Unraveled (4 page)

“She won’t be running around unsupervised,” Cormac says, and I smirk at Hannox. He
might have known Cormac for two hundred years, but I’m the one Cormac wants to keep
happy.

“It’s a precarious enough situation without dragging her into it,” Hannox reminds
him.

“Then veil her,” Cormac orders. Hannox opens his mouth, but Cormac holds up his hand.
“I’m not interested in debating this. The looms in the Eastern Sector have been disabled,
but if you think her presence in the weave is a threat and you want to veil her, do
it. Otherwise, get her in tactical gear.”

“I’m not much of a shot,” I tell him. In truth, I hate guns.

“I don’t want you in tactical gear to use you as a sniper,” Cormac says with a huff.
“I only thought it would be nice if you survived until our wedding day.”

Hannox mutters something under his breath.

Part of me wants to flash him my ring. The part of me that’s feeling smug about winning
out over the bossy Hannox. But since my engagement to Cormac is something I’m neither
proud of nor looking forward to, I keep my fingers to myself.

“And her hands?” Hannox asks.

“Gages won’t be necessary. Will they, Adelice?” Cormac says. “We’ve come to an arrangement.”

The weight of the ring is heavy on my left hand as he says it. I’ve agreed to this,
which means small mercies like unbound hands and trips into rioting sectors. I’m not
sure if I’m coming out on the better end of this bargain.

“It’s a bad idea,” Hannox says one final time, but Cormac’s angry look silences him.

When Cormac walks away, Hannox hands me tactical gear without offering to help me
put it on. I struggle into the thick black vest and scratchy nylon pants, hooking
and strapping while officers rush around me. The goggles pinch my nose, so I leave
them perched on my forehead. It isn’t long before the tactical teams in the sector
meet us at the mouth of the rivet. Cormac speaks to them in a hushed voice, and I
can’t hear the explanation of what’s going on within the sector.

When we finally set out to view the area, the streets are empty. Given the near panic
of the ship’s crew during our flight, I expected looting or mobs of angry people.
But the capital is as still as death.

“I thought you said there was rioting,” I say to Cormac as we ride through in a large
motocade. I see no one, even though our van shines floodlights onto our path.

“There will be rioting soon,” Cormac says.

“How do you know that?” I ask him.

“Experience.” His mouth twists into a rueful smile.

“Oh.” Had there been other riots? How had they started? What had he done in those
metros? I want to ask him these questions, but I keep quiet, listening to the terse
conversations between the officers in the truck and paying attention to Cormac’s reaction
to the empty streets.

A blackout happened once in Romen when I was a little girl. There was no warning.
No way to anticipate what was about to happen. Amie was only a toddler, and we were
both outside playing in the yard while our mother finished the dinner dishes. I picked
blades of grass and held them to my lips, blowing a stream of air across them to create
a high-pitched whistle. Amie laughed and clapped her hands while our mother watched
us from the kitchen window. And then there was no sky.

It was as simple as that. In one moment I sat under the rose-tinged hues of sunset,
entertaining my sister, and in the next, the world was black, blanketed in a sudden
and absolute night. I remember the sounds of screaming, the wails of terror echoing
through the darkness, but it wasn’t until my mother lifted me onto her hip, Amie perched
on the other side of her, that she shushed me with a gentle: “Quiet now. It will be
okay, darlings.”

I’d lost my screams in the dark, unaware that the sounds I heard came from my own
throat. Dad met us at the stairs, and mercifully, there was still power in the house.
But none of us could tear our eyes from the missing sky. It was the absence of it—how
half of our reality had vanished—that made it hard to swallow. Dad ushered us into
the basement and headed back upstairs as we huddled in our mother’s arms against the
wall. I ran my fingers along the bricks behind her back. They were solid. They were
real. They wouldn’t disappear.

I had never touched the sky. It was too far from the ground, even on my tiptoes, even
when the programmed clouds floated so close that they seemed within reach.

“Are the clouds real?” I asked my mother.

She blinked at the question. “Of course, Ad.”

