Altered

by Gennifer Albin

  “These are the alteration labs,” Jax explains. We turn left and immediately meet with a set of security doors. Jax holds the security card to the scanner and the doors glide open to allow us entrance.

  “Where are we going?” I ask, checking over my shoulder.

  Jax doesn’t answer. Instead he pushes open a white door. Privacy screens partially obstruct several hospital beds, and on the near wall, lit boxes display black-and-white images. I step closer to examine them.

  “So this is where he makes his toys,” I say, remembering Kincaid’s strange play and the actors adjusted to perfection for our entertainment.

  “Not only his toys,” Jax says. He flips a switch on the wall and a light buzzes on behind a bank of mirrors. Only then do I see the images hanging across them. The light casts shadows across the film and a variety of shapes appear before me.

  I wander closer and peer at the sheets. “Is this…?” I let my voice trail into a question.

  “A brain,” he confirms.

  “And the others?”

  “Chest. Hands.” He rattles through a list, pointing to each picture. Some of them are obvious, such as the spindly bones of a hand and foot, but others require concentration to see clearly.

  “He uses these to perform the alterations?”

  “Tailors use them,” he corrects me.

  Tailors, like Dante or myself or Erik.

  “X-rays give us a basic pattern to work from. They guide the measurement process,” Jax explains.

  “What do you need measurements for?” I ask, my alarm building to a frantic pulse.

  “Remember the actress who wanted her face back after the play?” he asks.

  I nod.

  “A Tailor uses measurements to change someone’s features. It’s not always necessary, but it speeds the work along,” Jax says.

  “Why are you showing me this now?” I demand. Being in this room gives me the creeps, and it further reinforces the idea that the Guild is using Tailors in their efforts to map and alter. I had been close to going under the Tailor’s instruments in Arras. I don’t like being so close to them here.

  “You didn’t look closely enough,” Jax prompts.

  I stare closer but it’s still a mass of murky white and spindly bones. Jax’s long finger trails to the bottom of the X-ray I’m studying and I follow it. There’s a mass of meaningless numbers and codes. Measurements of some sort, I assume, but it’s what’s underneath the gibberish that stands out:

  SUBJECT: LEWYS, ADELICE

  “This is me?” I ask aloud. I’m not really speaking to him, only trying to wrap my head around what I’m seeing.

  “You aren’t the only one,” he murmurs. “You deserve to know what Kincaid had in store for you.”

  I scan the next image. Valery. Erik. And the next. Jost.

  “How did they get these?” I ask loudly. Jax shushes me.

  “They don’t have surveillance in here, do they?”

  “Would you keep records of your misdeeds on tape?” he asks. “But it’s still not a good idea to yell.”

  Good point.

  “I don’t understand where they came from,” I repeat, trying to fit the pieces together. “I never agreed to be mapped.”

  “Do you think Kincaid’s the kind to ask? This isn’t the first time Kincaid ordered us to drug you.”

  “And you did it? Before now?” My fingers jab at him.

  “Dante wanted to see what Kincaid was up to.” Jax spreads his hands apologetically and backs a few steps away from me.

  Of course Dante would risk me to learn more about Kincaid. It doesn’t even hurt anymore to realize that, not after his attitude about abandoning my mother. But how had I missed it? The dreamless nights, the world fading from awareness to black to light again. I thought I’d stopped dreaming because I felt safe, but now I realize more sinister machinations were at work. Did someone carry me down here at night without me knowing it? But when I stop to think, I remember the strange dots and scratches on my arm that Erik noticed in the speakeasy, and the silvery scar we discovered at the swimming pool. My torn dressing gown the morning after Jost and I broke up. The strange bruise on my leg that Valery pointed out when she dressed me for the play. The clues have been there. Kincaid’s men weren’t even careful enough to prevent them, and still I hadn’t seen them until now. That didn’t answer the most important question though.

  “Why?”

  “What?” Jax asks.

  “Why would he do this? What’s his endgame?”

  “Kincaid is twisted,” he says but there’s discomfort in his voice. He has no more idea than I do. Jax is another cog in Kincaid’s machine, but he feels the creepy, sinister implications in the X-rays, in this room. Whatever Kincaid is up to isn’t benign.

