might be a trap inside,” Ver says under her breath. “If Jaha is not on our side, she could have set it. But then why did she tell us not to enter? Is she trying reverse psychology?”

I shake my head. The mental gymnastics are too much. “If she is on our side, then there’s something Paion doesn’t want her to find, and they scared her off.”

Ver’s hand is slick and sweaty in mine, and I worry about losing my grip on her. “Let me go first,” I tell her. “You can use my body as a shield if anything happens.

“Aryl, I . . .” Ver begins, but stops. She knows it’s better to be realistic than prideful.

With me walking ahead of her, we approach the door in the dune. Its color and texture help it blend in with its sandy surroundings. Nothing has confronted us yet. But I can’t forget Jaha’s panicked face. With every step we take, I want to turn back even more.

Though the factory’s not supposed to be in use, the enormous four-meter-high doors yawn open as we approach. We lock eyes for a second before we walk inside. I return Ver’s cane to her.

Cold air and icy-blue light envelop us. The walls and the checkered floor tiles are varying shades of white and gray. Everything’s rounded, like in a planetarium—surfaces with no clear edges. There’s no mark of who this empty place belongs to, no signs, no map to show us the building’s layout.

All I see is another set of doors. Plain white, no handles. Like the first, they open for us. Immediately, we’re sunk into near-total darkness. But when my eyes adjust, I stop in my tracks.

On the room’s ceiling, depicted in shifting multicolored lights, is an enormous human form made of DNA strands—running, turning, jumping.

The cargo tram we saw earlier was coming from here.

“ExSapiens,” Ver and I murmur together.

A chill runs through my body. We’re facing an entity bigger and more powerful than almost any other. I remember Pauling Yuan in Jaha’s apartment, handing the lab’s funding over to her. Vouching for Ver’s and my innocence. The way he hugged Jaha—like family. Covering for himself.

Beside me, Ver’s eyes have fixed on something in front of us. “Aryl—look at the shelves.”

Floor-to-ceiling shelving units cover the walls. The room is divided into three sections.

On the left, row after row of hands, wrists, and arms, from infant-sized to the diameter of a manhole cover. Every conceivable human skin color and beyond, to sparkling lavender and near-transparent limbs like Cal’s. Some look like thorny vines that split into finger-tendrils.

On the right are lower-body appendages—thick legs modeled after ancient columns, thin ones like leafless branches. Even unfinished models, naked wires wrapped around carbonglass cores.

In the center: Everything else. Ears. Eyeballs that change color every few seconds. Rows of identical noses, all small and button-shaped. Bottom and top halves of faces. Slender torsos composed of interlocking steel rings, like they’re covered in body armor.

Ver and I approach, her hand shaking inside mine. When we get to the center of the room, a bright blue-white light on the floor traces a circle around our bodies. That whole round section of floor we’re standing on shifts—breaks away from the rest of the floor, and rises giga fast.

The ground floor retreats below. Ver heaves as if she’ll throw up. I’m also queasy—I’m fine with heights, but there’s nothing to keep us from falling.

“Don’t look down,” I tell Ver. But I’m struggling to obey my own directions.

We keep rising, toward the DNA human on the ceiling. About halfway up, I see a large, dim balcony interrupting the rows of shelving units. It’s full of desks and computer monitors—and the first human beings we’ve seen since coming to this vacked place.

That’s where the rising platform stops, and where the nightmare begins.