DAY 100, 2:45 P.M.

Aboard Genesis 11

The best thing about having Sabbath off is the steamer. I hunker down inside, naked and sweating and relaxed. Detroit could get so cold. My guilty pleasure was simple: hot showers. Sometimes I would walk straight home from school and strip down. Didn’t bother with soap or shampoo, just wanted to disappear into warmth. Hot water only lasted for a few minutes back home, but it was still my favorite part of the day.

Babel’s devices never fail. If I go to take a steam bath, there’s steam. If I want to disappear into the simulator and pretend I’m in the Alps, I can. They’re not a company with faltering technologies or half measures. Knowing this is comforting and disturbing. Comforting, because I know we’ll get to Eden. After seeing all their bells and whistles, I have no fears of dying in a freak explosion or a botched landing. Disturbing, because Babel isn’t a company with a plan B. They’re more likely to have plans A through Z, and I’m not even sure we know all of plan A yet. It’s like looking at a puzzle that’s missing twenty or thirty pieces.

When I feel my fingers start to wrinkle, I press and hold the release button. Hatches glide outward and fog gasps ahead of me like moon mist. I take a quick shower and towel off before doubling back to the cafeteria.

I was hoping to find Bilal again, and I do, but he’s far from alone this time. I’m not even all the way down the stairs before I catch the first snatch of excited conversation.

“This means we’re famous,” Katsu is saying. “If the whole world’s reading about it.”

Jazzy says, “I always wondered what it’d be like to be a celebrity. I started hating pageants after a while, but there is something fun about being onstage.”

I round the corner and everyone looks up. Katsu jumps to his feet, raising both arms like he just finished a marathon. “Emmett! We’re famous, man! You can call me Hollywood!”

“Hollywood,” I repeat, eyeing him. “This about the Babel Files?”

Katsu smacks my arm excitedly and looks back at the others.

“He heard about it too. This is amazing.”

I slide past him and take the empty seat across from Azima. She’s braiding Isadora’s hair, and Isadora is braiding Jazzy’s hair, and Jazzy is drawing a tattoo on Jaime’s arm. It’s the kind of thing that only happens on Sabbaths. They’re the deep breaths we all take between endless sprints. The only time we can kick our feet up and act like normal people.

Bilal waves at me from the far end of the table. He looks showered and normal again, but I can still see a little red in his cheeks. He’s halfway through a slice of pie. I make an effort not to look at Azima after looking at him. Naturally, Longwei’s not here for the festivities. He tends to vanish whenever there’s a crowd. I notice that Kaya and Roathy are absent too.

“How many of you heard about it?” I ask.

“All of us,” Azima answers. “One way or another.”

I nod. “I wonder why they published it.”

“Who cares why they published it?” Katsu replies. “I’m famous. When I go back to Japan, I’m dating supermodels. Racing sports cars. I’ll be that guy they show at sporting events, you know? The one the announcers talk about for a few minutes. With the big sunglasses.”

Isadora laughs. “I don’t think we’re that kind of famous, Katsu.”

“Why not?” he asks. “We’re like…sexy astronauts!”

Jazzy makes a face. “Do you always have to make it weird?”

“Yes,” Katsu replies proudly. “I’m here to make it weird. Everyone knows that.”

“He has a point,” I say. “About us being celebrities. We’re the youngest people to ever go into space. Pretty sure that’s a big deal.”

“You really think so?” Bilal asks through a mouthful of pie. “We’ll all be famous?”

Jazzy shoots another look his way. “You’re the nicest kid in the world, Bilal, but you have the worst table manners I’ve ever seen.”

He finishes chewing and smiles. “My family didn’t have a table.”

Before Jazzy can get too embarrassed, Azima says, “I don’t want to be famous.”

“Really?” Isadora sounds shocked. “If you’re famous, you can do whatever you want. You can go to all the parties. Get the best seats at restaurants. I want to be famous.”

“Famous people are corrupt,” Azima says. “They are unhappy. Everyone knows this.”

