Unraveled

by Gennifer Albin

  She’s right. How often had I demurred to Cormac’s wishes to keep him calm? I was afraid of the havoc he’d wreak on the innocent people surrounding us. I hadn’t considered that it might be a ploy.

  “Cormac severed the sector, which means it will die soon enough,” Dante tells me. “He didn’t have to bother with destroying it. The sector can’t self-sustain for more than a few months without the Spinsters. If the mines on Earth fail, it could be years—possibly decades or centuries—before their loss threatens the entirety of Arras. The Eastern Sector has considerably less time, though, because Cormac left no Spinsters and the looms are mostly destroyed.”

  “How long have you been here?” I ask.

  “That depends,” Dante says, gesturing toward Jost and Erik. “We followed you immediately, but it took us a while to get word to those on Earth. We’re only beginning to get a handle on the situation. Thankfully the Agenda has spread throughout most of Arras, so we managed to regroup quickly.”

  “So you’ve been here since the severance of the Eastern Sector?” I ask.

  “We arrived not long after. You were already gone. Cormac practically handed the place over. It’s allowed us a safe place to plan, but some of us only arrived in the last few days. Falon got here yesterday.”

  Falon glances up at the mention of her name, meeting Dante’s eyes and then quickly looking away. She flips her dark hair over her shoulder so that it covers her face like a curtain. Although Falon was the first person we encountered on Earth, I’d spent little time with her. Now I couldn’t tell if the cold shoulder she was giving us was aimed at me or Dante. She’d made it clear to me the last time I saw her that she didn’t appreciate Dante not keeping her in the loop. If she hadn’t known where he was until a few days ago, I understood her anger.

  Dante had been here for weeks, along with Jost and Erik, and I hadn’t even known. I wonder for a moment whether Pryana and the Agenda at the Western Coventry had any clue. Probably not, I decide. The risk to the heart of the Agenda would have been too great. The more important an operation is, the more secret it needs to be, I suppose.

  It seems Falon might not have known where Dante was either. I recognize the cold shoulder, especially since Erik is giving it to me, too.

  “I have lots to tell you,” I say, trying to focus on something important instead of the ice spreading through my body in reaction to Erik’s dismissive behavior.

  “Soon,” Dante says. He gestures for me to join him at a nearby table and as people clear a place for us I see that Einstein and Jax are there, too, discussing a complicated-looking equation scrawled across a sheet of paper. They’re busy making adjustments, each bickering about the other’s changes. It’s quite the sight—lanky young Jax taking on Albert with his lined face and decades of wisdom. Jax worked for Kincaid on Earth, but he’d been using his considerable intelligence to help the Agenda. He might have met his match with Albert though.

  “Hello!” I call out, waving excitedly to them. Despite the surprise of all this and of Erik’s strange attitude, I’m genuinely pleased to see both of them.

  “My young Whorl,” Albert says, his bushy eyebrows rising with his smile.

  “It’s only been a month since you told me I was the Whorl, but I still don’t understand what it means,” I admit as I sink into the chair next to him.

  “In time,” Albert says. “There is much to discuss.”

  Like why Erik is acting as if he doesn’t know me. Or how the Agenda set up its headquarters in the Eastern Sector without Cormac even knowing about it. I’d especially like to know how they managed to rebound me away despite the security assigned to me.

  “I’m sure you have a million questions,” Dante says, dropping into a seat across from me. “But we’re in the middle of an operation right now. We had to adjust our strategy to capture you when we got the intel you’d be rebounding.”

  “How did you do it?” I ask. “I can barely go to the powder room by myself these days. My rebound should have been secure.”

  “It’s nearly impossible to breach a secure rebound session,” Dante says.

  “I know. But if it’s impossible, how did you do it?” I ask again.

  “Nothing’s impossible for a Creweler,” a familiar voice says behind me.

  I spin around in my seat, knowing that this is the one thing that should be impossible—even for a Creweler.

