The Unbound: An Archived Novel Part 20

There's no sign of Eric or Sako in the hospital lobby or in the lot, and I realize with a sinking feeling that their faces are the only two I'd recognize. I know that a Crew member made the void, but I don't know which one. The Archive keeps its members isolated-each an island-but that means I don't know how many Crew there are in my branch, let alone what they look like.

"Come on, Mac," calls Dad, and I realize I'm standing on the sidewalk staring at the street.

On the drive home, I feel the scratch of more letters in my pocket, and by the time we get back to the Coronado, the summons has repeated itself on the page, the letters darker, as if someone's pressing down harder on the ledger. I turn the paper over and write the words unable to report, watching as they bleed into the page. I wait for a reply, a pardon, but the original summons only rewrites itself on the page. The message is clear, but I'm not allowed to close my bedroom door or go to the bathroom without an escort, let alone slip off to the Archive for a good old-fas.h.i.+oned interrogation. I don't even have the excuse of school, since it's Sat.u.r.day. When I ask if I can go for a walk to get some fresh air, Mom looks at me like I've lost my mind.

And maybe I have, but after an hour of trying to do homework in spite of the hovering and heavy quiet, I can't take it anymore. I break down and text Wesley.

Save me.

Mom won't stop pacing, and Dad finally cracks and sends her down to the cafe to work off some of her stress. Five minutes after that, there's a knock on the door and Wesley's there with a bag of pastries and a book, looking like himself-well, his summer self: black jeans, lined eyes, spiked hair-for the first time in weeks. When Dad answers the door, I watch the war between what he's supposed to say-No visitors-and what he wants to say-Hi, Wes! What finally comes out is, "Wesley, I'm not sure now's a good time."

Even though Wes frowns and asks, "Has something happened?" I can tell he's not totally in the dark. If I had to guess, I'd say he's aware of the part where I got picked up by the cops, but not the part where I landed myself in the self-harm section of the hospital. His eyes go to my bandaged hand, and I can see the questions in them.

Dad casts a glance back at the table where I'm nursing a cup of coffee and trying not to look as tired as I feel and says, "Actually, why don't you come in?"

Wesley takes a seat next to me, and Dad stands by the door, clearly debating his next move.

"Dad," I say, reaching out and taking Wesley's hand with my unbandaged one. The steady beat of his rock music fills my head. "Could we have a moment?"

Dad hovers there, looking at us.

"I'm not going anywhere," I promise.

"I'll keep her out of trouble, Mr. Bishop," says Wes.

Dad smiles sadly. "I'm holding you to that," he says. "I'll go down and check on your mom. You've got ten minutes."

When the door closes, Wes gives my fingers a small squeeze before letting go. "Did you hurt your wrist again?" he asks, nodding at my other hand.

I shake my head. "Did Amber tell you?"

"That you got arrested? Yeah."

"It doesn't count as an arrest unless they book you."

Wesley arches a brow. "Spoken like a true criminal. What did you get picked up for?"

"Oh, Amber didn't share that part?"

"She didn't know."

"Ah, well. Remember the guy who disappeared before Bethany? Judge Phillip? I went back to check out his house, since that's where he vanished from. And I might have entered the place using less than legal methods."

Wes. .h.i.ts the table. "You broke into a crime scene without me?"

"Be glad, Wes, or we both would have been caught."

"We're a team, Mac. You don't go committing a crime without your partner in crime. Besides, if I'd been with you, we probably wouldn't have been caught. I could have stood at the door and made wild bird sounds or something when the cops came back. And if we did get caught, our mug shots would look fabulous."

I can't help but smile at the thought.

"Tell me you at least found something."

The smile slides off my lips. "I did," I say slowly. "A void."

Wesley's brow knits. "I don't understand."

"A void. Like the one on the roof."

"In the middle of Phillip's living room? That doesn't make any sense. The only way there'd be a void there is if someone made one. And they'd need a Crew key to do that."

