Chosen Ones

by Veronica Roth

  “We do not intend to threaten you,” Nero said.

  “And who is we?” Matt said. “You and her?”

  “The group that summoned you is the special council of Cordus,” Aelia said. “We were assembled to address . . . a particular problem that I will describe to you in full. I am the leader of that council as well as an elected official in city government. Praetor, as I said.”

  Sloane frowned at the device on the floor. She didn’t feel the burning, tingling pull of magic here the way she did at home. She stretched out a hand toward the siphon, waiting for something, anything, but she felt nothing. Maybe here, magic suffused the world so completely that she couldn’t feel it, the way a person stops hearing white noise after a few minutes. She brushed her fingers over the siphon, and it felt warm from skin contact but otherwise inert.

  “It requires intent,” Nero said to her.

  That was what she was afraid of.

  The car stopped. Aelia opened the door and gestured for them to follow her.

  On their side of the street were old-fashioned gas lamps with elegant black bases and glass spotted brown from the flames. On the other side of the street was rubble. Broken chunks of concrete piled up against cracked wood beams, which were fraying where they had split right down the middle. Twisted girders reached upward. Broken glass shone in the moonlight.

  Sloane heard Esther’s footsteps behind her, then felt her cool, dry hand. Sloane grabbed it, held it tight, and both women stood shoulder to shoulder, staring. One building’s remains tumbled into another’s, and on and on, as far as Sloane could discern in moonlight alone. Where a street had been was carnage and destruction—a curl of yellow-­white, the spine of a squirrel; a woman’s blouse, patterned with flowers, trapped under a rock; a bit of stuffing from a plush toy in the mouth of a scurrying rat.

  “The Drain,” Esther said.

  Sloane felt like time had run backward, and she was at the edge of the site where the Dome would later stand, surrounded on all sides by worshippers of the Dark One and seekers of magic. The Drain was like a fingerprint, distinct from all other forms of magic she had witnessed. And only one person could leave that particular mark.

  If this was a Drain site, then the Dark One had been here.

  Nero moved away from them to set up the same barriers Sloane had seen on Wacker Drive, intended to keep pedestrians away. But Aelia stayed beside them. “In your world,” Aelia said, spreading the fingers encased in her siphon wide so her hand looked like a metal claw, “there was a force of evil at work—one that you defeated?”

  “The Dark One,” Matt replied quietly. “Yes. I—we, actually; all of us—killed him.”

  “Wonderful.” Aelia smiled, and it looked almost sinister in the dim light of the gas lamps; shadows pooled beneath her prominent cheekbones. “We too have a kind of Dark One. Our name for him is the Resurrectionist.”

  “Is,” Esther said. “Present tense.”

  “Yes,” Aelia said. “Our Resurrectionist is still alive. Still terrorizing us. Still doing this.”

  She gestured to the dark expanse before them. Sloane saw dark shapes moving ahead, darting in and out of the broken buildings. The area had the trademark pattern of a Drain site, the bits of concrete and wood and steel growing smaller the farther in you looked. At the center, everything would be fine as sand.

  “This happened last year,” Aelia said. “The closest the Resurrectionist has ever gotten to our city center. They grow more powerful by the year, and they inch closer.”

  “Is that they singular or plural?” Esther asked.

  “Did your Dark One work alone?” Aelia’s mouth twisted into a wry grin. “There are followers; there are always followers. But the Resurrectionist’s followers are where the nickname comes from. They are the walking dead.”

  Across from them was the skeleton of a house, stripped of siding and drywall. Insulation tumbled in the wind, pink and puffy as cotton candy.

  “Like you, we had a Chosen One,” Aelia said. “He was valiant and a talented worker of magic. Young too. Too young, perhaps.”

  “He was?” Esther asked.

  “He is dead.” Aelia’s voice cracked. “He was defeated.”

