Unraveled (27 page)

“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

T
HE 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.