EARTH ONLINE

Chapter 13 — Some Reward

For a long time no one spoke. Then, in the corner, the Great Mole scraped at the dirt and whistled a thin, jeering tune, watching them sidelong as it gnawed something bloody.

The truth, when it came, was not the one Cole had built.

He'd assumed she'd killed by accident — a parent, most likely — and that being young and naive she carried no guilt and had spun her clumsy lies to cover it. He was wrong on every count.

"So you all think I'm the Stowaway," Penny said at last, and her voice had changed. The frightened child was gone; what came out was cold as iron. Her head snapped up. "Fine. I killed him. But that wasn't murder. It wasn't." Her eyes were wild. "How can it be murder, when I'm the one who gave him life? He never should have lived. He shouldn't have."

Lucan's brow furrowed. "It wasn't your parents."

A bleak, helpless thing crossed her face. "I'd never hurt my mom and dad. They were so good to me. I killed the thing that should never have been born."

And then even the slowest of them understood.

She told it flat and dry, because she'd lived it and didn't need to invent a word. Three months ago she'd been stupid — gone to meet a man she'd known only online, a city away, and come home pregnant. He'd wanted nothing more to do with her. By the time anyone knew, it was too late to end it safely: seven months along, the doctor said, terminating now could leave her unable to ever bear children, could kill her. She hadn't wanted it. But her mother had said she didn't want her daughter to live with the regret, or to take the risk — we'll raise the baby ourselves; just bring it into the world.

"I'm not as smart as you," Penny said, looking around at all of them. "Not as useful. I only wanted to live a normal life. I went into the hospital before the three days started. The second night, I had him."

Cole's eyes moved.

There were two cracks in her account, and now he saw them whole. She'd said her mother — supposedly unbothered by the Spire — had spent those days calmly tutoring her. But a mother unbothered by the end of the world doesn't tell her child, the night before she vanishes, don't be afraid. What was there to be afraid of?

Unless don't be afraid meant something else. Be brave. Bring the baby into the world, and whatever comes after, don't be afraid. And as long as you're alright, I'm alright was a mother saying she would spend everything she had to keep her daughter from drowning.

Penny's face was savage, but her eyes flickered with something like grief, like a thing she couldn't take back. "He cried, that night. I couldn't sleep. I couldn't stand it." Her voice dropped. "I held the pillow over his mouth and after a while he stopped. I made him. I gave him life — why can't I take it? He shouldn't have existed. He would have ruined me. I'm fifteen."

"He was a newborn," Cole said quietly.

Penny choked, and lowered her head, and said nothing more.

Zane the cook, conscious again and bleeding, rubbed his hands together. "So — we found the Stowaway, right? We don't have to die. The mole wants her, not us."

It was an ugly thing to say out loud. Ben's mouth tightened. "She's admitted it."

"What's your ability?" Cole asked her. A Stowaway always woke one, and she'd shown nothing even when the mole nearly ate her. "Is it the flashlight?"

Penny wiped her face. Then she laughed, a strange high sound. "You want to know my ability? Fine. I'm the Stowaway, and you're all going to feed me to that thing. Mom's gone. Dad's gone. I'm going to die too." Her fingers clenched. "So none of you get to live either."

A giant match bloomed in her small hand.

She was still tiny even with the strength a Stowaway carried — she'd just given birth — and the match was nearly half her size. She swung it and ran at them, and the first one she went for was the cook who'd just wished her dead.

"I'll kill you — I die, you don't get to live!"

They'd all seen what that match could do.

Zane had not — he'd been unconscious for it. He saw a little girl rushing him and went to catch the match one-handed and drive his fist into her stomach, and his hand never reached her clothes before the match came down on the crown of his skull with a sound like a dropped anvil.

It was a scene Cole had played out himself, on a thief named Quill.

But Zane didn't die at once. He folded, and the blood came, and his body shook — and Penny lifted the match to swing again, and a black shape blurred across the cavern and caught it.

The Great Mole's claws clamped the match, the thing trembling with delight. "Mosaic's match? A second one — oh, Spire, why are you so good to me, a second—"

Crack.

Its claws closed and the match snapped in two before it finished the sentence, the red head tumbling to the dirt.

The mole went still. It blinked its small eyes, staring stupidly at the broken halves like a cartoon frozen on a paused frame.

"No. Mosaic's match could never snap that easily. This isn't Mosaic's match. You lied to me."

Something vicious moved in its eyes. It rounded on Penny, who went white and stumbled back, and it shrieked and crossed the floor faster than sight.

Cole turned his head away — but not before he'd seen too much. It was over in seconds. He made himself look at the wall and listen to the rest, and beside him Lena had collapsed, face hidden; Wes and Ben turned away and were sick. Only Lucan watched the whole of it, eyes narrowed, frowning, as if working a problem.

When the grinding stopped, the cavern reeked of blood. On the floor there was a dark wet smear and a scatter of bones, and the mole sat picking its teeth with one of them, eyeing what was left of them with a flat, lazy hunger.

Cole swallowed the heave in his throat and crossed to Zane, and pressed two fingers under his nose, and was quiet a moment. "He's dead."

The fake match had killed the cook after all.

The mole sniffed, disdainful. "Counterfeit garbage. The real match kills the instant it lands. That liar's copy had a fifth of the quality." It cracked the bone. "Her ability was a clever one, though — copy any object she'd seen in the last day, twice a day. Pity the level was so low; only useless little things. She could never have made a real match."

"You know her ability?" Cole said.

"I ate her. The Spire tells me." It sounded almost regretful. "If only she could've copied real matches. I'd have kept her — made her copy me one every day."

Lucan spoke, low. "That explains the flashlight. Dropped into the dark, the first thing anyone thinks of is light. She'd seen a flashlight in the last day, so she copied one."

Cole nodded. From the very start, the girl had been the one he suspected most — because they'd been pulled into the game in broad daylight, and what girl carries a flashlight in the sun? And even granting she'd had it in hand at the start, she'd come down that long shaft tumbling and slamming off the walls the same as he had, dizzying, brutal — and somehow never let go of it?

> [ Ding-dong! Side Quest 2 — Find the damned Stowaway — complete! ]

The child's voice rang bright, and Cole thought, sickly, that it sounded pleased. Because a Stowaway had died?

There was no flush of victory in him. He looked at the two stains on the floor.

The mole, in a fine mood after a turkey and a Stowaway, scratched its head. "Right, then — using your match for kindling was a bit much. How about I give you a turkey egg? Don't say Uncle Mole isn't generous. I'm the kindest, sweetest little animal in this whole dungeon."

It clawed open a pit and bared a heap of countless white eggs, and with its eyes squeezed shut, as if it physically hurt, it pressed one perfectly ordinary white egg into Cole's hands.

> [ Ding-dong! Side Quest 1 reward obtained: Giant Turkey Egg! ]

As Cole took it he noticed the mole's coat had gone glossier, its bulk a touch larger. Eating a Stowaway really does make them stronger. For half a second there seemed to be a wisp of black mist around its head — and when he looked again it was gone. A trick of the light.

"Hey," Wes ventured, "do we get an egg? We helped — well, we found the Stowaway for you, didn't we? Any reward?"

The mole gave him a withering look and smiled, oily and mean. "A reward? Sure."

It turned, hoisted its enormous backside, and let loose a fart of such volume and stench that the word reward and the blast arrived together.

"There's your reward."

Everyone, including the unfairly downwind Cole, said nothing.