Unraveled (17 page)

Most of them nod, but as soon as she steps away their faces turn nasty behind her
back. I’m certain Alixandra can feel their expressions, even if she doesn’t see them.
I recall the sensation of tiny daggers in my back, a feeling familiar from my testing.
Unlike me, Alixandra doesn’t seem bothered by it.

But I have learned one thing, at least. I’m not the only one concerned about changes
in Cormac Patton. It sounds like the rumors are becoming more widespread. People everywhere
are talking about it. What effect will this have on his plans? If faith in Cormac
has already been undermined, what purpose can the wedding really serve?

“We’re ready for the next party,” the stewardess says, checking a list on her clipboard.

“That’s us,” Alixandra says, taking hold of my elbow and steering me toward the rebound
chamber. We aren’t using the ones I’ve rebounded through before, but instead a new,
larger chamber. I expect Alixandra and I to rebound on the same platform, but there
are two platforms adjoining each other instead.

“I thought we would rebound together,” I say to Alixandra.

“We are, but two people need to perform the procedure for optimal safety.” Her voice
takes on the same annoyed tone it always does when I ask a question—as though everything
that comes out of my mouth is completely stupid.

“I see.”

“Minister Patton wants to be sure of your physical safety as well as your security.”

“I bet he does,” I say. My glib comment is rewarded with a scathing look. My sense
of humor isn’t growing on Alixandra.

The stewardess prepares each of us, going through the same speech full of warnings
and reminders I’ve been given every time I’ve traveled via rebound. I nod, barely
paying attention to what she’s saying. I’m not surprised when she cuffs my arms to
the chair.

“What, no scary metal helmet?” I ask.

The stewardess blinks.

“You will be alone during part of the process,” Alixandra says, settling comfortably
into her chair. “We’ll be able to see each other, but technically we’ll be in separate
spaces. I want to be certain you are secure.”

“Where am I going to go?” I point out. There’s enough danger inherent in the process
without me jumping off the platform in the middle of it.

“You’ve managed to pull off some incredible escapes in the past. You can’t blame us
for being cautious,” Alixandra says.

“How long is the rebound?” I ask the stewardess.

“It will only take an hour,” she answers as she stuffs a pillow behind my back. I
want out of these cuffs and away from this awkward angle.

The pillow
is
helping, though. I remember the first stewardess who attended my rebound—on my retrieval
night. She had been kind, too, trying to ease my panic about being tied down and taken
to a new life. I didn’t ask her name.

“Thank you…?” I leave the invitation hanging between myself and the girl helping me.

“Diana,” she says.

“Thank you, Diana.”

“It was my pleasure, Miss Lewys,” she says, pausing to add the obligatory, “and best
wishes on your marriage.”

“Thanks,” I say. Her eyes meet mine and I see understanding in them. She knows, as
everyone in Arras must know, that this isn’t a marriage of love. Cormac is taking
a bride. He’s taking me.

And before I can wrap my head around it—around the fact that I’m on my way to be married
to Cormac Patton—Diana has left the room and the countdown on the clock begins.

“Will I be able to talk to you during the rebound?” I ask Alixandra. Rebounds still
make me a little nervous.

“Why would we want to talk?”

“Never mind,” I say.

“Do you need to tell me something, Adelice?”

“I get a little bit of motion sickness,” I admit, “and it might help if I had someone
to distract me.”

She looks pained at this suggestion.

“Like I said, forget it.” I hadn’t needed Alixandra’s company before today. I didn’t
need it now.

“Adelice, it’s my job to protect you, not only for Cormac,” she says, struggling for
the right words. For a moment our eyes meet and her carefully controlled composure
slips to reveal vulnerability.

“Who are you doing it for, then?” I ask.

The mask slides back into place as she picks up a
Bulletin
from the table on the platform. “The people of Arras, of course. You’ve become something
of a symbol to them.”

“I don’t believe you,” I say, but Alixandra only shrugs. I can’t expect answers from
her.

