Altered

SEVEN

IN MY SLEEP, I FACE THE GHOSTS that come for me. A wave of Remnants with Amie in the middle, reaching for me. I can only watch as Amie is swept into the crowd of soulless monsters. A new figure emerges where she vanished: a woman with wrists dripping red. The Remnants are gone now. I open my mouth to scream but no sound comes. Blood pools at her feet as she dissolves slowly into a puddle and then another woman rises from it. She’s naked, a long scar marring her belly, and her hair on fire. My mother. She points to me accusingly. Her eyes hollow. Dead. Because of me. I will the dream to change, coaxing my mind to wake up, reminding myself this isn’t real. But when I open my eyes, I’m at a bar, a whiskey perched in front of me. Next to it rests a tiny card. I lift it to read the inscription.

Drink me.

I look around, wondering where this dream has taken me. The place is familiar, although it lacks the color of the real location I encountered in my travels in Arras. Here the bar isn’t rich mahogany but a slab of ebony in a gray world. My eyes fall on the swinging doors. He’ll arrive any minute.

Cormac. The worst nightmare of all. But it’s not him. He’s stockier than Cormac with the same easy swagger, but his face is shielded by a fedora cocked too low.

Even as I fight the dream, I drift in and out of consciousness until light breaks into the room. Suddenly Jost’s arms are around me, waking me.

“I was dreaming,” I murmur.

“Nightmares?”

“Yes.”

His arms tighten around me, coming to rest in a cross on my chest. I feel the steady thump of his heart against my back. “You can rest now.”

I relax into the security of his embrace, but I don’t sleep. We’ve been on the surface barely over a week, and I’ve discovered so much. Too much. Seeing Valery, which I am increasingly sure was not my imagination. Being attacked by my mother. The strange experience in the Old Curiosity Shop. Cormac must have a hand in it all, but to what end? Does he hope to scare me back to Arras?

The events of the day crowd my mind, each bringing a question that I can’t answer. Sleep becomes impossible while knowing my mother is locked somewhere in the safe house. I replay the attack and rewind farther and farther into my memories of her and my father.

My parents were never risk takers. They’d hinted at rebellion in whispered conversations, but the only openly anti-Guild action they ever took was to try to keep me from being retrieved. If there was more to their treachery, it was as hidden as the mysterious tunnels under our house. I wish I could talk to my mother or that my father was alive to direct me. I resented when they got involved with academy issues or offered unwanted advice about classmates. Now I ache for their guidance.

I close my eyes, trying to wash the memory of them from my mind, but they persist in the space between sleep and wakefulness. My parents were affectionate. Kind to each other. But what I remember most is how my father adored my mother. How he tried to fill the void of the third child the Guild would not grant or remedy the scars of her thankless job. Now she’s a monster created by the Guild. I squeeze my eyelids tighter, willing myself to sleep, but images from home haunt me. Love notes. Morning routines. My mother pinning up her hair. I catch a glimpse of an hourglass scar behind her ear and startle awake, but close my eyes again quickly lest Jost wants to talk.

Did I imagine it? Have I added the scar to my memory as I try to understand who my mother was, or have I simply overlooked it for years?

My fingers touch my own scar. It feels the same as ever—slightly raised, but hardly perceptible. And yet it throbs, announcing me for who I am. My father’s words linger in my mind—remember who you are—but I’m no closer now to understanding who I am than I was that night.

As each second ticks by, I see the lies surrounding me. The secrets everyone kept from me. When did my parents dig those tunnels and why didn’t they tell me? How did Enora upload the program that led me to the truth on the digifile? Who gave her access? On Earth, the darkness is everywhere, and I’m trapped in it. How can I discover who I am when my world is built of secrets and shadows?

I only know one thing: I’m no safer here than I was in Arras. That’s one message Cormac’s made clear. He knows where I am, and he’s still pulling the strings. So if Kincaid is the most powerful man on Earth, I’m going straight to his compound. Enora told me once to make allies. She couldn’t have been more right.

We travel into the mountains the next day in a death trap Dante calls a crawler, which looks like a cage with wheels. Kincaid’s estate rests on several acres located comfortably outside the Icebox but still under the Interface. Far enough away to supervise his business there while still having room to wrap an intimidating perimeter fence around his land. And though I’ve yet to meet him, our first glimpse of his home colors my impression of what kind of man he is. The estate is extravagant in the worst sense of the word. Kincaid must be a man who tries hard to impress if this is where he lives. We can’t drive close enough to the estate to park the crawler there, so Dante stops outside one of the long, winding pathways to let us out. My mother is sedated and bound in the back—for our safety, according to Dante.

