The Unbound

EIGHT

I’M THIRTEEN, covered in blood, and sitting cross-legged on a table in a sterile room. I’ve been a Keeper for less than six months, and this isn’t the first time I’ve landed in the medical wing of the Archive. Roland stands out of the way, arms crossed over his chest while Patrick prepares a cold pack.

“He was twice my size,” I say, clutching a bloody cloth to my nose.

“Isn’t everyone?” asks Patrick. He’s only been at the branch a couple weeks. He doesn’t like me very much.

“You’re not helping,” says Roland.

“I thought that’s exactly what I was doing,” snaps Patrick. “Helping. You called in a favor, and here I am, patching up your little pet project off the books.”

I murmur something unkind behind the cloth, one of the many phrases I picked up from Da. Patrick doesn’t hear it, but Roland must, because he raises a brow.

“Miss Bishop,” he says, addressing Patrick, “is one of our most promising Keepers. She wouldn’t be here if the council had not voted her through.”

Patrick gives Roland a weighted look. “Did they vote her through, or did you?”

Roland’s gray eyes narrow a fraction. “I would remind you who you’re speaking to.”

Patrick lets off a short sigh like steam and turns his attention back to me, pulling the cloth from my grip to examine the damage over his glasses. It hurts like hell, but I try not to let it show as he presses the cold pack against my face and repositions my hand over it.

“You’re lucky it’s not broken,” he says, peeling off a pair of plastic gloves.

Roland winks. “Our girl, she’s made of steel.”

I smile a little behind the cold pack. I like the idea of that. Being a girl of steel.

“Hardheaded,” says Patrick. “Keep it iced and try not to get punched in the face again.”

“I’ll do my best,” I say, the words muffled by the cold pack. “But it’s so much fun.”

Roland chuckles. Patrick packs up his things and leaves, muttering something that sounds like useless under his breath. I watch him go.

“You threw your arms up when the History took a swing at you,” says Roland casually. “Is that what happened?”

I look down and nod. I should have known better. Da taught me better, but it was like two different lessons, in practice and in truth, and I wasn’t ready. Da said the right moves have to be like reflex, not just learned but known, and now I see why. There was no time to think, only act. React. My arms came up and the History’s fist hit them and they hit me. Heat spreads across my cheeks, even under the cold pack.

“Hop down,” he says, uncrossing his arms. “And show me what you did.”

I get off the table and set the cold pack aside. Roland throws a punch, slow as syrup, and I bring my arms up, crossed at the wrists. His fist comes to rest lightly against them, and he considers me over my raised hands.

“There is no right pose to strike, no position to take. The worst thing you can do in a fight is stop moving. When someone attacks, they create force, movement, momentum, but you’ll be okay as long as you can see and feel the direction of that force and travel with it.” He puts some weight behind his fist, shifting to one side as he leans forward. I let myself shift to the same side and back, and his fist slides away. He nods. “There we go. Now, better get that ice back on your face.”

Steps echo in the hall beyond the room, and Roland’s gray eyes flick to the door.

“I should go,” I say, taking the cold pack with me. But when I get to the door, I hesitate. “Do you regret it?” I ask. “Voting me through?”

Roland folds his arms across his chest. “Not at all,” he says with a smile. “You make things infinitely more interesting.”

“Where are we going?” I ask under my breath. Roland doesn’t answer, only leads me out of the aisle and down the sixth hall that branches off the atrium. The Archive is a network of mismatched spaces, branching and intersecting in a system only the Librarians seem able to comprehend. Every time I follow someone through the maze, I struggle to keep hold of my bearings as I count the turns. But tonight, instead of guiding me on a winding path across landings, down corridors, through rooms, Roland goes straight, straight to the very end of the very long hall and through a smaller set of doors set into the end.

We end up in another hallway, one much shorter, narrower, and dimly lit. He hesitates, glancing around to see and hear if we’re alone.

“Where are we?” I ask when it’s clear that we are.

“Librarians’ quarters,” he answers before setting off again. Halfway down the hall, he reaches a simple dark-paneled door and stops. “Here we go.”

The door opens into a cozy room with pale striped walls, sparsely furnished with a daybed, a low-backed leather chair, and a table. Classical music whispers from a device on the wall, and Roland moves through the small space with the comfort of someone who knows every inch of it.

He crosses to the table and absently drops the folder he’s been carrying into a drawer before pulling something shiny from his pocket. He runs his thumb over the surface once before setting it on top of the table. The gesture is at once worn and gentle, reverent. When he pulls his hand away, I see that the object is a silver pocket watch. It’s old, and I can’t keep my pulse from quickening when my eyes settle on it. The only objects that come into the Archive arrive on the bodies of Histories. Either he snagged the watch from a body or it came in with his.

