Weavers (The Frost Chronicles) (20 page)

The gate was live. Threads of light glimmered along the ground and sparkled in the seams of the structure. A sizzle shot through the air and crawled over my exposed skin, making my hair prickle. I tasted the flavor of metal when I inhaled.

Sudden light spiked from the gate’s mouth, and a pulse of sound shivered through the air like an exhale. A retinue of figures was suddenly crouched in the landing area, fresh from a jump, most of them with hands over their faces. Jumping was not pleasant for most, as I now knew from experience.

One man stood upright, seemingly unaffected by the disorienting effects of travelsickness. Long hair cascaded over his shoulders in an inky wave, and he wore white gloves and a uniform of deep purple. As I watched, Doctor Borde and the other scientist approached him.

I guessed these people were from the colonies, or some other such place.

“You shouldn’t be here,” a voice said at my elbow, and I jerked around.

It was the dark-haired man I’d seen before, on my first day at the Labs. Doctor Gordon, someone had called him. He stood a few feet away, regarding me curiously. His eyebrows arched, and his mouth curled in a challenging smirk. He wore the white robes of a scientist.

“I’m a swabber,” I said, fumbling with my badge.

He sniffed. “Swabbers never talk.”

“I do.”

“Well, he said, “you’re not cleared for this meeting. All staff was dismissed. Didn’t you hear?”

“No,” I said, refusing to blink.

“Well, now you’ve heard.”

I sneaked a last glance at the scene by the gate as I left. The man in the purple uniform had stepped from the landing pad and was greeting Doctor Borde. He had a haughty, cold expression, as if he were a prince tasked with cleaning a garbage pit. I couldn’t see Borde’s face because he had his back to me, but I heard someone mention the Sickness, and the word floated like a curse in the air. Then the doors slid shut, and I was alone in a glimmering hall, my heart hammering against my ribs and my skin flushed.

Only four more days till the jump.

~

A whistle laced the air and all the swabbers around me lifted their heads. They drifted away, leaving me alone. I never ran away when the rest of them did. I kept cleaning, kept company by my thoughts, until a voice interrupted them.

“I got your note. We need to speak.”

I lifted my head and saw Doctor Borde standing in front of me. His hands twisted together. He blinked rapidly.

“Now?” I glanced around at the surrounding halls. All the other swabbers were gone. It was only me and the scientist.

“Now. Come with me.”

He strode off without waiting for me to agree to anything. I hesitated, but not for long. He turned the corner and I was at his heels, following his fluttering coat down a corridor and into a dark room. Not his office. A closet. My head bumped a low-hanging light, and my shoulder grazed a shelf before he found the switch and fumbled with it to make the lantern dangling overhead gleam.

“There isn’t much time.” He turned to face me as soon as the space was illuminated. “I saw you in the Arrival Bay yesterday,” he said. “When the Health Inspector came.”

I didn’t nod or smile or frown. I gave away nothing by my expression. Borde hissed out another sigh. “You seek to trap me,” he said, rubbing his temples with both hands.

“I just want to know what you want from me.”

He pressed a fist to his mouth. I could read the confliction in his eyes. “I think...I think you aren’t from here.”

Panic blossomed in my stomach, but I kept my face carefully controlled. “I’m not,” I said.

Borde’s eyebrows drew together sharply.

“I’m...I’m from the coast,” I said quickly.

“Oh.” He hesitated, stopped. “I...that’s not what...no, no, I’ve taken too much of your time.”

“Wait,” I said, grabbing his sleeve before he could slip away. “There is something...I need something from you. If you have questions for me, I’ll answer them in exchange for it.”

He paled. “For what?”

“This.” I produced the paper Jonn had given me and handed it to him. He unsealed it and scanned the contents, then exhaled. He raised his eyes to mine. “This all you want?”

“Yes,” I said firmly.

“All right. Meet me again at my private quarters, the same as before. I’ll have what you need waiting for you.”

“Wait,” I said, before he could go. “Why did that Health Inspector come here? What’s going on?”

“My girl,” Borde said, “haven’t you heard? We had our first instance of the Sickness.”

