The Unbound: An Archived Novel Part 29

My attention drifts back to the drop-what was I thinking? I barely made it up that wall last night with Wesley helping me-and I pull the window closed, and say good night. Mom surprises me by pulling the door shut behind her. It's a small step, but it's something.

As soon as she's gone, I collapse onto the bed. Beyond the walls of my room, I can hear my parents talking in low voices as they shuffle through the apartment, and past them, the far-off sounds of the Coronado shutting down, the tenants retreating, the traffic on the street ebbing to a trickle and then to nothing. I realize how quiet it is in this room, without sleep and without Wesley. Some people might find it peaceful. Maybe I would, too, if my head weren't so cluttered.

Still, the quiet is heavy, and eventually it drags me down toward sleep.

And then, just as my eyes are starting to unfocus, the radio on my desk turns on by itself.

My head snaps up as a pop song fills the room. A glitch, I tell myself. I get to my feet to turn the radio off when the tuner flicks forward to a rock station, all metal and grind. And then a country song. I stand there in the middle of the room, holding my breath as the radio turns through half a dozen stations-no more than a few lines of each piping through-before landing on an oldies channel. The signal's weak, and I shiver as the wavering melody of a staticky crooner floats toward me.

The volume begins to turn up.

My hand's halfway to the power switch when the window next to the desk begins to fog. Not the whole window, but a small cloud in the middle of the gla.s.s. My heart hammers in my chest as a series of letters writes itself across the misted surface.

R I N G.

I glance down at my silver band and then back up as a line draws itself through the word.

R I N G.

I stare at the message, torn between confusion and disbelief before finally tugging off the metal band and setting it on the sill. When I look up again, Owen's there, his reflection hovering right behind mine in the gla.s.s. I spin, ready to strike, but he catches my fist and forces me up against the window, resting his knife under my chin.

"Violence isn't always the answer," he says calmly.

"Says the one holding a knife to my throat," I hiss.

I can see the outline of the Crew key beneath his black shirt. If I can get it away from him and reach the closet door without him slitting my throat, I can- He presses down on the blade in warning, and I wince, the knife's sharp edge denting the skin under my jaw. A little harder and it will slice.

"That would be a bad idea," says Owen, reading the thoughts in my skin. "Besides, the key beneath my shirt isn't the one you need." He leaves the knife against my throat and uses his other hand to pull the cord free of his collar, so I can see the too-familiar piece of rusted metal hanging from the end. It's not a Crew key at all. It's Da's key. Mine.

"Maybe, if you can be civilized, I'll give it back."

The knife begins to retreat, and the moment it shifts away from my skin, I catch his wrist and wrench hard. The blade tumbles to the hardwood floor, but before I can lunge for it, Owen sends it skittering across the room with his shoe. Then he catches my shoulders and pins me back against the wall beside the window.

"You really are a handful," he says.

"Then why haven't you killed me?" I challenge. He pulled back earlier and again just now. The Owen in my nightmares never hesitated.

"If you really want me to, I'll oblige, but I was hoping we could talk first. Your father is sitting in your living room, asleep in a chair with a book. I'm going to let go of you," he says, "but if you try anything, I'll slit his throat." I stiffen under his touch. "And even if you scream and wake him," adds Owen, "he can't see me, so he won't stand a chance."

Owen's hands retreat from my shoulders, and I will myself not to attack.

"What's going on?" I say. "Why can't he see you?"

Owen looks down at his hands, flexing them. "The void. It seems to have a few side effects. You helped confirm that when you first came into the storage room. I was standing right there, and you didn't even see me until you took off-"

"My ring," I say under my breath. It's a buffer, after all. A set of blinders.

"It comes in handy, I suppose," says Owen. "And all that matters is I'm here."

"But how are you here?" I growl. "You said you just tore your way through, but I don't understand. The doors you made, they weren't random. Why did you attack those people?"

Owen rests his shoulder against the wall. He still looks...drained. "I didn't mean to hurt them. I was looking for you."

My chest tightens. "What do you mean?"

The song on the radio ends and another picks up, this one slower, sadder.

"It turns out," says Owen, "the vast infinite emptiness you pitched me into isn't really empty. It's more like a shortcut without a destination. Half a door. But you can't have half a door," he says, blue eyes dancing. "You have to give it a place to go. Or a person to go to. Someone you can focus on with all your strength. I chose you."

