The Dark Vault

by Victoria Schwab

  Wood and stone and colored glass, and all throughout, a sense of peace.

  That’s how Da described the Archive to me when I was young. As I walk through the stacks now, I grasp the calm that used to come so easily. These days it feels like a memory, one I’m reaching for and can’t quite grab. Wood and stone and colored glass. That’s all he told me. He didn’t mention the fact I could never leave, or that the Librarians were dead, or that Histories weren’t the only things to fear.

  Your life is only made of secrets and lies because the Archive is.

  I smother Owen’s voice in my head before it can become my own. I cross back through the doors into the antechamber, sensing that something is wrong the moment I move from wood to stone, but it’s too late. The massive doors swing shut behind me, and I turn to see Agatha in front of them, her hair the color of blood and her cream-colored coat like a splash of paint against the dark wood.

  My eyes flick to the desk, where Patrick is sitting. Of course he would call her.

  “My list is clear,” I say as calmly as possible.

  “But I’m out of Crew,” says Agatha. Her voice has lost its velvet calm. “And out of patience.” She takes a step forward. “You’ve run me on a chase, Miss Bishop, and I am sick of it. I want you to answer me honestly. How did you make the voids?”

  “I didn’t make them,” I say, fighting to keep my voice steady even as I take a step back toward the door and the sentinels guarding it.

  “I don’t believe you,” she says, tugging off a black glove as she comes toward me. “If you are innocent, then show me.” I shake my head. “Why don’t you want me in your head? Afraid of what I’ll find? The innocent have nothing to hide, Miss Bishop.” She pulls off the other glove.

  “You don’t have permission.”

  “I don’t care,” she growls, her bare hands tangling in my shirt.

  “Agatha,” warns Patrick, but she doesn’t listen.

  “Do you know how small you are?” she hisses. “You are one cog in one wheel in one corner of an infinite machine, and you have the audacity to deny me? To defy me? Do you know what that’s called?”

  “Freedom,” I challenge.

  A cold smile touches the edge of her mouth. “Treason.”

  I feel the two sentinels move behind me, and before I can turn, their hands clench around my shoulders and wrists. Their movements are fast and efficient, wrenching my arms behind my back, twisting up hard until my knees buckle. My pulse races in my ears and my vision starts to go dark, but before I can fight back against the men or the encroaching tunnel moment, Agatha’s hands are there, pressing against my temples.

  At first, all I hear is the quiet that comes with her touch.

  And then the pain starts.

  TWENTY-SEVEN

  THE PAIN IS LIKE hot nails in my head, but a moment after it starts it’s gone, along with Agatha’s touch. The sentinels let go of my arms, and I fall forward to my hands and knees on the Archive floor. When I look up, Roland’s hand is wrapped around Agatha’s wrist, and Patrick is standing at the mouth of the atrium, holding one of the doors open.

  “What are you doing?” snaps Roland.

  “My job,” says Agatha icily.

  “Your job is not to torture Keepers in my antechamber.”

  “I have every reason to believe that—”

  “If you truly have every reason, then get permission from the board.” There’s a challenge in his voice, and Agatha stiffens at it, the smallest shadow of fear flickering across her perfect skin. Appealing to the board of directors means admitting she’s not only allowed more traitorous behavior in the Archive, but that she’s failed to uncover the source. “You will not touch her again without approval.”

  Roland lets go of Agatha’s wrist, but doesn’t take his eyes off her.

  “Miss Bishop,” he says as I get to my feet, “I think you’d better get back to class.”

  I nod shakily, and I’m about to turn toward the door when Agatha says, “She has something of yours, Roland.” I stiffen, but he doesn’t. His face is a perfect blank as Agatha adds, “A notebook.”

  I can’t bring myself to look at him, but I can feel his gray eyes weighing me down. “I know,” he lies. “I gave it to her.”

  Only then do I look up, but his attention has already shifted back to Agatha. I’m halfway through the door when she says to him, “You can’t protect her.” But whatever he says back is lost as I slip into the dark.