And how am I supposed to feel about being a symbol, anyway? First, it’s for the wrong
reasons. What would my parents think if I came to represent the ideal of womanhood
in Arras? Or Erik? Or Jost? Or Dante? How would they feel if I stepped into the role
of perfect wife and obedient citizen? It wasn’t supposed to turn out like this.

It won’t.

I focus on that thought as the countdown clock reaches zero and the first changes
shimmer through the room. I wonder what Spinster they’ve deemed talented enough to
rush the rebound process and I hope her fingers are as skillful as they claim. It’s
not my idea of a good time to be torn in two by someone integrating my thread into
another section of Arras.

The smooth white walls of the room flicker and fade in and out of my vision, and my
belly flips as a rush of vertigo surges through my body. I turn to watch Alixandra,
who is absorbed in her
Bulletin
. I can see her, but it’s as though I’m watching through a sheer, stretched fabric.
We are in the same place and yet we aren’t.

“Alixandra,” I test, but she doesn’t respond.

I’m on my way to marry Cormac Patton.

Only a month has passed since he asked me to marry him. I thought it would be far
in the future, but now it’s happening.

There will be a state dinner and a series of Stream interviews. Fear is starting to
settle into my blood. This seemed like a good idea when I agreed to it. Having unlimited
access to Cormac would give me the chance to alter him
and
gain access to the Coventry. But now I know having unlimited access to Cormac means
he’ll have unlimited access to me. I also know he’ll find a way to diminish my power,
possibly for good. My skills are nothing against him now that he’s found a way to
protect himself from alteration, and soon, I’m certain, he’ll alter me into the perfect
wife.

It’s only beginning to sink in that I will be his wife. On the happier nights since
I was taken from my home in Romen, I’d allowed myself to imagine marrying. I’d pictured
what it would be like to lie in bed with my husband. When I returned to Arras, I tried
to let go of that, but Erik always invaded my thoughts in the quiet moments before
sleep. I tried to deny myself the fantasy that somehow Erik would be the one in my
marital bed, because I knew this day would come.

I knew it would only hurt more when I faced down my wedding to Cormac.

I was right.

A tear tickles down my cheek and I try to wipe it away, forgetting the cuffs over
my wrists. It lingers, turning to salt on my cheek—an invisible line that no one can
see, but I can feel it clinging tight to my skin. Love has left its marks on me in
a hundred tiny scars that aren’t visible, only felt. Erik’s face floats into my memory.
I squeeze my eyes shut and try to see him, but no matter how much I try it becomes
harder. My mind is stealing him from me, hiding him away to protect me from the ache
that burns in my chest and seizes my limbs.

When I open my eyes, I see him more clearly. It’s as though he’s standing in front
of me. I realize that if I want to keep Erik, I can’t lock him away. I can’t ignore
the memory of him or I will lose even that. Because when I embrace the pain of our
separation—when I free his memory—he becomes real again.

Erik smiles at me and I smile back, tears streaming down my face. It becomes too painful
and I turn away.

Alixandra is off the platform.

I stare at her. She’s not supposed to leave the platform. That’s rebound rule number
one.

At first I think she’s waving at me and I shake my head to let her know I have no
idea what she’s saying. I can barely move my hands, but I point a finger at her chair
in case she’s suffering some type of temporary insanity that can be cured by a simple
reminder that she should be sitting down.

That’s when I realize she’s trying to tear the sheer barrier separating her rebound
platform from mine. I look more carefully at her room and notice that it’s fading
farther and farther into the gray walls of the Cypress Station. Soon Alixandra begins
to fade with it.

It isn’t possible. We’re rebounding together. She shouldn’t be fading from my sight,
because we’re going to the same room, the same station. Alixandra told me I wouldn’t
leave her side during this process, and as that realization settles into place, she
flickers completely out of view.

But my last vision of her isn’t one of screaming or grabbing. For the split second
before her rebound completes she looks past me and nods as her hands fly up once more
to tear at the barrier.

