Total pages in book: 146
Estimated words: 144277 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 721(@200wpm)___ 577(@250wpm)___ 481(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 144277 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 721(@200wpm)___ 577(@250wpm)___ 481(@300wpm)
But the seconds tick off and… nothing.
I sigh, suddenly feeling weary—a dull throb beginning to pulse behind my eyes—and make my way out from inside the circular desk. My body feels achy and rundown as I start feeling my way back towards the door, ready to just give up on this place and leave. It’s not working so why bother blowing it up?
It’s a bad idea. I know this even before the thought finishes forming in my head. We can’t leave here without setting up the self-destruct sequence. If we do… well, I don’t know what will happen, but whatever it is, it won’t be good. And it will probably show up at the most inopportune time.
So instead of finding my way back outside, I go back inside the desk and close my eyes, picturing the glass top in the last Looking Glass room when all the little switches were illuminated. So far, every desk, every Looking Glass, has been exactly the same from tower to tower.
I let out a breath, eyes still closed, and see it. Allowing my fingers to slide across the glass, tapping on it, trying to get it to restart.
It takes several tries and many minutes of messing around before it flickers to life. I open my eyes, relieved that I’m back in business here, only to find jagged cracks running across the glass panels of the dome like a spider web.
Clearly the plates are damaged and it’s messing up the image being projected. The voice is back too, warbled and weird.
I can’t really make out what it’s saying but I can tell that whatever this message is, it’s repeating. Saying the same few words over and over again.
The surface of the glass desk isn’t really lit up, but it’s not completely dark, either. I find the panel that controls the sound and start tapping the switches—jumping back in surprise when the voice is suddenly clear and booming.
“Shut down-protocol has been initiated for Xi Factory – Dimension 702. Please evacuate until further—” It cuts out. There’s some squealing, like it speeds up again, then it repeats. “Shut down-protocol has been initiated for Xi Factory – Dimension 702. Please evacuate until further instructions are received.”
It keeps going, over and over again, and no matter how many times I tap the glass, it doesn’t stop.
“Great. Fucking wonderful.” I leave the center of the desk, heading for the door, when the message abruptly changes.
“Reset in progress. Twenty-one days until launch.”
“What the hell is this?” I turn, looking up and around as the voice continues.
“Reset in progress. Twenty-one days until launch.”
I leave the Looking Glass room, closing the door behind me, and everything goes abruptly silent. Jasina—oblivious to what just happened—is sleeping on the couch, right where I left her.
She stirs, as I approach. “What’s going on? Did you set it?”
“No. There’s some other program running.”
This makes Jasina sit up, swiping at her red hair to get it out of her eyes. “What?”
“I guess there was some kind of shut down? The whole place. I got two messages. One said to evacuate, but then immediately after, there was another one that said reset in progress, or something like that.”
“They shut it down?” Jasina, who looks even more exhausted after a few minutes of rest than she did before, is still trying to make sense of things. “The tower?”
“No,” I shake my head. “The city.”
“How do you shut down a city and reset it?”
“Well…” It feels pretty obvious to me, but it also feels kinda gross to say it out loud.
Jasina’s eyes go wide. “They killed them?”
I shrug, feigning uncertainty. But it feels like the only logical answer. “What else would they do with all the people? They certainly weren’t down in the train station, on their way to another city.”
She blows out a breath. “Wow. Do you think it was the bot things that did it? Do you think they attacked them?”
“I dunno.”
“Well.” She gets to her feet, looking around the room, arching her back, stretching it, as she sighs with a heaviness that makes me wonder if she’s OK. Her eyes land on the bookshelf across from the one we use to enter and exit the Extraction Towers. “I think we should go investigate.”
My own eyes slide over to the bookshelf, which is actually a door that leads back into the city innards, and if you follow that path to its eventual conclusion, it also leads to the Little Sister dorm inside the Maiden Tower.
I wanted to go look when we were up in the other towers, but I never acted on it. Or even brought it up as a possibility. All those cities were inhabited. My curiosity over the idea tempered by the possibility that even if there are identical cities, there might not be identical people. We’d be seen as… invaders. It would be a bad move. But this city is different. We have time here. Twenty-one days, to be exact.