The Unbound

TWENTY-SIX

“GO TO THE ARCHIVE,” says Owen, “and steal me something.”

“What kind of something?” I ask, clenching my fingers around my backpack strap. Pain flickers through my wrist. It helps me focus.

“Something small,” says Owen. “Just a show of good faith. If you succeed, I’ll tell you what we’re really going to take from them. If you fail, there’s no point. You’ll just be in my way.” His eyes go to a clock on the wall. “You have until lunch,” he says, turning away. “Good luck.”

I stand there, watching him go, until someone clears his throat behind me.

“Avoiding my class, Miss Bishop?”

I turn to find Mr. Lowell holding the door open for me.

“Sorry, sir,” I say, and follow him inside. His hand grazes against my shoulder as he guides me through, and I’m hit with worry strange girl distant trouble at home I see the bruises quiet clutter ink stains before I continue forward out of his reach and take my seat. Sixteen people in a classroom without the buffer of a ring make the air feel like it’s singing. I sit there, wincing faintly every time a student gets too close, Owen’s warped ideas playing through my head while Lowell lectures on the warped ideas of others. I’m not paying much attention until something Lowell says echoes Owen.

“Every uprising starts with a spark,” says Lowell. “Sometimes that spark is a moment, tipping the scale. And sometimes that spark is a decision. In the case of the latter, there is no doubt that it takes a certain amount of madness to tip that first domino—but it also takes courage, vision, and an all-encompassing belief, even misguided, in their mission.…”

Owen sees himself as a revolutionary, exposing the Archive his cause. That single-minded focus acts both as his strength and his weakness. But is it a weakness I can use?

He’s so fixated on his goal that he can’t see the flaws. It’s proof that even someone as cold and calculating as Owen was once human. People—the living and the dead alike—see what they want to see and believe what they want to believe. Owen wants to believe in this mission, and he also wants to believe that I am salvageable.

All I have to do is prove it.

The moment the bell rings I’m on my feet, moving through the halls and their mess of sum total of silver or gold silver or gold Saturday school for purple laces if he ever hits me again I’ll out the doors and across the quad to the Narrows door set into the side of the shed, where I pull the key out from under my collar and pass through. Wesley’s coding system is different from mine, but I soon figure out that he’s labeled Returns with a white plus sign and the Archive with a white X, and I slot my key, take a breath, and step through into the antechamber.

Patrick is seated behind the desk, turning through the pages of the ledger. He pauses to write a note, then continues leafing through.

“Miss Bishop,” he says, my name little more than a grumble. “Here to confess?”

“Not yet,” I say. It’s still hard for me to believe he’s not the one responsible for the voids. I was sure he was out to get me removed. Erased. But he’s not—at least, not this time, this way.

“I need to see Roland. Just for a few minutes.” Patrick’s eyes move up from the ledger to mine. “Please, Patrick. It’s important.”

He closes the book slowly. “Second hall, third room,” he says, adding, “Be quick about it.”

I set off through the open doors and into the atrium, but I don’t follow Patrick’s directions. Instead of cutting down the second hall to the third room, I head down the sixth hall, following it to the very end the way Roland did when he first showed me to his room. I half expect the corridors to change around me, the way they seem to when I trail him through the maze, but the straight line stays straight. I press my ear to the small set of doors at the end, listening for steps, then slip through into the smaller, dimly lit hall that holds the Librarians’ quarters.

Halfway down the hall, I find his simple, dark-paneled door. It’s unlocked. The room is as cozy as it was before, but the lack of music whispering from the wall—and the lack of Roland sitting in his chair—makes the space seem too vulnerable. I whisper an apology for what I’m about to do.

I cross to the table by the chair and slide open the drawer. The silver pocket watch is gone—surely Roland has it on him—but the old, palm-sized notebook is there. It sings beneath my fingers as I slip it gently into my back pocket, my heart twisting. I scour the rest of the drawer for a scrap of paper and pen, and when I find them, I write a note. I do not say I’m sorry, or that I will bring it back, only jot down two small words.

Trust me.

I don’t even look at the paper, since lives are messy and it will be easier to hide this small deviation from the theft if it’s subtle. If Owen goes looking, I want it to be a mere whisper in my head instead of an image. Instead I focus on the very real guilt I feel as I fold the note, put it in the drawer, and duck out. My heart thuds in my chest all the way back into the atrium.

Wood and stone and colored glass, and all throughout, a sense of peace.

That’s how Da described the Archive to me when I was young. As I walk through the stacks now, I grasp the calm that used to come so easily. These days it feels like a memory, one I’m reaching for and can’t quite grab. Wood and stone and colored glass. That’s all he told me. He didn’t mention the fact I could never leave, or that the Librarians were dead, or that Histories weren’t the only things to fear.

Your life is only made of secrets and lies because the Archive is.

I smother Owen’s voice in my head before it can become my own. I cross back through the doors into the antechamber, sensing that something is wrong the moment I move from wood to stone, but it’s too late. The massive doors swing shut behind me, and I turn to see Agatha in front of them, her hair the color of blood and her cream-colored coat like a splash of paint against the dark wood.

My eyes flick to the desk, where Patrick is sitting. Of course he would call her.

“My list is clear,” I say as calmly as possible.

“But I’m out of Crew,” says Agatha. Her voice has lost its velvet calm. “And out of patience.” She takes a step forward. “You’ve run me on a chase, Miss Bishop, and I am sick of it. I want you to answer me honestly. How did you make the voids?”

“I didn’t make them,” I say, fighting to keep my voice steady even as I take a step back toward the door and the sentinels guarding it.

“I don’t believe you,” she says, tugging off a black glove as she comes toward me. “If you are innocent, then show me.” I shake my head. “Why don’t you want me in your head? Afraid of what I’ll find? The innocent have nothing to hide, Miss Bishop.” She pulls off the other glove.

“You don’t have permission.”

“I don’t care,” she growls, her bare hands tangling in my shirt.

“Agatha,” warns Patrick, but she doesn’t listen.

“Do you know how small you are?” she hisses. “You are one cog in one wheel in one corner of an infinite machine, and you have the audacity to deny me? To defy me? Do you know what that’s called?”

“Freedom,” I challenge.

A cold smile touches the edge of her mouth. “Treason.”

I feel the two sentinels move behind me, and before I can turn, their hands clench around my shoulders and wrists. Their movements are fast and efficient, wrenching my arms behind my back, twisting up hard until my knees buckle. My pulse races in my ears and my vision starts to go dark, but before I can fight back against the men or the encroaching tunnel moment, Agatha’s hands are there, pressing against my temples.

At first, all I hear is the quiet that comes with her touch.

And then the pain starts.