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)
But it’s too loud for that. And the words are all… weird. They make no sense.
I turn the torch off, shove it in my suit coat pocket, and then creep forward, sticking close to the wall, so I can peer around it when I get to a corner.
I’m a hundred-percent committed to stealth when I do this, but I don’t know what I’m looking at, so I have to step out to get a better look.
There are women—Matrons, all dressed up in that crazy outfit my mother was wearing the day of the funeral, but this time their faces are hidden by hoods—and they are in a giant circle, lined up along the perimeter of the room.
They’re the ones chanting.
But there are a lot more people in here than just Matrons. It’s filled with Little Sisters. Some of them are standing in their tunics and aprons, looking nervous. Some are even crying. But most of them, like a good fifty girls, are sprawled out on the floor, moaning and gasping for breath.
I’m not understanding what I’m seeing. Nothing makes sense. Why are they chanting? Why is no one helping these girls?
Then I look at the far side of the room and it all starts to make sense.
The first thing I see is a glass partition separating this room from another one. Then I see Gemna, strapped to a circle standing on end with arms and legs open. Then I see Jasina!
She’s strapped to another circle. And a third girl—one I certainly met, but don’t recall her name—is also attached to one of these circles.
I can tell they are screaming, or crying, or maybe just talking because their mouths are moving. Especially Gemna’s. But I can’t hear anything. And it’s not because of the loud crackling of spark that is being pulled out of a Little Sister and directed towards… I pause to squint. Is that Donal Oslin? The Tower District governor’s son?
I’m confused, but that doesn’t matter.
Because the cautionary part of the message my father left for me suddenly comes back to me. “You might see things down there, Finn. Ignore it. Do not interfere with anything that is happening below the Tower District. Just get on the train, take it down the line, and cut all ties with the gods by destroying their Looking Glass in the Extraction Tower.”
It feels like good advice.
I know Jasina has the notebook, but… I remember most of it. I don’t need the notebook, not really. So I’m about to turn and take my father’s advice.
But that’s when I see my mother.
And again, my father’s voice is in my head “Do not, under any circumstances, talk to your mother.”
What the… I blink. Take a moment, even though my moments do not number in the many right now, and try and sort out what is actually happening.
I look up, see that the ceiling is painted like the night sky, and then it hits me.
It’s a Looking Glass. Like the one upstairs. But then again, not like the one upstairs at all—for obvious reasons, of course. But the one thing that separates this Looking Glass from the one in the Extraction Tower is… its location.
I look around, trying to orient myself, and realize that we are probably directly underneath the god’s tower doors.
As in the very doors that Clara, and all the other Spark Maidens before her, walked through.
I suddenly understand what they are doing. They are opening the god’s tower doors. Not the ones above and outside, but right here in this room. Somehow, some way, this thick glass can be turned into a door. And then they are going to walk through.
What will they find on the other side of that door?
A god?
A new world?
Clara?
I’m looking right at my mother when she turns and suddenly, we lock eyes. She smiles. Her whole face brightening up, like she’s happy to see me. Like she didn’t join a cult and walk out. Like maybe I wasn’t just a job that ended with my father’s death.
“Finn! You’re here! Come.” She beckons me with open arms. “Come, my son. Join us as we begin anew.”
CHAPTER FIFTY
“It’s where I fed.”
These words come out of Anneeta’s mouth and it’s so honest and innocent, that it actually takes several seconds of silence before I am able to put it all together.
She ate them.
Literally ate them? Like… chewed them up and shit?
Or drained them of spark?
Not that one is better than that other in the grand scheme of things, but given the choice, I would prefer the latter.
It’s Clara who finds her voice first. “You ate them?” I think she’s mad. But Clara Birch has been trained somehow. Trained to be… polite, or something. Manners have been ingrained into this woman in a way I can’t even relate to, so that’s all she says. One question, three words, loaded to the hilt.