Total pages in book: 210
Estimated words: 200837 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 1004(@200wpm)___ 803(@250wpm)___ 669(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 200837 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 1004(@200wpm)___ 803(@250wpm)___ 669(@300wpm)
“Found something.” Finn is back and he starts working on the bent plate on the side of the door.
But my focus is on this desk. Because I can actually see a hint of letters under the black glass. Suddenly it hits me that it needs a light behind it. That’s how we see the words and shapes. It needs a light.
The moment I come to this realization, Finn stands up. “Got it.” Then he pushes the door until it closes with a click.
The lights go out. And in next moment, the entire room comes to life.
I gasp as the desk around me lights up, just like I guessed it should.
“Holy shit. Is that the night sky?” Finn is looking up at the ceiling, his face glowing a faint gray-blue color.
I look up too and sure enough, it’s like we’re standing outside on the top of the Extraction Tower dome, looking up at the stars.
“We did it!” Finn walks over to the desk and enters the ring, slipping his stomach right up to my back because this desk was really only meant to hold one person at a time. But I don’t tell him to back off. I like it when he’s close. “It’s beautiful, but…” Finn hesitates. I can almost feel him frowning behind me. “But what’s it mean?”
I look up, tipping my head back, trying to get a look at his face. “I don’t know.”
“The night sky is cool, right? But who cares? This can’t be all it does.”
“No. The desk is how you control it. Look. There’s all these… switches.” They don’t look anything like the switches I saw in the Matron control room, but it’s the only word I have to describe them. “I think you tap them or something.”
“Oh, fuck. I think you’re right. Because when Mitch was in here with me, he was tapping on the glass like crazy, but nothing happened.”
I turn—which isn’t an easy thing to do since we’re so pressed together and my gown is quite voluminous—and look up at Finn. “Mitchell Davies was tapping on it? Like he was pressing buttons, or something?”
“Yeah.”
“He knows. He knows how to use it.”
“What makes you think that?”
“Well, was your first instinct to start tapping on the glass?”
“No.”
“No. Because you had never seen this before. But he had. He knew how it worked. He just didn’t know how to make it work.”
The light in here is dim and I’ve got a weird view of his face, but I’m pretty sure Finn Scott is rethinking everything he ever thought he knew about Mitchell Davies right about now.
“It’s a terrible thing to be betrayed. Trust me, I know. But he’s not what you think, Finn.”
“Yeah.” Finn sighs and rakes his fingers through his thick, blond hair. Then he looks down at me. “Yeah, you might be right.” He leans both hands onto the glass, like he needs a moment. And I’m just about to exit the ring desk and give him this moment when suddenly the night sky above us disappears and the room blinks a bright white.
He and I both gasp, but then the white is gone and the night sky is back.
“Oh, my god. What did you do?”
Finn shrugs. “I didn’t do anything. What did you do?”
“I didn’t move at all. But you…” I look down at the desk and see two rectangles on either side of me. They’re just plain black inside, but there’s a glowing blue outline around them. “You put your hands on the desk,” I say, pointing at the rectangles. “You put your hands there. Do it again.”
It takes Finn another moment to catch on to what I’m telling him, but then he leans over, just like he did, and presses his palms into the black spaces outlined in blue glow.
Once again, the night sky disappears and the white light is back.
Finn gasps, and when I turn to see what he’s looking at, I gasp as well.
Because it’s his father.
Aldo Scott’s face is big, and bright, and smiling as he looks down at us from the curvature of the interior dome.
CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE
Get you home.
That’s what Tyse said last night.
Get me home.
I don’t think it’s possible. I really don’t. I think whatever it was that happened to me is permanent. So I’m not obsessing over this statement of his. It didn’t keep me up that night for hours and hours while Tyse slept soundly next to me. Almost as if this new mission of his is reassuring. Unlike me. Because I might be feeling unexpectedly unsettled.
Which is stupid because I’m not unsettled. Why would I be unsettled about the thought of going home?
Tyse is in the shower, getting ready to go to work. I need to get up too, but I’m so exhausted from absolutely not obsessing over how he wants to get me home, I can’t think about spending another day down on Eight with all those people and all those noises.