  It should have been obvious, Sloane thought. Even expected. If there was a universe in which she and her friends had won, of course there were universes where they had lost. Where they had died. Where they had never even existed.

  “But he’s the Chosen One,” Esther said. “He can’t be dead. Are you sure you got the right one?”

  “We are certain,” Aelia said curtly. “We had a prophecy. It was quite specific. And we used its magical signature to summon you here.”

  “Magical signature?” Matt said at the same time Esther said, “Why did you summon us?”

  Matt stepped back. Hers was the question he really wanted answered, Sloane assumed.

  “Isn’t it obvious?” Sloane said bitterly, her voice trembling. “She wants us to take on her Dark One for her.”

  “He isn’t my Dark One,” Aelia snapped. “And I assure you, I would not have resorted to such measures unless the situation was truly dire. I can’t allow more people to die. I can’t allow more of our world to fall into ruin.”

  “Oh, well, if the situation is dire, then it’s okay to kidnap people from other dimensions,” Sloane said. Her throat felt tight with rising hysteria.

  “Yeah, here I was thinking the direness quotient wasn’t high enough,” Esther added sourly.

  “I assure you, it is!” Aelia said, her voice becoming almost shrill.

  “I don’t think she’s very good at sarcasm,” Esther said to Sloane.

  “She’s going to love us, then,” Sloane replied.

  “You have to understand,” Matt said, raising his voice a little to talk over them. “We’ve already been through this, and we’re not eager to go through it again, especially for a place that doesn’t even belong to us.”

  “I’m afraid it’s not that simple.” Nero spoke from a few yards away, in the middle of the street. His fingers twisted together in front of him, metal siphon glove wrapped around flesh. “The fates of our worlds are no longer as distinct as one might hope.”

  “Uh,” Matt said, “what?”

  “Our worlds are connected,” Nero said. “We can see it, the connection. The use of magic has made both of our worlds unstable. The Resurrectionist preys on this instability to accomplish his destruction.”

  Sloane narrowed her eyes. “How?”

  “We don’t know. We don’t know anything for certain. All we know is that this”—Aelia gestured to the rubble that confronted them—“ is not something he should be able to do. It’s not something anyone was able to do until he came along.”

  Sloane thought about touching the Needle for the first time, how it had turned her into an empty stomach, a black hole of wanting. How she had taken everything—everything—into herself, indiscriminate and frantic, churning water into froth and bones into particles of sand. How she had burst through the surface of the ocean, soaked with blood and roaring with power.

  “No,” she said. The word came out broken. “No, it can’t be. This can’t be happening.”

  “Sloane,” Matt said softly.

  “We killed him,” Sloane said. “I saw him, under the water; I saw him die.”

  “In one world,” Matt said. “Apparently not in every world.”

  “Well, that was my world! I did my part, I fought my Dark One. I did my job!” She was crying. She hated crying. “You can stay and help if you want. But I’m not going to do it again. It was hard enough the first time.”

  Matt’s hand fell on Sloane’s left shoulder, then her right, so she was looking at him. She needed a benzo. She needed a mother who didn’t suck. She needed to be home.

  “I can’t,” she said again, this time only to Matt.

  “I know,” Matt said, nodding. “Me either, Sloane. Except I think we might have to.”

  Sloane looked over Matt’s sho
ulder at Aelia. Asking her a question without asking.

  “It is a huge feat, to send or summon between universes,” Aelia said. “We will only be able to accomplish it once more, to send you home. Which our urgent need compels us to do only after we have received your help.”

  “So you kidnapped us,” Esther said, “and now you’re holding us prisoner until we help you.”

  Aelia looked down, didn’t answer.

  “Just wanted to be sure I was clear on the situation.” Esther sounded bitter but tremulous.

  Sloane looked over Matt’s shoulder at the stripe of darkness in front of her flanked by intact buildings, cheerfully lit. An entire city block, obliterated. Aelia had brought them here to gain their sympathy, Sloane was certain. Show them a tangible sign of the destruction they were dealing with. This is just the beginning, this place said, of the horrors I will show you.

