“No,” Tyse says. “It’s bots. Look closer.”
He’s right. When they come out into the light, they are the gleaming white bots we saw in the train station. They pick the woman up by her arms and legs, carrying her like a sack until they’re out of sight.
“Look. She’s not the only one.” Tyse is pointing to a screen again, but this time, it’s on the other side of the room. The view on these screens is still mostly showing the people in the homes. Women and girls lying on beds or couches as glowing, cyan-blue spark travels through the tubing and disappears into the walls.
But there are maybe a dozen that show bots carrying more women and children off. The ones who didn’t make it back in time.
“He killed them?” It can’t possibly be true.
“Not sure,” Tyse says. “Maybe… maybe he’s set it up so they have to be harvested or or they die? But then again… yeah. Maybe he just killed them.”
I swallow down some bile. “I feel like I’m gonna be sick.”
“I think we’ve seen enough. Let’s just go, Clara.”
“Yeah. You’re right. I’m sorry I came up here now.”
“I’m sorry for being right.”
“About what?”
He smiles at me, which puts all the upside-down things in my world right-side-up again. “I told ya he was an asshole.”
Which only makes me sigh. And wonder, as we make our way all the way down the stairs again, if this is just the way of the world.
Is it all just…bad? Is everything evil? Is there no good left?
What is the point of a world like that?
This can’t be all there is.
There has to be goodsomewhere.
But no. I’m not sure that’s true. Because as Tyse and I descend the stairs of the tower, the cyan-blue glow below us is so bright, there’s no way to miss it.
It’s spark—vast quantities of it—filling up all the glass vats that were empty when we passed earlier.
Only the canal back home compares with what I’m looking at, but the canal was not pure spark. It was spark infused water. And no one was harvested to get it that color. The stuff in these vats, it’s… viscus. Thick. And a little bit gross, but I don’t know why I feel that way.
“It’s your blood,” Tyse yells, trying to be heard over the roar of mechanical things on the ground floor.
“What?”
“Sorry. I was just thinking that it’s like your blood. Your life force, ya know? And he’s stealing it. It makes me kinda sick to look at it.”
“Me too.”
“Oh, shit. Look.” We’re still standing on the third or fourth landing above the vats, so we’ve got a good view of the lowerlevel. Tyse is pointing to the far end where bots are carrying women and girls to another part of the tower.
Before I even realize it, my feet are flying down the stairs.
“Clara! Where are ya goin’?”
“I need to see,” I yell back. Going faster now. “I need to see what he’s doing with them.”
His boots pound on the metal stairs above me, but I don’t wait. He might stop me and I’m not leaving here until I know what Delta is doing to those women and girls who didn’t make it home.
Once at the bottom, I dart off to the left. Weaving my way in between working bots, vats of spark, and all kinds of other machinery that I don’t have names for. It’s loud again. Much too loud to have a conversation. But I can faintly hear Tyse calling my name behind me.