"But you didn't find me, Owen. You found five innocent people."

Owen frowns. "Five people who crossed paths with you. There's a saying in the Archive: 'Strange things shine brighter.' You notice it when you read the memories in objects. But the same thing happens to the memories up here." He taps his temple. "We stand out in the minds of others more than in our own. Whoever they were, you must have made an impression. Left a mark."

My stomach turns. Behind my eyes I see them: Judge Phillip on the verge of tears when he smelled the cookies in the oven.

Bethany clutching the silver necklace I returned.

A dazed Jason flirting to get my name and number.

Coach Metz with his gruff good, good when I agreed to try out for track.

And Cash? I wasn't paying attention, he said, because I was thinking about you. Truth be told, I can't stop thinking about you.

I wrap my arms around my ribs, feeling sick. He could have been taken, dragged through into the dark. Others were.

"Is there any way," I say, "to get them back?"

Owen shakes his head. "The void isn't meant for the living. It's not meant for the dead, either." Even in the dim light, I can see the way it wore on him. He looks strangely fragile. But I know better than to trust appearances.

Four people dead, for thinking about me. For caring. And how many others could have been taken? My parents? Wesley? All because of Owen. All because of me.

"What are you doing here?" I say through clenched teeth.

"I told you, I came to talk." Owen turns, considering the rest of the room. "I hate this place," he whispers, the words almost swallowed by the melody still leaking from the radio.

And then I remember this wasn't always my room. It was hers; Regina's. Owen's sister lived in here. She died in the hallway just outside. Owen looks down at the floor, where faint bloodstains still linger, worn to shadows by time. "Funny how the memory doesn't fade."

His hands, hanging loose and open at his sides, curl into fists. He should slip. If he were an ordinary History, the sight of this room and the memory of what happened here would be enough. The black of his pupils would waver and spread, engulfing the icy blue of his eyes. And as it did, he would go mad with fear and anger and guilt.

But Owen has never been an ordinary History. A prodigy turned prodigal son of the Archive. A brilliant but cunning member of Crew. A manipulator. A boy willing to jump off a roof just to die whole so he could return to punish the system he blamed.

I watch him step around the mark on the floor the way one would a body. "How long was I gone?" he asks, crouching to fetch his knife from the corner.

"Three weeks, six days, twenty hours," I say, wishing the answer didn't come so easily.

"What happened to Carmen?" he asks, straightening.

"She was reshelved," I say, "after she tried to strangle me on your behalf."

Owen turns back toward me, sliding the knife into the holster at his back. "Did she do anything else?"

"Besides waking up half the branch? No."

A grim smile flickers across his face. "And the Archive just let you walk away?"

I say nothing, and he closes the gap between us. "No," he answers for me. "They didn't. Something is different about you, Miss Bishop. Something is wrong. They may have let you keep your memories, but they haven't given you back your life."

"At least I'm alive," I challenge.

"But your head is full of splinters," he says, his fingers tangling in my hair, his cheek coming to rest against mine. "Broken pieces and bad dreams and terror and doubt," he whispers in my ear. "So jumbled up you can't even tell real from not. Tell me, did the Archive do that to you?"

"No," I say. "You did."

His hand falls away as he pulls back to look at me. "I opened your eyes," he says with strange sincerity. "I told you the truth. It's not my fault you couldn't handle it."

"You lied to me, used me, and tried to kill me."

"And you threw me into the void," he says matter-of-factly. "The way I see it, we both did what we had to do. I didn't enjoy deceiving you, and I didn't want to kill you-I told you that then-but you were in my way. I'm here to find out if you still are."

"I will always be in your way, Owen."

A pale brow arches. "If only your thoughts were as sure as your words, Miss Bishop. But they don't lie as easily. Do you know what's written all over your mind? Doubt. You used to be so certain about your ideals-the Archive is law, is good, is G.o.d, trust in them, trust in Da-but your ideals are crumbling. The Archive is broken. Da knew-he had to know-and he still let them have you. Your head is full of questions, full of fears, and they are so loud I can barely hear the rest of you. And when Agatha hears them, she's going to treat you like rot in her precious Archive. She'll see you as something to be cut out before it spreads. And not even your beloved Roland will be able to stop her." He brings his hands up to the wall on either side of me, caging me in. "You want to know why I'm here? Why I haven't just slit your throat? Because unlike the Archive, I believe in salvaging what can be saved. And you, Mackenzie... Well, it would be a crime to let you go to waste. I want you to help me."