I whip around and see the dark outlines of a rebound chamber. The clock on the wall
is dead. The room is chilly.

But standing in the middle of it is something that warms my blood.

Erik.

SEVENTEEN

I
CAN’T MOVE UNTIL THE FINAL PIECES
of the room settle into place. Erik is real. Erik is here.

He takes a cautious step toward me.

This time I manage to say his name. “Erik?”

He races forward and unlatches my cuffs, pulling me up and into a tight hug. But before
I can even enjoy it, he releases me.

I don’t know where we are or how I’ve gotten here. The chamber is silent and abnormally
cold. These facts collect in my mind but they don’t add up to anything.

“Follow me.” It’s little more than a command, and for a moment I’m frozen to the spot.
But when he walks out of the room, I go after him despite the shock and confusion
warring within me.

I step out into an office. No, not exactly an office. More like a large meeting room
dimly lit by lamps and handlights. Before I can react, Valery throws her arms around
me.

“They did it,” she says in a breathless voice.

I’m not entirely sure who they are or what they did or how it happened, but I nod
as she clasps my hands in her own. She looks the same, but she’s free of cosmetics
and her black hair is cropped to her chin.

“Do you like it?” she asks, fluffing her bob.

“Yes. It suits you.” The whole conversation is surreal. The last time I saw Valery
she’d admitted that she betrayed us on Alcatraz, but now she is here. That doesn’t
exactly explain where
here
is, though.

“Get those off.” She points to my gloves.

It takes a moment for the suggestion to process, but when it does, I rip them from
my sweaty hands and throw them to the floor.

“Thanks,” I say to her over a lump in my throat as it begins to settle in that I’m
free.

A dozen people gather around a table, poring over blueprints of some sort, and when
a man stands up to leave, I see them.

Dante and Jost.

They’re both here.

“Where are we?” I ask Erik, grabbing his arm. He removes my hand quickly but I don’t
think I’m imagining a gentle squeeze as he does it.

“We got her,” Erik calls out, and everyone stops to stare at me. There are a few cheers.
Some eye me with curiosity. Others look unimpressed. But all that matters is the grin
that splits across Dante’s face, because for a moment I feel like I’ve come home.

He strides forward and grabs me by the shoulders. He’s still wearing the jeans and
shirt he wore to Alcatraz, and he looks tired.

“You look different,” he says.

“I’ve been busy preparing to become Cormac’s little woman,” I say, but I can barely
focus on what he’s saying to me. I’m too busy scanning the room, trying to process
the incredible shift in my circumstances. Not even an hour ago I was on the way to
my wedding, and now I’m here—wherever this is.

“But you aren’t married?” Erik asks, and I think I hear a tinge of anxiety in his
tone.

“No, I’m not.”

“Thank Arras. I was worried we missed the blessed event,” Dante says.

“Were you hoping to give me away?” I ask.

“I was planning to object.”

“You weren’t the only one,” Erik says.

“You were just in time,” I tell them. “I was on my way to the wedding.”

“We had less time to strategize until we got here,” Dante says. “Relative timelines,
remember?”

“Yes, but where
is
here?” I ask. I turn around and take in the whole of my surroundings. I can’t help
but notice a line of framed portraits along a far wall. The room is average. It could
be any meeting room in Arras, but that doesn’t explain how my friends managed to set
up in Arras. “Are those prime ministers?”

“You’re in the Eastern Ministry offices,” Dante explains.

“The Eastern Sector was destroyed.”

“Do you believe everything Cormac tells you?” Dante asks. He drags me to a window
that overlooks a courtyard. When I spot the elephant fountains, I know he’s telling
the truth.

I was here a little less than a month ago, but now it’s been entirely transformed
into an Agenda barricade. Only the shell of the room reminds me it was once Guild
territory before Cormac destroyed it—or rather, pretended to. “Why would Cormac lie
to me? He told me he destroyed the whole sector. He made me watch.”

“To scare you.” Valery’s voice is soft as she speaks. “Fear is control.”

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.”