The Archived (23 page)

F
OR ONE TERRIBLE,
terrifying moment, I don’t know what to do.

A History is out, and all I can think about is forcing air back into my lungs. And
then the moment ends, and the next one starts, and Wes and I are somehow on our feet
again, rushing through the Narrows door and onto the third floor of the Coronado.
The hall is empty.

Wes asks me if I’m okay, and I take a breath and nod, pain rippling through my ribs.

My ring is still off, but I don’t need to read the walls to find Jackson, because
his green sweatshirt is vanishing through the north stairwell door near my apartment.
I sprint after him, and Wes turns and launches down the hall toward the south set
of stairs beyond the elevators. Steps echo in the stairwell below, and I plunge down
to the second floor as the door swings shut. I’m out in time to see Jackson skid to
a stop halfway down the hall, Wesley rushing forward to block the landing to the grand
stairs and the lobby and the way
out
.

The History is trapped.

“Jackson, stop,” I gasp.

“You lied,” he growls. “There is no home.” His eyes are wide and going black with
panic, and for a moment it’s as if I’m back in front of Ben, terrified, and my feet
are glued to the ground as Jackson turns and kicks in the nearest apartment door,
smashing the wood and charging through.

Wes dashes forward, shocking me into motion, and I run as Jackson vanishes into the
apartment.

Beyond the broken door of 2C, the apartment is modern, spare, but very clearly occupied.
Jackson is halfway to the window when Wes darts forward and over a low couch. He catches
Jackson’s arm and spins him back toward the room. Jackson dodges his grasp and cuts
to the side down a hall, but I catch up and slam him into the wall, upsetting a large
framed poster.

The shower in the bathroom at the end of the hall is going, and someone is singing
off-key but loudly as Jackson shoves me away and rears back to kick. I spin as the
rubber heel of his shoe lodges in the drywall, and grab his wrist while he’s off balance,
pulling him toward me, my forearm slamming into his chest and sending him to the floor.
When I try to pin him, he catches me with a glancing kick, and pain blossoms across
my chest, forcing me to let go.

Wesley is there as Jackson scrambles to his feet and into the living room. Wes swings
his arm around Jackson’s throat and pulls hard, but Jackson fights like mad and forces
him several steps back. A glass coffee table catches Wesley behind the knees, and
he loses his balance. The two go down together. The shower cuts off as they crash
in a wave of shattered glass. Jackson is up first, a shard jutting from his arm, and
he’s out the door before I can stop him.

Wesley is on his feet, his cheek and hand bleeding, but we tear into the second-floor
hall. Jackson, in his panic, has stormed past the entrance to the landing and toward
the elevator. We close in as he rips the glass from his arm with a hiss and forces
the grille open. The dial above the cage door says the elevator is sitting on the
sixth floor. The lobby is two stories tall. Which means two stories
down
.

“It’s over,” calls Wesley, stepping toward him.

Jackson stares at the elevator shaft, then back at us.

And then he jumps.

Wes and I groan together and turn, racing for the stairs.

Histories don’t bleed. Histories can’t die. But they do feel pain. And that jump had
to hurt. Hopefully it will at least slow him down.

A scream cuts through the air, but not from the elevator shaft. Someone in 2C lets
out a strain of words between a cry and a curse as we hit the landing. Halfway down
the main staircase we see Jackson clutching his ribs—serves him right—and making a
limping but determined beeline for the front doors of the Coronado.

“Key!” shouts Wes, and I dig the black handkerchief from my pocket.

“Right for Returns,” I say as he grabs it, gets a foot up on the dark wood railing
and jumps over, dropping the last ten feet and somehow landing upright. I hit the
base of the stairs as Wes catches Jackson and slams him against the front doors hard
enough to crack the glass. And then I’m there, helping hold the thrashing History
against the door as Wes gets the Crew key into the lock and turns hard to the right.
The scene beyond the glass is sunlight and streets and passing cars, but when Wes
turns the key, the door flies open, ripped from his grip as if by wind, and reveals
a world of white beyond. Impossible white, and Jackson Lerner falling through it.

The door slams shut with the same windlike force, shattering the already cracked glass.
The Crew key sits in the lock, and through the glassless frame, a bus rambles past.
Two people across the street have turned to see what reduced the door to littered
shards and wood.