"Help you do what?"

The ghost of a smile touches his lips. "Finish what I started."

TWENTY-FIVE.

I ALMOST LAUGH. And then I realize that Owen is serious.

"Why would I ever help you?"

"Other than self-preservation?" says Owen, pushing off the wall. "I can give you what you want." He wanders around the bed to the bedside table. "I can give you back your grandfather." His fingers trail along the edge of a photo before reaching for the blue bear beside the lamp. "And your brother, Ben."

Owen's fingers close around the bear just before I slam him back against the wall. Ben's stuffed animal tumbles from his grasp.

"How dare you?" I hiss, pinning him there. "Do you think I would actually fall for that a second time? You've played this hand, Owen. It's tired. And Ben is gone. I have no desire to drag him out of sleep again. The only thing I want is to see you on a shelf."

Owen doesn't fight back. Instead he levels his infuriatingly calm gaze on me. "That won't solve your problems. Not anymore."

"It's a start."

Owen's hand flies up and wraps around my bad wrist. "So much misdirected anger," he says, tightening his grip. I gasp at the pain, but the room holds steady around me as I pull back-and to my surprise, he lets go. I cradle my wrist, and Owen crosses his arms.

"Fine," he says. "Let your dead rest. I can give you something else."

"What's that?" I snap. "Freedom? Purpose?"

Owen's blue eyes narrow. "A life."

I frown. "What?"

"A life, Mackenzie. One where you don't have to hide what you are or what you do. No more secrets you don't want to keep. No more lies you don't want to tell. One life."

"You can't give me that."

"You're right. I can't give it to you. But I can help you take it."

One life? Does he mean a chance to walk away? To be normal? No more lying to my family, no more holding back from Wes? But there wouldn't be a Wes, because Wes belongs to the Archive, Wes believes in the Archive. Even if I could walk away, he wouldn't. I would never ask him to, and it doesn't matter because it's not possible. The Archive never lets you go. Not intact, anyway.

"What you're promising doesn't exist."

"Not yet," says Owen. "But by the time I'm done it will."

"You mean once you've torn the Archive down-how did you put it, Owen? Branch by branch and shelf by shelf? You know I won't let you."

"What if I told you I didn't have to? That the Archive would stay, and you would stay with it if you wanted to? Only no more secrets. Would that be worth fighting for?"

"You're lying," I whisper. "You're just telling me what I want to hear."

Owen sighs. "I'm telling you the truth. The fact that you want to hear it means you should listen."

But how can I listen? What he's saying is madness. A dream, and a poisonous one at that. I watch as Owen crosses to the radio and switches it off.

"It's late," he says. "Think about what I've said. Sleep on it. If you're still determined to fight me, you can do so in the morning. And if at that point I'm feeling merciful, I'll kill you whole before the Archive can destroy you bit by bit."

The Owen in my nightmares does not walk away, but this one does. He gets halfway to the bedroom door, then pauses and turns back, tugging Da's key back out from under his collar. He offers it to me, and it hangs between us like a promise. Or a trap.

"As proof," he says, "that I'm real."

Everything in me tenses when the metal hits my palm. The cool weight of Da's key-my key-sends a shiver through me. I loop it over my head, the weight settling against my chest. It feels like a small piece of the world has been made right. Then Owen turns, opens the door, and strides silently away.

I follow, watching light spill into the dim living room as he slips out of the apartment and into the yellow hall. Something thuds behind me, and I spin to find Dad asleep in a corner chair, a book now on the floor beside him. Even in sleep, his face is creased with worry; as I kneel to retrieve the book, I wonder what it would be like to tell my parents why I have nightmares. Why I have scars. Where I vanish to. Why I cringe from their touch.

I hate Owen all the more for planting the thought in my head, because it's not possible. A world without these secrets and lies could never exist.

But as I set Dad's book on the table and tug a blanket up over his shoulders, a question whispers in my head.

What if?