Altered (7 page)

“Why send
her
though?” I ask. The shell in front of me seems unaware I’m her daughter. I can’t see any benefit in using her against me.

“To scare you,” Dante says in a cold voice. “Whatever you’ve done to earn their wrath, they want you to know they’re coming for you and they’ll use any means to destroy you.”

It sounds like he’s speaking from experience.

“Are you going to kill her?” I choke the question out. It might not be my mother anymore, but the thought of standing back and letting him murder her claws across my body, squeezing my heart until I’m sure it will shatter. It will be like losing her all over again.

But Dante hesitates at my question, and the pained look on his face mirrors what I feel. He’s closer to this situation than he’s letting on. The Guild must have taken something from him, too. “Not unless you ask me to.”

Whatever the Guild has done to her, forcing her into a half-life, I can’t bring myself to end it. I think of the boxes in the storage facility. It’s possible the rest of her waits inside one, and if so, wouldn’t it be possible to save her—to mend the damage done to her in the sterile clinics of Arras? The technology exists to make a Remnant, perhaps it exists to fix one.

“I can’t let her go without angering Kincaid,” Dante says. “The security feed will catch it, which means I’ll have to take her in.”

“Do you have holding areas here?” Jost asks.

“Not here. Kincaid has holding facilities on his estate, but I can’t protect you from him if I take you there. A refugee is one thing, but a renegade Spinster is another,” Dante tells me.

“I’m guessing after this”—I gesture to the warp—“you couldn’t protect me from him regardless.”

Dante’s attention turns to Erik. “You got a good bit of credit for that Guild paraphernalia, right?”

Erik nods.

“Then let me put this in terms you’ll understand. Adelice is the most valuable Guild paraphernalia on Earth,” Dante says. “Kincaid will want her.”

And like that I’m an object. Something to be collected and used and sold, like a machine.

“What if we don’t want to come along?” Jost asks.

Dante faces him, his shoulders drawing up so that his slight difference in height feels more formidable. “He’ll come after you. We may not have looms here on Earth, but you can’t get far if Kincaid wants you. Your best option for staying alive—and keeping her safe—is to come as an invited guest. Otherwise, he’ll see you as a threat.”

“We’ve been threats before,” I say, taking my place beside Jost.

“You don’t need more enemies than you already have,” Dante warns us. “The Guild overstepped their bounds here tonight. Kincaid won’t overlook this. He’ll want retribution from whomever he can get to after this. At this point, you need him as an ally.”

“I won’t be of any use to him,” I warn Dante. “The strands here are different. I can hardly control my abilities.” The warp I’d made to protect my mother was nothing like the large domes I’d built around Jost and myself in the Coventry. It would have stopped a direct bullet but he only had to change position. I’d barely been able to grab the correct strands.

“You aren’t dealing with the precise patterns of Arras here. This is raw space-time—you can’t control it like you’re at a loom,” Dante says. “Not that I imagine most Spinsters could do what you did.”

Jost steps closer to him and nods at my mother. “What will we do with her?”

I’m grateful he’s changed the subject. I don’t want to explain more about my skills, especially since I’m only now grasping that here I can touch the raw matter of the universe.

Dante’s face is grim, but he’s gentle as he lifts the remains of the steel door from my mother. Jost keeps a gun leveled at her, but Dante reaches to take her into his arms. She claws at him, howling, but her injuries prevent her from causing too much harm. Keying in the passcode, he holds her cautiously and eventually she goes limp in his arms as we wait for the door to swing open.

“We have facilities where I can restrain her,” Dante says. “She will be fine there until we can move her in the morning. You should rest.”

He tilts his head toward a hallway lined with doors.

“Sleeping quarters,” he tells us, and then he disappears down the gray corridor without another word.

For a moment, I question if I’ve done the right thing by keeping her alive, and if I’m making a mistake by sending her with Dante now, but soon worry gives way to a panic building inside me. It rushes through my limbs and stops me in my tracks. The boys freeze alongside me and I feel their concern. But I can’t put words to my dreadful realization yet.

