Unraveled

by Gennifer Albin

  “So what you’ve done wasn’t wrong?” I ask, thinking of my mother and my father. Of Dante. Of Erik and Jost, who are probably dying right now at his hands.

  “It’s wrong to you, but can’t you see the gray?” he asks. “If you were me, could you turn away? From the power? From the possibility?”

  “And leave innocent people alone?” I ask. “Yes.”

  “And yet plenty of innocent people have died at your hands,” he says.

  I stare at the time strand wrapped around my fingers and wonder how his perception has become as warped as the strand itself. It’s no longer simply about the greater good. Cormac has made himself into a hero. He’s given himself the power of the creator, after bestowing that “gift” upon others before him. He doesn’t see himself as having committed any wrong, because he did what he thought was right.

  And here I am, holding his life in my hands and knowing exactly what it means to persist in a gray area. Cormac Patton deserves to die. Of that much I’m certain, but do I deserve to kill him? Does anyone have the right to kill someone else?

  There is enough blood on my hands for a lifetime.

  I could unwind Cormac and wait. Wait for the singularity. Wait for the Guild officials to find me. Wait to die one way or another. It hardly matters anymore.

  Because no one wins in this scenario.

  “Don’t tell me you’ve had a sudden fit of mercifulness?”

  “I’m thinking.” I press the time strand tightly between my fingers and Cormac gasps.

  “What is the pass code?” I ask him.

  “I will never tell you that.”

  “You’re going to die, Cormac,” I say. It has already begun. His hair is slowly turning white and lines are appearing in his polished face. He won’t be the handsome face of the Guild much longer. “And without us, there will be no Arras,” I say softly. “So why not tell me the pass code?”

  “Because I’ve lived over two hundred years and I will die alone,” he says. “I will cease and no one will mourn me.”

  “You won’t be alone.” I realize then that fear is the barrier between us now, and only I can remove it. But I won’t say I will mourn Cormac. I won’t lie to him.

  “You will die, too.” Cormac’s words aren’t a threat. They linger somewhere between a thought and a question. As though he needs me to know this, needs me to acknowledge this.

  “Everything has a beginning and an end,” I say to him. I pull gently on his time thread, careful not to remove it entirely. I can feel the end of it barely holding on, still running through him. I could pull it completely out, unwind him, but instead, with a gentle twist, I snap the thread at his chest. Maybe he has seconds left. Maybe he has days.

  “Why not unwind me entirely?” he asks.

  “I want you to face your own end.” By removing most of his time strand, I’ve taken back the life he’s stolen from others. I could have unwound him entirely and watched as he crumbled to dust, but I want him to stare his death in the face, knowing he can’t stop it.

  But now that I’ve released my hold on him, he pushes me against the wall, his arm crushing my windpipe. I struggle to breathe, black spots blotting my vision, but I don’t fight against him. And then he drops his hold on me and stumbles back, laughing. I gasp as my throat reopens and air rushes into my lungs.

  “It doesn’t matter. I will make certain you fade with me. Neither of us will be the hero of this story,” Cormac says, falling onto his back and clutching his chest. “Authorization: Alpha One Destruct Three. Arras will be destroyed and you along with it.”

  Cormac isn’t going to let me walk out of here, and I don’t blame him.

  “Now we’re even,” he says between heaving breaths. “We’ll both die here. Neither of us wins.”

  His breathing becomes more labored and I know he’s close to the end. The color drains from his face. This is it. The man who took everything from me is finally going to die. It hardly matters that he’s found a way to kill me now.

  “The evacuation has already started. The people are safe. It doesn’t matter if I die,” I say without flinching.

  “You’re prepared for this? To lose the looms? To lose the control?” he asks. “You could have lived forever.”

  “I’d rather die than continue with this lie.”

  “It takes a talented girl to do that,” he says.

  I regard him for a long moment before I answer. “I know.”

