The Archived

TWENTY-SIX

I KNOW THIS ROOM.

The cold marble floors and the walls lined with ledgers and the long table sitting in the middle of the chamber: it’s the room where I became a Keeper. There are people seated behind that table now, just as there were then, but the faces—most of them, at least—have changed. And even as we gather, I can hear the distant sounds of the disruption spreading.

As Wesley and I stand waiting, my first thought is that I avoided one tribunal only to end up in another. This morning’s would have been deserved. This afternoon’s makes no sense.

Patrick sits behind the table, glowering, and I wonder how long he’s been making that face, waiting for us to walk in. It is, for a moment, absurdly funny, so much so that I’m worried I’ll laugh. Then I take in the rest of the scene, and the urge dies.

Lisa sits beside Patrick, her two-toned eyes unreadable.

Carmen is beside Lisa, clutching her notepad to her chest.

Roland heads the table, arms folded.

Two more people—the transfer, Elliot, and the woman with the braid, Beth—stand behind those seated. The expressions in the room range from contempt to curiosity.

I try to catch Roland’s eye, but he’s not watching me. He’s watching them. And it clicks: Wesley and I are not the only ones on trial.

Roland thinks it’s one of them who has been altering Histories. Is this his way of rounding up suspects? I scan their faces. Could one of these people be wreaking so much havoc? Why? I scour my memories of them, searching for one that lights up, any moment that makes one of them seem guilty. But Roland is like family; Lisa is sometimes stern but well-meaning; Carmen has confided in me, helped me, and kept my secrets. And little as I like Patrick, he’s a stickler for rules. But the two people standing behind them… I’ve never spoken to the woman with the braid, Beth, and I know nothing about Elliot other than the fact that he transferred in just before the trouble started. If I could spend some time with them, maybe I could tell—

A shoe knocks against mine, and a tiny flare of metal and drums cuts through my thoughts. I steal a glance at Wesley, whose forehead is crinkling with concern.

“I still can’t believe you told my mother we were going on a date,” I say under my breath.

“I told her we were going out. I couldn’t exactly be more specific, could I?” Wesley hisses back.

“That’s what lying’s for.”

“I try to keep lies to a minimum. Omissions are much less karmically damaging.”

Someone coughs, and I turn to find two more people sidling into the chamber, both in black. The woman is tall, with a ponytail of blue-black hair, and the man is made of caramel—gold skin and gold hair and a lazy smile. I’ve never seen them before, but there is something lovely and frightening and cold about them, and then I see the marks carved on their skin, just above their wrists. Three lines. They’re Crew.

“Miss Bishop,” says Patrick, and my attention snaps back to the table. “This is not your first infraction.”

I frown. “What infraction have I committed?”

“You let a History escape into the Outer,” he says, taking off his glasses and tossing them to the table.

“We also caught him,” says Wesley.

“Mr. Ayers, your record has been, before today, impeccable. Perhaps you should hold your tongue.”

“But he’s right,” I say. “What matters is that we caught the History.”

“He shouldn’t have gotten into the Coronado in the first place,” warns Lisa.

“He shouldn’t have gotten into the Narrows at all,” I answer. “I returned Jackson Lerner this week. So tell me how he managed to wake, find his way back into my territory, and avoid my list? A product of the disruption?”

Roland shoots me a look, but Patrick’s eyes flick down to his desk. “Jackson Lerner was a filing error.”

I bite back a laugh and he gives me a warning glare, as does Lisa. Carmen avoids eye contact and chews the side of her lip. She’s the one who took Jackson from me. She was supposed to return him.

“It was my…” she says softly, but Patrick doesn’t give her the chance.

“Miss Bishop, this was a filing error precipitated by your incorrect delivery of the History in question. Is it not true you returned Jackson Lerner to the Archive’s antechamber, as opposed to the Returns room?”

“I didn’t have a choice.”

