Altered

  “I don’t see any men here,” I say, but they ignore me.

  “An intriguing proposition,” Kincaid says, “but I’m afraid I’ve grown fond of Earth. My estate is lovely, I took the liberty of claiming it from the man with the newspapers. The one we ripped early on.”

  “Hearst? I remember him. Troublemaker,” Cormac says.

  “Arrogant, too.”

  I can’t keep my mouth from falling open at the bizarre exchange. Their eyes shift, feet tap—they’re buying time. Each trying to determine the best way to destroy the other.

  “The thing is, Arras is monotonous,” Kincaid says in a bored voice. “You employ the same standards. You add new tech to control the masses. There’s nothing challenging there, but you’ve created a virtual playground on Earth and I’m king of the hill.”

  “So you’d unravel it?” Cormac says, and his eyes flicker to mine. He wants me to hear this.

  “Yes,” Kincaid snarls, losing his composure. “I want to watch it fade away like I watched her fade before me. I want to see you burn into the sun, and I want to feel that sun on my skin every day and know that I put it there and that I took it from you.”

  “Destroying it won’t bring her back,” Cormac says. “And without your petty dreams of revenge, how will you fill that loss?”

  “There are other realms to reach for,” Kincaid says. “Space, perhaps. Maybe even death someday. This is my world, full of liars and cheats and the unwanted wastrels of Arras—my kind of people. Each more honest than a single official left in Arras.”

  “And when they rise up and start a war?” Cormac challenges. “How will you control them?”

  “Why control them? Kill them. It will be no waste. I have my men. They have skills, as you know. I’ll start over if I care to.”

  “Caring isn’t in your vocabulary,” Cormac says. “Your ability to care died with her.”

  “Is that why you exiled me?” Kincaid demands. “So I couldn’t force you to pay for what you did to her?”

  “I did nothing to her.” Cormac’s voice stays gentle, catching me off guard.

  “You told her lies. You turned her against me,” Kincaid says. “Why, Cormac? Why did you want her to hate me?”

  “I wanted her to help you. The experiments you were doing were against Guild law.”

  “What kind of experiments?” I ask, thinking of the X-rays and measurements hidden in the labs of the estate.

  “Kincaid dreams not only of controlling Tailors but also of being one himself,” Cormac tells me.

  “It’s the natural step in evolution,” Kincaid snarls, “and I was close until you ruined everything.”

  “I warned her. That’s all. What you did to her—that was the result of your madness.”

  “I’m perfectly sane,” Kincaid says. “But you awake the sleeping sword of war.”

  “Poetic,” I mutter.

  “Whatever you paid those scientists to do to you, it didn’t make you into a Tailor, Kincaid. It stripped you of your humanity. That’s why you killed Josin.” Cormac doesn’t look triumphant as he says it. He looks sad.

  And I realize he’s right. Kincaid doesn’t hunger for power and control like Cormac does, and for the first time, I realize he wants something far more dangerous. Destruction. Total and pure nihilism. This isn’t about a lost power play. Whatever transpired between Cormac and Kincaid runs deeper and closer to Kincaid’s heart than I realized. He guarded the information from me so I wouldn’t see that his perverse fascination with change and control had twisted his very soul into something irrevocably malignant.

  “What about me?” I ask, drawing their attention from each other. “What’s my offer? What will you give me?”

  “You can watch it burn,” Kincaid seethes. “Everything they took from you. Everything they controlled. You’ll have a front-row seat to the dawn of a new age outside the Guild’s control.”

  “A dawn of your control,” I clarify.

  “I’ll share,” he says simply.

  “Fair offer, but I think I have a more enticing one,” Cormac says, snapping his fingers.

  The army of guards behind him shifts and out of the dark sea of black uniforms a girl emerges. She’s fair-haired and wearing combat gear like Cormac, but her features are painted in lovely contrast to her fair skin, her eyes framed by dark lashes, and although her hair is pinned in perfect curls that frame her delicate face, a few tendrils have escaped, leaving curls behind her ears.