“I don’t want to be famous either,” Bilal chimes in quickly. “Too much attention.”

I notice him looking hopefully in Azima’s direction and have to hide a laugh. Katsu looks around the rest of the table in shock. “Then the two of you can live your quiet lives while Isadora and I go to parties. Emmett? Jaime? You two coming dancing with us or not?”

Jaime shrugs. “I don’t really dance.”

Katsu groans before turning to me. “Emmett. Please. Please say you’ll party with me.”

“In Japan or Detroit?”

He laughs. “Let’s meet in the middle.”

“So…the ocean?”

He laughs louder now. “You’re all officially invited to my middle-of-the-ocean party. We’ll eat all the best food and dance on yachts and whatever else famous people do. And just to make sure Jazzy comes, we’re making it a sexy astronaut theme.”

Everyone laughs at that. For a while, they talk about their favorite celebrities. Bilal’s obsessed with some philosopher in Palestine. Isadora confesses that she wants to date the entire Brazilian soccer team. I get caught up listening for a while and almost forget I’ve got somewhere to be. I excuse myself and head back to our room, hoping I haven’t kept Kaya waiting too long.

As I come back in, I hear her shower running, so I sit down at our table and pull one of the reports on the Adamites. This one’s a random scientist’s theory on Adamite mythology. Once I would have fallen asleep after the first paragraph, but Babel’s tests have made my mind sharper. Things that were once hard are becoming easy. I wonder if this is the student I could have been without all the distractions. If I could have come home and spent hours doing homework instead of babysitting cousins. I file it under N for Never Know.

When Kaya’s ready, we take our normal route. Same checkpoints and cameras and secret panels. I’m pretty sure at this point either of us could do it blindfolded. If Babel’s watching, they haven’t said anything about our nighttime fun. Maybe they don’t care if we do a little exploring, so long as we don’t get into any real trouble. Or they know what Kaya can’t accept: we’ve reached the limits of our exploration.

As we walk, I catch her up on the day’s news. She hasn’t heard about the Babel Files yet, and she’s apparently known about Azima’s interest in Bilal for a while. I’m always surprised to find out that she spends time with the other competitors, but I guess it makes sense. When I run out of news, she shares a new strategy she’s developed for the Rabbit Room. I laugh because it’s the kind of brilliant plan only Kaya could devise.

We wait in the antechamber and then enter the no-grav zone. Kaya doesn’t play around on the walls anymore or throw jelly beans. The fun version of Kaya has slowly been replaced by the obsessed version. Her fascination with Babel has made her all business. I keep catching myself hoping we’ll get through the door and have an answer and finally be able to move on. Kaya pretends it’s this great adventure, but secretly I think she just wants an answer to the riddle of the door. She pushes herself directly up to the second air lock and latches her feet on the exposed frame. All I can do at this point is follow.

“Notice anything about my necklace?” she asks.

Throughout the competition, Babel’s given us more and more nyxia to use. I keep three bands on one wrist and a ring on the opposite hand. Kaya’s the only one who keeps hers in the form of a necklace. Little nyxian charms dangle beneath her collarbone, shaped like stars and hearts and wings. I glance at it and give a nod. “Your sunflower’s missing.”

“Well done,” she says. “I needed it to manipulate this.” Reaching into a pocket, she removes a perfect black cylinder. “Took me a few weeks to get it right. Give it a try.”

I take the cylinder from her and line it up with the door slot. It’s a perfect fit. Kaya gestures for me to press it fully forward, and I push in until it draws flush with the rest of the door. We both hear a little click. Clockwork mechanisms grind to life. My eyes go wide as the door slides open.

“You’re a genius,” I say, stunned. “A genius, Kaya.”

We float into an antechamber, and the gravity falls thick over our shoulders. We each drop to a knee, and it takes us a few seconds to stand. The next door has a handle.

“Should we keep going?” I ask.

“Of course we keep going. I’ve been imagining what’s back here for months.”