“It doesn’t work anymore,” says Roland, sensing my interest. “Not here.” He gestures to the daybed. “Sit.”

I sink onto the soft cushion and run a hand over a black blanket folded on the bed beside me. “I didn’t think you needed sleep,” I say, feeling awkward. It’s still so hard to process the idea that he’s…not alive.

“Need is a strange thing,” he says, methodically rolling up his sleeves. “Physical needs make you feel human. The lack of them can make you feel less so. I don’t sleep, no, but I rest. I go through the motions. It provides a psychological relief rather than a physical one. Now try to get some rest.”

I shake my head, even as my body begs me to lie down. “I can’t,” I say quietly.

Roland sits down in the low-backed leather chair opposite, his gold Archive key gleaming against the front of his shirt. Keeper keys unlock doors to the Narrows; Crew keys unlock shortcuts in the Outer; Archive keys unlock Histories, turning them on and off like appliances, not people. I wonder what it would feel like to turn a life off with a single twist of metal. I remember Carmen holding hers out to me, remember the pins-and-needles numbness that shot up my hand when I tried to wrap my fingers around it.

“Miss Bishop,” says Roland, his voice drawing my attention up. “You have to try.”

“I don’t believe in ghosts, Roland. But it’s like he’s haunting me. Every time I close my eyes, he’s there.”

“He’s gone,” says Roland simply.

“Are you sure?” I whisper, thinking of the fear and the pain that follow me out of my nightmares. “It’s like there’s a part of him that dug its nails into my head and held on. I see him when I close my eyes, and he feels so real.… I feel like I’m going to wake up and he’ll still be there.”

“Well,” says Roland, “you sleep, and I’ll keep an eye out for him.”

I laugh sadly, but don’t lie down. I need to tell him about the blackouts. It would be so much easier not to tell him—he’s already worried, and it will only make things worse—but I need to know if I’m losing it, and since I’m the one shot through with nightmares and missing moments, I don’t think I’m the best judge.

“Something happened today,” I say quietly. “In the Narrows.”

Roland steeples his fingers. “Tell me.”

“I…I lost time.”

Roland sits forward. “What do you mean?”

“I was hunting, and I… It was like I blacked out.” I roll my bad wrist. “I was awake, but one minute I was one place, and the next I was somewhere else, and I couldn’t remember how I’d gotten there. It was just blank. It came back, though,” I add, “after I calmed down.”

I don’t say how shaky the memory was and how I had to fight to recover it.

Roland’s gray eyes darken. “Is this the first time?”

In response, my gaze escapes to the floor.

“How many times?” he asks.

“Just once. A couple weeks ago.”

“You should have told me.”

I look up. “I didn’t think it would happen again.”

Roland shoves up from his chair and begins to pace. He should tell me it’s going to be okay, but he doesn’t bother lying. Bad dreams are one thing. Blacking out on the job is another. We both know what happens to a member of the Archive if they’re deemed unfit. There is no such thing as a leave of absence here.

I look up at the cream-colored ceiling.

“How many Keepers lose their minds?” I ask.

Roland shakes his head. “You’re not losing your mind, Mackenzie.”

I give him a skeptical look.

“You’ve been through a lot. What you’re experiencing, it sounds like residual trauma and extreme fatigue, paired with the influx of adrenaline, are triggering a kind of tunnel vision. It’s a feasible reaction.”

“I don’t care if it’s feasible. How do I make sure it doesn’t happen again?”

“You need rest. You need to sleep,” he says, a note of desperation working its way into his voice as he slumps back down in his chair. His gray eyes are worried, a paler version of the fear that flashed through them when Agatha first summoned me to be assessed. “Please try.”

I hesitate, but finally nod, slide off my shoes, and curl up on the daybed, resting my head on the folded blanket. I consider telling him that I think I’m being followed, too, but I can’t will the words out.

“Do you regret it yet?” I ask. “Voting me through?”

His mouth twitches, but I don’t hear his answer, because my body is already betraying me, dragging me down into sleep.

When I wake, the room is empty, and for a split second I can’t remember where I am or how I got here. But then I hear the whisper of classical music from the device on the wall and remember that I’m in the Archive, in Roland’s quarters.

I blink away sleep, marveling at the fact it doesn’t cling to me. No dreams. No nightmares. For the first time in days. Weeks. I allow a small, breathless laugh to escape. My eyes burn from the sheer relief of a few hours’ sleep without Owen and his knife.

I fold the blanket Roland let me borrow and return it to the corner of the daybed before getting up. I switch the music off as I pad across the cloisterlike space. Behind a door left ajar on the far wall, I find several versions of his self-assigned uniform: slacks and sweaters and button-down shirts. I look around for a clock even though I know there isn’t one. My eyes go to the silver pocket watch, still on top of the side table. It doesn’t work, but I find myself reaching absently for it when my attention slides to the drawer beneath.