  “What else do you do here?” I ask.

  “We do the alterations,” Jax says, hesitating a moment. “And this is where Kincaid gets his renewal patch.”

  “That’s how he’s still alive, isn’t it?” I ask. “What are these patches?”

  “He uses donor threads to keep from aging,” Jax says. “We take the time strands from other people and insert them into Kincaid’s own thread.”

  “Donor implies willingness,” I mutter.

  “There’s nobody more willing than the dead,” Jax says.

  I recall the bright time strand I spotted within Kincaid. Was it the one pulled from Deniel after he attacked me? It doesn’t matter. It is despicable and unjustifiable however Kincaid came by it. Is this how Cormac and the other Guild officials stay alive too?

  “We need to tell Jost and Erik,” I say, heading to the door.

  “First, we have to take care of something more important,” Jax says. He gestures to the privacy screen, and my heart sinks into my stomach. He pushes it to the side, revealing Dante, unconscious, lying on a table. An IV runs from his arm, and a mask regulates his breathing.

  “What happened to him?” I breathe.

  “He’s sedated,” Jax tells me.

  “Wake him up,” I cry.

  “It’s not that easy—”

  “Wake him up!”

  Jax fumbles through the cabinets and emerges with a vial of liquid. He sucks the medicine into a long syringe and takes a deep breath.

  “Hold his arms,” Jax orders me. I do as I’m told. Before I can ask him what he’s planning to do, Jax slams the syringe into the center of Dante’s chest. The effect is instantaneous. Dante’s eyes fly open and he gasps against the mask covering his face. I pull it off him and he stares at me in confusion.

  “It’s okay,” I say.

  “Ad?” It’s the only word I can make out. Dante’s words are confused, a jumble of consonants and vowels.

  “We need to go,” Jax says. He offers Dante a hand, while I gently pull the IV needle from his arm. “We’ll explain everything in a minute.”

  “We need to get to Erik and Jost,” I say, wrapping Dante’s other arm over my shoulder to help steady him.

  Dante pushes us away. “I can walk.”

  Jax and I exchange a concerned look, but we let Dante walk. I stay close to him in case he stumbles, but he doesn’t head for the door. He trips his way to the next privacy screen.

  “There’s someone else in here,” Dante says. “I got glimpses between doses.”

  “Who?” I ask, moving to push away the screen, my heart pounding in my chest.

  “It’s Valery,” Dante says, beginning to tremble.

  “The drugs are messing with his system,” Jax says, grabbing a scratchy white blanket to place over Dante’s shoulders.

  Valery lies sedated behind the other screen. A bag drips nutrition into her arm, but from the look of her skeletal form, she’s been here awhile.

  “How long has she been here?” I wonder out loud. I can tell from the sallowness of her complexion that this is more than a couple days of sedation. I barely recall Kincaid mentioning Valery was going on the mission.

  “She never left the estate,” Jax sa
ys in disgust. “Kincaid lied to us. It took me a few days to piece together what was going on down here, and then I had to convince someone to let me in on the job. Kincaid doesn’t trust me, he knows I’m too close to Dante.”

  “I’ll get her. She won’t be able to walk on her own,” Jax adds.

  “And then what?” I ask, beginning to feel the familiar panic crawling through my skin.

  “You need to get your friends and run,” Jax says.

  “They’ve got the whole place on lockdown,” I argue. “There’s no way we’re getting out of here.”

  “Don’t worry about that,” Jax says. Despite the seriousness of the situation, he winks at me.

  “Jax is an expert at causing a commotion,” Dante says weakly.

  “You’re going to distract them?” I guess. “How do you plan on distracting Kincaid’s whole security force?”

  “With a very big boom.”

  “And then what?” I ask. “Where will we go? We have no—”

  Dante holds up a shaking hand to stop me. “We do have a plan. I know where the Whorl is.”

  “What?” I ask.