  His body seizes as the light fades from his dark eyes, and then he’s gone. Standing, I walk to the window and stare out. There’s no point trying to run now. There’s nowhere to go. Whatever security forces are left here won’t let me go, although I doubt anyone’s sticking around.

  The door bursts open and Hannox barrels in, nose still bloody, stopping to stare at Cormac’s lifeless, withered body. I close my eyes and wait, both for retribution and for peace.

  But nothing happens. When I open them, Hannox’s gaze has shifted to me.

  “He’s dead, then?”

  I can’t read his face. It is entirely absent of thought or feeling, nearly slack with apathy. “Yes.”

  Hannox looks up to the ceiling and then lowers his head to nod once. “I’ve waited a long time for this day.”

  “You were his best friend,” I say, hoping to prompt a reaction, because fear is starting to filter through my blood. I’m not sure I can fade away with the world. I’d rather die fighting.

  “Duty and friendship are not the same thing,” he says.

  Outside, the sky is a shimmering web of color, loosening and blurring in a spectacular display of light. Closing my eyes, I listen to the discord of space and time colliding and crossing as the pattern of this world collapses on itself. I wonder what it will feel like to fade into the universe. I can almost imagine the numbness of nonexistence creeping through my limbs like a slow-moving drug, and yet I feel oddly at peace.

  There’s a crackle of sound in the room and I whip around to find myself standing face-to-face with Alix.

  “How?” I ask, staring at her.

  “No time for that,” she says, tossing me a backpack.

  I look at Hannox, and Alix freezes, drawing a gun from her hip, and in the same moment that I scream, “No,” I hear one word escape from his lips.

  “Please.”

  The shot is off before either word registers, and Hannox falls back against the wall. His eyes find mine and he smiles. It’s then that I realize he wasn’t asking for mercy, he was asking to be freed.

  Alix shifts back on her heels. “I didn’t know that he was an ally.”

  “I don’t think he did either.”

  Alix shakes her head as if to dissolve her guilt. “We can’t worry about it now. Put that on.”

  I examine the pack, unsure what to do with it until Alix groans and grabs it, holding out the straps. She slides them over my shoulders and pulls a strap around my waist. I buckle it into place and wait for her to give me any indication of what’s going on.

  “How did you get here?” I ask her when nothing happens.

  “How do you think?” she snaps, pivoting around the room as though she’s looking for an escape route.

  “But Cormac destroyed the Eastern Sector,” I say.

  “Most of it, but Loricel is talented and she wasn’t going down without a fight.” Alix spots Cormac’s body and whistles. “I wish I could tell her about that.”

  “It doesn’t matter,” I say confidently. I’m enough like Loricel to know that the victory would be as hollow for her as it is for me. I wonder what we’re waiting for, what impossible feat Loricel is going to pull off now.

  And as I wonder a fissure of light splits the room, in the middle, like a seam ripping open. But there’s no Interface beneath us anymore. It’s already dissipated as Protocol Three unwinds Arras from existence. This is her plan? This isn’t like my escape from Arras. Then the Coventry was in the Interface, closer to the ground. We can’t survive jumping from here to Earth.

 
; But Alix doesn’t waste time considering this as she grabs me and throws us through a gash in the weave.

  We’re falling too fast for me to get a handle on Earth’s strands. Alix points to her vest and tugs at a cord near the zipper. A balloon of fabric billows behind her. She jerks as it opens fully, but then her fall starts to slow. My own speed accelerates so quickly that she grows small in my vision. I search frantically for my cord, but my fingers find nothing, which is a problem since the ground is getting closer and closer. Finally, my hands close on the cord, and I yank it as hard as I can. The force of the chute jolts me, knocking the wind from my lungs, and I gasp for air I cannot catch. As my descent slows, I’m able to calm down enough to breathe deeply and by the time I hit the ground, I crumple into a ball, trying to ease the last waves of panic.

  “You okay?” Alix calls, running over to me.

  Note to self: it only took a near-death experience for her to show some concern for me.