Together, we cross the threshold into a new, brightly lit corridor. It looks like every other one, but our careful progress reveals no cameras. The hallway runs twenty meters, then hairpins. A slow descent. We walk twenty more meters, then hairpin again. There are no stairwells, no scuffed floors, nothing.

“They didn’t use nyxia in these hallways,” Kaya remarks.

I nod, though I hadn’t noticed. The walls are some kind of nanoplastic lined with the occasional metal support. Something about the layout puts me on edge. I’m about to tell Kaya we should go back when a door appears around the next turn. Like the walls, it has no nyxia woven into its frame. There is a scanner, though. We come to a stop before it. I don’t swipe it open.

“Finally,” Kaya whispers excitedly. “We finally get to see what’s back here.”

I try to look excited, but something’s off. This door is different from the others.

We stand there awkwardly until Kaya glances over. “Well, go ahead.”

“I don’t know if we should,” I say. “I don’t have a good feeling about it.”

Kaya looks at me like I’m crazy. “Emmett, we’ve spent weeks—no, months—trying to get in here. If we stopped now, it’d be like reading to the end of the book and not finishing.”

“Doesn’t feel right.”

“But we’re literally right here. We can’t stop now.”

I swallow and nod. “Your call.”

The card scans and the door releases.

The brightness inside forces us to squint. I blink twice before picking out shapes, vague and ethereal. My eyes adjust slowly. Jointed mechanical arms extend from the high ceilings. Five, ten, twenty at least. They hang ominously throughout the room, ending in sharp drills and glinting saw blades. Staggered along the walls are plasma screens. I can’t decipher the diagrams or numbers flashing green across their surfaces. Blue light pumps through everything like blood. It borders the white floor panels and circles the joints of mechanical tools.

Kaya takes the first step inside. On cue, the tiled floor snaps from white to black. It looks like a shadow has fallen, like some towering monster looms above us now. The lights lose their reflection, and in the fading glow we see what the room is for.

A man. Three straps run crosswise, suspending him tightly to the far wall. His face is half hooded, down to the upward curve of his lips. A pair of snaking white cords feed into the corners of his mouth. Matching white cables disappear into his bare chest, his arms, his abdomen. Just below his throat is an open wound. The edges of it are smoking and rotten. It almost looks like something was lodged there and someone ripped it out.

Kaya and I are drawn into the room the same way neighbors are drawn to a burning house. Babel forgot to put up police tape; we can go as close to the fire as we want to. There is no noise except for the slow, steady pulse of a monitor. The beats are so spaced out that I find myself waiting and waiting for the next one to sound.

“He’s alive,” I whisper. But who is he? And why does Babel have him here, like a captive?

“Look at the scars,” Kaya says, soft and sad.

His skin looks like faded clay. It must have once been a rich and beautiful color. Along his arms, I notice the burns. Skin has bubbled up in some places and been stripped away in others. His entire left shoulder is colored with faint bruises. It doesn’t need to be said, but Kaya says it anyway.

“They’ve been torturing him.”

We come to a stop. Not quite close enough to reach out and touch him. My eyes trace downward. They left undergarments, and a strange, stony armor over his kneecaps. I point to them.

“What are those?” I ask.

Kaya kneels, making a thoughtful noise. “I’ve seen crosses like that.”

“Crosses?”

She holds out both arms. “Crosses.”

And she’s right. A central stone has been molded to each kneecap. From it, jagged arms reach up and out and down. I squint to get a closer look. The metal looks grafted into the skin, almost like scales. I circle around to the side and hear Kaya suck in a breath.

“Be careful,” she whispers.

“I am.”

At an angle, I get my first impression of how big the man is. Not tall, but compact and muscular. He’s thicker from front to back than most tree trunks. I doubt I could get my arms fully around him. His shoulders are unnaturally broad too. On his elbows I spot stones that match the ones on his knees. They mesh perfectly with his skin. For the first time, I realize he’s not human at all. This is an Adamite. Here, on the ship.

“Kaya, it’s one of them.”

“An Adamite,” she confirms. “How could they do this to him?”