  “The Whorl is on Alcatraz Island,” Dante says in a small voice. “That was the intel the man who came through the loophole had. Kincaid doesn’t know, but we’ll have to move quickly. We’ll need supplies—a raft and dry suits. This place won’t be easy to get to.”

  “I’ll take care of it,” Jax says. “You guys worry about getting everyone ready to go and I’ll make sure there’s a crawler waiting with what you’ll need.”

  “Get ahold of Falon. Tell her what’s happened and where we’re heading.” Even in his weakened condition, Dante is coherent giving orders and making plans.

  “What about Valery?” I ask. “We can’t leave her here.”

  “Jax will take care of her. Get her clothes and get her to the crawler.” Dante looks to Jax for confirmation, and Jax nods.

  “I’ll message Falon from Valery’s quarters,” Jax says.

  I look at Dante and his face is determined as he gives one final order: “Let’s get the hell out of here.”

  * * *

  I rap so quietly on Erik’s door that he doesn’t respond so I knock again. When he answers his door, his shirt is untucked and his hair tousled but I can tell he hasn’t been sleeping.

  “Can I come in?” I ask. It’s my job to convince both Erik and Jost to come, something I plan to approach with separate tactics, while Jax works on a distraction and gets Val and Dante out and into a crawler. The plan is straight and to the point, so I’m positive it will go all wrong.

  Erik looks flustered to see me, which is unusual, but we haven’t talked about what he said to Jost. If he meant it. Or how I feel about it. Because I’m not sure yet. I duck in under his arm and push the door closed.

  “I have something I need to tell you,” I start, but before I can continue Erik leans into me, resting his arm on the door behind me, and suddenly I can’t seem to breathe. He’s so close to me that I can see the golden flecks around his irises, like stars swimming in the ocean.

  “We’ve needed to talk for a while,” he murmurs.

  This close I can see that his lower lip is slightly fuller than the top one. I want him to lean closer. In this moment, I forget about Kincaid and Valery and Jost. I want him to kiss me.

  Instead I push him away. Erik sighs and drops onto his bed, leaning his head into his hand. I’m immensely jealous of his hand in this moment. How he runs it through the mess of his hair.

  “Not about us,” I stop him. “There’s trouble. More trouble than I can explain right now.”

  “Well?” he says expectantly.

  “We have to get out of here. I’ll explain later.”

  “Explain now.” He grabs my wrist to stop my frantic pacing.

  I gawk at him and pull away. Before I can respond to Erik’s demand, the door bursts open and a man stumbles in. At first I think we’ve been discovered, but then Jost appears in the doorway behind him.

  So this is how it ends. The betrayal numbs my body into paralysis.

  But Jost surprises me, releasing his fist. It makes hard contact with the Sunrunner’s jaw. He bounces back but doesn’t fall and soon he’s tussling with Jost. They wrestle each other to the floor and I jump up, looking for a way to help without accidentally ripping apart the room or anyone in it.

  The Sunrunner pins Jost to the floor, his arm coiled around his neck.

  “Little help here,” Jost gasps against the pressure.

  I whip around, looking for something to attack the Sunrunner with, and as I do, the room spins to life, full of purple and gold and crimson. I could use my alteration abilities.

  “Do it,” Jost croaks.

  Before I can, Erik jumps in, surprising the Sunrunner enough that he loses his grip on Jost, who reverses the hold, pinning the other man to the ground as Erik unceremoniously cracks the medicinal bottle of whiskey over our attacker’s head, knocking him out.

  “What’s going on?” Jost demands, his breath coming in heavy, fast pants.

  I look to Erik, but neither of us speaks. I hadn’t planned on convincing both of them to come at the same time. That would require a miracle.

  “Do you know what he was going to do to you? I got to know Burris on the mission,” Jost continues, pointing to the man on the floor. “Kincaid doesn’t send Burris to bring you tea. Trust me. He sends Burris to kill you—or worse.”

  “Why would anyone want to kill us?” Erik asks in a cool voice.

  “That’s what I’m asking you,” Jost says.

  “Why don’t you ask Burris?” Erik says, crossing his arms defensively, abandoning the brief brotherly camaraderie.

  “Because he’s not currently very talkative,” Jost says, “and because he already told me.”