“But we can’t touch them,” I pointed out. I could touch this wall. I could touch her
and Amie. I knew they were flesh and blood and stone, but I didn’t know what a cloud
was or why the sky was sometimes brilliant blue and other times dull gray.

Now I realize my mother could have explained more about the looms and why this was
happening. Instead she simply said, “No,
we
cannot.”

It wasn’t an answer, even then. It was a clue. It was a different way to look at my
world.
We
could not, according to my mother, but someone else could. It was the answer that
stilled my breath as a girl. It stills my breath now.

Right now, in this metro, families wait behind drawn curtains or in cramped basements,
and parents offer words of reassurance. But they repeat the practiced lies of generations:
This is normal. It will pass quickly. Don’t be afraid.
And I know they say those things not merely to calm their children and stop the onslaught
of innocent questions, but also to calm themselves. The population of the Eastern
Sector has every right to believe this is a blip, a temporary issue that will resolve
itself soon. But it’s been hours since we received the news of the blackout and
soon
must feel like a lie even to those saying it now.

“Halt!” an officer yells, and the van squeals to a stop. In the middle of the road
stands a man. He doesn’t blink as our bright lights wash over him. It’s as though
he’s daring us to drive forward and crush him.

A group of officers scramble out of the transport with their weapons drawn.

“PC!” an officer orders, but the man doesn’t reach for anything.

“What’s happening?” the man calls out instead.

“We need to see your privilege card,” the officer says, ignoring the man’s question.

The man steps forward, trying to see into the transport, but he’s stopped with the
butt of a rifle.

“My wife and children are scared. The sky has been dark for hours,” he says.

“Return to your home,” the officer says.

I catch my breath, silently willing the man to listen.

To stop asking questions.

“Your job is to protect us,” the man says, shoving a finger in the officer’s face.
“I want answers.”

“Sir, step back.” His warning is ripe with violence.

“My daughter is four years old,” the man says. “She wants to know where the sky has
gone.”

Nothing about the man seems dangerous. He’s young but starting to bald and a sheen
of nervous sweat glimmers on his skin. His questions come from a place of confusion,
not rebellion. He’s simply scared, and I can’t blame him.

Cormac steps in front of the van, and I blink. He’d been beside me a moment ago.

“Tell her the sky will return soon,” Cormac says. His back is to me, but I can imagine
his practiced smile.

“Prime Minister,” the man says, and I hear the shock in his voice.

“Go home,” the officer next to the man orders again. The command is more insistent,
almost nervous.

“No!” he refuses, and my pulse jumps up a notch. More rifles train on the man.

Go home,
I beg him silently.

“I’m a citizen of Arras and I deserve to know what’s going on,” the man says.

A burst of laughter slices through the air, but it doesn’t break the tense mood. Cormac
is laughing. He finds this funny. A warning bell goes off in my mind.

“I’m not sure what’s funny,” the man says, but it’s not confusion coloring his voice
anymore. Now he’s angry.

“I deserve to know what’s going on,”
Cormac repeats mockingly. He strides up to the man and places his hands on his shoulders.
“You really want to know?”

I don’t hear the man say yes, but I dread where this is going. Before I realize it,
I’m out of the van and moving toward them. An officer grabs me by the waist and my
hands lash out toward his strands, but I pull them back before I hurt him.

“Your entire world is a lie,” Cormac tells the man. “The Spinsters have abandoned
you, and you’re all going to die.”

The man steps back and stares at him and so do I. Doesn’t he know his men will talk
about this?

Before I can process Cormac’s reckless indifference, the man lunges toward Cormac,
who sidesteps him. A split second later a shot shatters the air, hitting the man squarely
in the chest.

“No!” I scream, pulling loose from the officer’s arms and running toward the man.

He stumbles back, a fleeting look of surprise crossing his face. By the time I reach
him, there’s a pool of blood under his body. I press my hands to the wound and he
covers them with his own.

“My daughter.” His words are punctuated by gasps as airy as oxygen leaking from a
balloon.