THREE DAYS UNTIL the jump, and everyone was frightened. Whispers swirled like smoke through the entire Compound, polluting the atmosphere and breathing fear into everyone’s lungs. The murmur on everyone’s lips was
quarantine
. Nobody knew anything solid. Nobody knew anything at all.

Except me.

Doctor Borde had said it himself. The Sickness was here.

I moved as if in a dream. The shining halls of the Labs and the dark, warm forests on the way to the Security Center flowed around me like delusions. My control was slipping, and the thoughts in my head moved constantly between the mission, my loved ones back home, and the Sickness. What if one of us caught it? What if we took it back to the Frost?

That night, I slipped from the barracks and set out toward the Security Center. My blood burned in my veins as I jogged, because I had a mission. After I was finished, I was going back to Borde’s private research lab. Fear simmered in my blood, but I pushed the emotions away. There wasn’t time to get distracted.

I was so absorbed in my thoughts that I barely heard the snap of branches. I’d grown lax in my days of relative safety.

A hand grabbed me. I gasped, cursed, fell. Fingers pressed over my mouth and eyes stared into mine. “Don’t scream,” a voice hissed.

Jacob.

“Jake,” I snapped. “I thought you were a Watcher.” I picked up the broken snow blossom necklace from the ground and tossed it into the underbrush.

“Watcher?”

“The monsters,” I said. “Surely you remember them from your passage through the Frost before you came here.”

Something shifted in his gaze, a scuttle of understanding that hinted at something else, but it crawled away before I could analyze it or probe further. “Ah, yes,” he said. “I remember. But they aren’t—” He stopped. Apparently attempting to argue with me didn’t matter right now.

“What do you want?” I brushed twigs and dirt from my uniform and swiped strands of hair from my eyes.

“We have to talk about the PLD,” he said.

Suspicion barbed me. I raised my eyebrows faintly, showing my surprise but nothing else. Not my suspicion, certainly. “What about it?”

He hesitated. “The Sickness is here, Lia.” He dropped the use of my fake name since we were alone, and his choosing to use my real name sharpened my attention. Whatever he was about to say, he was serious about it.

“Yes,” I agreed.

He turned his head and looked into the shadows of the forest. He appeared to be choosing his words carefully, but finally he made a sound of frustration. He scrubbed a hand over his face. “I can’t leave any of my people here.”

“Your people?”

“The fugitives. The travelers. They are my people now. We’ve been a family for years. I’ve taken care of them. I can’t leave them, not now. Not with the Sickness spreading, and everything falling apart...”

Atticus’s orders returned to my mind. I saw his gaze in my mind, so cold and ruthless. Snake-like. His threats hovered in my memory. “I can’t let you do that,” I said automatically, but my mind was churning with thoughts. I understood his position. Of course I did. If I was in his place, I’d feel the same way. I knew without a doubt that if Ann and Adam and the rest were to be left behind...well, I would never do it.

But I had my orders, too. And there would be consequences for failure. We were at an impasse. So who would blink first?

I pressed my lips in a firm line. I was tough as the ice that coated our river, hardened by years of snow and wind and Watcher attacks. He would not crack me.

Jacob’s eyes narrowed to slits as he saw my resolve. “I won’t go if they don’t.”

I needed to think, to plan. And I wasn’t going to do that on my feet, not in the dark like this when I was so on edge. “I have to get to the Security Center,” I breathed. “We will talk about this tomorrow.”

I didn’t know if he’d let me go, but he nodded and stepped back. “Fine,” he said.

I slipped up the path to the Center. My lungs hurt and my skin was shimmering with perspiration.

What now?

~

A few hours later, I knocked on Doctor Borde’s door.

For one long, breathless moment I thought he wasn’t going to answer, but then I heard the locks sliding. The door hissed open and Borde peered at me, his eyes red-rimmed and his hair in a snarl. His shirtsleeves were rolled up to his elbows, and a stain adorned the breast pocket, evidence of a late-night meal hastily consumed.

“You have what I asked for?” I asked.

“Yes,” he said. “But...I just don’t know if I can trust you. You have to make it worth my while to give it to you.”

“All right,” I said. “How?”

“Are you—are you working for Doctor Gordon?”

“What?” Confusion filled me. That mean scientist? “No. Why?”

