55 - FINN

CHAPTER FIFTY-FIVE

T here's no way to count days in the tunnels. It's just one long underground hole with barely enough light to see by. But we walk for a long time. I do carry Jasina some of the way. But when she gets too tired, or her feet get too sore—that one slipper of hers was more of a detriment than it was worth—we just stop and sleep. We're probably dying of thirst at this point, but after all we've been through, neither of us is willing to give up now.

So we walk. Stumbling, most of the time. Until finally, there is a bright light up ahead.

"Oh, my god!" Jasina turns to me, grabbing my shoulders, shaking me. "Is that—" She starts laughing and it's a mixture of relief, and hysterics, and disbelief that she suddenly can't control.

It is what we've been looking for. It's a station. It's a city. My father was right. There are more places in the world than Tau City and this quest we're on, it's real.

We've been in a pretty dark place for a lot of hours now and both of us were starting to think the whole thing was bullshit.

But it's not.

"Holy shit!" Jasina stops dead in her tracks, her feet bloody because she's been walking barefoot most of our journey. We tried tearing up pieces of her dress and wrapping her feet. When that disintegrated, we used my suit coat. Then my sleeves. I gave her my boots, but they were too big and her feet were already too torn up, so the pain wasn't worth it and she just went barefoot. She looks at me, smiling. "We made it. And look! They're just how your father described them."

Honestly, if she wasn't with me, and she didn't take those notes, I'd be freaking the fuck out right now. Because I have zero memory of my father describing the things we're looking at as we walk towards the bright light of the train station.

They are… machines . But they look like men. If men had white, gleaming bodies and no faces. They are Workers.

Do not bother with them. They are Workers . That's what Jasina wrote in the notebook. They will not bother you. They cannot even see you. Just walk past them, follow the tunnel—you'll recognize it because you traveled through one just like it when you left Tau City—find the stairs that lead up to the Extraction Tower, enter the top floor of the Extraction Master's quarters, and, using your Extraction Master credentials, activate the self-destruct for the Looking Glass. Then leave the way you came, get on the next train, and go to the next city down the line .

We start this process, walking right past the oblivious Workers.

But Jasina pauses just outside the door that leads to the tunnel beneath the Tower District so she can read a sign. "Sigma Factory—Dimension 702." She looks at me, frowning. "What's that mean?"

It's pretty obvious what that means. But it's really hard to say it out loud. Still, it needs to be said. "It's… not a city. It's a… well, factory really is the only word that properly describes where we come from. They make you, Jasina. They make Spark Maidens. They produce you. You're a… a product . And I'm nothing but a Worker. Some other kind of Worker than these machine men that can't see us. It was fake, you see? A lie. Tau City was nothing but a lie. And so is this one." I look at the sign and read it. "Sigma City is just another Tau City. A factory that belongs to someone else. You, and all the girls with spark inside them, are something to be sold. That's why the bells ring. That's why the doors open. Someone bought you. And when you walk through the doors you leave this world and go to another one."

A world where Clara was kissing a man called an augment.

But I don't say that out loud.

There's a lot more to this story—a lot of questions we'll probably never get answers to—but I'd just be guessing and there's no point in continuing. We're not walking through the doors. We're here to do a job and we're damn well gonna do it.

Jasina doesn't argue, but she doesn't agree either. She just stares at those words. Sigma Factory .

If the Tau City station hadn't blown up, there would've been a sign there too. Tau Factory—Dimension 702 . Maybe the train travels along some break in reality? A line so bright you cannot miss it?

No. A line so bright you cannot even see it.

But the facts are the facts.

We were… prisoners. Like my mother said. Except that's not quite the right word.

We were… livestock .

We were pigs .

I almost laugh here. No wonder the Council and Matrons were so horrified when I threw that insult at them after Clara walked through the doors.

But we're not a part of the factory anymore. Jasina's not a pig, she's the Godslayer's Courtesan. And we're gonna blow the whole thing up one Looking Glass at a time.

When we get inside , we set the self-destruct first, but it's got a ten-hour timer, just like the last one. So we loot the tower. We take water, and food, and boots, and packs while the Extraction Master and his family sleep. We don't wake them. We don't even warn them.

If this plan is going to work, there can only be one Extraction Master left at the end.

And that's me.

We don't stay for the explosion. We leave, heavy with plunder, enter the train with the Workers, and we rest, sitting on the floor in the back, drinking our water, and lacing our boots, and eating our food.

We feel it, though. The whole train shakes when the Looking Glass blows.

But it's a relief and soon after, we're curled up together on the floor, letting the rhythm of the train lull us to sleep so when we stop, we can get up and do it all again.