  It’s a simple choice, my dear, the Dark One had whispered.

  Sloane tasted bile.

  “I am sure you need time to process all of this,” Aelia said. “We have prepared rooms for you to stay in while you’re here. We can speak again tomorrow, after you’ve rested.”

  Esther reached for Sloane’s hand and squeezed it gently. She felt warm and steady and familiar. They had fought side by side before, in situations they thought they would never escape. Sloane remembered the two of them staying up to keep watch, their spines pressed together as they each watched a different horizon.

  Sloane let the heat of her friend draw her back to herself. She knew how to do this. Knew how to search dark landscapes for enemies, how to fall only half asleep, how to booby-trap a house with a jar of marbles, how to march inexorably toward a single end and a near-certain doom.

  It was like a dance, and she would never forget the steps.

  EXCERPT FROM

  Life and Death: Scholars on the Resurrectionist and His Army

  by Garret Rogers

  From “The Possibility of the Impossible: An Interview with Marwa Daud, Professor of Magical Theory (University of Chicago)”

  DAUD: Magic has confronted us all with many utter impossibilities made possible. But thus far it obeys certain rules. A person cannot, for example, make herself fly through the air like a bird or conjure food out of nowhere. Up until the emergence of the Resurrectionist, we believed that bringing the dead to life was another one of those limits. But the Resurrectionist’s army is, as I’m sure you know, composed of individuals that appear to be corpses. Yet they walk, talk, and even produce magic themselves on occasion. How can this be? How can this terrorist raise an entire army when the world’s most talented magic-users cannot reanimate anything larger than a housecat? Is he—assuming the Resurrectionist is a he—that much more powerful than the rest of us?

  ROGERS: A housecat—you’re referring to the experiment by the German Franz Becker about five years ago?

  DAUD: Yes, Becker. He was a brilliant scientist. So tragic that he was able to bring his recently deceased pet cat back to life only for the act to kill him shortly thereafter. He is a fine example of what I am saying, which is that other people have indeed tried to raise the dead. Magic is still relatively new, so I am not positing that no one else ever will walk in the Resurrectionist’s footsteps, but it seems to be a long way off. That doesn’t mean that we can’t learn something from his army in the meantime. Quite the contrary—on a theoretical level, his army is significant. Outliers and anomalies are always central to my thinking, because they expand our understanding of theory—the practical informing the possible. That giving some form of life to the dead is even possible tells us something important about the nature of magic itself. About its origin or perhaps about the way we use it. The Resurrectionist is alone in his ability, for now, but why? Does he have access to a particular magic source or channel? Is his enhanced ability innate, instinctual, or is it learned? All of these answers, when found, will tell us something profound about magic.

  ROGERS: Such as?

  DAUD: Well, if magical skill is innate, then we exist in a world where power truly is inherited. We can therefore begin to ask if the use of this power is genetic, and if so, does it follow certain bloodlines more closely than others? This kind of thinking—that there are certain superior bloodlines—has led humanity down dark paths more than once. But if the Resurrectionist learned his ability, then we can assume that magic is a resource from which any person may draw, in which case we must know if it is a limited resource or if it renews itself. If it is finite, we might begin to allocate magical use to particular people in positions of prominence or influence. This would reinforce existing structures of power in our society. The wealthy and famous become the most magical, which brings further wealth and fame.

  If magic is an endless resource, however, there will be no inherent limit to its use. The human race will change on a fundamental level as we stop performing everyday tasks “the old-fashioned way,” so to speak—

  ROGERS: So you don’t see a positive outcome no matter what the answers are, do you?

  DAUD: I guess I hadn’t really thought about it that way. But no, regardless of what power humankind has access to, I suppose I never see it as having a good outcome. We are animals, after all. And don’t let your housecat fool you into thinking that animals are nothing more than fuzzy, whiskered creatures who wish us no ill. Nature is bloody, and as a whole, it favors strength over compassion.

