Altered

EIGHTEEN

I SLEEP SO HEAVILY THAT THE NEXT morning I have no memory of the prior night. When I look back at the time since Deniel’s attack, it seems like a dream, even though I feel far from safe. Sleep is the dark and lovely escape of my childhood, and nightmares are now an inevitability of my waking existence. They’ll come for me again and again, but in sleep, I’m finally free.

When I was little, I would lie awake and listen to my father checking the locks on our doors. The only thing I needed so I could drift away was the sound of locks clicking in place and if I heard them, I rarely had nightmares.

Once, soon after my parents starting training me to hide my gift, I dreamed I was tangled in a web, held captive by sticky strands that wound slowly around my short legs. They wrapped up my entire body until even my eyes were glued shut from the clinging fibers, and I waited to be devoured.

My father woke me that night, and I was still screaming even after he switched on the lamp that hung over my bed. Only cocooned in his strong arms did I calm down enough to relate the dream in choking, gasping sobs.

“You’re safe,” he whispered into my hair.

“But you weren’t there,” I sobbed.

He could have lied to me—told me he would never leave me—but instead he pulled away and took my trembling chin in his warm, rough hands. “When I’m not there, remember you have the strength to free yourself.”

“But I didn’t,” I protested.

“You will,” my father said, brushing back the wisps of copper hair caught in my tears.

I fell asleep in his arms and woke the next morning to find him sleeping in a crooked heap next to me. He’d stayed with me through the night. Looking back, it was almost as though he knew our time together was drawing to a close, as though he couldn’t bear to deplete my strength before I would need it most.

Now sleep asks no more of me than it once did. It is a refuge for me like it was when I was a child—perhaps the last refuge I have left.

My father is the first person I think of when I wake—my real father. The man who brought me up and locked the doors at night to keep me safe. I only knew him as a parent—someone who cared for me, providing food, shelter, and security—but now I know there was more to Benn Lewys. In the Coventry, I blocked the memory of my retrieval night, letting it fade into a fuzzy, Valpron-tainted recollection. If I didn’t think of it, it had never happened. The fact that I would never see my father again could burn out of my mind along with the other moments too painful to recall.

But now, knowing that Dante is my biological father and that Benn kept his own painful secrets tucked away, I want to remember. And for the first time since my retrieval, I have a conduit to my past.

I find Dante piling large glass panels and coiled wire into the back of a crawler.

“Going somewhere?” I ask, suddenly glad that I’d pulled on thick blue jeans rather than a dress.

“Yeah,” Dante says, pushing another panel into the cargo bed. There’s the hesitation of a question in his voice. He knows I’m up to something.

“I want to come with you,” I say, twisting a loose strand of hair tightly around my finger. “Maybe I could learn the family business.”

Dante slams the cargo door closed and wipes his hands across his jeans. “Sunrunning is hardly the family business.”

“Still, I’d like to see it.” I’m not exactly lying. I would like to understand how Sunrunning works, but I’m more eager for some time off the estate with Dante.

“I don’t know. I was planning to go alone—”

“I don’t feel safe here anymore,” I say in a low whisper, confessing my weakness to my father as I would have as a child.

“Fine,” Dante agrees. Apparently he’s as vulnerable to my entreaties as my father once was. “I’m leaving in ten minutes. Meet me out here.”

I dash back in to grab a few supplies—a bottle for water and a jacket in case it’s cool in the open-air crawler. Unfortunately, my quick supply run puts me in the path of Jost and Erik. I’m not eager to make a party of it, but I can’t say no when they ask to come along. It means Jost and Erik can help Dante collect the solar panels after they’re charged. Dante doesn’t seem too happy about it, but he doesn’t renege on his agreement to let me come.

“And you’re sure this is safe?” I ask Dante, my attention locked on the crawler. It has the same terrifying, cage-like appearance of the one we traveled in to the estate with the added bonus of no roof.