The monitor beeps, startling us both. We each catch the other’s look of panic. There’s a moment of embarrassed smiles. But a movement wipes them from our faces.

Though a strap stretches below his chest and across his biceps, the captive’s hand begins to rise. The monitor ticks into the silence. The hand climbs like a ghostly drawbridge. I’m close enough to notice everything: how the veins thicken, how the frail hand tightens into a powerful fist, how the man’s lips part ever so slightly. I stand in horror before him, unable to move, unable to speak.

The charms along Kaya’s neck tremble with movement. They rise impossibly into the air, turning on their clasps like little planets. Kaya’s staring down and my jaw drops. We watch the invisible hands slide the nyxia up, millimeter by millimeter. We’re both terrified, but Kaya’s instincts finally kick in. She slaps a hand over the charms and pulls the necklace back to her chest.

A thunderclap breaks the silence.

Kaya drops with it and lets out a strangled, high-pitched cry. I feel a presence snake into the air, and I’m forced back as something big and powerful tears across the distance separating us. It is wind and rain and chaos. I fight forward as Kaya starts to scream.

Voices sound in a distant world. The man strapped to the wall tightens his fist, and Kaya’s eyes go wide. The necklace tightens, digging into flesh. I’m there, scrambling to help, but my hands can’t get between the nyxia and her neck. There’s a click as one of the charms snaps off. It claws into the air, and the captive manipulates it into smoke, gathering the substance around a fist. I’m shouting now: for help, for anyone. Kaya’s eyes are bloodshot, her face terrified. Her hands fight and claw, but neither of us can pull the necklace free as it tightens, tightens, tightens.

I’m already crying, but I scream when the nyxia’s drawn upward. Kaya’s body is pulled into the air until her toes are barely touching the floor. I try to pull her body back down, but I’m not strong enough. The force is too powerful. Kaya’s stopped clawing at her neck. One hand falls limp to her side. Then the other. I hear a rattling noise, and I shout at the top of my lungs as the lights of the room flash twice. The man on the wall spits a curse through gritted teeth.

Then Defoe is between us.

His charcoal suit ripples. One second it’s fabric, the next black plate mail. He clamps both hands over the man’s fist. Shadows slash out in every direction. Defoe grunts, then rams his nyxia-enforced shoulder into the captive’s stomach. Pinned and blind, the man can’t brace for the blow. Defoe rams the shoulder again, and air gushes out through the man’s thick lips. With a jerk, Defoe rips the nyxia away from the captive. Another quick manipulation melds it into his armor. He sets his feet and delivers three more blows: gut, gut, and groin.

Kaya collapses to the floor. I get my fingers between her and the necklace and rip it away. Dark red lines are dug there like trenches. Defoe wheels around, nyxia shivering back into his suit as he ducks and lifts Kaya by an arm. I put my weight on her other side and we drag her out of the room. Darkness fills the edges of my vision.

This isn’t real; this can’t be happening.

“She’s not breathing!” I shout. “She’s not breathing.”

She’s not moving either.

“God, she’s not breathing.”

Defoe gets the door closed and he lays her down. Footsteps sound overhead. Kaya stares, eyes red, at the ceiling. Vandemeer and the other attendants turn the corner. Hope tears through me. They can save her. They have to save her. I stumble back as they slide in around her body. Vandemeer starts CPR. Someone preps a crash cart. They let electricity course through her. Vandemeer breathes into her lips. His hands pump over her chest. I wait for the movie ending. The gasping breath. The eyes snapping open and blinking. A promise that it’s not over.

It doesn’t come. Vandemeer backs away. His face looks shattered.

“Time of death, 9:02.”

As they escort me away, I get one final look at Kaya. She looks like a fallen petal, snapped too soon. No one closes her eyes, so she keeps staring out at the world she’s left behind. I remember the second book we read together. A bridge to imaginary lands. I remember new worlds meant to be explored together, but I also remember the lonely astronaut and his dead friend. His empty heart and her haunting absence. I don’t need to pretend I understand the boy in the book. Not anymore.