  I don’t stop moving until I reach Dallas’s office. I’m early, and she’s not there, but I sink down onto the couch, my heart pounding. I can still feel Agatha’s hands against my temples, the pain of the memories being dragged forward toward her fingers. Too close. I pull Roland’s journal from my pocket. The memories hum against my skin as I cradle it in my palm, but I don’t reach for them—I’ve taken enough from him already. Instead I close my eyes and lean my head back against the couch.

  “I’m impressed.”

  I look up to find Owen sitting in Dallas’s low-back chair, twirling his knife absently on the leather arm while he watches me intently.

  “I have to admit,” he says, “I wasn’t sure you’d do it.”

  “I’m full of surprises,” I say drily. He holds out his hand for the journal, and I hesitate before relinquishing it. “It’s very important to someone.”

  “Everything in the Archive is,” he says, taking it from me. His hand lingers a moment around mine, and I recognize the touch for what it is: a reading. His quiet slides through my mind while my life slides through his. I can almost see the struggle with Agatha play out in his eyes, the way they widen, then narrow.

  “She’s angry because I won’t grant her access to my mind.”

  “Good,” he says, pulling away. He pages through Roland’s notebook, and I’m surprised by how gentle he is with it. “It’s strange,” he adds under his breath, “the way we hold on to things. My uncle couldn’t part with his dog tags. He had them on him always, looped around his neck along with his key, a reminder. He served in both wars, my uncle. He was a hero. And he was Crew. As loyal as they come. When he got back from the second war, I had just turned thirteen, and he began to train me. He was never the kind and gentle type—the Archive and the wars made sure of that—but I believed in him.” He closes Roland’s journal and runs his thumb over the cover. “I was initiated into the Archive when I was only fourteen—did you know that?” I didn’t. “That night,” he continues, “after my induction, my uncle went home and shot himself in the head.”

  The air catches in my throat, but I will myself to say nothing.

  “I couldn’t understand,” he says, almost to himself, “why a man who’d lived through so much would do that. He left a note. As I am. That’s all he wrote. It wasn’t until two years later, when I learned about the Archive’s policy to alter those who live long enough to retire, that it made sense. He would rather have died whole than let them take his life apart and cut out everything that mattered just to keep its secrets.” His eyes drift up from the journal. There is a light in them, narrow and bright. “But change is coming. Soon there will be no secrets for them to guard. You accused me once of wanting to create chaos, but you’re wrong. I am only doing my job. I am protecting the past.”

  He offers me the journal back, and I take it, relieved.

  “It’s rather fitting that you chose to take that,” he says as I slip it into my bag. “The thing we’re going to steal is not so different.”

  “What is it?” I ask, trying to stifle some of the urgency in my voice.

  “The Archive ledger.”

  I frown. “I don’t under—” But I’m cut off as the door clatters open and Dallas comes in, juggling her journal, a cell phone, and a mug of coffee. Her eyes land on me, and for a moment—the smallest second—I think they take in Owen, too. Or at least the space around him. But then she blinks and smiles and drops her stuff on the table.

  “Sorry I’m late,” she says. Owen rises to his feet a
nd retreats to a corner of the room as she collapses into the abandoned chair. “What do you want to talk about? Who you’re taking to Fall Fest? That seems to be all anyone else wants to talk about.” She fetches up her journal and begins to turn through pages, and I’m surprised to see she’s actually taken notes. I’ve only ever seen her doodle flower patterns in the corners of the page. “Oh, I know,” she says, landing on a page. “I want to talk a little about your grandfather.”

  I stiffen. Da is the last person I want to talk about right now, especially with Owen in the audience. But when I meet his gaze over Dallas’s shoulder, there is a new interest—an intensity—and I remember something he said last night:

  The Archive is broken. Da knew—he had to know—and he still let them have you.

  I’m just beginning to earn Owen’s trust (or at least his interest). If this is going to work, I need to keep it. Maybe I can use Da.

