Unraveled (18 page)

“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

T
HE 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.”