“Jackson Lerner’s presence in the Narrows is not the most pressing issue,” says Lisa. “The fact that he was allowed into the Outer…” Allowed, she says, like we just stepped aside. Allowed, because we were still alive when he got through. “The fact that two Keepers were patrolling the same territory and yet neither—”

“Who authorized that, anyway?” Patrick cuts in.

“I did,” says Roland.

“Why not just give them a Crew key and a promotion while you’re at it?” snaps Patrick.

Da’s Crew key weighs a thousand pounds in my boot.

“The status of Miss Bishop’s territory necessitated immediate aid,” says Roland, meeting Patrick’s gaze. “Mr. Ayers’s territory has yet to experience any increase. Whereas the Coronado and surrounding areas are, for some reason, suffering the greatest damage during this disruption. The decision was well within my jurisdiction. Or have you forgotten, Patrick, that I am the highest-ranking official not only in this branch but in this state, and in this region, and, as such, your director?”

Roland? The highest ranking? With his red Chucks and his lifestyle magazines?

“How long have Miss Bishop and Mr. Ayers been paired?” asks Lisa.

Roland draws a watch from his pocket, a grim smile on his lips. “About three hours.”

The man in the corner laughs. The woman elbows him.

“Miss Bishop,” says Patrick, “are you aware that once a History reaches the Outer, it ceases to be the Keeper’s task, and becomes that of the Crew?” On the last word, he gestures to the two people in the corner. “Imagine the level of confusion, then, when the Crew arrives to dispatch the History, and finds it gone.”

“We did find some broken glass,” offers the man.

“Some police, too,” adds the woman.

“And a lady in a robe going off about vandals—”

“But no History.”

“Why is that?” asks Patrick, turning his attention to Wesley.

“When Lerner escaped, we went after him,” says Wes. “Tracked him through the hotel, caught him before he exited the building, and returned him.”

“You acted out of line.”

“We did our job.”

“No,” snaps Patrick, “you did the Crew’s job. You jeopardized human lives and your own in the process.”

“It was dangerous for you two to pursue the History once it reached the Outer,” amends Carmen. “You could have been killed. You’re both remarkable Keepers, but you’re not Crew.”

“Yet,” says Roland. “But they certainly demonstrated their potential.”

“You cannot be encouraging this,” says Patrick.

“I sanctioned their partnership. I should hope I wouldn’t do that without believing them capable.” Roland stands. “And to be frank, I can’t see how reprimanding Keepers for returning Histories is a good use of our time given the current…circumstances. And given those circumstances, I believe Mr. Ayers should be allowed to continue assisting Miss Bishop, so long as his own territory does not suffer for it.”

“That is not how the Archive functions—”

“Then for now the Archive must learn to be a little more flexible,” says Roland. “But,” he adds, “if any evidence presents itself that Mr. Ayers is unable to keep his own numbers down, the partnership will be dissolved.”

“Granted,” says Lisa.

“Very well,” says Carmen.

“Fine,” says Patrick.

Neither Elliot nor Beth have said a single thing, but now each gives a quiet affirmation.

“Dismissed,” says Roland. Lisa stands first and crosses to the doors, but when she opens them, another wave of noise—like metal shelves hitting stone floors—reaches us. She draws her key from her pocket—thin and gleaming gold, like the one Roland drove into Ben’s chest—and hurries toward the sound. Carmen, Elliot, and Beth follow. The Crew is already gone, and Wesley and I make our own way out; but Roland and Patrick stay behind.

As I approach the door, I hear Patrick say something to Roland that makes my blood run cold. “Since you are the director,” he mutters, “it’s my duty to inform you that I’ve asked for an assessment of Miss Bishop.”

He says it loud enough for me to hear, but I won’t give him the satisfaction of looking back. He’s just trying to rattle me.

“You will not bring Agatha into this, Patrick,” says Roland, more quietly, and when Patrick answers, it’s nothing more than a whisper.