  She’s my age now, or close to it, and I see the startling evidence of the time dilation we’ve been fighting against. I told myself a few months wouldn’t matter. How old would Amie be? Fifteen. Still a girl. But as she stands before me, I see a young woman. My equal. Her bright eyes recognize me. The last time I saw her, amid a crowd in Cypress, she believed she was someone else—Riya. A result of her being rewoven after my retrieval night. Cormac has been busy preparing for this moment by creating the perfect bait. He’s dangling my sister in front of my eyes, knowing I’m too weak to resist.

  “Amie,” I whisper. I step forward tentatively, and my eyes meet Cormac’s. He nods slightly to indicate it’s okay, and the part of me that wants to embrace her accepts this, pushing against the smaller voice that reminds me that nothing with Cormac is free.

  My arms find her, and she hugs me back. My heart swells, knowing she recognizes me, and for an instant I’m transported to the dark cellar a lifetime ago. She was shorter then, her head rested on my chest, and now it falls on my shoulder and I smell her soap-clean scent and I remember why I fought for her. Why I needed to cling to the hope of getting my sister back. Her bright chatter and mindless gossip. The way Amie’s enthusiasm could be catching. She was the sun in my world. On Earth, she could be the sun for everyone. I’d give anything for that.

  We stay like this for a long moment and no one speaks, no one breaks the spell, and I don’t let myself think of Cormac or his devious intentions.

  I pull back and study her face, looking for signs of fear, but I see happiness.

  Joy.

  “Have they hurt you?” I ask.

  “No,” she says with a laugh. “I’m training. It’s marvelous. A Spinster. Me! Wouldn’t Mom and Dad be surprised?”

  I bite my tongue. I want to ask her what she thinks happened to our parents, but I know better. Cormac might let her remember me, but he’ll have altered her memory.

  “Do you remember anything?” I ask her, my eyes traveling from her to Cormac. I don’t want to overstep this moment and have her ripped from me again. “Where have you been?”

  Her eyelids flutter and she stares at me, like she’s trying to dredge up a memory but cannot.

  “She’s been at the Coventry,” Cormac says, prompting her and letting me in on the lie I need to embrace if I want to spare my sister the devastation of the truth about what happened to her and my parents after my retrieval.

  “You’ve been happy there.” My voice breaks on the words, my throat swelling over the lie, but I push it through. It’s better if Amie doesn’t remember Riya and the men who dragged her from the tunnel under our house. Someday I can tell her the truth, when she can understand it.

  “I’m not without a heart,” Cormac says.

  “I never said you were,” I respond coolly. “It’s just a small one.”

  “Enough of this,” Kincaid says, walking from his entourage toward me and my sister. “Take her with you. My men can handle the rest.”

  “Why would you think I would leave with you?” I ask him, pushing Amie behind me to keep her a safe distance from him.

  “You want to go back with Cormac? Playing dress-up and weaving the world in a tower?” Kincaid asks.

  “‘Fetter strong madness in a silken thread,’” Cormac says.

  “Well done, Cormac,” Kincaid says. “But this thread of life is spun.”

  “Shakespeare suits any occasion,” Cormac says, his eyes on me. “‘His thread of life had not so soon decay’d.’”

  Cormac
’s message is clear to me. Kincaid is rotten, and I know then what I have to do. I feel my consciousness fading down, focusing in on the basic world around me. The strands of Alcatraz are dark and the time here moves slowly. It’s not frozen like in the buildings, but it’s still otherworldly. Unnatural. The sooner I get off this island the better. But I’m not interested in the island, I’m interested in the man advancing on me. His composition reminds me of Albert’s, and I’m sure if I looked at Cormac now with my newfound ability, I would see something similar—a mass of artificial threads neatly patched into place around the stagnant, staid individual time thread. Kincaid’s time thread is worn, mixed with newer threads into a macabre patchwork. Away from the Guild’s technology and labs, he would have used any means to survive. How many have died so he could live?