  “I learned a few new tricks while you were away,” Loricel tells me.

  “Such as how to come back to life?” I can’t keep the shock out of my question.

  “Not even I can achieve that,” she says. Loricel purses her lips and stares like she expects better of me. Without her smart suit and done-up hair she reminds me of my grandmother. She looks smaller than the last time I saw her, as though the weight of things has deflated her. But I still have no doubt: she’s the most powerful woman I’ve ever known. “Did you think Cormac had the guts to terminate me?”

  “He claimed he did,” I say.

  “He tried, but you know Cormac. He’s a hoarder. If something shows the least bit of usefulness to him, he’ll keep it around just in case.” Loricel gives me a wink that’s anything but amused. I can tell she wants us to continue this conversation in private.

  I want to ask how she escaped, but I decide to wait until she brings it up herself.

  “What’s this mission?” I ask, recalling Dante’s statement.

  “We’ve managed to gather some important intelligence from local sources and public records,” Dante tells me.

  “Is it regarding Protocol Three?” I ask, hoping to finally have some answers.

  “No,” Dante says slowly. “What do you know about Protocol Three?”

  “It’s something I overheard Cormac say. It’s probably nothing to worry about,” I say. Dante doesn’t look convinced.

  Jost speaks up behind me and somehow, despite everything that’s happened between us, I feel the fluttering of tiny wings in my chest at the sound of his voice. “We know where Sebrina is.”

  I turn toward Jost, unsure what to say to him. His blue eyes meet mine and there’s fire in them. There’s an electricity in the air around him, waiting to be unleashed. Finding Sebrina is all he’s ever wanted, and even now, I want it for him.

  “I remember she was rewoven into the Eastern Sector,” I say. I’d found the information on the night we escaped from Arras to Earth. Even then Jost had been separated from her for almost three years, believing the whole time that she was dead—a victim of the Guild’s warning to Jost’s hometown. I cried for them both the night Cormac severed the Eastern Sector.

  “They destroyed most of the files when they cut this sector off from Arras,” Jax says, cracking his fingers as he speaks. “I had to get into the Guild’s mainframe to recover the information. It took me a couple days. “

  Jax gives Jost an apologetic look, but Jost waves it off. “The important thing is that we found her.”

  “Is she still here?” I ask in a small voice.

  Dante steps forward and nods. “We have every reason to believe she’s still within the Eastern Sector.”

  “Even ministers that evacuated left their families,” Jax says.

  I nod my head, already knowing this. I wonder for a moment if Grady left. “I watched Cormac tell a man to abandon his family because he could get a new one.”

  “You were there?” Erik’s jaw tenses as he asks.

  “I didn’t want to be,” I snap. He must know I tried to stop it.

  “It’s pretty clear that Protocol Two quarantines everyone in the sector who isn’t a high-ranking Guild official.”

  “They must protect their secret,” Loricel says in a soft but cutting tone.

  I take a step back and meet Loricel’s eyes once more. Does this mean she knew about the officials all along? Had she seen it before, herself?

  When I first met Loricel, I wondered how old she was. I thought I had an idea after her short mentorship of me at the Coventry, but now I’m no
longer sure. She still has paper-thin skin, creased with age, and the same silver hair. At some point, she allowed herself to age rather than maintain the charade of perpetual youth.

  “Older than you think,” she says.

  It’s clear Loricel remembers every moment that’s transpired between us. And as she says the words—words she spoke to me at our first meeting—I realize she’s been telling me the truth the whole time.

  I just didn’t hear her.

  She knew about the Guild and how far renewal technology could go, but she hadn’t told me. Loricel had covered up the Guild’s biggest secret: they made themselves immortal at the cost of other people’s lives; their own life spans were extended using the time strands of people whose lives the Guild had cut short.

  “If Sebrina is out there,” I say, trying to focus on the task at hand and not on the questions burning through my brain about Loricel’s secrets, “we need to go after her.”