“Perfectly,” Dante says, balancing a thick glass panel on his shoulder. “Get in and stop worrying. I thought you were a rebel.”

“I haven’t quite hit the suicidal stage of rebellion though,” I mutter.

“What every father wants to hear,” Dante says. He looks away as soon as it slips from his mouth, but awkwardness crackles in the air around us. I can appreciate his attempt to lighten things between us, but I can’t laugh about this yet.

“How far are we going?” I ask as the engine thunders to life.

“Until we see the sun,” Dante says.

“We’ll be outside Kincaid’s territory?” I ask.

“Yes,” Dante answers, not taking his eyes off the road that leads from the estate.

The ride is as rough as I predicted based on the appearance of the crawler, but when we get closer to the border, where Dante will gather the solar energy to sell in the Icebox, light creeps across the edge of the Interface. We’ve been past the border before—the night we came to Earth—but we hadn’t stayed long enough to study the relationship of the worlds. Day never came once we’d passed under the Interface into the metro of the Icebox, only an artificial morning created by the solar charges in the street lamps. I had looked at the sky that day and it hasn’t changed since. At the time I was sad to think I had left the moon and stars behind without so much as a goodbye. In a moment I will see blue laced with cottony clouds. I will see the sun.

And when I do, we’ll be deep in Guild territory.

“But what is it the border of?” Erik asks as we cross into the bright light of morning. We’re out from under the Interface now. Arras’s cover doesn’t reach this far along the rocky, mountainous shoreline.

“The Interface between Earth and Arras,” Dante says over the rumble of the crawler’s engine. That’s hardly more than we knew before though. The relationship of Earth and Arras remains hazy, although we see the parasitic effects of Arras every day. “There’s a Guild mining operation nearby.”

“Only one?” I ask.

“One active mine. Once they expend a spot, they move to another. We estimate there are about one hundred active mining locations at any time, but there are thousands of abandoned ones,” Dante says. “Arras always needs more. It’s growing every year.” His eyes flicker to the sky directly over us.

If Arras is up there, it’s hidden from view, even at the boundary of the Interface. Dante parks the crawler in a patch of grass, and I leap from it, kicking off my thin flats and stretching my toes in the cool blades. It tickles my skin and I’m reminded of home, of the grass woven into the yard I played in as a girl, and I have to fight the ache of longing that tumbles through me. Turning around, I look at the world the sun touches. There’s some vegetation, although it’s sparse and unruly. I stare up, unblinking, into the bright sky, looking for an aeroship like the one we saw the first time we were here. But no ship comes and soon purple spots blossom in my vision. Dropping my gaze, I stare out to the other side and catch my breath—across the top of a far series of mountain peaks runs a long fence. Metal. Sharp. Modern. On the way here, Dante warned me that one of the Guild’s mining operations was located nearby, and here’s the proof. I don’t want to know what lies beyond that fence.

Jost and Dante are busy checking equipment, ready to get started with the operation as Erik and I watch. They move with purpose, unloading thin panels from the small cargo space in the crawler.

“How does it work?” I ask.

“Basically, these collect the solar energy,” Dante says as he mounts a panel on a rack behind the vehicle.

“And that?” I point to a cord snaking its way from the rack to the back of the crawler.

Dante opens the cargo door wider and I spot a long, squat control board. “It monitors the intake of solar energy as well as the panel’s temperature level with bypass diodes. Collection occurs in cycles so the panels don’t overheat and crack. We need to hook them up to a solar tracker to ensure the rack tilts them toward the sun. It takes hours to fully charge a panel.”

“So we’ll be here awhile,” Erik says, pivoting around to take in the entire view—how the raw weave blocks the sun, the Guild’s fence, the sparse vegetation. “Arras lies over it…”

I have to assume so, based on our escape from Arras, when I ripped an exit through to the mantle that we now see overhead.

Erik takes a few steps back, surveying the world around him. Then he leans down and touches the ground. A moment later his eyes rise to the border between the sun and the weave.

