Altered

THREE

I GLANCE AT THE SIGN HANGING ON a post by the door: THE OLD CURIOSITY SHOP. Curious indeed. After a few moments navigating the store, I see no signs of life, but what I do find holds my attention: relics from a forgotten world, particularly an old radio. I forget my quest and stare at it, tentatively reaching out to touch its buttons, but it’s as dead as the one hidden in the secret cubby in my parents’ home. A product of yesterday, and nothing more.

I’ll have lost Valery completely by now, if it was even her at all, so I linger in the store and riffle through the books, knocking years of dust off them. A copy of Shakespeare’s sonnets catches my eye. I read it over and over as a child, stealing it from the stash of contraband in my parents’ room. We had a few books, and if my parents minded my reading them, they certainly never said anything. I understand now how precious they were, and more than anything I want to take this volume with me. I couldn’t protect those books. I couldn’t protect my parents, but I can have a piece of them again.

“Not many young people are interested in books these days,” a raspy voice says. A face, lined and gaunt, follows the words, appearing in the doorway. The woman limps over, resting against a cane, and I notice that one of her feet is made of steel and wood.

“My parents had it,” I tell her. “I read it as a child.”

“Quite the luxury,” she says. “Books and having the time to teach your child to read.”

I pause, not sure how to respond. This conversation is heading in a dangerous direction. Many of the Icebox’s inhabitants are refugees, but that doesn’t make it any safer to admit I am one myself.

“Keep it,” she offers.

“I couldn’t,” I say. “Not without paying.”

The shop owner seems to grow an inch at the mention of payment. She can’t do much business selling radios that don’t work and books that can’t be read.

“I don’t have any money though,” I admit.

“Well,” she mutters, shaking her head, “at least you can read.”

“I have this,” I say, unlatching an earring. I only offer her one, because I know the emeralds in the pair are real and because I know the boys will be furious if I come back missing both. We’ve been hawking our possessions strategically and we’ve been saving the earrings until we have a plan for getting back to Arras and need real money.

“You’re either proud or an idiot,” she says, but she accepts the earring. “Look around, take some more of this junk off my hands. An emerald for a book isn’t a fair trade, child.”

I pocket the sonnets and consider asking for the radio, but purely out of nostalgia. It will do us no good, and I’ll be forced to abandon it as soon as we are on the move again. Instead I trail my fingers along the dusty spines of books. The books my parents kept were full of stories and poetry, but many of the books on these shelves recall the history of Earth. It’s the information I’ve been seeking. This woman has been collecting it for me, safeguarding the information against the entropy that envelops so much of this world. I wonder how many generations of owners stacked these shelves and traded the past before her.

The tinkle of a bell interrupts my thoughts, and I turn quickly to the door to see who has entered. In my haste, I knock a few books off the shelf, but the old woman has vanished into the recesses of the shop, so I retrieve them quickly before she notices. Jost appears at my side, looking decidedly displeased.

“What was that about?” he demands, not bothering to bend down and help me.

“Valery. I couldn’t let her disappear,” I say, stacking the books neatly. “But I lost her, and this was the only shop open—”

He stops me. “Your earring.” My hand flies to my naked earlobe, but it’s too late to cover it up.

“I traded it,” I admit in a low voice, but inwardly I gather up strength and stand to face him.

“For what?” he says. His voice is soft, but it isn’t kind.

“A book,” I say. “More than one actually. Who knows what we might find out.”

Jost grabs the books and slams them down on the shelf, and as he does he knocks a stack of papers to the floor. “Have some respect,” I hiss as I snatch the brittle pages, but they aren’t just paper. They’re Bulletins full of old news.

He starts in on respect and scaring him to death and throwing away resources, but I only hear snatches of what he says because I’m reading the headline neatly printed in block letters on faded, yellow paper:

HOPE AGAINST TYRANNY:

SCIENCE

OFFERS AN

END TO WAR

May 1, 1943—Preliminary studies termed the Cypress Project indicate the end of World War II is in sight. According to sources within the project, investors visited the laboratories for a presentation on the viability of the looms, which have been funded by twelve allied nations in cooperation with generous contributions from individuals in the private sector. The visit was necessary to secure permission to proceed to human trials of the project.

