Chosen Ones

by Veronica Roth

  As they approached Michigan Avenue, Sloane tilted her head back and looked for the black building that stood at the bend in Lake Shore Drive, but she couldn’t find it. In its place was a wide glass tower with a hole in the middle—and hovering in the center of the hole, with space on all sides, was a sphere made of the same glass and metal as the rest of the building.

  “How . . .” She felt strange, like she wasn’t standing in her own body anymore. “How—”

  “Oh, that. I’m not sure how it works,” Kyros said, sounding amused. “Magic, obviously, but I’m unclear on the specifics.”

  “It’s not an illusion?”

  “No. Would you like to go in?”

  Sloane shook her head. No, she did not want to stand in a giant floating glass sphere. She put a hand to her aching temple. Across the street, she spotted something familiar—the Chicago Cultural Center—and walked straight toward it, not even glancing at the Walk signal to make sure her path was clear. It was too much, too fast. She needed to sit, needed to breathe.

  Kyros chased her across the street and up the stone steps. The cultural center was old—which, she was realizing, meant that both universes would likely have it in common—a neoclassical building with a row of arches topped by a row of columns, like layers in a cake. But it was the inside that made it one of her favorite places, the domes of Tiffany glass that glowed colorful and beautiful in the morning sun. That and the space’s persistent quiet.

  Just inside, she found a bench made of cool marble and sat, putting her head in her hands. Kyros sat beside her—not too close, thankfully, or she might have punched him—and stayed quiet as she took deep breaths through her nose.

  “It’s a lot,” she said once she felt calmer.

  Kyros nodded. “I’m sure it is.”

  “Would you mind if I went up there—” She pointed up the stairs toward the Tiffany dome. She could see only a sliver of it from where she sat, glinting green, but it promised familiarity and—if Kyros would allow it—solitude. “By myself? I just need a few minutes.”

  Kyros narrowed an eye at her.

  “I promise I won’t go anywhere else,” she said.

  “All right,” he said. “But in a few minutes, I’ll come up to check on you.”

  Sloane stood, feeling steadier now. She climbed the steps, then paused on one of the landings to look up at the Bacon quote—The real use of all knowledge is this: that we should dedicate that reason which was given us by God for the use and advantage of man—set in tiny tiles into the mosaic that covered each wall, framed on every side by green and yellow and blue patterns, spirals and diamonds and draped ribbons.

  When she turned the corner, she saw the Tiffany dome aglow in the sunlight. The walls arching up to meet it were covered in small tiles formed into organic shapes, vines twisting and coiling together, bright green. The dome itself was simpler, divided into rectangular sections that shrank as they drew closer to the middle. Within each rectangle, the glass was arranged in small blue-and-green semicircles, like the scales of a fish, and in the center, the symbols of each astrological sign. A chandelier hung over the space, mirroring the shape and pattern of the dome itself.

  Across from her, three canvases were set up in front of the back wall. The two on either side were featureless from a distance, like Rothkos, massive and empty. The one in the center showed hints of light, like something cracking open to reveal something luminous inside it. She drew closer to see the label fixed to the wall near the paintings and found herself standing directly beneath the chandelier.

  And then—something caught her by the ankle, its fingers cold and strict, and jerked her foot up toward the ceiling. Sloane gasped as her body flipped upside down, thinking of the teenager who had floated into the clouds in the video HenderCho had showed them, and the walls began to turn around her—or she was turning, guided by the hand around her ankle, the hand that didn’t seem to be there at all. Her clothes floated away from her body but didn’t fall down all the way. Her hair, too, was adrift around her, like she was in a pool of water instead of dangling in midair, staring at the floor as if it were a ceiling.

  Quiet, she found herself thinking, her default thought when panic set in. Because quiet had helped her to escape the Dark One with Albie; quiet had helped her escape death dozens of times. She clenched her jaw and went still, letting herself turn, dangling, like a Christmas ornament just placed on a branch. She thought if she could just jerk her leg free . . . but then she might fall headfirst onto a hard floor that had to be more than six feet below. She stared at her captive ankle as if the invisible force holding her might speak up and tell her what to do.