I stagger back. Wesley gives a dazed laugh just before his legs buckle.

I crouch beside him even though the motion sends ripples of pain through my ribs.

“Are you all right?” I ask.

Wes stares up at the broken door. “We did it,” he says brightly. “Just like Crew.”

Blood is running down his face from the gash along his cheekbone, and he’s gazing
giddily at the place where the door to Returns formed. I reach out and slide the key
from the lock. And then I hear it. Sirens. The people from across the street are coming
over now, and the wail of a cop car is getting more and more distinct. We have to
get out of here. I can’t possibly explain all this.

“Come on,” I say, turning toward the elevator. Wes gets shakily to his feet and follows.
I hit the call button, cringing at the thought of using this death trap, but I don’t
exactly want to retrace the path of our destruction right now, especially with Wes
covered in blood. He hesitates when I pull open the grille, but climbs in beside me.
The doors close, and I punch the button for the third floor and then turn to look
at him. He’s smiling. I can’t believe he’s smiling. I shake my head.

“Red looks good on you,” I say.

He wipes at his cheek, looks down at his stained hands.

“You know, I think you’re right.”

Water drips from the ends of my hair onto the couch, where I’m perched, staring down
at the Crew key cupped in my hands. I listen to the
shhhhhhh
of the shower running, wishing it could wash away the question that’s nagging at
me as I turn Da’s key over and over in my hands.

How did Roland know?

How did he know that we’d need the key today? Was it a coincidence? Da never believed
in coincidence, said chance was just a word for people too lazy to learn the truth.
But Da believed in Roland. I believe in Roland. I know Roland. At least, I think I
know him. He’s the one who first gave me a chance. Who took responsibility for me.
Who bent the rules for me. And sometimes broke them.

The water shuts off.

Jackson was returned. I returned him myself. How did he escape a second time in less
than a week? He should have been filed in the red stacks. There’s no way he would
have woken twice. Unless someone woke him and let him out.

The bathroom door opens, and Wesley stands there, his black hair no longer spiked
but hanging down into his eyes, the eyeliner washed away. His key rests against his
bare chest. His stomach is lean, the muscles faint but visible. Thank god he’s wearing
pants.

“All done?” I ask, pocketing the Crew key.

“Not quite. I need your help.” Wesley retreats into the bathroom. I follow.

An array of first-aid equipment covers the sink. Maybe I should have taken him to
the Archive, but the cut on his face isn’t so bad—I’ve had worse—and the last thing
I want to do is try to explain to Patrick what happened.

Wesley’s cheek is starting to bleed again, and he dabs at it with a washcloth. I fish
around in my private medical stash until I find a tube of skin glue.

“Lean down, tall person,” I say, trying to touch his face with only the swab and not
my fingers. It makes my grip unsteady, and when I slip and paint a dab of the skin
glue on his chin, Wes sighs and takes my hand. The noise flares through my head, metal
and sharp.

“What are you doing?” I ask. “Let go.”

“No,” he says, plucking the swab and the skin glue from my grip, tossing both aside
and pressing my hand flat against his chest. The noise grows louder. “You’ve got to
figure it out.”

I cringe. “Figure what out?” I ask, raising my voice above the clatter.

“How to find quiet. It’s not that hard.”

“It is for me,” I snap. I try to push back, try to block him out, try to put up a
wall, but it doesn’t work, only makes it worse.

“That’s because you’re fighting it. You’re trying to block out every bit of noise.
But people are made of noise, Mac. The world is full of noise. And finding quiet isn’t
about pushing everything out. It’s just about pulling yourself in. That’s all.”

“Wesley, let go.”

“Can you swim?”

The rock-band static pounds in my head, behind my eyes. “What does that have to do
with anything?”

“Good swimmers don’t fight against the water.” He takes my other hand, too. His eyes
are bright, flecked with gold even in the dim light. “They move with it. Through it.”

“So?”

“So stop fighting. Let the noise go white. Let it be like water. And float.”

I hold his gaze.

“Just float,” he says.

It goes against every bit of reason in me to stop pushing back, to welcome the noise.

“Trust me,” he says.