  I step forward. I’ve seen it done. I can replicate it now, but to do so means I have to count on Cormac’s army to back me up against Kincaid’s entourage, but I know that’s why Cormac has drawn us here together. Why he sent Valery to lead us to Kincaid. He’s been planning this moment, orchestrating it from offstage. He knows I have a choice: destroy him or Kincaid. I can’t have it both ways, but now I understand my choice, what’s truly at risk. I could watch Arras fade into the sky, but I’m not jaded enough not to see the thousands of laughing schoolgirls, the mothers fawning over their infants, the couples learning to fall in love. I can’t destroy them to destroy one man or the Guild. There’s another way, and now I’m playing with a full deck.

  I won’t turn back.

  The realization bursts inside me, flooding me with strength, and I lash out with the ferocity I felt the night I was attacked at the estate, my fingers grazing into Kincaid’s very being and latching on to his time strands. I have to pull hard against its efforts to stay in place, but everything rides on this and it gives me a strength I didn’t know I had. With a pop, it uncoils, pulling through him.

  I ignore his agonized shriek and I watch the unwinding in its purest form. I don’t see flesh or bone, merely the threads falling apart. The thin silver strand of his soul dissipating into the night sky along with the rest of him, until the golden strand of his life—his unnatural time in existence—fades from my fingers. By the time I regain full awareness, there’s chaos around me and dust scattering at my feet.

  Dust to dust, Kincaid.

  FORTY-TWO

  CORMAC’S MEN REACT AS I EXPECT THEM to, engaging in cross fire with the few Tailors that dare to take them on. Most of them are smart enough to make a run for it, and a few even escape the range of fire.

  “Leave them,” Cormac says flippantly. He has a smug look on his face, and I hate him for it. “I knew I could count on you to make the right decision, Adelice.”

  “What is right?” I muse out loud. I turn to Amie, but she’s backed away from me, her face ashen. I’m a monster to her, but it doesn’t matter. I knew that would happen. Better now than later.

  “What did you do?” she gasps, one hand reaching to her throat.

  “I made a decision,” I say in a calm voice. Amie thinks she wants this life, but she needs to know what it really entails. She needs to see the dirty work—the horror behind the looms, the capability of the Guild, the choices she’ll have to make.

  “And now you have another one to make,” Cormac says. “I can’t leave you here, Adelice. You’re dangerous.”

  “And you expect me to go with you? To turn my back on my friends and lie down in your clinic, so you can make me into the perfect wife?” I ask.

  “Wife?” Amie mumbles, peeking from behind Cormac.

  “Cormac and I are engaged, or didn’t he tell you? Like he didn’t tell you what he did to our mother? Our father?” I ask, but my voice is too cold and I regret speaking so cruelly to her. Amie’s as much a victim of Cormac as any of us.

  “Come, come, darling,” Cormac says. “I have a proposal that will be more to your liking. Your life for hers. If you come with me, she can stay with your friends.”

  Amie stares at him, confused and hurt, but nothing about his proposition surprises me. Using Amie was always part of his endgame.

  “And them?” I ask, gesturing to my friends. “They can go?”

  “All of them, even your pitiful scientist. He’s no good without you,” Cormac says. So he knows. “Good move not telling Kincaid the truth that Einstein is incapable of completing the binding without you—that you were the true Whorl the whole time.”

  “I am getting smarter,” I say absently. I don’t trust Cormac to release them, but this isn’t just about my choice anymore.

  “I’ll let her go, too, and you’ll return with me. I’ve seen the light, Adelice,” Cormac says. “I’m a changed man. Maybe becoming prime minister has done that. We’ll sever the worlds. We have his notes. I’m not unreasonable. You come back to my world and I’ll give them their own. We need you there, Adelice. None of them can do this, and in exchange, I won’t touch you.”

  It’s a honeyed promise, coated in something sweet to make it palatable, but I taste its bitterness, the venom he’s trying to hide. I merely nod in agreement.

  “Adelice!” Erik calls from behind me, and I turn to look at him. He’s watched this without a word until now, and his brother stands beside him looking set and determined. “You don’t have to do this.”

  “Take her,” I cry, pushing Amie toward him. She’s sobbing, and I want to reassure her, but how can I after what she’s seen?

  Erik’s face sinks and he nods. One last promise he’ll make to me for a lifetime of promises we’ll never keep.

  “I’ll come with you, Cormac, and if you so much as try to alter my hair, I will rip you in half,” I warn him in a low voice.