  “Hello,” a voice beneath her said.

  She flinched and looked up. Or rather down.

  She was still turning, but the man’s face was right beneath hers, separated by a few feet—she was higher than six feet above the ground, then, because he appeared to be tall—so he was like the center of a pinwheel.

  “Do you need help?” he said. His voice was low but oddly musical for such a serious face. He was pale, with a nose that could politely be described as “pronounced” and dark eyes that had not shifted from hers from the moment she first looked at him. The focus was unnerving.

  “What,” she said, “the fuck. Is this.”

  He smiled a little. “An Unrealist prank, I think,” he said. “Here, take my hand, and I’ll get you out of the trap.”

  The last thing Sloane wanted to do was hold hands with a strange man in a parallel dimension, but she didn’t see that she had any other choice. She reached up—down—and they clasped hands firmly. He raised his other hand, which was encased in a black siphon that looked like a glove with no fingertips. It, like all of the siphons she had seen, was made of metal, but it had once been painted green. The paint was peeling at the edges, and there were large scuff marks and scratches across each plate. There were noticeable screws around its edges and visible hinges made of different colors of metal, suggesting that it had been repaired more than once.

  He hummed, a low rumble that she thought she might feel buzzing in her fingers. She felt the tension around her ankle break, like a cord snapping. He kept his hand outstretched and continued to hum, though he changed the pitch somewhat. Her leg slowly lowered, her body righting itself by degrees. Soon she stood in front of him, her hand still held in his for a moment before they both realized it was no longer necessary.

  Now that she was on the ground, she could see that he was a head taller than her, which was no small thing, given that she was tall herself. And he wore dark, muted colors, gray and navy and black, with that odd swath of fabric around his shoulders like a hood. It was pinned at his shoulder, not by the gold finery of Aelia and her peers but by what looked like a large bolt. She smiled faintly at it. It almost seemed like a joke, to mock the same people who had summoned her to Genetrix.

  “Thanks,” she said. “You said that was a . . . prank?”

  “Yeah, the Unrealist artists’ collective have been setting up traps all over the city for a couple months now. Snares, they call them. I read their manifesto the other day—someone wallpapered a train with them.”

  She was about to ask what Unrealists were but then she remembered she was supposed to be blending in as much as possible and swallowed the question. “What did it say?” she said instead. It seemed like a safe thing to ask.

  “They contend that the introduction of magic unmoored us from the practical and therefore from reality itself,” he said. “And question whether there’s such a thing as a fact when half the things we used to regard as facts are being upended. Hence the reversal of gravity that you just experienced.”

  They had a point, she thought. Gravity was a law, and magic upended it. Unraveled it. What else did magic unravel?

  Time. Space. Whole dimensions, maybe.

  “Well,” she said. “Interesting or not, I hate them.”

  He laughed. His entire face crumpled when he laughed, and his mouth opened to
reveal a row of slightly crooked teeth. “They’re a nuisance,” he said, “but a harmless one most of the time.” His eyes shifted down to her hands. “No siphon of your own? A bold choice.”

  “It’s being repaired,” she lied as smoothly as possible. She was the worst of all of the Chosen at lying—even Albie had been more convincing than she was—but she had practiced enough now that she wasn’t completely hopeless. “It’s a piece of shit,” she added for authenticity.

  “Sounds like mine,” he said, wiggling his fingers. “I know someone who does cheap repairs, though.”

  A silence fell between them. Sloane knew she should stop the conversation there, thank him again, and go back downstairs to meet Kyros. But it had been a long time since she had spoken to someone who didn’t know who she was or what she was. A lifetime, in fact. She wasn’t so eager to give it up.

  “So—you like the paintings?” he said, gesturing to the three canvases.

  She stepped closer to read the placard on the wall: “Tenebris,” Charlotte Lake, 2001.