“Then this is where it begins,” he says softly.

At first I don’t follow, and then it hits me: everything Loricel told me and everything I’ve learned. Arras has to begin and end. And it does, I realize. At four distinct points. Dante called them resources, but I know them as something different—coventries. Four distinct coventries.

“It’s hard to fathom,” I whisper. “But it must be.”

We both start turning, looking for what we know is nearby. If only I knew what it looked like.

“There!” Erik points to a spot in the distance.

“Come on,” I call, picking up my pace until I’m jogging toward it. If we have hours to kill before the panels are charged to capacity, we might as well look around.

“Whoa!” Dante calls, but we don’t listen.

In the distance, barely close enough to see, something rises up in a wind tunnel. Sparks fly off the twisting strands, and all around the building are large gears and tubes. My eyes follow the tubes back as they snake off. I know where they lead—to a Guild mining site. One of the ones Loricel had to visit each year. The ones I would have been responsible to maintain as Creweler. I pull back. Nothing good can come of going there. Even from a distance I can feel the frozen deadness of the area, the corrupted world around the drill site.

But I walk backward, staring at the strange cloud that rises farther and farther up into the sky until it covers the sun, and the dark, glittering strands that stretch out past it, covering the Earth. It’s separate from Earth and separate from Arras, and around it strands radiate, knitting together into the Interface, as though it’s creating the Interface’s weave.

We’ve found a coventry.

“Is that…” Erik’s voice trails into a question.

“A coventry,” I guess. It rises like a tower, tubes and gears taking it above the surface of Earth. Due to the Interface, we can’t see the actual compound where we once lived. The tower fades past the mantle like a castle nestled in the clouds. But I know it’s there.

“How?” he asks.

I drop down to my knees and drag my finger along the ground, drawing a square. “Think of it this way. Arras has four coventries, right?” I don’t wait for him to answer me. “They each rest on the border of the Endless Sea—or that’s what we’re told.”

“But why is it here?” he asks, his eyes on the wind tunnel circling the tower.

“It’s not really,” I say. “It’s up there, but that tunnel actually plumbs the elements of Earth and sends them up to Arras. Spinsters use them on the loom. We weave them into Arras, but we have to mine them from somewhere.”

“So you take that”—he points to the twisting strands—“and make it into Arras.”

“Yes,” I say. “That’s why we have to be in the coventries. To keep Arras bound together correctly.”

“But if you’re right about this,” Erik says, “then the coventries aren’t part of Arras. They’re located in between Earth and Arras.”

I follow his eyes up to stare at the snaking tunnel. We can’t see the compound, but I know he must be right. Hadn’t I always suspected everything about the Coventry was false? From the programmed windows carefully created to display a perfect setting to the strange walls in Loricel’s studios that she’d overridden to use exactly as she wanted. The garden filled with creatures and plants that should never have been able to coexist. The constant need for security. The coventries were between Earth and Arras, and that’s why we didn’t fall to our deaths when I ripped us through Arras to Earth. We’d been close enough to the surface in the Coventry.

“That’s why we have to rebound in,” I tell him, recalling the small station situated right outside the compound walls. “It’s why they guard us so closely. They don’t want us to know where we are.”

Dante and Jost stride up in the middle of my explanation, looking angry and out of breath.

“Are you trying to get killed? Do you know how close we are to the mines?” Dante asks.

“I know,” I say.

Jost looks at my drawing in the dirt, and I repeat Erik’s and my conversation as his eyes search the sky. “But the Guild officials must know how this works.”

“Maybe,” Erik says. “The Guild is funny about what it does and doesn’t share, and there are enough ministers occupied with keeping their heads up their—”

“They aren’t worried about it,” I finish for him.

Erik grins. “Sure, sweetie.”

“Did Maela know?” I ask him, gesturing to the strange site. “Did she ever mention anything about the mines?”

