The Archived

TWENTY-TWO

I GASP AND JERK MY HAND BACK, but it’s too late.

Ben’s brown eyes—Mom’s eyes, warm and bright and wide—blink once, twice.

And he sits up.

“Mackenzie?” he asks.

The ache in my chest explodes into panic. My pulse shatters the calmness I know I need to show.

“Hi, Ben,” I choke out, the shock making it hard to breathe, to speak.

My brother looks around at the room—the stacked drawers reaching to the ceiling, the tables and dust and oddness—then swings his legs over the edge of the shelf.

“What happened?” And then, before I can answer: “Where’s Mom? Where’s Dad?”

He hops down from the shelf, sniffles. His forehead crinkles. “I want to go home.”

My hand reaches for his.

“Then let’s go home, Ben.”

He moves to take my hand, but stops. Looks around again.

“What’s going on?” he asks, his voice unsteady.

“Come on, Ben,” I say.

“Where am I?” The black at the center of his eyes wobbles. No. “How did I get here?” He takes a small step back. Away from me.

“It’s going to be okay,” I say.

When his eyes meet mine, they are tinged with panic. “Tell me how I got here.” Confusion. “This isn’t funny.” Distress.

“Ben, please,” I say softly. “Let’s just go home.”

I don’t know what I’m thinking. I can’t think. I look at him, and all I know is that I can’t leave him here. He’s Ben, and I pinkie-swore a thousand times I’d never let anything hurt him. Not the ghosts under the bed or the bees in the yard or the shadows in his closet.

“I don’t understand.” His voice catches. His irises are darkening. “I don’t…I was…”

This isn’t supposed to happen. He didn’t wake himself. He’s not supposed to—

“Why…” he starts.

I step toward him, kneeling so I can take his hands. I squeeze them. I try to smile.

“Ben—”

“Why aren’t you telling me what happened?”

His eyes hover on me, the black spreading too fast, blotting out the warm, bright brown. All I see in those eyes is the reflection of my face, caught between pain and fear and an unwillingness to believe that he’s slipping. Owen didn’t slip. Why does Ben have to?

This isn’t fair.

Ben begins to cry, hitching sobs.

I pull him into a hug.

“Be strong for me,” I whisper in his hair, but he doesn’t answer. I tighten my grip as if I can hold the Ben I know—knew—in place, can keep him with me; but he pushes me away. A jarring strength for such a small body. I stumble, and another pair of arms catches me.

“Get back,” orders the man holding me. Roland.

His eyes are leveled on Ben, but the words are meant for me. He pushes me out of his way and approaches my brother. No, no, no, I think, the word playing in my head like a metronome.

What have I done?

“I didn’t…”

“Stay back,” Roland growls, then kneels in front of Ben.

That’s not Ben, I think. Looking at the History—its eyes black, where Ben’s were brown.

Not Ben, I think, clutching my hands around my ribs to keep from shaking.

Not Ben, as Roland puts a hand on my brother’s shoulder and says something too soft for me to hear.

Not Ben. Metal glints in Roland’s other hand and he plunges a toothless gold key into Not Ben’s chest and turns it.

Not Ben doesn’t cry out, but simply sinks. His eyes fall shut and his head falls forward, and his body slumps toward the ground but never hits because Roland catches him, scoops him up, and returns him to his drawer. The pain goes out of his face, the tension goes out of his limbs. His body relaxes against the shelf, as if settling into sleep.

Roland slides the door shut, the dark devouring Not Ben’s body. I hear the cabinet lock, and something in me cracks.

Roland doesn’t look at me as he pulls a notepad from his pocket.

“I’m sorry, Miss Bishop.”

“Roland,” I plead. “Don’t do this.” He scratches something onto the paper. “I’m sorry,” I say. “I’m sorry, I’m sorry, but please don’t—”

“I don’t have a choice,” he says as the card on the front of Ben’s drawer turns red. The mark of the restricted stacks.

No, no, no come the metronome cries, each one causing a crack that splinters me.

I take a step forward.

“Stay where you are,” orders Roland, and whether it’s his tone or the fact that the cracks hurt so much I can’t breathe, I do as he says. Before my eyes, the shelves begin to shift. Ben’s red-marked drawer pulls backward with a hush until it’s swallowed by the wall. The surrounding drawers rearrange themselves, gliding to fill the gap.

Ben’s drawer is gone.

I sink to my knees on the old wood floor.

“Get up,” orders Roland.

My body feels sluggish, my lungs heavy, my pulse too slow. I haul myself to my feet, and Roland grabs my arm, forcing me out of the room into an empty hall.

“Who opened the drawer, Miss Bishop?”

I won’t rat out Carmen. She only wanted to help.

“I did,” I say.

“You don’t have a key.”

“‘Two ways through any lock,’” I answer numbly.

“I warned you to stay away,” growls Roland. “I warned you not to draw attention. I warned you what happens to Keepers who lose their post. What were you thinking?”