  Despite the chaos and strategizing going on around us, Dante grins at this. He looks a bit maniacal. It’s how I know we’re related.

  “That’s our next order of business.”

  EIGHTEEN

  THE STREETS ARE DESERTED, AS THOUGH THE citizens are still abiding by the quarantine Cormac placed on the sector before he severed it. I can tell people have been out of their homes, though. Glass crunches under our feet from the shattered remains of storefront windows. The food co-op is devoid of rations. I wonder how many mothers and fathers fought one another for the little bit of food stocked on its shelves. I wonder how many people have run out of food entirely after the Eastern Sector’s time in limbo. This is how Cormac left things. When he severed the sector in front of me, I thought he was a monster. But knowing that he left millions of people to starve in the dark makes me question if the word monster can even begin to describe him.

  I trade my traveling suit and heels for something more practical—boots and jeans. Valery’s shorter than I am, and her jeans and tunic are a bit too short and tight on me to be comfortable, but it’s still better than running around in a skirt and stockings.

  “We have to move quickly because we estimate resources will run out in as little as two weeks here,” Dante explains to me.

  “And what happens then?”

  “People will start to die.” He blows out a long sigh of frustration. “We need to evacuate everyone between now and then.”

  “Dante,” I whisper. I’m not sure I want Jost to hear what I have to say. He has to be worried enough about Sebrina as it is. “Doesn’t it seem too quiet to you here?”

  Dante gives me a quick bob of the head that the others don’t see. “On the one hand, it follows the pattern of behavior of the people left behind on Earth after the exodus. There’s clearly been looting. Most food supplies are compromised. But you’re right. On the other hand, it’s too quiet.”

  “What do you think is going on?”

  “I’m not sure,” Dante says. “But it’s not a coincidence if the Guild’s involved.”

  Jost and Erik walk a hundred yards ahead of us, watching for danger. Valery trails between us and the Bell brothers. I want to ask her to join us, but I need to talk to Dante and I’m not sure I trust her yet. She may have proven herself to the others somehow, but her betrayal is still fresh to me.

  Watching Jost and Erik in the distance, I can’t help but think they’re both avoiding me, and yet the sight of them working together makes me smile. They’ve become friends again in the time I’ve been gone.

  “And those two?” I motion toward the brothers.

  “They seem to have reached some sort of agreement after Cormac took you. It was pretty obvious since they stopped bickering all the time. Bit of a relief, actually.”

  “Cormac didn’t take me,” I correct him.

  “It’s pretty hard for a man to admit when a woman’s sacrificed herself for him,” Dante says. “It’s pretty hard for a father to admit it, too.”

  “What a waste of energy,” I say.

  “Says the one worrying about semantics.” Dante shines his handlight over his face and raises an eyebrow. “You have a point.”

  Jost holds up a hand for us to stop. We slow down and wait as he moves forward a few steps into an alley. His figure disappears behind a building, and Erik follows him. Both brothers are swallowed by darkness and before I can call out to her, Valery goes in after them.

  “Do they think that I’m going to wait around here and—”

  A piercing scream shatters the night.

  Dante and I race toward the alley, skidding to a stop at its dark mouth. Ahead of us is a figure, barely visible under the blacked-out sky. Dante flips on his handlight and the beam scatters across the figure. It’s Erik. He waves for us to put the light away.

  “Remind me to speak with him about hanging out in dark alleys without handlights,” Dante mutters. He doesn’t turn it off, but instead points it at the ground.

  “Deal.”

  We approach Erik cautiously, unsure what to expect, but as soon as we’re even with him, Dante’s light reveals Jost crouched near the wall of the alley.

  “What’s he—” But I don’t have to finish my question because as my eyes adjust to the darkness I see that Jost is not alone.

  “Shhh!” Erik warns, and that’s when I hear the voices. One is calm and reassuring, but the other comes in fits of words punctuated by giggles and wails.

  I move closer to Jost but the woman he’s speaking to startles and scuttles farther down the alley.

  “Don’t come any closer,” Jost warns.