“Perfect example,” he says. “I don’t know, but I doubt it. You see, Maela doesn’t care about anything unless it directly affects her. She doesn’t care what you are weaving or why. She does as she’s told and she takes any opportunity she can to advance.”

“So she’s indifferent?”

“It’s the preferred disease of Arras,” Erik says, and his smile becomes anything but amused.

“We shouldn’t stay here,” Jost says in a low voice. “They must keep guards near here.”

“He’s right. Not that there are usually refugees from Arras running around the base of the slubs to worry about,” Dante says.

“Slubs?” Erik asks.

“You’ll feel it,” he says. “The areas near the drill are dead. The Guild has mined all the resources and left an irregularity in space-time.”

Loricel told me Earth was frozen around the mines, and I could feel the coldness creeping over my skin as we moved closer to them.

“I want to see the mines now,” Erik says, and before we can respond to him, he’s heading in the direction of the tubes.

“Me too,” I vote.

Dante groans but turns to follow him. “I knew why you wanted to come today, but I hoped you’d chicken out.”

“We’re too young and reckless to chicken out,” Erik calls back.

“He’s going to get us killed,” Jost growls, even as we follow him.

“Not if I get us killed first,” I say, trying to lighten the mood. He doesn’t laugh, so I take his hand and drag him after his brother.

We catch up with Erik, but no one speaks. There’s a sense of shared purpose in the silence, and we walk for so long that the sun shifts in the sky. First it moves high and glares over us and then it begins to dwindle down. We’re hours from the crawler and the solar equipment, but I won’t turn back until we see the mines. The area we’re exploring is outside the mountain range, and by the time we finally reach the steel fence, the sun hangs low. Not far from the fence, I spot a small creek a short way off. The rushing stream seems so vital after being under the Interface, where everything is inert, lifeless, or artificial.

“I’m going to fill up a few bottles,” Dante says. “Water near the source mines is pure, and we’ll need it for the hike back. Stay here until I return.”

“I’ll come with you,” Jost says. “No one should be alone.”

I open my mouth to protest, but he holds up his hand.

“Please, Ad. You’ll draw more attention if there are guards,” he whispers.

I’m itching to get to the mining site and I don’t want to waste time refilling water bottles but I bob my head in agreement.

“Stay with her until we get back?” Jost asks Erik.

Erik looks genuinely surprised by the request but a little pleased as well.

“You look as out of place as she does,” Jost continues, as if he can’t bear to actually be asking a favor of his brother.

“Sure,” Erik says, but now he doesn’t look happy.

Dante and Jost stride off toward the water, and I fidget as their outlines grow small on the horizon.

“Promise me that you won’t let me clock him,” Erik says through gritted teeth.

I can’t exactly blame him for being mad. I’m not very happy myself. “Promise.”

As soon as they’re far enough away, I start toward the fence.

Erik grabs my arm to stop me, but I drag him along. “They’ll be back in a few minutes,” he says.

“Dante is going to rush us out of here. I want to take a look around without him hovering over us,” I say. “Are you coming with me or waiting around?”

Erik follows me. Now that we’re so close, I feel pulled to the fence. It’s not what I would expect. It’s thick steel, and sturdy, but I don’t see any cameras or guards. It looks more like a boundary than a safety measure, which makes it easy to climb. As soon as I’m over it, I spot the mines. Erik holds a finger to his lips. Like I need him to tell me to be quiet. And then I see it.

A light moves not far from a nearby truck. It’s held by a worker. It looks like he’s escorting a group. I’m too curious to keep from taking a few steps forward to look more closely. The truck is parked near a grove of trees and it’s unlikely to be seen, but I understand the need for caution.

“Ad,” Erik says in a low voice. I hold up a hand, indicating I know what I’m doing.