I pick up my pace and force my eyes forward as I follow Wesley out. The numbers of Librarians in the atrium seems to have doubled in the last day. Halfway to the desk, we pass Carmen giving orders to a few unfamiliar faces, listing the wings, halls, rooms to be blacked out. When they peel away, I tell Wes to go on ahead, and stop to ask Carmen something.

“What does that mean, ‘blacking out’ rooms?”

She hesitates.

“Carmen, I already know what a disruption is. So what does this mean?”

She bites her lip. “It’s a last resort, Miss Bishop. If there’s too much noise, too many Histories waking, blacking out a room is the fastest way to kill the disturbance, but…”

“What is it?”

“It kills the content, too,” she says, looking around nervously. “Blacking out a room blacks out everything inside. It’s an irreversible process. It turns the space into a crypt. The more rooms we have to black out, the more content we lose. I’ve seen disruptions before, but never like this. Almost a fifth of the branch has already been lost.” She leans in. “At this rate, we could lose everything.”

My stomach drops. Ben is in this branch. Da is in this branch.

“What about the red stacks?” I press. “What about Special Collections?”

“Restricted stacks and Archive members are vaulted. Those shelves are more secure, so they’re holding for now, but—”

Just then, three more Librarians rush toward her, and Carmen turns away to speak with them. I think she’s forgotten me altogether, but as I turn to go, she glances my way and says only, “Be safe.”

“You look sick,” says Wes once we’re back in the Narrows.

I feel sick. Ben and Da are both in a branch that is crumbling, a branch that someone is trying to topple. And it’s my fault. I started the search. I dug up the past. I pushed for answers. Tipped the dominoes…

“Talk to me, Mac.”

I look at Wesley. I don’t like lying to him. It’s different lying to Mom and Dad and Lyndsey. Those are big, blanket lies—easy, all-or-nothing lies. But with Wes, I have to sift out what I can say from what I can’t, and by can’t I mean won’t, because I could. I could tell him. I tell myself I would tell him, if Roland hadn’t warned me not to. I would tell him everything. Even about Owen. I tell myself I would. I wonder if it’s true.

“I’ve got a bad feeling,” I say. “That’s all.”

“Oh, I don’t see why you would. It’s not like they just put us on trial, or our branch is falling down, or your territory is out of control in a seriously suspicious way.” He sobers. “Frankly, Mac, I’d be worried if you had a good feeling about any of this.” He glances back at the Archive door. “What’s going on?”

I shrug. “No idea.”

“Then let’s find out.”

“Wesley, in case you haven’t noticed, I can’t afford to get in any more trouble right now.”

“I have to admit, I never pegged you as such a delinquent.”

“What can I say? I’m the best of the worst. Now, let the Librarians do their job, and we’ll do ours. If you can handle another day of it.”

He smiles, but it seems thinner. “It’ll take more than an overflowing Narrows, an escaped History, a glass table, and a tribunal to get rid of me. Pick you up at nine?”

“Nine it is.”

Wes veers off into the Narrows toward his own home. I watch him go, then squeeze my eyes shut. What a mess, I think, just before a kiss lands like a drop of water on the slope of my neck.

I shiver, spin, and slam the body into the nearest wall. The quiet floods in where my hand meets his throat. Owen raises a brow.

“Hello, M.”

“You should know better,” I say, “than to sneak up on someone.” I slowly release my hold on him.

Owen’s hands drift up to touch mine, then past them to my wrists. In one fluid motion, I’m the one against the wall, my hands pinned loosely overhead. The thrill of warmth washes over my skin, while the quiet courses under it, through my head.

“If I remember correctly,” he says, “that’s exactly how I saved you.”

I bite my lip as he leans in to kiss my shoulder, my throat—heat and silence thrumming through me, both welcome.

“I didn’t need saving,” I whisper. He smiles against my skin, his body pressing flush with mine. I wince.

“What’s wrong?” he asks, lips hovering beneath my jaw.

