And they just left without me.
That was yesterday.
I went home, didn’t even grab food—hoping against hope that once Finn came home, I could convince him to stay awake long enough to go out to eat. I have this coin card with my name on it. Enough coin to pay for anything I want, and Finn and I haven’t even had a chance to use it for dinner.
But I was crying at this point.
Which makes me tired.
So I just fell asleep.
Today, is the next morning and the bed sheets next to me aren’t even wrinkled.
Because Finn never came home last night.
I’m sitting on the floor of the room, backed up to a corner, staring at the door. Willing, with all my might, that he will come home.
He doesn’t.
Eventually, I get up, dress, and make my way down to the lobby.
But it’s like I’m walking through a nightmare. Because the entire place is empty. And the reason the entire place is empty is because this lobby is no longer attached to the upper dimension.
I’m back in the factory world. Standing inside a decrepit building with blown-out windows. Outside, there are workers pushing crates around.
And then, an elevator dings. And when I turn, Xi steps out. Looking just like he did when we first met him.
Which is funny, but not in a funny way.
Because he told Finn he wanted us to meet the real him.
But he never came to see us in the upper dimension.
This is when I understand the meaning of the words, ‘too good to be true’.
He didn’t bring us here to save us.
He brought us here touse us.
Xi opens his arms, wide smile on his face. “Every spark has its purpose.”
38 - CLARA
It is the day everything changed. Before Finn’s father, Aldo, died and the bells rang for Haryet. It is warm, and sunny, and perfect.
I had everything that day. A man who loved me, and who I loved back. Two best friends to share my Spark Maiden life with. An entire suite of rooms on the ninth floor of the Maiden Tower. Floor-to-ceiling windows with a view of the canal and the Extraction Tower across it. More coin in my accounts than I could ever hope to spend. A social order that catered to my every whim.
It was all a lie.
Not a single thing about that life was real.
I’m floating above my Tau City, but it’s just an outline of cyan-blue spark against a black background. Appropriate, I think. Because it was hollow. But there’s a current of spark up here in the wind. Flowing. Taking me past the city now and into the desert where everything turns into the night sky.
The stars are made of spark. They glow, twinkling in the dark.
But beyond all that emptiness, there are the women and girls. The ones I named. The ones that live inside me now. They makea long chain, connected to each other by holding hands, that leads back to the Source. The spark flows through them the same way it came out of my fingertips when I was a girl. A mini arc of lightning.
Haryet is the woman closest to me. Reaching for me.Please, she mouths.Please!