This is what the Guild does to traitors, and I committed treason of an extraordinary caliber when I ripped us from Arras to Earth. We might be safe here temporarily, but there’s no way to protect those we left behind, and now I know what the Guild does to those they perceive as threats—the monsters they create from them.

And if I don’t find the resources to get back to Arras soon, there’s no way to prevent them from doing this to Amie.

IN MY SLEEP, I FACE THE GHOSTS that come for me. A wave of Remnants with Amie in the middle, reaching for me. I can only watch as Amie is swept into the crowd of soulless monsters. A new figure emerges where she vanished: a woman with wrists dripping red. The Remnants are gone now. I open my mouth to scream but no sound comes. Blood pools at her feet as she dissolves slowly into a puddle and then another woman rises from it. She’s naked, a long scar marring her belly, and her hair on fire. My mother. She points to me accusingly. Her eyes hollow. Dead. Because of me. I will the dream to change, coaxing my mind to wake up, reminding myself this isn’t real. But when I open my eyes, I’m at a bar, a whiskey perched in front of me. Next to it rests a tiny card. I lift it to read the inscription.

I look around, wondering where this dream has taken me. The place is familiar, although it lacks the color of the real location I encountered in my travels in Arras. Here the bar isn’t rich mahogany but a slab of ebony in a gray world. My eyes fall on the swinging doors. He’ll arrive any minute.

Cormac. The worst nightmare of all. But it’s not him. He’s stockier than Cormac with the same easy swagger, but his face is shielded by a fedora cocked too low.

Even as I fight the dream, I drift in and out of consciousness until light breaks into the room. Suddenly Jost’s arms are around me, waking me.

“I was dreaming,” I murmur.

“Nightmares?”

“Yes.”

His arms tighten around me, coming to rest in a cross on my chest. I feel the steady thump of his heart against my back. “You can rest now.”

I relax into the security of his embrace, but I don’t sleep. We’ve been on the surface barely over a week, and I’ve discovered so much.
Too much
. Seeing Valery, which I am increasingly sure was not my imagination. Being attacked by my mother. The strange experience in the Old Curiosity Shop. Cormac must have a hand in it all, but to what end? Does he hope to scare me back to Arras?

The events of the day crowd my mind, each bringing a question that I can’t answer. Sleep becomes impossible while knowing my mother is locked somewhere in the safe house. I replay the attack and rewind farther and farther into my memories of her and my father.

My parents were never risk takers. They’d hinted at rebellion in whispered conversations, but the only openly anti-Guild action they ever took was to try to keep me from being retrieved. If there was more to their treachery, it was as hidden as the mysterious tunnels under our house. I wish I could talk to my mother or that my father was alive to direct me. I resented when they got involved with academy issues or offered unwanted advice about classmates. Now I ache for their guidance.

I close my eyes, trying to wash the memory of them from my mind, but they persist in the space between sleep and wakefulness. My parents were affectionate. Kind to each other. But what I remember most is how my father adored my mother. How he tried to fill the void of the third child the Guild would not grant or remedy the scars of her thankless job. Now she’s a monster created by the Guild. I squeeze my eyelids tighter, willing myself to sleep, but images from home haunt me. Love notes. Morning routines. My mother pinning up her hair. I catch a glimpse of an hourglass scar behind her ear and startle awake, but close my eyes again quickly lest Jost wants to talk.

Did I imagine it? Have I added the scar to my memory as I try to understand who my mother was, or have I simply overlooked it for years?

My fingers touch my own scar. It feels the same as ever—slightly raised, but hardly perceptible. And yet it throbs, announcing me for who I am. My father’s words linger in my mind—
remember who you are
—but I’m no closer now to understanding who I am than I was that night.

As each second ticks by, I see the lies surrounding me. The secrets everyone kept from me. When did my parents dig those tunnels and why didn’t they tell me? How did Enora upload the program that led me to the truth on the digifile? Who gave her access? On Earth, the darkness is everywhere, and I’m trapped in it. How can I discover who I am when my world is built of secrets and shadows?

I only know one thing: I’m no safer here than I was in Arras. That’s one message Cormac’s made clear. He knows where I am, and he’s still pulling the strings. So if Kincaid is the most powerful man on Earth, I’m going straight to his compound. Enora told me once to make allies. She couldn’t have been more right.