  He calls out to the woman, but she only scrambles farther away from us in fits and jerks.

  “What’s going on?” Dante asks, and then he flashes the handlight in our direction. The woman screams as the light hits her and I realize she’s not a woman. She’s a girl not much older than me.

  But everything about her is wrong. In the light her pupils are wide and black, and that’s not even the most frightening thing. The whites of her eyes have gone red and her skin droops into giant jowls from her jawline. Some of it has detached entirely and something under the surface ripples. No, crawls. She hisses and wails and laughs as she scratches her fingers across the brick walls. It’s as though she’s decaying while she’s still alive.

  “Jost,” I say, loud enough that he can hear. “We should go.”

  I take a careful step forward and touch his shoulder.

  “She needs help,” he says, flashing me a disappointed look.

  “We can’t help her,” I say.

  “Dante can help her,” Jost corrects me, “and Erik.”

  So Erik has finally admitted to his brother that he’s a Tailor.

  “Then let’s talk to them.” I pull Jost’s arm, urging him back to the others.

  When we reach them, Dante and Erik are discussing something in grim voices. Valery hugs her arms to her chest and I place a reassuring hand on her shoulder. She doesn’t look up, and Dante’s expression is grave.

  “That girl needs your help,” Jost says. “I know you can patch.”

  “Jost.” Erik places a hand on his brother’s shoulder. “I have basic patching skills. I don’t think I can do anything about that much … damage.”

  “I alter by feel,” Dante says apologetically. “I don’t have the medic training or equipment for such a severe case of…”

  “So that’s it?” I ask, frustrated by how unfeeling they both sound. Beside me Jost straightens a little in response to my indignation, as though he’s physically backing up my moral stance.

  “It’s not only that.” Erik pauses. “I’ve never seen damage like this before.”

  “That doesn’t mean you can’t fix it,” I say firmly.

  Behind us the girl bellows out a groan that grows strangled as she gasps for air. Jost takes a step toward her, but Erik grabs him, holding him back from helping her.

  The girl’s skin sags as she lifts her hands out to us, her flesh falling in sickening lumps to the ground. H
er cry grows weaker, echoing from some pit deep inside her, until she is silent and still.

  I can’t tear my eyes from her body. I did nothing to help her. I only watched her die.

  We stand in mute shock as we try to process what we’ve witnessed.

  “Didn’t she remind you of anything?” Erik asks us finally.

  I don’t have to think hard. The frenetic speech pattern, the animal-like responses, and most of all, her strange appearance.

  “A Remnant,” I say. “But Remnants are more controlled than she was, and her skin wasn’t scarred.”

  “I don’t think she was altered,” Erik says. He speaks in slow, measured words. “This is something else entirely.”

  I shiver at the thought. I want them to help her, but I can’t deny this is something we haven’t faced before. “It was like she was decaying.”

  “I think that’s exactly what happened to her,” Erik says.

  “Do you know something about this?” Dante asks him. “From your work with the Guild?”

  Erik holds his hands up. He doesn’t look guilty but it’s obvious Dante doesn’t trust him yet. “There were a lot of rumors flying around the Coventry. I never knew what to believe. The Guild was always testing new weapons and alterations. If I had to guess, I think that’s what we’re dealing with. But I have no experience with this.”

  “Did you touch her?” Dante asks Jost.

  “No, why?”

  “Until we know what it is we need to assume it’s contagious.”

  “I saw it,” I tell them. “It was like a swarm of insects.”

  Dante looks to Erik, who nods slowly. I know he saw it, too.

  “It’s possible,” Erik says. “They altered people to create Remnants. It wouldn’t be that hard to manipulate animals or insects in similar ways.”

  “You think it was an altered bug?” If he’s right there’s a good possibility I’ll be seeing these things in my dreams.

  “They dictated what came into Arras. They could eradicate entire species, or…” Erik trails away, leaving us to our imaginations.

  “Or create weapons,” Dante finishes.