  I try to say yes, but I’m too overwhelmed. She pulls me up from the ground, but her grip isn’t gentle and she drops my hand as soon as I’m steady on my feet.

  “Loricel said this is your chance,” Alix says. “She said it’s the one she should have given you before.”

  I look up at the pattern moving swiftly across the sky. It’s already growing fainter, like a strange cloud disappearing into rain.

  Thank you, I think.

  Alix turns on her heel and starts to head away.

  “Wait!” I cry. “Where are you going?”

  “There are millions of survivors,” Alix says, facing me. “They’ll need me.”

  Need her. Not me. Nothing has changed between Alix and me, even after everything else that’s changed around us.

  “The others?” I ask. “Did they make it out?”

  “Nearly everyone left with the first wave. The little girl is safe,” she says, but she stops short of telling me what I want to know and a knot tangles in my stomach.

  “What about the boys?”

  “They stayed to help everyone evacuate.” She pauses for a moment and something flashes across her face. Like everything about Alix, it’s completely unreadable. “That’s all I know, but I wouldn’t count on them getting out.”

  “Why?” I ask. “You did. They could have, too.”

  Alix hesitates before she answers. “They … they stayed to make sure Loricel could rebound me in to you. They held off the security forces Cormac sent in.”

  She takes a long breath before adding weakly, “I’m sorry.” I don’t believe a word she says, or maybe I can’t believe it, because it means I’m the one who has to tell our story and I must do it alone. I will live a half-life, caught in a past I can never forget.

  I don’t ask Alix to wait for me. Instead I turn my eyes to the sky as numbness washes through me. It’s exactly how I imagined I would feel as Arras faded from reality. Although I’m here and alive, I feel as frozen and dead as I expected.

  Arras has become a web of color written across the sky in lines of lace and luminescence. The sun breaks through the growing holes and for the first time in decades its heat touches the Earth. It’s hot on my face and I think of emerald leaves and possibilities lost. There will be no schoolgirl to tug my hand earnestly toward home. There will be no boy to take me in his arms for a moonlight dance. It’s the end of my world and the beginning of my life.

  I’ve never felt more alone.

  TWENTY-SEVEN

  THE CAMP IS A MASS OF FAMILIES CLUTCHING together and speaking in low voices. They sit on coats and bags. No one was prepared for this and as the new sun wanes over Earth—the day far too short for a history of darkness—the group I’ve stumbled on barely notices me as I shamble into their presence. A few cast suspicious eyes in my direction, but otherwise I feel invisible. And for the first time in a long time, I am no one. I can’t fix this world at the touch of a loom.

  I am free. I am possibility.

  Something crushes my heart as I take in the survivors. It grips me with thin, cold fingers and I can’t shake them loose.

  “Do they have that radio system up and running yet?” a man shouts to another.

  “Not yet, and who knows if anyone else will have one.”

  “We still need to work on it,” he says as he stops to converse with a family. He’s tall and strong and he looks like my father. This is what Benn would be doing right now. Making plans, helping others.

  It’s what I have to do. Be helpful. Be strong. I must move forward.

  “Are you okay?” someone behind me asks, and I turn toward the voice, but I sway with the movement and collapse into her.

  “Does anyone have any water?” she yells. There’s a clamor of activity around me and a few moments later a cup presses against my lips. I hadn’t realized I was thirsty, but I drink it and I let them lay me back against a bed of jackets.

  “Do you know where you came from?” the woman asks me as a half dozen concerned faces peer over me.

  I look at each one and try to decide what to tell them. In the end I settle on the simplest story. “I was in Cypress.”

  “What’s your family’s name, honey?” she asks. “We’ll pass the word around. They must be worried sick about you.”

  “Lewys,” I say. “But I was alone.”

  No one recognizes the name—or me—without Cormac at my side. Without the beautiful clothes and pinned-up hair, without the cameras, I’m only another girl. I’m only another survivor. No one asks why a girl of my age was alone or what happened to my family, but I can’t be the only orphan here tonight.

