Begging.
Then, I open my eyes.
Haryet stands before me. Floating in a mist of cyan-blue spark. Made entirely of spark threads, the chain of Maidens behind her. Her hand, reaching for mine.
Please.
I am empty. But I don’t have to be.
This is the message that Haryet delivers. She points to my arm, floating up next to me until she can touch it. Immediately, a symbol appears. The same symbols that first showed up on my hands when I was nothing but a Little Sister.
First, my palms. Then the backs of my hands. Then my wrists, and finally, on Imogen’s Extraction night, before any of this madness ever started, the spark inside me leaked out as light all the way up to my elbows.
Once I met Tyse, this went further. Sometimes, they cover my whole body.
When she pulls her finger off my skin, the mark disappears.
“What are they?” I ask Haryet. “Do you know?”
She smiles, nodding. Then points to herself. I’m shaking my head, not understanding. Then she holds up this same finger and spark spools out of her like thread.
I hate that word now.Needles and thread!
But I shake that feeling of dread off, and try to concentrate on what she’s telling me. She’s got a message. That’s why she’s here.
Her thread hovers in the air, weightless. Then begins to come towards me. As soon as the thread touches the skin on the top of my wrist, there’s a hissing sound. Then intense burning as Haryet sears a mark into me.
The same mark she just showed me a minute ago.
The same mark that tagged the Factory women.
A mark that has always been there—under the right circumstances.
“They’re names,” I say. “I get it now.”
I’m desperate to finish whatever is happening here and get back to my real body because ever so slowly, over the course of this interaction, the sound of chanting has come back. And it’s not just the begging, either.
It’s the horde.
Epsilon!Epsilon!Epsilon!
The fight! It’s happening right now!
And that’s what the begging is!
It’s…Tyse. Calling for me!
Clara!
He’s dying.
He’s losing. “He needs me!” I yell. Aiming my frustration at Haryet.
“No.” For the first time since that night she walked through the tower doors, Haryet speaks to me. “He doesn’t needyou, Clara.He needs this.” She steps aside, allowing me to see thechain of Spark Maidens behind her. They hold hands. Millions of them. Billions of them. All dead from harvest.
“I don’t understand.”
“You will. When you take it.”
