The bots ignored her as the entire lift shook.
Blip flew to the window and then back to the control panel. “No!” he cried, “It’s collapsing.”
“What is?” Syn asked.
“The tower! The tower is collapsing!”
“Aren’t the Towers the spine of the Disc? What happens?”
“I don’t know. I really, truly don’t know.”
From far below there was an awful sound—something like the world being torn open. It reverberated through the Jacob. They bounced around the inside of the lift, smacking into each other. Syn put her hands to her ears to block out the sound.
“Will we make it?” she screamed at Blip, hoping that he could read lips. She knew he couldn’t hear her over the metallic rending below.
Blip heard her, and she saw him waggle in the zero gravity, but she didn’t understand his words. He raced to the control panel. The awful sound died in an instant.
Everyone was screaming, but Blip’s shout came through. “The hull is rupturing! I think other Jacob towers are falling.”
Syn glanced out of the window to look at the world below, expecting a mass of clouds to block her view. There were no clouds. There was no water. There was a massive hole a third-way up the arc, where Zondon Almighty had been.
Through the hole the stars of space twinkled. The unmoving titans peered through as small dots. They were constant, ageless, unbothered by Syn’s plight.
Syn snapped her gaze away. The entire atmosphere was being sucked out into space. The billowing, pitch-stained clouds swam in urgency to the widening gap, tumbling past the scenery in a rush to escape. The water itself that had flooded this world drained away in a huge maelstrom. Now, the loose dirt was being pulled through as the endless vacuum sucked it all out.
From far away, she could now see the other towers clearly. The haze and smoke and clouds were draining away. It was all clear. Across the Disc, the next tower over was buckling. Its base was splintering, and the Disc itself was tearing away from it. From inside, large flashes of light went off—explosions. She could see the light but couldn’t hear it.
Another tower a few kilometers away did the same thing. At its base, its Jacob lift was yanked through the opening tear and sucked through the widening hole into empty space, shot out like a bullet.
“Oh, no!” Syn whispered.
Their Jacob came to a sudden stop. Blip shouted, “Go!”
“Where’s Neci?” Syn asked.
“No time!” Blip opened the doors and both sets—the inside and the outside of the tower—slid open.
“Go!” The bots raced out, led by Huck. Blip screeched again, “Go!”
The tower shook, and the Jacob lift slipped down a foot. Syn was still inside and saw the opening of the entrance shrink. She crouched against the pull and pushed forward, darting through the open space as the last bot ahead of her and Blip moved out into the needle. Syn sped through, and the Jacob lift lurched down again. The gap narrowed and Syn slid through only a foot of space.
The tower rattled. Blip pushed toward the control panel. The outer doors shut fast, and inside the needle, through the glass panes, they saw the Jacob fall straight down, sucked by the vacuum opening inside the Disc.
Syn was still moving through the needle and slammed into the wall, falling into a cradle position to bounce around. She was breathing heavily. The entire Disc itself was gone.
Blip moved toward her and nudged her to halt her tumble. “Are you okay?”
After a moment, she calmed her labored breathing. “Yes.”
“We have to go,” Blip urged, “I don’t know what this will do to the needle.” He moved on ahead and then turned back to Syn. He said, “Or Olorun herself.”
The trek through the passageways to the gate room was slow. Syn took every meter with apprehension. She knew Neci was here. She knew Neci was expecting her.
“She’s at the gate,” Blip said as he noticed Syn’s hesitation.
“How do you know? Did Olorun tell you?”
“No,” Blip pulled back to move along with her as she swam through the zero gravity tunnel. “It’s a guess.”
Syn thought about it. Of course, that’s where she would be. She had not destroyed her Disc to hang out in the passageways. She would be forcing the gate open. She had burned her world so that Syn would open the door. She would go through one way or another.
She had won.
Syn pushed ahead toward the vast space that was her first exposure to this twisted world. She remembered her own description of the space on the other side of the gate. “You’re right. Neci will be in the mirror room.”
41
SISTERS
The asteroids of debris floated before them, all under the red lights. In the center, bathed in red light herself, floated Neci, in front of the great gate itself. Every image of Hell Syn had ever seen rose up to her. A zero-gravity world of floating mountains engulfed in the heat of Hell, burning red-hot from ancient embers. The Crimson Queen stood before the gate to Eden itself, barring the way, her face as dark and terrible as the faces she had painted on the walls of Zondon Almighty. The Queen’s dark skin glowing under the scarlet light made her appear as if on fire herself, burning like an angel.
Neci’s face was awash in crimson. Her white clothes glowed a hellish blood red. The ribbons that hung from her shoulders floated about like a billowing cape, like celestial wings.
Neci stood, her arms crossed, defiance etched into her face. Her legs were straight, although she hung in zero gravity—a feat that Syn appreciated.
The Crimson Queen at the end of the journey.
Behind the Queen stood Pigeon, hunkered against the gate itself, her hands splayed out flat against the metal to steady herself. She glanced between Neci and then back at the others in the room.
The others were the members of the Ecology. A cacophony of sizes and shapes. She had a flashback to the Theater and the great swarm giving their blessing. Hundreds of them gathered now. Not the thousands she had hoped for. But so many.
There, in the middle of the array, were Arquella and Bear with Huck orbiting them. They had lived. She wanted to race over to them and hug them. But she could not. She had to face Neci.
Syn whispered to Blip, “They won’t fit in that passageway we came through. And we can’t open the iris.”
Blip chirped, “There’s a secondary cargo passageway near the first. I can open that.”
The bots were all focused on the Crimson Queen themselves. They all stood back dozens of meters from Neci’s fearless gaze, giving her a wide swathe.
No, it wasn’t fearless. Neci was frightening them, but she was also frightened. The girl shouted at the bots. “Stay back!”
Syn entered, and both she and Blip sidled along the outskirts of the room, in the darkness. They had done this path once before and knew it well. The debris floated in the space between them and her. In the wreckage were the large bodies of the burlys that had accompanied Neci. They were dead. The Ecology must have killed them in Syn’s absence.
Syn’s stomach tightened. There was still the awful stench of burnt flesh lingering in the entire room—it was the smell that had made her recoil when she first slipped through from her side.