  “What about him?” I ask.

  Dallas shrugs. “I don’t know. But you quote him a lot. I guess I want to know why.”

  I frown a little, and take a moment to choose my words, hoping they both read the pause as emotion rather than strategy.

  “When I was little,” I say, looking down at my hands, “I worshipped him. I used to think he knew everything, because he had an answer to every question I could think up. It never occurred to me that he didn’t always know. That he would lie or make it up.” I consider the place between two knucklebones where my ring should be. “I assumed he knew. And I trusted him to tell the truth….” My voice trails off a little as I glance up. “I’m just now starting to realize how little he told me.”

  I’m amazed to hear myself say the words. Not because the lies come easily, but because they’re not lies at all. Dallas is staring at me in a way that makes me feel exposed.

  I tug my sleeves over my hands. “That was probably too much. I should have just said that I loved him. That he was important to me.”

  Dallas shakes her head. “No, that was good. And the way we feel about people should never be put in past tense, Mackenzie. After all, we continue to feel things about them in the present tense. Did you stop loving your brother when he died?”

  I can feel Owen’s gaze like a weight, and I have to bring my fingers to the edge of the couch and grip the cushion to steady them. “No.”

  “So it’s not that you loved him,” she continues. “You love him. And it’s not that your grandfather was important to you. He is. In that way, no one’s ever really gone, are they?”

  Da’s voice rings out like a bell in my head.

  What are you afraid of, Kenzie?

  Losing you.

  Nothing’s lost. Ever.

  “Da didn’t believe in Heaven,” I find myself saying, “but I think it scared him, the idea of losing all the things—people, knowledge, memories—he’d spent his life collecting. He liked to tell me he believed in someplace. Someplace calm and peaceful, where your life was kept safe, even after it was over.”

  “And do you believe in that place?” she asks.

  I let the question hang in the air a few long seconds before answering. “I wanted to.”

  Out of the corner of my eye, I see Owen’s mouth tug into a smile.

  Hook. Line. Sinker.

  “Why the ledger?” I ask as soon as we’re out.

  Everyone else is going to lunch, and I’ve chosen a path that rings the campus—a large, circuitous route few students use when they can cut across the quad—so that we can talk in private.

  “How much do you know about it?” he asks.

  “It sits on the desk in the antechamber. It has one page for every member of the branch. It’s how the Archive communicates with its Keepers and Crew.”

  “Exactly,” says Owen. “But at the front of it, before the pages for the Keepers and the Crew, there is one page labeled ALL. A message written on that page would go out to everyone in the book.”

  “Which is why you need it,” I say. “You need to be able to contact everyone at once.”

  “It is the only connector in a world divided,” says Owen. “The Archive can silence one voice, but not if it’s written on that page. They cannot stop the message from spreading.”

  “It’s your match,” I whisper. “To start the fire.”

  Owen nods, his eyes bright with hope. “Carmen was supposed to take it, but she obviously failed.”

  “When do we take it?”

  “Tonight,” he says.

  “Why wait?”

  Owen gives me a pitying look. “We can’t just walk up to the front desk and rip the page out of the book. We need something to distract the Archive. We don’t need something long, but we need something bright.” He gestures to the quad, where the stalls and booths and decorations are still being erected.

  “Fall Fest?” I ask. “But how will something in the Outer distract the Archive?”

  “It will,” he says. “Trust me.” Trust. Something I will never feel for Owen. Warning lights go off inside my head. The more factors, the less I can control.

  “You and I, Mackenzie, we are the same.” I attacked him once for that very idea, but this time I hold my tongue. “Everyone in the Archive has doubts, but theirs whisper and ours shout. We are the ones who question. We are the bringers of change. Those who run the Archive, who cling to their rules, are terrified of us. And they should be.”

  Something sparks inside me at the thought of being feared instead of afraid. I smother it.

