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)
“All in good time, Mr. Scott.”
Next to me, Jasina scoffs.
Xi continues. “As I was saying, this is my main factory. You’ve already visited the other three—Rho, Pi, and Omicron. They are very unique. Like children. Special in their own little ways.”
“Wait,” Jasina says. “Those were all your cities?”
“They are,” the god Xi responds. “The gods who used to run them died, so I took them under my wing. Rho is a bit of a mess, much more so than this one, though it is not as blatant there. It’s a long story that involves the upper dimension that I won’t bore you with, but the other two are somewhat thriving. Which is why I could not let you destroy them.”
“But we did,” I say. “I set the timer in the Looking Glass room of each of those Extraction Towers.”
“You did.” Xi smiles at me. Like he’s a patient father. “I interrupted the sequence, naturally. Sigma is the only tower you actually managed to blow up after leaving Tau City. But the Alphas don’t know that. I used the two of you to exploit the game. I need the Alphas to think we’re in disarray out here.” He sighs. Like he’s tired. “If I have to play the game, Mr. Scott, then I might as well win. And you and your woman have turned out to be a nice bit of luck for me.”
I shake my head. “I don’t understand what you’re talking about.”
“It’s a game, Finn. Between gods. In fact, it is called the Game of Gods. I’ve got a lot of assets collected—four entire factories are nothing to sneeze at, but they’re hardly on par with the Alpha cities as far as production goes.”
“I’m sorry,” Jasina puts up a hand. “I don’t understand. The Alpha cities?”
Xi turns his gaze to Jasina now. Eyes soft, voice calm, posture relaxed. “If you had not been trying to destroy things and simply rode the train out to its natural end, you’d have gotten there.” He pauses here, his eyes rolling up a bit, like he’s thinking. “Probably would’ve gotten there. If you could make it past Epsilon.”
He waves a hand through the air. “At any rate, the Alpha cities—Alpha, Beta, Gamma, and Delta—they are at the very end of the line. But trust me when I say this, young lady, you do not want to go there as a Spark Maiden. You might be thinking that you understand what is happening because you stumbled upon some secrets in Tau City and you saw some things you shouldn’t have while you’ve been snooping through my factory. But you do not know anything, Jasina Bell. And you do not want to end up a Spark Maiden in the Alphas. They harvest them six times a day.”
I blow out a breath. I have no idea what that means in a literal sense, but I can take a good enough guess.
“That’s right,” Xi says, looking at me now. “Every three hours the Alpha Factories take their spark. Pull it right out of their bodies. When compared to your barbaric Extraction Ceremony that happens once a decade, you Tau City slaves had it very, very good. But of course, your god has been dead for hundreds of years now, and the humans left in charge afterward were… well, just plain ignorant of how any of it works. Your factory owners, the autocrats of Tau City in Dimension fourteen-forty, have no idea what to do with all their product, let alone how to extract it on the daily. And thus, it propagated in unnatural ways.” His gaze is fixed with mine as he pans a hand at Jasina. “Exhibit A.”
“I don’t understand,” Jasina says. “What does that mean?”
“It means…” He smiles at her. “You are quite special. All the women and girls of your Tau City are special. You’re filled with spark, Jasina.”
“But… isn’t every woman? I mean, to some extent. If they practice, they can sparkle.”
“I’m afraid that’s not how it works,” Xi says. “No other city on the line has been left to its own devices for so long. One girl out of ten thousand is harvested every decade, Jasina Bell. One. Compare that to the Alphas where tens of thousands of them are harvested every three hours.”
“Well, typically one,” I say. “But it’s been decidedly off track in Tau City this past decade.”
“Yes,” Xi chuckles. “You would know, wouldn’t you. Sent them all in, did you?”
“No. My father—” I sigh. Suddenly tired of all this. “He died about six weeks ago. So he did them before that. Still, I got in two since his death.”
“Ah, yes. Haryet Chettle and Clara Birch.”
My eyes narrow. “What do you know about them?”
“I know enough.” Then he turns. “Let’s continue our tour. As I said, in the Alphas, they harvest six times a day. They drain every last drop of spark out of every female, regardless of age, and they collect it in vats.”