  They are remarkably calm, but as the woman strokes my forehead, someone asks in a low voice, “Have they figured out what happened yet?”

  No one speaks, but finally a man shakes his head. “There are theories, of course,” he whispers, but as he begins to share them I slip into the darkness pressing heavily on my eyes.

  I have no need of theories.

  * * *

  I wake to an old lullaby and for a moment my mother’s face swims into my vision, but when I blink she is young and fair-haired.

  “Amie!” I gasp.

  “You’re awake,” she says, relief flooding her voice. She waves to someone and Pryana hurries over and helps Amie sit me up.

  “You won. You got out,” I say in a weak voice.

  Pryana shrugs, even though she grins a little. “Did you have any doubt?”

  “Thank you.” The words feel too simple slipping from my lips, but they weigh heavy in the air between us. It’s all I can offer to a girl who owes me nothing and to whom I owe everything.

  “I’ll leave you two alone.” Before she goes, Pryana bends down and wraps her arms around me, squeezing me in a tight, awkward hug.

  I swallow and nod once, afraid I will cry. I can never repay my debt to her.

  “How did you find me?” I ask Amie after she’s left.

  “Pryana got me out,” she says. “She suspected you would go to Cypress. To find Cormac.”

  Amie waits for me to confirm this, but I only nod. I’m not ready to talk about it yet.

  “Is he dead?” she asks me in a flat voice.

  “Yes.”

  Amie’s face contorts and I recognize the pain of confusion.

  “Did you kill him?”

  I can’t lie to her. Not anymore. Lying has never protected her. “Yes.”

  She presses her lips into a thin line and neither of us speaks. My reasons for killing Cormac won’t absolve me of what I’ve done and her forgiveness won’t either. But she doesn’t leave my side. We sit in silence like two strangers who have nothing to talk about.

  TWENTY-EIGHT

  THE REFUGEE CAMPS ARE FULL OF THE broken and the bruised, the angry and the grateful. Each camp is a press of bodies—living, working, and healing together. Although there are no elected leaders, the strong step forward to direct and guide until there is a working system. I stop at each camp, checking the wounded; the bodies have been buried by volunteers. The bo
dies that made it to Earth before Arras faded into space. The evacuation was dangerous, but the days after were worse. Peace is still a fragile reality here.

  But in the camps along the eastern coast of America, they tell me stories of the ones who came to save them. They tell of the brothers with the same eyes, who fought the Guild forces when they came.

  No one has seen them.

  Amie travels with me, choosing to leave Pryana behind at the first camp, and I’m grateful for her company. Without transport, we walk, and the days become weeks until our new reality no longer feels new. We’ve been on the surface a little over a month, and Amie hasn’t questioned why I won’t stop looking.

  I think she wants answers that I cannot give her—about what happened in Arras. But those memories are too tangled with grief for me to separate them into words, so we are mostly quiet as we travel. I am bound to a promise and haunted by hope. Alix said Sebrina made it to the surface, and I have to find her for Jost. But I’m on the east coast, about to give up, when news of an outlying camp on the northern end of the seaboard reaches us. We speak to one of the self-appointed leaders, hoping he can point us in the right direction.

  “That outpost is a two-day walk,” he explains to us.

  “Amie”—I turn to my sister—“you should stay here while I go to check it out.”

  “No, I’ll come with you.” Despite leaving a life of luxury, Amie hasn’t complained once about the conditions on Earth. Our weeks here have been full of harsh travel as we walked in search near the coasts. I’ve spent so much time thinking of Amie as a liability—as a victim—that I never saw how strong she has become in the absence of our parents. We’ve both grown up too soon.

  One of the men from the camp comes over to us and whispers in the leader’s ear. Their conversation is low and strained, but when it ends, he turns to us. “I can offer you two motocycles.”

  “We can’t borrow them,” I say. “We’re heading west by week’s end. I can’t return them.”