"Exactly." I run my good hand through my hair and tell him about breaking into Judge Phillip's and seeing the void, and the way it made the memories unreadable. I tell him about Eric and Sako following me. I tell him what Roland said about evidence, and that I know it sounds crazy, but I think I'm being set up.

"You have to tell the Archive," he says.

"I know." I know. But tell them what? I know how ludicrous it all sounds. I can see the skepticism in Wesley's eyes, and he's far more forgiving than Agatha will be. I can't just walk in there and announce they have another traitor in their midst. Not after what happened with Owen and Carmen. I need to talk to Roland, but I'll have to get past Agatha first. I know I can't keep ignoring the summonses, but after everything I've put my parents through, I can't just disappear. I think about sending Wesley to the Archive on my behalf, but the last thing I want to do is get him tangled up in this, especially now that Agatha's involved. Besides, we're not really partners. Wesley's not supposed to be helping me.

He looks at me hard. "You didn't feel like mentioning any of this last night?"

I pick at a fraying bit of tape on my hand. "It wouldn't translate well to text," I say. "And I was a little busy."

He reaches out and takes my wrapped hand and runs his fingers lightly over the tape. "What happened, Mac?"

I pull away and roll up my left sleeve for him to see the bandage. I unwrap it so he can see the fourteen little red X's beneath.

"Who did this to you?" he growls.

I wish that were an easier question to answer. I take a breath and hold it for several long seconds before finally saying, "I did."

Confusion flickers across Wesley's face, followed by worry. I go to push my sleeve back down, but he catches my hand and draws my arm closer. His fingers hover over the cut. "I don't understand."

"I didn't mean to do it," I explain. "It started as a dream. Owen was... He was the one with the knife, and then I..." Wesley pulls me into a hug. He holds me so tight it hurts, so tight his noise pounds through my head, but I don't pull away.

"I don't know what's happening to me," I whisper into his s.h.i.+rt.

Wes pulls back just enough to look at me. "Tell me how I can help."

Go away, I think. Stay away from me and whatever bad is circling. But I know him well enough to know that he won't. "For one, you could ask Amber not to tell the whole school I got arrested."

"It doesn't count as an arrest unless they book you," echoes Wes, adding, "She won't tell anyone."

"She told you."

"Because she knows I..." He trails off.

"You what?"

"She knows I care," says Wes. "About you. By the way, you look like h.e.l.l. Have you slept at all since..."

I rub my eyes. "I can't."

"You can't stay awake forever, Mac."

"I know...but I'm scared." Words Da taught me never to say. He thought saying it was halfway to surrendering. Now the confession hangs between us. The room settles and thickens, and I can feel the cracks in my armor as it loosens around me.

Wes pushes up from the table. He pours himself a cup of coffee and rests against the counter.

"Okay," he says. "If you're determined to stay awake, I can help. But this"-he gestures down at the spread of precalc and lit theory on the table-"isn't going to do." He digs the physiology book out from the bottom of the pile and flashes me a mischievous smile. "Here we go."

By the time Dad gets back, Wes has managed to cover himself in an impressive number of Post-it notes, each labeling a muscle (I don't have the heart to tell him we're studying blood flow right now). Dad takes one look at him and almost smiles. And when it takes Wes half a dozen tries to affix a yellow sticker to the place between his shoulders, I end up laughing until my chest hurts, and for a while I forget how much trouble I'm in and how tired I am and how much my arm hurts.

I make it to dusk, but even with Wesley's company, I'm starting to fade. Mom is back home and making no attempt to hide the fact that she's hovering. Every time I yawn, she tells me I should go to bed. Tells me I need to sleep. But I can't. I know Dallas said I had to confront my problems, but I just don't have the strength to face another nightmare right now. Especially now that I know I'm capable of doing actual damage to myself. And maybe to others. I would rather be exhausted and awake than a danger and asleep, so I brush off her concern and crack open a soda. It's halfway to my lips when she catches my hand, filling my head with her high, worried static as she pries the can away and replaces it with a gla.s.s of water.