The group continues, moving closer to the actual drills. For a moment my attention wanders to the mining spot. I’ve seen pictures of the drills, but I hadn’t come close to understanding their enormity. They are massive, even larger than the aeroship we saw when we first arrived. Since mine operations are shut down for the night, the gears don’t grind into the ground. Instead they sit ominous and dangerous in a cavernous hole in the world. Part of me wants to creep closer to see how far the abyss extends, but then movement catches my eye. The group stops at the perimeter of the site, and I see him.

Leave it to Cormac Patton to wear a suit into a labor camp.

“Is that…?” Erik whispers as he comes up beside me.

I nod. “Someone should explain occupational-appropriate attire to him.”

Erik chuckles lightly and tugs at my shoulder. It’s clear he wants me to step back farther away from the tree line. But I don’t need him to protect me. I pull away and move a few steps forward. I expect him to go back to the fence, but he follows me.

“If he sees you,” Erik warns.

“He won’t.”

And I know I’m right—unless he’s looking for me. Cormac is paranoid enough to always be on alert, but he can’t expect us to be here in the belly of the Guild’s operations. It would be stupid of us to come so close to their operations after our escape.

The mining group is too far away for me to hear them, so I gesture toward a cluster of boulders that’s closer to them. Erik shakes his head, but I ignore him and tiptoe forward. We’re still near enough to the grove that if anyone from the Guild group looked up, they would see only darkness and branches.

Cormac and the other men’s attention stays on the mining site, and I tread quietly to the rocks. Straining, I can barely make out their conversation.

“How long until the site is expended?” Cormac’s voice, even from a distance, sends a tingle of apprehension running through me. I wasn’t sure I would ever be so close to him again. For one moment I consider running forward and pushing him into the drill site. It’s not a bad plan except that Cormac is only one cog in the machine of the Guild. Their operations might stall for a bit but his death wouldn’t be enough to destroy the entire system—even if it would be satisfying.

“You realize Jost is going to kill you.” Erik’s eyes dart around us, dutifully watching for trouble. “If Dante doesn’t first.”

I shush him and turn my attention back to the group. The space behind the rock is tight and Erik leans in against me to stay hidden. I’m not sure he’s ever acted this nervous around me.

Cormac is nodding. “We’ll need to expand farther in then. Unless you think we can risk the stability here longer.”

The man next to him, who I can’t help noticing is dressed in jeans and a plain shirt, responds, “I don’t think so. We risk a temporal collapse if we continue, but expanding won’t be easy. The natives are already restless in these parts, and Kincaid’s men are getting greedy.”

“They get that from Kincaid,” Cormac says. “No doubt he’s filled their heads with talk of his glorious revolution against the Guild. If they only knew him like I do.”

“Several Sunrunners have picked fights with miners in the last few weeks.”

Cormac waves off the warning, unconcerned. “We’ll send more Remnants in.”

“Will you be bringing her here soon?” someone asks him.

“Perhaps. If we open a new site, Pryana will have to come for a visit.” But his tone stays noncommittal.

So Pryana is slated to be the new Creweler. This is bad news. Pryana is a talented Spinster, but she’s never shown the wisdom necessary for the powerful position of Creweler, the woman who oversees the entire pattern of Arras. Everything about her is wrong for the job.

Cormac dismisses most of the group, but one man lingers by his side.

“Sir, what if—”

“Believe me, Hannox, I’m considering it. I think Pryana can handle it. We haven’t had to really test her yet,” Cormac says to his companion.

Hannox: the man on the other end of the conversations overheard in Arras.

“And if she can’t?” Hannox asks.

“We’ll deal with that when we know it’s a problem,” Cormac says, ignoring Hannox’s concern.

“Until then we should keep up the search for Adelice, I assume,” Hannox says.

“We know she’s with Kincaid,” Cormac says. “But I’ve had no word from the spy for weeks.”

“Sir, it’s not been very long on the surface,” Hannox reminds him. “Give it time. Word will come. Until we’ve recovered her, we’ll ration source material?”