It is barely ajar, just enough for me to see another glint of metal, and when I take the drawer in both hands and slide it open—the wood utters a soft hush—I find two worn silver coins and a notebook no larger than my palm. I lift the notebook. The paper edges are yellowed and fragile, and when I peel the cover back, I find a date written in elegant script in the bottom corner.

1819

The next several pages are filled with notes too small and old to read, and mingled with them, pencil sketches. A stone facade. A river. A woman. The name Evelyn runs in his careful script under her throat.

The journal sings beneath my fingers, brimming with memories, and I hesitate to put the book back. Roland has always been a mystery. He never wanted to talk about the life he’d left behind, the one he claimed he’d go back to when he was done serving. But now I know he didn’t leave a life behind at all, not willingly, and he’ll never go back to it.

The question “Who is Roland?” has become “Who was Roland?” and before I can stop myself, I close my eyes and reach for the thread of memory in the notebook. I catch hold, and time turns back. It rolls away, and darkness ripples into an alleyway at night: a young, smudged Roland standing beneath a pool of flickering lamplight. He’s cradling the notebook in one hand as he shades in the woman’s hair with a short stub of pencil and pins a slip of paper to the opposite page with his thumb. As he draws, letters bleed onto the slip. A name. He snaps the notebook shut and checks his pocket watch, three Crew lines spreading like a shadow across the inside of his wrist.

The sound of voices draws me out of the memory, and I set the notebook back into the table drawer as the door groans a little under someone’s weight, but doesn’t open.

I hold my breath as I ease the drawer shut and step toward the door and the voices on the other side. When I press my ear against it, I can hear his melodic voice and just the edges of Lisa’s soft, even tone. And then my chest tightens as I realize they’re talking about me.

“No,” says Roland quietly, “I realize it’s not a permanent solution. But she just needs time. And rest,” he adds. “She’s been through a lot.”

Another murmur.

“No,” replies Roland. “It hasn’t come to that yet. And it won’t.”

I force myself away from the door as he echoes, “I know, I know.”

When Roland comes back into the room, I’m sitting on the floor, lacing up my shoes.

“Miss Bishop,” he says. “How are you feeling?”

“Like a new person,” I say, getting to my feet. “How long was I out?”

“Four hours.”

Four hours, and I want to cry. How mended could I feel with eight? “It’s amazing,” I say. “The difference. To be free of Owen for a night.”

Roland crosses his arms and looks down at them. “You could be free of him for longer.” His gray gaze slides up. “You don’t have to live with it, the weight of what you’ve been through. There are options. Alterations—”

“No.” Alterations. The word for when the Archive carves out memories from someone’s mind. Cuts their life full of holes. I think of Wesley, missing a day of his life. I think of his great-aunt, Joan, stripped of years when she retired, just as a precaution.

“Miss Bishop,” he says, reading my disgust, “alterations are not carried out solely on those who leave, or those who need to be kept in the dark about the Archive’s existence.”

“No, they’re also for those deemed unfit—”

“And for those who want to forget,” counters Roland. “There’s no shame in it, Mackenzie. Wanting to be free of certain memories. The bad ones.”

“The bad ones?” I echo. “Roland, they’re all tangled up. Isn’t that the idea? Life is messy. And even if it weren’t, I said no.” The truth is, I don’t trust them to stop with the memories I’m willing to lose. And even if I did, it feels like running. I need to remember. “We’ve had this conversation already.”

“Yes, we have, back when you were only fighting bad dreams. But if you keep having tunnel moments—”

“Then we’ll handle it,” I say, making it clear the conversation is over.

Roland’s shoulders slump, his arms falling back to his sides. “Very well.” He lifts his silver watch from the side table and slips it back into his pocket. “Come on, I’ll lead you out.” I notice, as I follow him, that the halls don’t seem to shift around us. Unlike the twisting corridors of the stacks, the path to the Librarians’ quarters is a straight and steady line.

We reach the front desk, and I cringe when I see Patrick sitting there. His eyes flick up, cold behind their black-framed glasses, and his mouth draws into a tight line. Roland anticipates a remark and speaks first.

“It’s come to my attention that Miss Bishop’s predecessor did not adequately prepare her before his demise.”

“Pray tell,” says Patrick, “in what ways is she lacking?”

I frown. Nobody likes being talked about like they’re not in the room, especially when the talk centers on their shortcomings.

“Stillness,” says Roland. “She’s more than competent when it comes to combat, but lacks the patience and conservation of energy that comes with proper training.”

“And how do you plan to assist her?”

“Meditation,” answers Roland. “It’ll benefit her, anyway, when she makes Crew and—”

“If she makes Crew,” corrects Patrick, but Roland continues.