“I’ll protect her,” I promise him, but he doesn’t hear me. He stares at me with unseeing
eyes, glassy as the still ocean.

“Get rid of that,” Cormac orders as he heads back toward the motocade. “I want us
at the capitol building in five minutes.”

He doesn’t look at me when I follow him, but he waits for me to climb into the transport.
Instead I stand in front of the van and plant my hands on my hips.

“That was unnecessary,” I say. My voice is shaky, betraying my rage.

“You have blood on your hands,” he says, gesturing for someone to bring me a rag.

“Someone should have blood on their hands tonight,” I say in a low voice. “It should
be you.”

“That’s what I do to traitors,” Cormac says. “You’d do well to remember that.”

“Then do it to me,” I dare him, smacking my chest with my fist so he knows where to
aim. “Because that man asked a question, and you killed him.
I ripped apart your world, Cormac.
It’s only fair.”

“Don’t tempt me,” he snarls. But it’s an empty threat. Instead he pushes me aside
and climbs into the transport. Cormac needs me to cooperate with his wedding plan
to distract Arras and prevent future episodes like this in the other sectors. Of course,
he’s after more than a bride. He’s hoping for a powerful ally. But it will take more
than threats to control me.

I don’t follow him. Instead I watch as they drag the man’s body to the side of the
street. They don’t bother to bag him like they did my father. In a few hours, his
wife will come looking for him. She’ll bring their daughter, because no mother would
leave her young child alone in a blackout. Maybe she’ll find him dead in the street,
with no clue what happened to him. And then she’ll turn to the Guild for security
and hope. Never knowing it was they who betrayed her.

I’ve seen my father’s blood pooling on the floor. I dream of it. The sticky blood,
black like tar, that can’t ever be erased. I’ll live the rest of my life with that
memory—burned into my mind at sixteen.

His daughter will live with death, too. She won’t even have a childhood.

But as we move through the Eastern Sector another thought sends a chill down my spine.

The girl probably won’t have to live with the memory for long.

FOUR

A
TALL IRON FENCE WRAPS AROUND THE
Eastern Ministry, the complex that contains the sector’s offices. A guard steps out
and clears us for entrance while two more men open the gate and then secure it behind
us. Despite the lack of power for operating the gate, the capitol offices must have
some type of generator because a few electric lights blink in the windows. To an ordinary
citizen they probably look like beacons of hope. To me they’re warning signals.

I have no idea what to expect once we’re inside. Cormac was tight-lipped after our
altercation in the street. The grounds of the Ministry are lush and wild in the dark.
It’s impossible to tell whether people and animals are moving through the gardens
or whether it’s the blackness playing tricks on my mind.

We pile out of the transport and Cormac taps my goggles. I pull them over my eyes
and the world is red. Despite the total darkness, I can now see everything in front
of me. Cormac glows like an ember.

“We’ll check the perimeter,” Hannox says.

“For what?” I ask.

“Bombs, armed rebels—”

“Cosmetic-less women!” I cry in mock horror.

“This isn’t a joke.” Hannox’s eyes narrow. “If you can’t get your priorities straight—”

“You have a blackout,” I say, moving toward him. “The citizens are in their homes
scared. You killed a man in the street. All because some women refused to do what
you told them to? Get
your
priorities straight!”

“We have no idea what to expect in there. It’s standard policy to check out a building
and its surroundings before the prime minister enters it, even when there isn’t an
active rebellion in the immediate vicinity,” Hannox explains through gritted teeth.
I’m pretty sure he’s visualizing strangling me.

“There’s no rebellion here.”

“What do you call this?” Hannox says, waving his hands at the blank sky.

“A few Spinsters taking a break?”

“Adelice.” Cormac’s invocation of my name is a warning, but I don’t stop.

“Believe me, there’s no armed revolution waiting for you in there,” I say. It’s as
though they can’t comprehend that someone chose not to obey, as though dissent could
only be violent. I’m certain if a group had planned a full-blown revolution the streets
would not be empty now.

“As if I would trust your insight,” Hannox says. “May I please finish my job, sir?”