The opulence of Kincaid’s estate takes me by surprise. I shouldn’t have expected it to be any different, based on the Sunrunner’s safe house in the grey market, but it pulls at me—the luxury off-putting in a world where there’s not enough food to feed the population. It’s nearly an entire metro unto itself, and I can’t help thinking it puts even the compound of the Coventry to shame. In the center, the main house governs the landscape with its red-tiled roof and twin spires watching over the grounds. There are balconies that overlook the magnificent spectacle below. Palm trees and shrubbery line the walkways, and everywhere I turn faces frozen in marble stare back at me, locked in a permanent display of horror and beauty for those deemed worthy to enter the estate.

Pillars loom overhead, creating an artificial lighting system that mimics the sun. It’s bright and warm, and the light sparkles off the water in the pools and fountains, nearly blinding me. But tucked behind the stately buildings and manicured gardens, a series of smokestacks billows against the Interface.

“Jax will show you in,” Dante says, gesturing to a lanky boy waiting at the top of the stairs. “I’m going to see to our prisoner.”

“I want to see her. I need to talk to her,” I say as Dante turns away. I have so many questions for her. No matter what the Guild has done to her, she might still have answers. And I miss her.

“I promise you can later, but right now she needs to be secured for—”

“Our safety,” I finish for him.

“Exactly,” Dante says through tight lips.

The friendliness Dante exhibited toward Jost and me on our first meeting has cooled. He brought us here, starting out at first light, and he barely spoke to us as we took the twisting roads through the mountains to reach Kincaid. Maybe my talent unnerves him, but I suspect it’s something more.

“Welcome,” Jax calls as he bounces down the steps.

“Kincaid is expecting us,” Dante says.

“I’ll take care of them,” Jax says, “and I have a message for you once you’re done, uh…” He stares at my mother in Dante’s arms, undoubtedly wondering why we’ve brought a Remnant onto the estate.

“I’ll find you later,” Dante says, carrying my mother away.

Jax is so skinny he looks years younger than Jost or Erik. But his eyes are surrounded by wrinkles, and they light up when he grins widely as he sticks his hand out to shake each of ours, repeating our names as we introduce ourselves—the greeting so easy and natural that I can’t help but relax a little for the first time since yesterday’s crazy events.

“I had them put some drinks in the assembly room for you,” Jax tells us. “Kincaid is in a business meeting, but he’ll join you at lunch.”

“What’s that?” I ask, pointing to the smokestacks.

“Power plant. It hosts the grids for the estate and the Icebox,” Jax says.

“That’s where you store the solar energy you collect?”

“It’s a bit more complicated than that. We utilize a hybrid photovoltaic system with a coal-based generator that—”

“So basically it’s where the power comes from?” Erik stops him.

“Yeah,” Jax says with a laugh. We follow him into the main building, trailing behind as he chatters about the locations of toilets and how to call a servant. But I’m mesmerized by the statues that lurk in every corner and the detailed portraits that hang from the carved wooden panels. Tapestry after tapestry with precise, intricate embroidery chills my blood. There are faces everywhere, frozen in time, watching me as I enter the house. Between the patterns and colors and ornamentation, my head begins to hurt. The assembly room contains a variety of seating choices, arranged in clusters. Against the far wall, a tall hearth, at least twice my height, lords over the room. My feet sink into the plush, woven rug as I melt into a sofa. The sofa is very elegant and very small, and I perch on it uncomfortably. Jax excuses himself, leaving the three of us alone in the grand room.

“Drink?” Erik asks, lifting a crystal decanter toward us.

“No, thank you,” Jost says, and his formality irks me. Will we ever move past this awkwardness between the two of them?

“Not at the moment,” I tell Erik.

“If it’s poisoned, at least you’ll be rid of me.” Erik shrugs, nonplussed by our refusal, pouring a bit of the amber liquid into a tumbler. He shifts back, draping his arm around the sofa and throwing a leg across the seat. He looks at ease in this setting, not at all put off by the oppressive grandeur of our surroundings.

“So should we take a look around?” Erik asks a few minutes later, depositing his empty glass on the table.

I scoot a coaster under it, afraid to mar the pristine wood. Something tells me this Kincaid fellow would notice.

“This place has to be crawling with security,” Jost points out. “Maybe we should wait a day or two before we label ourselves troublemakers.”

With their cards on the table, the brothers glare at each other and then inevitably turn to me—tie-breaker extraordinaire.

“Jost is right,” I agree, although I hate to take sides. “And they’re probably listening to us now. I bet we wouldn’t get far.”

“Well that only leaves the elephant in the room then,” Erik says. “Your mom.”