“—and she’s a quick learner, so it shouldn’t take long for her to pick it up. In the meantime, when she comes, send her back.” He straightens, flaunting his full height. “And do it without interrogation, please. I’d like to make the most of everyone’s time.”

I forget sometimes what a good liar Roland is.

Patrick considers us both, clearly trying to pick apart the ruse, but in the end his mouth only twists into a mean smile, his eyes hanging on me as he addresses Roland. “If you think you can teach Miss Bishop to be quiet and still for once, then best of luck.”

I bite my tongue as Roland nods to us both and vanishes back into the atrium, leaving me alone with the sentinels and Patrick, who appraises me coldly. Neither one of us has forgotten that he was the one who summoned Agatha in the first place. That he petitioned to have me removed. Now he says nothing, not until I’ve passed between the sentinels to the Archive door and my key is slotted in the lock. Only then does Patrick add a low but audible, “Sleep tight.”

I’m halfway back to my numbered doors, trying to swallow the bad taste Patrick always leaves in my mouth, when my eyes drift to a chalk marking on the wall.

It’s not on one of the doors, but on a stretch of dark stone. I drew it two and a half weeks ago to mark the spot where it happened. Some days I walk past it, but others I stop and force myself to remember. To relive. Roland would be furious. I know I should be moving on, should be doing everything I can to put the memory behind me, or let the Archive take it away, but I can’t. It’s already scarred into my mind a dozen ways, all of them twisted, and I need to remember—not the nightmarish distortions that have followed, but what actually happened. I need to remember so I can be better, stronger. Da used to say mistakes were useless if you tried to forget them. You had to remember and learn.

My hand drifts to the wall, and I barely have to reach before the memories rush up beneath my fingers. I spin them back, away, until I find that day—and even then, past the blinding light of the Returns door being thrown open, past our tangling bodies and the key and all the way back to the moment when I thought I had a chance. I know exactly where it is and when to stop, because I’ve watched the scene so many times, studying his strength and my weakness. Watching myself lose.

I drag the memory to a stop and hold it there, in the second before the fight starts. Owen’s hand is outstretched as he asks for the ending of the story; my hand is about to reach for my hidden knife. I know what’s going to happen.

And then it does.

There is no sound, no color, only a blur of motion as I go for the knife against my leg and Owen lunges forward. Before my blade can reach his chest, his hand closes around my wrist. He slams it back into the wall, forcing his body against mine.

Phantom pain drifts into my fingers as I watch his grip tighten. The knife tumbles to the floor. I try and fail to get free as he catches the blade and spins my body back against his, the glinting metal coming to rest beneath my chin.

He frees the final piece of the story—and with it the final piece of his key—from my pocket and shoves me away so he can assemble it. I don’t run. I don’t do anything but stand and watch and cradle my broken wrist. Because I still think I’m going to win.

I attack and manage to send the knife skating into the dark—even manage to send Owen backward, too. But then he’s up again, catching my leg and slamming me back onto the hard floor. I curl in on myself in pain, struggling to force air back into my lungs.

It’s obvious now that Owen was playing with me.

My recovery is too slow, but he waits for me to get to my feet. He wants me to believe that if I can, I stand a chance.

But when I finally summon the strength, he is there: too fast, a blur as he wraps his hand around my throat and pins me against the nearest door. I watch myself gasp and claw at his grip as he reaches up and takes hold of the key wrapped around my good wrist, snapping the cord with a single sharp tug. He unlocks the door behind me and showers both of us in glaring white light. I watch him lean in, watch his lips move, and I don’t need sound to know what he’s saying. I remember just fine.

“Do you know what happens to a living person in the Returns room?”

That’s what his lips are mouthing. And then, when I don’t answer—can’t answer—he adds, “Neither do I,” before he shoves me backward into the blinding white, closes the door, and walks away.

My hand slips from the wall. A now-familiar numbness spreads through me in the memory’s wake.

The Owen in my nightmares is drawn in color and sound, and even when I know I’m dreaming, it feels so unbearably real, here and now and terrifying. But watching us this way, I don’t feel any of the fear. Frustration and anger and regret, maybe, but not fear. This scene is faded and gray like an old movie, so clearly a moment in the past. It doesn’t even feel like my past, but one that belongs to someone else. Someone weaker.

I think of Roland’s offer—of letting the Archive go in and hollow out everything that Owen touched and ruined—and I can’t help but wonder if this is how I’d feel about him after that. If he were only this, a memory in someone else’s life, would he be able to hurt me in my sleep? Or would I be free?

I shove the thought away. I’m not going to run away. That isn’t the way to be free. And I’m never going to let the Archive into my head, when it would be so easy for them to erase more of me. Erase everything.

I need to remember.