I sigh and take a long sip. She pa.s.ses the soda to Wes, who makes the mistake of yawning as he takes it.

"You should head home," Mom tells him. "It's getting late, and I'm sure your father is wondering where you are."

"I doubt that," he says under his breath, then adds, "He knows I'm over here."

"Mom," I say, finis.h.i.+ng the gla.s.s of water, "he's helping me study."

"Does he know you're here here?" she presses, ignoring me. "Or does he think you're upstairs with Jill?"

Wesley's brow furrows. "Frankly, I don't think he cares."

"Parents always care," she snaps.

"Honey," says Dad, looking up from a book.

They're talking, all three of them, but the words begin to run together in my ears. I'm just thinking about how strange it is when my vision slides out of focus.

The room sways, and I grip the counter.

"Mac?" Wes's voice reaches me. "Are you okay?"

I nod and set the gla.s.s down; or at least I mean to, but the countertop's not where I thought it was, and the gla.s.s goes cras.h.i.+ng to the floor. It shatters. The sound is far away. At first I think I'm about to have another blackout, but those happen fast, and this is slow like syrup.

"What have you done?" Wes snaps, but I don't think he's talking to me.

I close my eyes, but it doesn't help. The world sways even in darkness.

"The doctor said she needed to-"

Everything else is far away.

"Allison," growls Dad. I drag my eyes open. "How could you-"

And then my legs go out from under me, and I feel Wesley's arms and his noise wrap around me before the world goes black.

NINETEEN.

AT FIRST, everything is dark and still.

Dark and still, but not peaceful.

The world is somehow empty and heavy at the same time, the nothing weighing me down, pinning my arms and legs. And then, little by little, the details begin to come back, to descend, rise up, wrap around me.

The open air.

My racing heart.

And Owen's voice.

"There's nowhere to run."

Just like that, the darkness thins from absolute black into night, the nothingness into the Coronado roof. I am racing through the maze of gargoyles, and I can hear Owen behind me, the sound of his steps and the grind of metal on stone as he drags his blade along the statues. The roof stretches to every side, forever and ever, the gargoyles everywhere, and I am running.

And I am tired of it.

I have to stop.

The moment the thought hits me, I slam to a halt on the rooftop. My lungs burn and my arm aches, and I look down to find the full word-B R O K E N-carved in b.l.o.o.d.y, bone-deep letters from elbow to wrist. I search my pockets and come up with a piece of cloth, and I'm halfway through tying it around my forearm, covering the cuts, when I realize how quiet the roof has gotten. The footsteps have stopped, the metallic scratching has stopped, and all I can hear is my heart. Then, the knife.

I turn just in time to dodge Owen's blade as it slashes through the air, putting a few desperate steps between our bodies. The gargoyles have s.h.i.+fted to form walls, no gaps to get through: no escape. And that's okay, because I'm not running.

He slashes again, but I grab his wrist and twist hard, and the knife tumbles from his grip into mine. This time I don't hesitate. As his free hand goes for my throat, I bury the blade in Owen's stomach.

The air catches in his throat, and I think it's finally over-that I've finally done it, I've beat him, and it's going to be okay. I'm going to be okay.

And then he looks down at me, at the place where my hand meets the knife and the knife meets his body. He brings his hand to mine and holds the knife there, buried to the hilt, and smiles.

Smiles as his hair goes black, and his eyes go hazel, and his body becomes someone else's.

"No!" I cry out as Wesley Ayers gasps and collapses against me, blood spreading across his s.h.i.+rt. "Wesley. Wesley, please, please don't..." I try to hold him up, but we both end up sinking to our knees on the cold concrete, and I feel the scream rising in my throat.

And then something happens.

Wesley's noise-that strange chaotic beat-pours into the dream like water, was.h.i.+ng over his body and mine and the rooftop, filling it up until everything begins to dim and vanish.

I'm plunged into a new kind of darkness, warm and full and safe.