  “And tonight we will…” He trails off, eyes fixed on some-thing down the path. Not something, I realize. Someone.

  Wesley.

  He’s standing on the path, holding his lunch tray and talking to Amber. I’ve been clinging to the hope that even if he saw him, Owen might not recognize Wes—the boy he stabbed on the roof of the Coronado had spiked hair and lined eyes and a different manner—but Owen frowns and says, “Didn’t I kill him?”

  “You tried,” I say as, to my horror, Wesley catches sight of me and waves before turning back to Amber.

  “I saw him written on your skin, but I didn’t realize the marks were so fresh,” says Owen, withdrawing his knife from its holster with one hand, gripping my arm with the other. “You’ve been keeping a secret,” he growls, quiet forcing through my head.

  He has nothing to do with our plans, I think as calmly as possible. But this time, the plural pronoun does nothing to placate Owen.

  “He is a tether to the life you’re leaving,” he says, tightening his grip. “A rope to be cut.” He twirls the knife.

  No. My mind spins with his blade. He can be salvaged. If your grand scheme is for the Keepers and Crew to rise up against the Archive, you’ll need every one of them you can get. And when the call goes out, he’ll stand with me. Killing him would be a waste.

  “I’m not convinced of that,” says Owen. “And don’t pretend to be pragmatic where he’s concerned.”

  “Fine,” I say, pulling free of his touch, “if you don’t want to listen to logic, then listen to this: this isn’t Wesley’s fight. I haven’t dragged him into it, and neither will you. If you hurt him in any way, you will never get my help. Trust me.”

  Owen’s eyes harden. The knife stops spinning, snapping into his grip. For a second his fingers tighten on the handle. Then, to my relief, he puts the weapon away and falls in step behind me.

  “Hey, you,” says Wesley, waiting for me to reach him before setting off again toward the Court. My eyes go to his hands to make sure he’s wearing his ring. He is.

  “Why weren’t you in Physiology?” asks Amber.

  “Doctor’s appointment,” I lie.

  “We were just talking about the cops on campus,” says Wesley. “Did you see them?” He’s asking another question underneath the words: Do you know why they’re here?

  I shake my head. “No. Amber, do you know what’s up?”

  “No idea,” she says with a groan. “Dad’s not giving me anything.”

  “The elusive Mackenzie
Bishop!” calls Cash as we reach the Court. “No lunch?”

  “Not hungry,” I say. Owen wanders over to the Alchemist and watches the scene unfold, and it’s all I can do to keep from looking at him.

  “Missed you again in gym,” he says. “Another meeting?”

  I’m about to go with “doctor’s appointment” again, but Saf cuts in.

  “Gee, what kind of meeting forces you to miss gym multiple days in a row?”

  “Don’t be an ass, Saf,” shoots her brother. “You were sent to Dallas, like, seven times last year.”

  “It was three, jerk.”

  Cash turns his attention to me. “Point is, no big deal. We’ve all been there. Eventually your parents come up with an excuse, or the school does.”

  “What did they send you for?” I ask, eager to turn the attention on someone else.

  “Hyperactivity,” he announces proudly.

  “Perfectionism,” says Saf.

  “Stress-induced anxiety,” adds Amber.

  “Antisocial tendencies,” says Gavin.

  All eyes go to Wesley. “Depression,” he says, twisting a straw absently around his fingers. My heart aches at the thought of Wes suffering. I imagine us in bed, imagine myself pulling him in against me, wrapping my arms around him and warding off his demons. He’s worth it, I think. And I will not—cannot—drag him into this mess.

  “And you, Mackenzie?” asks Cash, drawing my attention back. “What have you done to land yourself in Dallas’s office?”

  My eyes flick toward Owen. “Apparently I have a problem with authority.” I say.

  “Is that why you can’t go to the dance?” asks Gavin. Owen frowns.

  “Actually,” I say lightly, “I’ll be there after all.”

  Wesley’s eyes light up. “Really?” he asks with a smile. It breaks my heart.