Borde frowned, looking unconvinced. “A brilliant man...and my professional rival. I thought...well, never mind. Come in, Lila.”

I drew in a deep breath and made a desperate gamble. “Actually, my name isn’t Lila.”

His hands stilled on the door.

“It’s Lia. Lia Weaver.”

His eyebrows pulled up sharply at the word
Weaver
, and his entire expression changed. He stepped back. “Come in at once and tell me everything.”

I stepped across the threshold and into the room crammed with shelves and tables. The scent of something cooking met my nose. The door snapped shut behind me, and my heart pounded. Was I really going to do this? I had to proceed carefully. Give him just enough information that he gave me what I needed to know.

“Sit, sit,” Borde babbled. “Let me get you some tea.”

He scurried away, leaving me standing in the middle of the room. My legs trembled with a sudden attack of nerves, so I sank into one of the chairs he’d indicated. The fabric creaked and dust plumed from the arms as I sat down. Borde returned with a steaming cup in his hands. He handed it to me and then dropped into the chair across from mine.

“Please,” he said. “Please continue.”

I closed my fingers around the edges of the cup of tea in my palms and leaned forward. “First, what I asked for.”

He nodded and jumped up again. He disappeared into another room and returned with a narrow white box made from a strange, light material. It was tightly sealed. He set it on the table beside my chair. “All exactly according to the instructions you gave me,” he said, and licked his lips nervously. “Now...”

“Wait,” I said. “I need some more information, too.”

He was very still, as if I wielded a knife, and he was trying to calculate the best way to disarm me. “Oh?”

“The Sickness—what is it? What causes it? How do you catch it...how do you know if you’re infected?”

He lowered his head for a moment, and his shoulders relaxed. My attention sharpened. He’d been expecting me to ask something else. What?

“I...this is classified information...”

“Tell me,” I demanded.

He winced. “The Sickness can pass through the air or, if one is attacked by the infected, through the blood. Bites.”

“Bites? As in...animals?”

“Some animals are unaffected and some...” he trailed off, and I understood. “Rats, for instance, are susceptible. Horses are not.”

I waited for him to continue.

“The infected first experience nose bleeds, broken capillaries in the eyeballs, a reddening of the skin, bleeding gums. It only gets worse from there. Symptoms escalate into vomiting, coma, death. Less than twenty-five percent of the infected survive, and those who do are...changed.”

“Changed? How?”

He shook his head. “We still don’t fully understand it. Not yet.”

“Is that why they brought that infected man here?”

He didn’t answer.

Frustration bubbled up inside me, but I tamped it down and took a deep breath. This was the part where I had to proceed very carefully. I couldn’t spook him—he was very nervous, clearly—and I couldn’t give away too much.

“Is there any way to treat the Sickness?”

“Not that we have discovered,” he admitted, and his eyes shifted to the left, focusing on the door. He frowned, but then the creases in his forehead eased as he looked back at me. “Your turn,” he said. “You say your name is Lia, not Lila.” He hesitated for so long that the silence grew too thick, almost suffocating. I wanted to scream, but I held my composure. Finally, Borde asked, “Where are you really from?”

The question hovered between us as foreboding as a weapon. I braced myself against the chair. I couldn’t breathe. The words in my mouth burned on my tongue, but I forced them out. I felt the power of them charging the air as I spoke.

“I’m from here, actually. But I’m not...I’m not from this time.”

Borde exhaled shakily.

I expected him to laugh or roll his eyes or demand that I leave. But he did none of those things. Instead, he wept.

He
wept
.

I half-rose from my chair. “Have you gone mad?”

“I’m fine,” he muttered, swiping at his eyes with his right wrist. “Forgive me. I’m just—this is very overwhelming for me. I’ve wondered for so long...”

“Wondered what?” I demanded. My impatience was unraveling; I needed answers. I was running out of time.

“Yes, yes,” he said to himself. “Of course. She probably came by way of the device, but why?”

She
. He was talking about me.
The device
. Anxiety burned a hole in my stomach. What did he know? “Tell me,” I said.

Borde lifted his head. His eyes flared with excitement. He clasped his hands together. “For some time now,” he said, “I have been working on plans for a device. A device that will allow travel not simply through space, like the gates, but through time.”