  Cormac’s face contorts. He knows I can do it. He’s seen it with his own eyes. It doesn’t ensure my safety. It merely raises the stakes of our cat-and-mouse game. And I know something he doesn’t. Something that could change everything. If it’s true and Amie has been training, our small resistance will have everything it needs, save one thing. One thing I can give them: time.

  Cormac offers his arm and I take it tentatively, not daring to cast one more look over my shoulder at what I’m leaving behind—a life I’ll lose forever.

  A bullet whistles overhead, cracking through the solemn moment, and I realize with horror it’s come from behind me. I’m simultaneously furious and terrified. Enough blood has been spilled here today.

  “Fool!” Cormac yells as his guards rush toward us. “She already lost one father to inane valor.”

  Dante. The wild card, who never quite wanted me, didn’t know what to do with me, is fighting for me now. I whip toward them and see guns raised, but they can’t take on all these men. Valery is helping Albert to safety, but Amie is nowhere to be seen. I twirl, trying to find her, but she’s hidden from my sight, lost in the chaos of drawn weapons and gunfire. I choose to believe she has fled with Albert and Valery, disappeared into the night, beyond my vision—because I have one last thing to do.

  I think of the house crumbling behind them, the severed time strands. Albert wanted me to remember, to look at this world for what it was, and I had. I unwound Kincaid but I studied everything first and I’m able to call it forth now as rifles click into place and fingers press down on triggers, and with a great and sudden fury, I pull against the world around me. This conflict won’t be solved with guns, and I’d rather go with Cormac than watch the life seep from another friend, the only family I have left. I can stop the bloodshed with a single choice. My fingers find the right strand, long and wild, a lifetime of possibilities and it cracks against Earth, mutilating what lies in its wake, forming a long barrier of protection. I turn and instantly warp another spot and another, until I’ve surrounded us in protection. They can’t reach me, but Cormac’s men can’t shoot them.

  Their cries are muffled, and I see the look on Dante’s face. Grim, but determined, and he waves for the rest of them to flee as I build my own cage. The only way to protect those I love is to
cage myself with the Guild. I’m as dangerous to them as these men with guns.

  Erik doesn’t run with the others, he walks forward and places his hand on the rift between us. He can’t reach through, and I can’t touch him, but I let my hand rest there for a moment. One final goodbye.

  “Go!” I choke at the words, and even if he can’t hear them, I know he understands. He doesn’t move, not even to breathe.

  “I can’t.” The words are lost in the wind or muffled by the rift, but I see them.

  And so I whisper back, carefully articulating each word, so that he understands: “‘Love is not love which alters when it alteration finds.’”

  He bites his lip and I see the desperation in his eyes, but then Jost comes and pulls Erik away. Jost pushes Erik away from the cage of light and time I’ve created.

  Jost turns toward me, and although his words are lost to the warp between us, I understand them. “Find her.”

  I give him a determined nod. Somehow I will protect Sebrina for him.

  He raises his hand and places his fist over his heart before he turns away from me—perhaps forever.

  “I have missed your flair for the dramatic,” Cormac says. “A little unnecessary, but if you can’t control your men—”

  “I’m not interested in controlling anyone,” I spit at him.

  “You have a world to control, so I’d reevaluate that,” he says.

  So this is how it will be—the niceties abandoned. A group of men cuff me and lead me toward the waiting aeroship.

  “I could still kill them, you know,” Cormac calls, pulling a flask from his vest. “But I won’t, and then you will see that I can be merciful.”

  I twist my mouth, weighing my words, searching for the right thing to say, and in the end it’s simply, “Thank you.”

  “Better manners every day,” he murmurs. “Take her to my quarters, and put her hands in gages. We don’t want her wandering off.”

  The inside of the aeroship is voluminous and austere. Great metal ribs arch overhead, and my footsteps echo across the metal flooring as the guards lead me. My hands are secured with gages, inflexible gloves that prevent the use of my hands. It occurs to me as my gaze sweeps over the thin metal walls and pressed-glass windows that I could try to escape, that I should try to escape. I’m not interested though. Cormac has no idea he’s taking me exactly where I need to go.