  “Told you what?” I ask.

  “That he caught a spy and was going after her,” he says. “I assume he means you.”

  My heart thumps when he looks at me. “We have to get out of here.”

  “And go where?” Jost asks. “Kincaid will be after you.”

  “We know where the Whorl is,” I say, trying to keep my head clear and my words rational despite the trying circumstances I’ve found myself in this evening, but when I finish relating the night’s events, neither of them acts surprised. Erik places an arm around my shoulder, but I shrug it off, aware of Jost’s tensed jaw.

  “Why are we still here?” Jost asks, his gaze glued to the floor. “If Dante knows where the Whorl is, we need to go.”

  “We have to wait for Jax. We can’t get past security without a distraction,” I tell him. Our eyes meet for a moment before I look away, confusion blooming in my chest.

  “This ought to be good,” Erik mutters, “and by good, I mean very, very bad.”

  THIRTY-SIX

  JAX’S DISTRACTION COMES IN THE FORM OF blowing up a garage that sits far enough from the main house that we aren’t in imminent danger but close enough that the security force acts swiftly, giving us the opportunity to slip out of an entrance at the back of the house. As smoke pours from the wreckage, we flee the estate in the stolen crawler, Dante and Valery tucked safely inside with a bag of food and water. Jax has kept his word—everyone is too busy to see us go and the gates are unattended. I don’t look back at Kincaid’s playground. There’s nothing left for me there. Jost drives north, following a rough map Dante has drafted.

  “Hopefully, the men notice I’m gone first,” Jost says, his hands white knuckled on the steering wheel. “They’ll probably assume I’m out somewhere killing Erik. It’s actually a fantastic alibi.”

  “Yeah,” Dante says, from the backseat. “Because it’s very believable.”

  “To be clear,” Erik says, “you probably won’t kill me though?”

  “The night is young.”

  “Let’s get to the island before we kill each other,” Dante suggests in a mild tone that grows weaker as the adrenaline wears off.

  We collapse in
to silence after this, the somewhat good-natured threat still hanging in the air. Although it’s clear now that everyone knows about the drama between Jost, Erik, and me.

  Now that we’re off the estate, the road grows wild the farther we get from the inhabited Icebox. I turn around, hoping to stem the rolling nausea from our ride. “Dante,” I call, leaning my chin against my seat, “do you think Jax will be okay?”

  We’d left him at the estate to deal with the fallout of the explosion. Dante grins. “He’ll be fine. He’s headed straight to the Agenda to let them know what’s happened so we can rendezvous with Falon later.”

  “That night when I caught you in the cells,” I say, hoping this question doesn’t destroy Dante’s mood, “did you get my mother out?” I’ve been wondering since I found him strapped to the exam table, not knowing when or how he’d been taken.

  Dante swallows hard and nods, but he doesn’t give me any details.

  Her freedom means she’ll come after me again, but I have new enemies to worry about. The woman I knew as my mother is already dead. Even if I alter her I don’t think I can erase what’s happened. Would she remember what she’s done? The people she’s killed? I’ve spent enough nights contemplating how my own actions have led to deaths: Enora, my father, the nameless threads I ripped in cold blood. I was passive in those actions but I feel their blood on my hands like the sticky, black substance that coated my feet on the night of my retrieval. I can’t dismiss the past, it lives in my head and infects me. Even with her soul back, her morality intact, would my mother be able to calm the bitter truth of what she’s done?

  And I know one thing for certain, my mother would want me to push forward, to find the Whorl, to get to Amie. I haven’t given up on that yet. I won’t let Arras and Earth be severed without reaching Amie first and removing her from Cormac’s control.

  But Loricel’s words the good of the many whisper in my mind. I can’t sacrifice a world for a sister as much as I can’t sacrifice an opportunity for my mother. If I did, the groans of the dead would haunt me, calling to me, slowly driving me insane. Loricel asked me to think about my choices. At a loom to help others she made decisions. I have no loom now—merely passion swelling up inside me like a flooding dam ready to burst into action. Sometimes the only way to serve the greater good is to fight.