The Unbound

Wesley squints at me a little. “You’re one to talk about secrets, Mackenzie Bishop,” he says. But the words are playful. He turns to face me and surprises me by bringing his hands to rest firmly on my shoulders. My head fills with the cluttered music of his noise.

“You want to know my full name?” he asks softly. I nod. He brings his forehead to rest against mine and talks into the small window of space between our lips. “When Crew are paired up,” he says, his voice easy and low over the sound of his noise, “there’s a ceremony. That’s when they have their Archive marks carved into their skin. Three lines. One made by their own hand. One made by their partner. One made by the Archive.” His eyes look down into mine. His words are little more than a breath between us. “The Crew make their scars and take their vows to the Archive and to each other. The vows start and end with their names. So,” he whispers, “when we become Crew, I’ll tell you mine.”

And then the bell echoes through the gym, and he smiles and pulls away. “About time,” he says cheerfully, heading for the locker rooms. “I’m starving.”

Da won’t talk about his Crew partner.

He once said he’d tell me anything if I asked the right question, but somehow I never ask the right one to get him to tell me about Meg. He doesn’t even tell me her name; I learn it later, after he’s gone and I’m packing up his things.

They all fit into one box.

There’s a leather jacket, a wallet, a few letters—to Dad, mostly (and one to Patty, my grandmother, who left him before I was born). There are only three photos in with the letters (Da was never very sentimental). The first one is of him as a young man, leaning up against an iron fence, looking lean and strong and a little arrogant—really the only difference between young Da and old Da is the number of wrinkles on his face.

The second one is of him with Mom and Dad and me and Ben.

And the third one is of him with Meg.

They stand close, shoulder to shoulder but for a small gap, Da tilting his head slightly toward hers. His sleeves are rolled down, but hers are rolled up, and I can see, even in the faded photo, the three parallel scars of the Archive carved into her forearm. It’s a mirror image of the one etched into Da’s skin, the two of them bonded by scars and oaths and secrets.

Neither one of them is smiling in the photo, but they both look like they’re about to, and all I can think is that they fit. It’s not just the way their bodies nest, even without touching. It’s the knowing way they share the space, sensing where the other ends. It’s their mirrored almost-smiles, the closest I have ever seen Da to happy. I know so little of this woman, of Da’s days as Crew—only that he left. He told me he wanted to live long enough to train me himself (what would have happened if he’d died first? Would someone else have come?), but seeing him—this strange, vibrant, happier version of my grandfather—it hurts to think he gave her up for me.

“Do you think they were in love?” I ask Roland, showing him the photo.

He frowns, ru

“Love is simple, Miss Bishop. Crew isn’t.” His eyes are proud and sad at the same time, and I remember that underneath the sleeves of his sweater, he bears the scars as well. Three even lines.

“How so?” I press.

“Love breaks,” he says. “The bond between Crew doesn’t. It has love in it, though, and transparency. Being Crew with someone means being exposed, letting them read you—your hopes and wants and thoughts and fears. It means trusting them so much that you’re not only willing to put your life in their hands, but to take their life into yours. It’s a heavy burden to bear,” he says, handing the picture back, “but Crew is worth it.”

ELEVEN

I TAKE A LONG, cold shower.

Wesley’s touch lingers on my skin. His music echoes through my head. I remind myself as I scrub my skin that we are both liars and con artists. That we will always have secrets, some that bind us and some that cut between us, slicing us into pieces. That we will never see each other whole…until we become Crew. But I don’t know if I want to be Crew with Wesley. I don’t know if I’m willing to let him see all the pieces.

I try to put his promise from my mind. It doesn’t matter right now. A world stands between me and Crew: a world of nightmares and trauma and Agatha. How do I tell Wesley that I might not make it to the ceremony, let alone the naming? Crew are selected. They are assessed. They are found fit.

If Agatha got her hands on my mind right now, I would never be found fit. Which means I need to keep her from getting her hands on me until I find a way to fix whatever’s happening.

I have to hope there is a way to fix it.

A way that doesn’t involve letting the Archive inside my head to cut out memories. If I let them in, they’ll see the damage Owen did. The damage he continues to do.

I snap the water off and begin to get dressed. The lockers have emptied out by now, but as I slip the key back over my head, shivering a little when the metal comes to rest against my sternum, Safia rounds the corner, focused on the braid she’s weaving with her hair. Until she sees me. Her eyes narrow even more than usual.

“What’s that?” she asks as I pull my shirt on over the key.

“A key,” I say as casually as I can.

“Obviously,” she says, finishing her braid and crossing her arms. “Did he give that to you?”

I frown. “Who?”

“Wesley.” Her voice tightens a fraction when she says his name. “Is it his?”

My hand goes to the metal through my shirt. I could say yes. “No.”

“They look the same,” she presses.

They don’t, actually. Wesley’s is darker and made of a different metal. “It’s just a stupid trinket,” I say. “A good luck charm.” I hold her gaze, waiting to see if she buys it. She doesn’t seem convinced. “I read it in some book when I was a kid. This girl wore a key around her neck, and wherever she went, the doors all opened for her. Maybe Wesley read the same book. Or maybe he kept losing his keys so he put them around his neck. Ask him yourself,” I say, because I can tell she won’t.

Safia shrugs. “Whatever,” she says, tugging on one of her earrings. They look like real gold. “If you guys want to wear ratty old keys, that’s your choice. Try not to get tetanus.” With that, she turns and strolls out.

My stomach growls, and I’m about to follow her when a sliver of metal catches my eye from beneath the bench. I kneel down and find a necklace: a round silver pendant on a simple chain. The pendant has been rubbed so much that the ornate B etched into its front is barely visible. I weigh it in my palm, knowing I should just leave it and hope whoever it belongs to comes looking for it. It’s not my problem. But the level of wear on the pendant suggests that it’s important to someone. It also means there’s a good chance a memory or two has been worn in to it. Object memories are fickle—the smaller the object, the harder for memories to stick—but they’re usually imprinted by either repetition or strong emotion, and this kind of token sees a fair amount of both. It can’t hurt to look.

I glance around the locker room, making sure I’m alone before I pocket my ring. Instantly, the air in the room changes—doesn’t thicken or thin, exactly, but shifts—my senses sharpening without the metal buffer. Curling my fingers over the pendant, I can feel the subtle hum of memories tickling my palm, and I close my eyes and reach—not with my skin, but with the thing beneath it. My hand goes numb as I catch hold of the thread, and the darkness behind my eyes dissolves into light and shadow and, finally, into memory.

A girl—tall, thin, blond, classically pretty—sits in a parked car in the dark, face wet from crying, with one hand wrapped, knuckles tight, on the wheel and the other clutching the pendant at her throat. As I roll time back, the memory skips from the car to a marble kitchen counter. This time, the girl is on one side of the counter clutching her pendant, and a woman old enough to be her mother is on the other, gripping a wineglass. I let the memory roll forward, and a moment later the girl shouts something—her words nothing more than static—and the woman pitches the wineglass at the girl’s head. The girl cuts to the side and the glass strikes the cabinet behind her and shatters, and I swear I can feel the anger and the hurt and the sadness worn into the surface of the pendant.