  “I heard the artist speak last night,” he said. “She said people assume they’re a view from the USS Tenebris before the incident, but they’re actually from the perspective of magic, looking through the veil at the lights of the Tenebris.”

  Sloane didn’t know what to say. She didn’t know what the USS Tenebris was—aside from a naval ship, obviously—or what the incident was, though it sounded familiar.

  “I don’t know how to look at art,” she said. “There hasn’t been much room in my life for it.”

  “What’s been taking up all the room?”

  She considered that for a moment, then replied, with a hint of a smile, “Mayhem.”

  He laughed a little, but his eyes lingered on hers, like he knew she wasn’t quite kidding. “I’m Mox,” he said, holding out his siphon hand for her to shake.

  “Sloane,” she replied, wrapping her fingers around the metal. It was cool to the touch. “So . . . you’re into art, then.”

  “Not particularly,” he said. “I repair and customize non-Abraxas siphons, so I’m just here to deliver a finished product to a friend.”

  “Ah,” she said. “So the cheap repair guy you know is . . . you.”

  “Lucky me,” he said.

  “Well, maybe I’ll look you up if my repair guy does a shit job,” she said.

  For the first time in a long time, Sloane was standing in her own skin. She was not a Chosen One or Bert’s stray dog or Sloane Andrews the turbo-bitch who some Trilby reporter wanted to hate-fuck. And the second she had a little bit of herself back, she was desperate to get the rest.

  “I better go,” she said. She didn’t want Kyros to come upstairs and spoil the moment.

  “Well, if you want something to do later,” he said, “I sometimes pick up shifts at a bar in Printer’s Row. The Tankard.”

  “The Tankard, huh?” she said. “I’ll see if I can escape.”

  She smiled. He smiled. And she started toward the staircase.

  But on the first landing, she couldn’t help but look back. He was standing right where she had left him, staring intently up at the Tiffany dome, his face rendered even paler by its light.

  TOP SECRET

  MEMORANDUM FOR: COMPTROLLER

  ATTENTION: FINANCE DIVISION

  SUBJECT: Project Delphi, Subproject 17

  Under the authority granted in the memorandum dated 9 March 2004 from the director of Central Intelligence to the Department of Magical Oversight on the subject of Project Delphi, Subproject 17, code name Flickering, has been approved, and $1,000,000.00 of the overall Project Delphi funds have been allocated to cover the subproject’s expenses. Flickering is here defined as a small military force intended to serve and protect the valuable entity known as Mage until such a time as his purpose, dictated by the predictions of [redacted], code name Sibyl, is fulfilled.

  Fatima Harrak

  Director of Security

  Department of Magical Oversight

  TOP SECRET

  21

  THE TENEBRIS INCIDENT?” Kyros frowned and held the door for her as they exited the cultural center. “No one’s told you about the Tenebris Incident yet?”

  “Should they have?”

  “Well, it’s the foundational event of the modern world,” Kyros said. “So . . . let’s see. It happened in 1969. The USS Tenebris was a naval ship that set out to test the response of a ballistic missile to the intense pressures of Challenger Deep.”

  Sloane waited for the walk signal to flip. “Um—the deepest part of the ocean, right?”

  “The deepest part of the Mariana Trench, which is itself the deepest part of the ocean,” Kyros said. “They wanted to demonstrate naval strength after World War Two. Due to a minor equipment malfunction, the Tenebris’s deep-water submersible had to touch down on a particularly precarious spot in Challenger Deep. The rocky expanse it settled on collapsed, revealing an even deeper part of the deep later known as the Tenebris Gorge. No one is certain of what happened next, but the ballistic missile they had set out to test fired into the gorge, and the men in the Tenebris’s submersible were buried alive in rubble. After that, magic spread throughout the world, sometimes with . . . catastrophic results.”