Suddenly I want to jump up and go exploring. Anything to avoid this conversation, but I can’t ignore it forever. “So my mom’s a Remnant.”

It’s liberating to say it out loud, as though I’ve taken the first step in accepting the fact.

“Yes, but what is a Remnant exactly?” Jost asks. “How did the Guild do this?”

“I interacted with them. They’re as smart as we are, maybe even more cunning, like they’ve been tuned into some primal frequency,” Erik says.

“But how?” Jost’s question feels more desperate this time, and I think of his wife.

“We know the Guild can remap and alter. They did it to Enora,” I remind him, taking his hand.

“They seem to have perfected their technique,” Jost mutters.

I frown. He’s right. Enora’s alteration backfired horribly, resulting in her suicide, but the Remnants seem fully functional. “Listen, there’s something I haven’t told you,” I whisper. I relay the story of the clear cubes tucked away in storage at the Coventry.

“What do you think they are?” Jost asks.

“Souls,” I say without hesitation. “Dante told us they remove the Remnants’ souls, and the strands I found were too thin to be full people. I knew that then, but Loricel told me that people who die before they’re ripped lose part of their strand. I think it’s the key to understanding this. Spinsters rip people so the Guild can reuse them.”

“So they separate the soul from the body?” Jost muses. “But why? It seems like a lot of work for no good reason.”

“Take Enora. They didn’t remove her soul, so it didn’t work.”

“But why wouldn’t they remove Enora’s soul if it was going to cause a problem?”

“I can’t say exactly, but if I had to guess I think it comes back to something Loricel told me. Cormac was scared to do it to me. That’s why they tested it on Enora, and when it backfired, they couldn’t be sure I wouldn’t have a similar reaction,” I tell them.

“But they were planning to map you,” Erik says.

“No,” I say slowly as the pieces start to fit together. “They’d already mapped me. Cormac was positive they could splice my skill set into another Spinster, someone ready and willing to do what they asked. Someone who wouldn’t reject the manipulation.”

“Who?” Jost asks.

“My guess?” Erik says. He pours another drink and doesn’t meet our eyes. “Pryana. She’s as power hungry as Maela, but easier to control. That must have been why she was there that night.”

I’d forgotten Pryana was there on the night of our escape. Her presence had seemed so trivial. Pryana blamed me for her sister’s death after Maela, the manipulative Spinster in charge of our training, made an example of my refusal to rip a thread from Arras. Maela took out an entire academy instead, Pryana’s sister included, and ever since, Pryana had been eager to rise to a position of power over me. Of course she’s the Spinster Cormac would choose for the experiment. He enjoys making me squirm.

“But if the technology hadn’t worked, they’d have jeopardized you and her,” Jost says.

“They weren’t going to use me,” I remind him. “They were going to take Loricel’s skills. If they did that, they wouldn’t have to manipulate me much, only enough to make me Cormac’s perfect bride.”

“You know, I have to feel a little sorry for Cormac,” Jost says. “You are quite the catch.”

Erik raises his glass and says, “I’ll drink to that.”

For a second they grin at each other, but Jost’s smile slips first.

“How would they have done this? Who has the ability to alter a person’s personality and memories? Their skills?”

“Someone at one of the other Coventries,” I guess. “Loricel told me she once assisted with the memory wipe of the entire population of Arras for the Guild, which means others helped.”

“It’s hard enough to keep the entire Western Coventry in line. I can’t imagine how they managed it elsewhere,” Erik says.

“Maybe it’s not Spinsters,” I say. The memory of the mapping session niggles at my mind. It was overseen by a doctor. Loricel wasn’t present at all.

“Kincaid better have answers,” Erik mutters.

“And I promise you I do,” an airy voice proclaims. The man appears out of nowhere, but behind him I spy an elevator door sliding closed. As soon as it shuts, the panel blends in with the carved wooden wall. “But your guesses aren’t bad. You’re close, children.”

I ignore the “children” comment. As one of the Coventry’s newest recruits, I’ve dealt with my fair share of simpering adults. Instead I stand in greeting. “Kincaid, I presume.”

“Dear girl, you presume correctly!” His voice peaks, and Kincaid claps his hands in delight. He’s wearing a smoking jacket, tied at the waist, and what appear to be velvet house slippers. We’re not the only ones dressed down for the occasion.

“Care to tell us which part we were close on?” Erik asks, not bothering to straighten up.

Kincaid’s taut features slacken when he takes in Erik’s overly comfortable appearance, and I frown in disapproval. Erik gets the message and sits up.

“All in good time,” Kincaid assures us. He extends his arm to me. “But first, strangers must become friends.”