“Long day,” I say, swallowing.

He pulls back a fraction, but doesn’t stop brushing me with kisses, leaving a trail of them up my cheek to my ear as his fingers tangle through mine above my head, tighten. The quiet gets stronger, blotting out thoughts. I want to escape into it. I want to vanish into it.

“Who was the boy?” he whispers.

“He’s a friend.”

“Ah,” Owen says slowly.

“No, not ‘ah,’” I say defensively. “Just a friend.”

Willingly, necessarily just a friend. With Wesley, there is too much to lose. But with Owen, there is no future to be lost by giving in. No future at all. Only escape. Doubt whispers through the quiet. Why does he care? Is it jealousy that flickers across his face? Curiosity? Or something else? It is so easy for me to read people and so hard for me to read him. Is this how people are supposed to look at each other? Seeing only faces, and none of the things behind?

He can read me well enough to know that I don’t want to talk about Wesley, because he lets it drop, wraps me in silence and kisses, draws me into the dark of the alcove where we sat before, and guides me to the wall. His hands brush over my skin too gingerly. I pull his body to mine despite the ache in my ribs. I kiss him, relishing the way the quiet deepens when his body is pressed to mine, the way I can blot thoughts out simply by pulling him closer, kissing him harder. What beautiful control.

“M,” he moans against my neck. I feel myself blush. In all the strangeness, there’s something about the way he looks at me, the way he touches me, that feels so incredibly…normal. Boy-and-girl and smiles-and-sideways-glances and whispers-and-butterflies normal. And I want that so, so badly. I can feel the scratch of letters in my pocket, now constant. I leave the list where it is.

A faint smile tugs at the corner of Owen’s mouth as it hovers above mine. We are close enough to share breath, the quiet dizzying but not quite strong enough. Not yet. Thoughts keep trickling through my head, warnings and doubts, and I want to silence them. I want to disappear.

As I run my fingers through his hair and pull his face to mine, I wonder if Owen is escaping too. If he can disappear into my touch, forget what he is and what he’s lost.

I am blotting out pieces of my life. I am blotting out everything but this. But him. I exhale as he brushes against me, my body beginning to uncurl, to loosen at his fingertips. I am letting him wash over me, drown every part of me that I don’t need in order to kiss or to listen or to smile or to want. This is what I want. This is my drug. The pain, both skin-deep and deeper, is finally gone. Everything is gone but the quiet.

And the quiet is wonderful.

“Why do you smoke, Da?”

“We all do things we shouldn’t, things that harm us.”

“

I

don’t.”

“You’re still young. You will.”

“But I don’t understand. Why hurt yourself?”

“It won’t make sense to you.”

“Try me.”

You frown. “To escape.”

“Explain.”

“I smoke to escape from myself.”

“Which part?”

“Every part. It’s bad for me and I know it and I still do it, and in order for me to do it and enjoy it, I have to not think about it. I can think about it before and after, but while I’m doing it, I stop thinking. I stop being. I am not your Da, and I am not Antony Bishop. I am no one. I am nothing. Just smoke and peace. If I think about what I’m doing, then I think about it being wrong and I can’t enjoy it, so I stop thinking. Does it make sense now?”

“No. Not at all.”

“I had a dream last night.…” says Owen, rolling the iron ring from Regina’s note over his knuckles. “Well, I don’t know if it was night or day.”

We’re sitting on the floor. I’m leaning against him, and he has one arm draped over my shoulder, our fingers loosely intertwined. The quiet in my head is like a sheet, a buffer. It is water, but instead of floating, like Wes taught me, I am drowning in it. This is a thing like peace but deeper. Smoother.

“I didn’t know Histories could dream,” I say, wincing when it comes out a little harsh, making Histories into an it instead of a him or you.

“Of course,” he says. “Why do you think they—we—wake up? I imagine it’s because of dreams. Because they’re so vivid, or so urgent, that we cannot sleep.”

