Skulls.
Small skulls atop small skeletons, scattered around the room, most huddled together, their clothes flat on the bones. Hollow eye sockets cased in bleached skulls gazed at her. Dozens upon dozens of small, empty faces, pleading with an unanswered desperation.
A mound of them were stacked nearly half-a-meter high as if someone had started to collect them all.
Syn grunted, “Did it have to be children?” She took a step closer but did not enter. “What is this? Is anyone here?”
Blip hummed, a sound Syn knew to be his attempt to fill the time as he searched Olorun’s records. “A daycare.”
“What?”
Blip paused and then said, “Like your crèche.”
Syn remembered the pristine white room she woke up in years before—the place she had been educated through video. The room she had been locked away in and met Blip in. The room she had lived in for nearly two years until the door to Olorun opened, and she stepped out.
Blip continued, “Like that but for many kids. A place for children to be watched as their parents worked. There were at least eight on our Disc. This seems pretty small.”
“You could’ve just said a school.” Syn rolled her eyes as she crossed the threshold. “Just kids. Where are the parents?”
Blip floated beside her, illuminating each of the skeletons with the red of his scanning laser. “Don’t know. But I can tell you these all died at the same time.”
Syn leaned down and picked up a tired looking teddy bear in the middle of the room. “How?”
“Every one of them has decayed at the same rate. All identical. They all died within hours or days of each other. Maybe minutes.”
Syn tapped one of the skeleton’s shoe. “Why?”
This was new. Most of the others they had encountered on their side of ship, on their Disc, had died violently—it was easy to realize their cause of death. The weapon would often be nearby. A hammer. A shovel. A length of rope. Often at the hand of another member of the crew.
“Maybe suffocation,” Blip said.
“They were locked in here and left to die?”
“Maybe they were forgotten about. Or maybe those who knew were killed.”
Two mysteries. The fallen companion bot the day before. And now this.
Syn shook her head. Three mysteries. Was Blip telling the truth?
And how would she find that out without sending Blip away? How could she discover the truth and still keep Blip? Three mysteries and one problem.
“I want answers,” she said. She looked around the wide space—there were no back rooms, just a closet and a bathroom—and shouted, “Anyone here?”
Only silence answered.
She searched behind the doors into the closet and bathroom but shook her head when she returned. Nothing. “So why did he send us—”
Blip’s light shut off sharply, and he floated back in front of her in a blur. “Shhh,” he hushed.
“What wrong?”
“Someone’s coming.”
18
THREE-HEADED THIEVES
Eni to way daran.
“Whoever comes into the world, comes into trouble.”
Syn felt frozen. More of the burlys?
As if knowing her thoughts, Blip shook his head. “No—it’s three smaller people. But they are fast. They’re running here.” He rotated around, his eyes wide and commanding. “Hide!”
“Where?”
He circled around and then pointed to the hill of skulls and skeletons built up against the wall.
“No. Not there. I’m not—” she stammered.
“Do it! Hide!” She glared at him until he beckoned, “Please.”
“Fine,” she said, moving to the pile, and getting down on her knees to burrow inside the mound.
“Stay there. I’ll look around.”
Blip floated toward the partially opened front door at a snail’s pace. He was far more cautious now than he had even been when they crossed through to this side. He turned around once more, “Promise me, whatever happens, keep quiet and hidden. If that other bot was in this room, they may think I’m him. They don’t know about you.”
Syn whispered after a moment’s hesitation, “I promise.”
As he moved ahead, she did her best to pull her full body under the child skeletons, positioning as many as possible to cover her up. They rattled and clacked, a disturbing, hollow sound. A small skull, that of a toddler, rolled down the pile and smashed against the ground. A broken egg shell will no yolk. She stared through the small gap between two skulls at Blip’s receding form. “Be careful,” she mouthed without speaking.
He moved to the edge of the doorway, and she couldn’t see anything past his gray frame.
From the outside, from the inky darkness, several small hands shot through the doorway and grabbed hold of Blip.
Something outside grunted, “Got ya!”
Syn started to jump up to pull him back, but she remembered her promise. Within the second of deliberation, the hands pulled Blip out and disappeared.
“No!” Syn whispered.
She jerked back as two dark eyes stared out from the darkness at her. Eyes that she had seen a thousand times. As if staring in a mirror. But these were fierce and angry, and they frightened her. Then they were gone, retreating back down the unseen space outside. They scanned across the darkened room and swept past her, missing her hiding place. After a moment, the eyes disappeared, and the room was left quiet, and Syn was alone again.
Frozen in wait, Syn struggled to move. “No.” She kicked and punched and pulled herself free. Syn scrambled to stand and chase after Blip, but her clothes and jewelry were tangled in the bones around her. She staggered back to the ground against the skeletons, and her impact shattered the frail joints underneath her. She threw the skulls away from her and heard them shatter against the walls. One by one, she tossed aside the skeletons of dead children, freeing herself from the tangle of white bones. Finally free, she stood and raced after Blip, into the darkened corridor. She slid to a halt an inch before the doorway—if she exited now, the pathway would light up. They’d see her. They’d come back and then…
Outside the daycare room, everything was dark. Her eyes struggled to see what light there was, her pupils opening wide to navigate the darkness. She stood motionless, debating crossing the threshold. Who was that? Finally, her fear for Blip overwhelmed her caution, and she raced into the darkness, ignoring caution. “Blip!” She shouted, but she heard nothing. She did not hear the footsteps of the thieves. She did not hear their shouts. They made no sound, and she was lost in the red light of the pathway strips that announced her as she ran.
Let them come back for me! Let them find me! “I’m here! Give me Blip back!” Syn paced ahead, racing past door after door—from the quiet domiciles to shattered storefronts. She ran, crying out after him, “Blip!” She came to a wider area where the sky opened up before her, and she could see slivers of the few working sunstrips between gaps in the low black clouds moving ahead. She blinked and shouted again, “Blip!”