“I wasn’t,” I say. My throat hurts, as if I’ve been screaming. “I just had to see him—”

“You woke a History.”

“I didn’t mean to—”

“He’s not a goddamn puppy, Mackenzie, and he’s not your brother. That thing is not your brother, and you know that.”

The cracks are spreading beneath my skin.

“How can you not know that?” Roland continues. “Honestly—”

“I thought he wouldn’t slip!”

He stops. “What?”

“I thought…that maybe…he wouldn’t slip.”

Roland brings his hands down on my shoulders, hard. “Every. History. Slips.”

Not Owen, says a voice inside me.

Roland lets go. “Turn in your list.”

If there’s any wind left in my lungs, that order knocks it out.

“What?”

“Your list.”

If she proves herself unfit in any way, she will forfeit the position.

And if she proves unfit, you, Roland, will remove her yourself.

“Roland…”

“You can collect it tomorrow morning, when you return for your hearing.”

He promised me he wouldn’t. I trusted…but what have I done with his trust? I can see the pain in his eyes. I force one shaking hand into my pocket and pass him the folded paper. He takes it and motions toward the door, but I can’t will myself to leave.

“Miss Bishop.”

My feet are nailed to the floor.

“Miss Bishop.”

This isn’t happening. I just wanted to see Ben. I just needed—

“Mackenzie,” says Roland. I force myself forward.

I follow him through the maze of stacks. There is no warmth and there is no peace. With every step, every breath, the cracks deepen, spread. Roland leads me through the atrium to the antechamber and the front desk, where Elliot sits diligently.

When Roland turns to look at me, anger has dulled into something sad. Tired.

“Go home,” he says. I nod stiffly. He turns and vanishes back into the stacks.

Elliot glances up from his work, a vague curiosity in the arch of his brows.

I can feel myself breaking.

I barely make it through the door and into the Narrows before I shatter.

It hurts.

Worse than anything. Worse than noise or touch or knives. I don’t know how make it stop. I have to make it stop.

I can’t breathe.

I can’t—

“Mackenzie?”

I turn to find Owen standing in the hall. His blue eyes hangs on me, the smallest wrinkle between his brows.

“What’s wrong?” he asks.

Everything about him is calm, quiet, level. Pain twists into anger. I push him, hard.

“Why haven’t you slipped?” I snap.

Owen doesn’t fight back, not even reflexively, doesn’t try to escape, the slightest clenching of his jaw the only sign of emotion. I want to push him over. I want to make him slip. He has to. Ben did.

“Why, Owen?”

I push him again. He takes a step away.

“What makes you so special? What makes you so different? Ben slipped. He slipped right away, and you’ve been here for days and you haven’t slipped at all and it isn’t fair.”

I shove him again, and his back hits the wall at the end of the corridor.

“It isn’t fair!”

My hands dig into his shirt. The quiet is like static in my head, filling the space. It is not enough to erase the pain. I am still breaking.

“Calm down.” Owen wraps his hands around mine, pinning them to his chest. The quiet thickens, pours into my head.

My face feels wet, but I don’t remember crying. “It’s not fair.”

“I’m sorry,” he says. “Please calm down.”

I want the pain to stop. I need it to stop. I won’t be able to claw my way back up. There is all this anger and this guilt and—

And then Owen kisses my shoulder. “I’m so sorry about Ben.”

The quiet builds like a wave, drowning anger and pain.

“I’m sorry, Mackenzie.”

I stiffen, but as his lips press against my skin, the silence flares in my head, blotting something out. Heat ripples through my body, pricking my senses as the quiet deadens my thoughts. He kisses my throat, my jaw. Each time his lips brush my skin, the heat and silence blossom side by side and spread, drowning a little bit of the pain and anger and guilt, leaving only warmth and want and quiet in their place. His lips brush my cheek, and then he pulls back, his pale eyes leveled cautiously on mine, his mouth barely a breath from mine. When he touches me, there is nothing but touch. There is no thought of wrong and no thought of loss and no thought of anything, because thoughts can’t get through the static.

“I’m sorry, M.”

M. That drags me under. That one little word he can’t possibly understand. M. Not Mackenzie. Not Mac. Not Bishop. Not Keeper.

I want that. I need that. I cannot be the girl who broke the rules and woke her dead brother and ruined everything.…

I close the gap. Pull Owen’s body flush with mine.

His mouth is soft but strong, and when he deepens the kiss, the quiet spreads, filling every space in my mind, washing over me. Drowning me.

And then his mouth is gone, and his hands let go of mine. Everything comes back, too loud. I pull his body against mine, feel the impossibly careful crush of his mouth as it steals the air from my lungs, steals the thoughts from my head.

Owen steps forward, urging my body against the wall, pushing me with his kisses and the quiet that comes with his touch. I am letting it all wash over me, letting it wash away the questions and doubts, the Histories and the key and the ring and everything else, until I am just M against his lips, his body. M reflected in the pale blue of his eyes until he closes them and kisses me deeper, and then I am nothing.