“What did you dream about?”

He navigates the iron ring to his palm, folds his fingers over it.

“The sun,” he says. “I know it seems impossible, to dream of light in a place as dark as this. But I did.”

He rests his chin on my hair. “I was standing on the roof,” he says. “And the world below was water, glittering in the sun. I couldn’t leave, there was no way off, so I stood and waited. So much time seemed to pass—whole days, weeks—but it never got dark, and I kept waiting for something—someone—to come.” The fingers of his free hand trace patterns on my arm. “And then you came.”

“What happened then?” I ask.

He doesn’t speak.

“Owen?” I press, craning to look at him.

Sadness flickers like a current through his eyes. “I woke up.”

He pockets the iron ring and produces the iron bar and the second piece of the story, the one I handed him before the trial.

“Where did you find this?” he asks.

“Under a marble rose,” I say. “Your sister picked some clever hiding places.”

“The Even Rose,” he says softly. “That was the name of the café back then. And Regina was always clever.”

“Owen, I’ve looked everywhere, and I still haven’t found the ending. Where could it be?”

“It’s a large building. Larger than it looks. But the pieces of the story seem to fit where they’ve been hidden. The Even Rose fragment spoke of climbing out of stones. The fragment from the roof spoke of reaching the top, battling the monsters. The ending will fit its place, too. The hero will win the battle—he always does—and then…”

“He’ll go home,” I finish quietly. “You said it was a journey. A quest. Isn’t the point of a quest is to get somewhere? To get home?”

He kisses my hair. “You’re right.” He twirls the trinket piece. “But where is home?”

Could it be 3F? The Clarkes lived there once. Could the ending to Regina’s story be hidden in their home? In mine?

“I don’t know, M,” he whispers. “Maybe Regina won this last game.”

“No,” I say. “She hasn’t won yet.”

And neither has the rogue Librarian. Owen’s quiet calms my panic and clears my head. The more I think about it, the more I realize that there’s no way this disruption is just a distraction from the dark secrets of the Coronado’s past. It’s something more. There was no need to shatter the peace of the Archive after erasing evidence in both the Archive and the Outer. No, I’m missing something; I’m not seeing the whole picture.

I disentangle myself from Owen and turn to face him, forfeiting the quiet to ask a question I should have asked long ago. “Did you know a man named Marcus Elling?”

A small crease forms between Owen’s eyes. “He lived on our floor. He was quiet but always kind to us. Whatever happened to him?”

I frown. “You don’t know?”

Owen’s face is blank. “Should I?”

“What about Eileen Herring? Or Lionel Pratt?”

“The names sound familiar. They lived in the building, right?”

“Owen, they all died. A few months after Regina.” He just stares at me, confused. My heart sinks. If he can’t remember anything about the murders, about his own death on the roof…I thought I was protecting him from the Archive, but what if I’m too late? What if someone’s already taken the memories I need? “What do you remember?”

“I…I didn’t want to leave. Right after Regina died, my parents packed up everything and ran away, and I couldn’t do it. If there was any part of her left in the Coronado, I couldn’t leave her. That’s the last thing I can remember. But that was days after she died. Maybe a week.”

“Owen, you died five months after your sister.”

“That’s not possible.”

“I’m sorry, but it’s true. And I’ve got to find out what happened between her death and yours.” I drag myself to my feet, pain rippling through my ribs. It’s late, it’s been a hell of a day, and I have to meet Wesley in the morning.

Owen stands too, and pulls me in for a last, quiet kiss. He leans his forehead against mine, and the whole world hushes. “What can I do to help?”

Keep touching me, I want to say, because the quiet soothes the panic building in my chest. I close my eyes, relish the moment of nothingness, and then pull away. “Try to remember the last five months of your life,” I say as I go.

“The day’s almost over, isn’t it?” he asks as I reach the corner.

“Yeah,” I call back. “Almost.”