  The sidewalks were busier now, and louder. Whistles, hums, and sung vowels came from all directions in an array of pitches. Most of the workings, from what Sloane could see, were small and practical: a flash of light to hail a cab, a tiny flame to light a cigarette, a bubble of a shield to keep coffee from spilling. A group of teenagers sitting outside Jack’s Magic Beans linked pinkie fingers and hummed in unison, like they were performing a séance. Judging by the way they shed outerwear afterward, though, the working had been for warmth.

  “What kind of catastrophic results?” Sloane said, still craning her neck to look at the teenagers. One of the girls was using her siphon to shoot bubbles out of her fingertip at one of the boys. He whistled and poked one of the bubbles as if to pop it. Instead, it turned solid and gleamed like glass.

  But Kyros was talking again. “The earliest recorded incident was a sighting of the leviathan, but it could have been a false report. Everyone is always spotting monsters. But then there was the Graves Disturbance—gravity failed over the gorge, and a massive fishing boat just floated away along with a lot of water and, by some accounts, a baleen whale.”

  “A whale?”

  “Evidently. Electrical storms caused power outages across large regions—all of England, actually, and one left the entire state of Florida without electricity for two weeks. Parts of the ocean boiled all the sea life alive—that was quite unpleasant to clean up after, though I’m told we discovered some interesting delicacies in that time too. And then there was the plague that killed one-eighth of the world’s population.”

  The Camel was across the street, and from this angle, she could see the inner building, with its Hall of Summons, poking out where the outer walls dipped low enough to reveal it. There was nothing cohesive in the design of it; it looked like dozens of ideas had been thrown in a blender and poured out while they were still chunky.

  “Kyros,” Sloane said, “has anyone ever commented on the way you talk about catastrophe?”

  “No. Why?”

  “No reason.”

  Cyrielle was standing right in the middle of the lobby. Today she wore only blue: blue lipstick, a blue feather stuck in her hair, tight blue trousers, and a billowing blue blouse with a high neck. She wore a hand siphon made of delicate gold chains that crisscrossed over her knuckles and wrapped in a dense cuff around her wrist. She didn’t look pleased. “We’ve been looking for you,” she said tersely.

  “I went for a walk,” Sloane replied. “Kyros was kind enough to join me.”

  “Nevertheless, you should clear it with someone before you—”

  “I wasn’t aware I needed permission to leave this building.”

  “The issue is not permission,” Cyrielle said. “If you don’t care abou
t my reaction or Nero’s and Aelia’s, then you might spare a thought for your friends, who had no idea what happened to you.”

  Sloane couldn’t think of anything to say to that.

  “You’re missing another training session,” Cyrielle said. “Come.”

  Kyros nodded at Sloane, who reluctantly followed. Apparently she needed to learn a shield, at least.

  “A very hearty what-the-fuck to you,” Esther said when Sloane walked into the room where they were training.

  The Hall of Summons, Cyrielle had explained to Sloane as they walked, was closed for repairs after Sloane’s “stunt”—Cyrielle’s word for what had happened the day before. Instead, they were in a bare room on the fourth floor of the Camel that was typically used as a meeting space for students. There were no windows, and the furniture—a few beat-up couches—was pushed against the walls, leaving a clear stretch of beat-up wood floors for their practice.

  Matt didn’t even look in her direction when she walked in, just continued to hum into his oscilloscope.

  “Sorry,” Sloane said, feeling somewhat helpless. “I just—”

  “Whatever,” Esther said, raising her siphon hand. “Just get to work.”

  Sloane took the siphon Cyrielle offered her, determined to do something useful with this session. She pulled the cord tight with her teeth and flexed her fingers.

  Unfortunately, determination and intent didn’t seem to be the same thing, because the only thing she accomplished in the next two hours was reliably humming at 170 MHz. Meanwhile, Esther had figured out how to modulate the strength of her magical breath, Matt had enough precision to fill a balloon with a succession of magical breaths, and Nero had cleared them both to move on to something else. Cyrielle, who had been working one on one with Sloane, seemed ready to hurl the siphon—or Sloane herself—at a wall by the time she called the session to a close.