The war departments of all twelve nations involved with the Cypress Project have issued a call for healthy young women between the ages of sixteen and thirty years to serve as test pilots on the looms. For the first time in American history, chosen women will be considered as enlisted troops in the U.S. Army.

But it’s the photograph that I can’t process: a scientist demonstrating on a loom for a group of men who wear ties and horn-rimmed glasses. Hardly anyone in Arras wears glasses these days, thanks to renewal tech, but aside from the spectacles, most of the men in the clipping could pass as current officials in Arras. One in particular. Maybe Jost is right, and I’ve lost my mind. Maybe I’m seeing ghosts.

Jost shakes me, abandoning his rant to get my attention. “Ad!”

I don’t know what to say, so I hold the paper out to him. He takes it and the color drains from his face.

I’m not the only one seeing ghosts.

“How can that be possible?” he asks me.

“A coincidence?” I offer, but no part of me believes it.

“A family member?”

I nod, because even if I can’t accept these explanations, I can’t comprehend what Cormac Patton’s picture is doing in a Bulletin clipping from Earth that has to be almost two hundred years old. The man looks like him though, right down to his smooth jaw and dark eyes.

“Find anything?” the shop owner asks, hobbling toward us. She bobs her head in greeting at Jost but doesn’t seem excited to see another poor young person.

“Can you tell us about this?” Jost asks, passing her the paper to inspect. Her eyes slit in concentration but then familiarity dawns in her expression and she leans back on her cane.

“The Cypress Project,” she says with a sigh. “That’s all.”

“That’s all?” I repeat. The Cypress Project. I’ve never heard of it, although I know of Cypress, Arras’s capital metro. The name sends a tingle slithering through my skin.

“Your parents taught you to read,” she says, annoyance seeping into her gravelly voice, “but they didn’t bother to tell you how it happened?”

“You remember it, though?” I ask. “The Cypress Project?”

“Of course,” she says. “You don’t forget that. You don’t forget being left behind.”

“Tell us,” I say, taking her hand gently. “I want to know too.”

Her eyes soften, but then they fall to our hands, clasped tenuously together.

“Get out!” she howls, wrenching her hand from mine like I’ve bitten her.

I fall back against Jost in surprise and his arm circles protectively around me.

“Please!” I beg. “What do you mean ‘left behind’?”

“What the Guild of Twelve Nations did was reprehensible,” she seethes, raising her cane and pointing it at us. “But your kind, what you do, that’s worse. Rebellion and violence—an endless cycle. The Kairos Agenda is unwelcome here. I want no part of it. I’ve lost enough already. Get out!”

Jost pulls me to the door, but I can’t tear my eyes from the accusation blazing on her face. It is as though she knows who I am, what I can do, but how is that possible? Bringing my hand up to push Jost’s arm off mine, ready to turn and flee, I see what she saw. The same mark that caught the girl’s attention last week. A mark so I’ll remember who I am. A mark that told her who I was. I raise the hourglass techprint to her as Jost drags me to the exit.

“This?” I ask. “Is this it?”

“You’ve been marked, girl,” she snarls. “And I’ll have no part of it.” We’re out the door now, and as she clutches the entrance’s frame, her shouts echo against the buildings around us. “Give me that paper back.”

Jost shoves it into his pocket, and we dart away. I don’t feel guilty for taking it. She got fair payment. She only wants to keep it from me, but she doesn’t know who I am.

No more than I do apparently.

The shop owner limps onto the sidewalk hurling obscenities at us as we go, and calling, “Thief!” But no one this close to the grey market cares. Not at this hour. Until someone does—a figure appearing from the fog cast about us.

“Hold up there,” he says. “What’s old Greta screeching about?”