  17

  WE JUST PASSED CITY HALL,” Sloane said to Esther, as the car pulled up to a curb again. “This must be the Thompson Center.”

  “That big curved glass building?” Esther gestured to the stone façade that confronted them. “Doesn’t look like it.”

  “I mean, I think the architecture is different, but we’re in that location.” Sloane frowned. “So to speak.”

  They passed through a dark, spacious lobby to an elevator bank. It was too dark for Sloane to see how high the ceiling was. Nero pulled a grate of tarnished bronze across the elevator doors before pressing the button.

  “This building is in the Bygoneist school,” he said as the elevator rose. “Which means it’s made primarily without magical intervention but represents styles of many periods combined without concern for accuracy.”

  “Without magical intervention,” Matt repeated. “Is that . . . rare? To build something without magic?”

  Nero shrugged. “In Chicago, yes. Architecture is an industry heavily influenced by magic, and people here love their architecture.”

  Cameron would have loved it, Sloane thought.

  The elevator came to a stop on the seventh floor. Nero led them to a balcony that overlooked a dome made of stone—the Hall of Summons, he explained, as if it were obvious what that meant. They walked to the back of the building and climbed a winding staircase made of wrought iron up another two flights to what appeared to be a wall of solid wood.

  Nero pressed his siphon-covered hand to the wood, then took it away, leaving a bright white handprint behind. It faded into the wall within seconds, and then the polished wood parted down the middle and opened to a long hallway with doors on either side.

  “These rooms are occasionally used as apartments for important guests of the Cordus Center,” Aelia said, gesturing toward one of the doors. She whistled. The door opened and slammed against the wall behind it with a shudder. “They’re intended to showcase the work of up-and-coming designers, so they are a bit . . . odd.”

  Nero set about opening the other doors with a gentler effort from his siphon.

  “The Cordus Center,” Matt repeated. “Is that where we are now?”

  Sloane walked the perimeter of the hallway, passing rooms in different styles. She took in only quick impressions of each: one done in spartan simplicity, another a Gothic cathedral in miniature with windows of stained glass, and the last full of delicately carved wood furniture.

  “Yes,” Aelia said. “This building is primarily an academic institution, the Cordus Center for Advanced Magical Innovation and L
earning.”

  “Camel,” Nero said.

  “Camel?” Sloane frowned.

  “C-A-M-I-L,” Nero said, “or, as the students fondly call it, the Camel.”

  Aelia gave him a look, and Nero shrank back. “We will meet again tomorrow to further discuss things,” she said. “Please, try to rest. Nero.” She jerked her head to the side. “A word?”

  Nero gave them all a nod and followed Aelia back down the hallway to the elevator. Sloane’s instinct was to go after them and find a way to listen to their conversation, but the hallway went straight to the elevator with no bends or curves or alcoves to hide an eavesdropper, so she stayed where she was.

  “I call the church room,” Esther said at once.

  “Go for it,” Matt said, glancing at Sloane.

  Surely he wouldn’t want to share one.

  He turned and walked into the room filled with carved wood.

  Sloane’s room, her only option, was white: white walls, white sheets, a wood floor painted white. But when she slid her fingers into the wide seams between wall panels, she discovered drawers, a small closet, and a hidden bookshelf. The last occupant had left a few books there: The Manifestation of Impossible Wants: A New Theory of Magic; A Society Divided: The Cold War Between Magic and Science; and The Mysterious Magical History of the Throat Siphon. Sloane was just weighing the last one in her palm when someone knocked.

  “Team meeting,” Esther said. “My room.”

  Sloane set the book down, leaving the white wall panel open. When she went next door, Esther was already sitting on the bed, her back against its elaborately carved headboard. Matt was tapping on one of the stained-glass windows as if testing its stability. His face was dotted with multicolored lights in the shape of the Virgin Mary.