We travel into the mountains the next day in a death trap Dante calls a crawler, which looks like a cage with wheels. Kincaid’s estate rests on several acres located comfortably outside the Icebox but still under the Interface. Far enough away to supervise his business there while still having room to wrap an intimidating perimeter fence around his land. And though I’ve yet to meet him, our first glimpse of his home colors my impression of what kind of man he is. The estate is extravagant in the worst sense of the word. Kincaid must be a man who tries hard to impress if this is where he lives. We can’t drive close enough to the estate to park the crawler there, so Dante stops outside one of the long, winding pathways to let us out. My mother is sedated and bound in the back—for our safety, according to Dante.

The opulence of Kincaid’s estate takes me by surprise. I shouldn’t have expected it to be any different, based on the Sunrunner’s safe house in the grey market, but it pulls at me—the luxury off-putting in a world where there’s not enough food to feed the population. It’s nearly an entire metro unto itself, and I can’t help thinking it puts even the compound of the Coventry to shame. In the center, the main house governs the landscape with its red-tiled roof and twin spires watching over the grounds. There are balconies that overlook the magnificent spectacle below. Palm trees and shrubbery line the walkways, and everywhere I turn faces frozen in marble stare back at me, locked in a permanent display of horror and beauty for those deemed worthy to enter the estate.

Pillars loom overhead, creating an artificial lighting system that mimics the sun. It’s bright and warm, and the light sparkles off the water in the pools and fountains, nearly blinding me. But tucked behind the stately buildings and manicured gardens, a series of smokestacks billows against the Interface.

“Jax will show you in,” Dante says, gesturing to a lanky boy waiting at the top of the stairs. “I’m going to see to our prisoner.”

“I want to see her. I need to talk to her,” I say as Dante turns away. I have so many questions for her. No matter what the Guild has done to her, she might still have answers. And I miss her.

“I promise you can later, but right now she needs to be secured for—”

“Our safety,” I finish for him.

“Exactly,” Dante says through tight lips.

The friendliness Dante exhibited toward Jost and me on our first meeting has cooled. He brought us here, starting out at first light, and he barely spoke to us as we took the twisting roads through the mountains to reach Kincaid. Maybe my talent unnerves him, but I suspect it’s something more.

“Welcome,” Jax calls as he bounces down the steps.

“Kincaid is expecting us,” Dante says.

“I’ll take care of them,” Jax says, “and I have a message for you once you’re done, uh…” He stares at my mother in Dante’s arms, undoubtedly wondering why we’ve brought a Remnant onto the estate.

“I’ll find you later,” Dante says, carrying my mother away.

Jax is so skinny he looks years younger than Jost or Erik. But his eyes are surrounded by wrinkles, and they light up when he grins widely as he sticks his hand out to shake each of ours, repeating our names as we introduce ourselves—the greeting so easy and natural that I can’t help but relax a little for the first time since yesterday’s crazy events.

“I had them put some drinks in the assembly room for you,” Jax tells us. “Kincaid is in a business meeting, but he’ll join you at lunch.”

“What’s that?” I ask, pointing to the smokestacks.

“Power plant. It hosts the grids for the estate and the Icebox,” Jax says.

“That’s where you store the solar energy you collect?”

“It’s a bit more complicated than that. We utilize a hybrid photovoltaic system with a coal-based generator that—”

“So basically it’s where the power comes from?” Erik stops him.

“Yeah,” Jax says with a laugh. We follow him into the main building, trailing behind as he chatters about the locations of toilets and how to call a servant. But I’m mesmerized by the statues that lurk in every corner and the detailed portraits that hang from the carved wooden panels. Tapestry after tapestry with precise, intricate embroidery chills my blood. There are faces everywhere, frozen in time, watching me as I enter the house. Between the patterns and colors and ornamentation, my head begins to hurt. The assembly room contains a variety of seating choices, arranged in clusters. Against the far wall, a tall hearth, at least twice my height, lords over the room. My feet sink into the plush, woven rug as I melt into a sofa. The sofa is very elegant and very small, and I perch on it uncomfortably. Jax excuses himself, leaving the three of us alone in the grand room.