“Yes, our supply is stocked for several months. I want skeleton operations at drill sites, and every surface resource focused on finding Adelice,” Cormac commands.

“Sir, if she’s dead—”

“She isn’t,” Cormac says. “And stop calling me sir. Dammit, Hannox, we’ve known each other one hundred and seventy-five years.”

“Yes, sir.” Hannox adds a bow and a salute to emphasize the point.

Cormac waves him off with a smirk. “See to the operations. I’ll take care of our missing Creweler.”

“I’ll liaise with the handlers and check for new intel,” Hannox promises.

“We’ll have images and details sent down so that they can recognize her, but under no circumstances are they to know why we’re looking for Adelice,” Cormac warns.

“What if she’s on Arras?” Hannox asks.

“She’s not smart enough to get into Arras undetected,” Cormac says. “But I’m increasing security and surveillance around her sister. If Adelice is up there, she’s going after Amie.”

“Someone’s spying on me. On us,” I whisper. The thump of my heart is so loud it nearly drowns the words. They’re coming after me, and even worse, they’re watching Amie.

“No surprise there,” Erik responds, tugging at my arm. We stay crouched behind the rock until Cormac and Hannox begin moving back to the camp.

“Who do you think it is? The spy?” I ask Erik after the men are out of earshot.

“It could be anybody,” he says. He nods back to the grove of trees and I follow him. My footfall is soft, but I feel heavy. Pryana might be capable of performing the tasks I’d hoped to keep from the Guild, but Cormac doubts her skill. My head turns over everything we’ve learned, sorting and tagging it into appropriate slots in my memory. Cormac even confirmed the disparity in time acceleration in Arras. He sent a spy weeks ago—was he talking about Deniel? That had happened only two days ago.

As soon as we’re back over the fence, Jost slams his hands into Erik, catching hold of his shirt. “That was stupid,” he says quietly, but his tone is fierce and angry.

“It’s my fault,” I say. “Erik tried to stop me.”

Jost doesn’t apologize to Erik, but he drops his hold on his brother.

“Come on, Ad,” Jost says, turning away from Erik.

“I don’t care what Kincaid will think,” Dante says, his hands clenched in tight balls at his sides. “If any of you go running off again, I’ll shoot you.”

“Noted. I’m sorry,” I say to him. But I’m not.

“We should head back.” Jost’s words are simple, but I can see the tension in his jaw. I know it won’t allay their anger, but I tell them about what we overheard at the mines and about Cormac’s presence. Jost keeps relatively calm, considering that was exactly the kind of danger he wants me to avoid.

“It’s bad enough that they know you’ve settled in with Kincaid, but if they get intelligence that you’ve left the estate—”

“They won’t miss the opportunity to get to me,” I finish for Dante.

“There’s an old ammo factory up the way. Our intel says they use it to weaponize and release new Remnants. It’s likely there’s some transport there,” Dante tells us, shifting from foot to foot. I can’t help but notice his eyes swiveling around us. It’s not like him to be so worried. “If their spies informed the Guild that you’re Sunrunning, then we need to get out of here before they come looking for you, and the crawler is hours away.”

“Won’t there be Remnants?” I ask.

“We’ll stick together and check things out first,” Dante says. “We don’t have much of a choice, I’m afraid.”

“I’m not sure that I like this plan,” Jost says.

“Cormac Patton is on Earth, and he’s looking for you—” Dante begins.

“Looking for Adelice,” Erik corrects him. “She’s his blushing bride.”

“Oh shut up, Erik,” I say, making a gag-me face. “Maela’s missing you too, I’m sure.”

“So I’m home free,” Jost says in a voice that can only be described as joking.

Everyone turns to stare at him.

“What?” he asks, confused.

“Did you crack a joke?” Erik asks him slowly.

“Oh shut up, Erik,” he says, mimicking my face.

“Now you can both shut up,” I say, turning on my heel and moving alongside Dante. I need to think about what I’ve heard, about where to go from here.