I let out an unsteady breath, and then I do it. I let go. For a moment, Wesley washes
over me, louder than ever, rattling my bones and echoing in my head. But then, little
by little, the noise evens, ebbs. It grows
steadier
. It turns to white noise. It is everywhere, surrounding me, but for the first time
it doesn’t feel like it’s
in
me. Not in my head. I let out a breath.

And then Wesley’s grip is gone, and so is the noise.

I watch him fight back a smile and lose. What comes through isn’t smug, or even crooked.
It’s proud. And I can’t help it. I smile a little too. And then the headache hits,
and I wince, leaning on the bathroom sink.

“Baby steps,” says Wes, beaming. He offers me the tube of skin glue. “Now, if you
wouldn’t mind fixing me up? I don’t want this to scar.”

“I won’t be able to hide this,” he says, examining my work in the mirror.

“Makes you look tough,” I say. “Just say you lost a fight.”

“How do you know I didn’t win?” he asks, meeting my eyes in the glass. “Besides, I
can’t pull the fight card. It’s been used too many times.”

His back is to me. His shoulders are narrow but strong. Defined. I feel my skin warm
as my gaze tracks between his shoulder blades and down the slope of his back. Halfway
down the curve of his spine is a shallow red cut, glittering from the sliver of glass
embedded in it.

“Hold still,” I say. I bring my fingertips against his lower back. The noise rushes
in, but this time I don’t push. Instead I wait, let it settle around me, like water.
It’s still there, but I can think through it, around it. I don’t think I’ll ever be
the touchy-feely type, but maybe with practice I can at least learn to float.

Wes meets my gaze in the mirror, and quirks a brow.

“Practice makes perfect,” I say, blushing. My fingers drift up his spine, running
over his ribs till I reach the shard. Wesley tenses beneath my touch, which makes
me tense too.

“Tweezers,” I say, and he hands me a pair.

I pinch the glass, hoping it doesn’t go deep.

“Breathe in, Wes,” I say. He does, his back expanding beneath my fingers. “Breathe
out.”

He does, and I tug the glass out, his breath wavering as it slides free. I hold up
the fragment for him to see. “Not bad.” I put a small bandage over the cut. “You should
keep it.”

“Oh, yeah,” he says, turning to face me. “I think I should wash it off and make a
little trophy out of it, ‘Courtesy of an escaped History and the coffee table in Two
C’ etched into the stand.”

“Oh, no,” I say, depositing the shard in his outstretched hand. “I wouldn’t wash it
off.”

Wes drops it onto the top of a small pile of glass, but keeps his eyes on mine. The
crooked smile slides away.

“We make a good team, Mackenzie Bishop.”

“We do.” We
do
, and that is the thing that tempers the heat beneath my skin, checks the flutter
of girlish nerves. This is Wesley. My friend. My partner. Maybe one day my Crew. The
fear of losing that keeps me in check.

“Next time,” I say, pulling away, “don’t hold the door open for me.”

I clean off the cluttered sink and leave Wes to finish getting dressed, but he follows
me down the hall, still shirtless.

“You see what I get for trying to be a gentleman.”

Oh, god—he’s flirting.

“No more gentlemanly behavior,” I say, reaching my room. “You’re clearly not cut out
for it.”

“Clearly,” he says, wrapping an arm loosely around my stomach from behind.

I hiss, less from the noise than the pain. He lets go.

“What is it?” he says, suddenly all business.

“It’s nothing,” I say, rubbing my ribs.

“Take off your shirt.”

“You’ll have to try a hell of a lot harder to seduce me, Wesley Ayers.”

“
My
shirt’s already off,” he counters. “I think it’s only fair.”

I laugh. It hurts.

“And I’m not trying to seduce you, Mackenzie,” he says, straightening. “I’m trying
to help. Now, let me see.”

“I don’t want to see,” I say. “I’d rather not know.” I managed to shower and change
without looking at my ribs. Things only hurt more when you can see them.

“That’s great. Then you close your eyes and I’ll see for you.”

Wesley reaches out and slips his fingers around the edge of my shirt. He pauses long
enough to make sure I won’t physically harm him, then guides my top over my head.
I look away, intending to educate myself on the number of pens in the cup on my desk.
I can’t help but shiver as Wesley’s hand slides feather-light over my waist, and the
noise of his touch actually distracts me from the pain until his hand drifts up and—