Olivia gestured for quiet the first few times I started to ask questions, glancing at the walls of the alley, the open air, the vents in the corridors. I could only assume we were passing between and below and above houses, or even government buildings. Eventually, however, we emerged into a broader corridor. We passed people occasionally now, and they’d nod at Olivia, eye Oren and I curiously. When one of them used the same name as Wesley had used, Vee, I asked about it. This time she didn’t shush me.
“Most of us don’t go by our real names. I guess it started as a way to stay anonymous, back when everyone was living double lives in the city. But now even most lifers, like me, have other names.”
“Lifers?”
“People who live entirely inside the walls. People Prometheus would have locked up, if he could find them.”
Oren made a small sound in his throat. When I looked at him, his face was stony, unreadable. But I could tell from the tension in his shoulders that he was ill at ease. One of us claustrophobic, the other afraid of the sky—there was no place where both of us could be.
“Will that man—Wesley—will he be okay?” The last I’d seen him, he wasn’t moving, lying in a heap on the ground.
“Oh, don’t worry about him. If prisoners disappeared on his watch all the time, they’d suspect him of being one of us right away. Make it look like he simply got overwhelmed, and knocked about in the process, and it’s much harder to point fingers at him.”
“Earlier, he was working with the Eagles—he sent someone away, just a kid.”
Olivia nodded. “He told us. Don’t worry, he wasn’t a Renewable. They get half a dozen reports like that a month. A neighbor misinterprets something, or just plain doesn’t like someone, or something turns up missing, and bam. Renewable sightings everywhere.”
“What’s going to happen to him? The kid they took?”
“They’ll run some tests on him and find out he’s not a Renewable, and he’ll be free in a day or two.”
“And what if he had been a Renewable?”
Olivia didn’t speak, but I saw the answer in the way her face tightened and smile vanished.
“Why go to all this trouble for us?” Oren didn’t bother to hide the suspicion in his voice.
“No offense,” Olivia replied. “But we don’t give a damn about you. It’s her we want. You just happened to get here with her.”
My chest tightened again. So much for being able to breathe here. I’d been here only a few hours, and already people wanted to use me. At least Olivia was being up front about it.
“Why me?” I sounded as suspicious as Oren.
“We’re not—we’re not sure.” Her voice was slightly troubled. “If nothing else, though, we could always use another Renewable.”
Oren glanced at me, blue eyes piercing. Though he didn’t speak, I knew what had prompted the look. These people thought I was a Renewable. I shook my head a fraction.
Let’s keep it quiet for now.
Wait until they told us what they wanted from me—and what would happen to me if I couldn’t help them.
I should change the subject, ask something else, but curiosity got the better of me. “How did you know what I was?”
“Wesley,” Olivia replied. “He’s Sighted. Most Renewables are, but he’s sharper than anyone. Usually his position within the Eagles makes him perfect for spotting new Renewables when they come through CeePo, but you just happened to catch him on his day off.”
It was strange that I hadn’t been able to tell Wesley was a Renewable until he’d opened the door with magic. Even then, the feel of magic nearby was faint, easy to miss. In the Iron Wood, everyone was surrounded by a warm, golden light when I used my second sight. But then, everyone there was a Renewable. There was no need to learn to hide it. Here, being a Renewable was grounds for being locked up.
Olivia turned and caught me staring hard at her, trying to see if she carried any telltale sparkles of hidden magic. She laughed. “You can stop squinting like that, I’m no Renewable.”
“Why do Renewables have to go through Central Processing?”
“Well, everyone does. But Renewables especially. Most people still hate them, so even if someone tries to hide, they’re usually ratted out by their neighbors.”
Deciding to redirect the conversation back to Olivia, I asked, “So if you’re not a Renewable, how do you know so much about them? About—us?”
Her reply was quiet. “I’m not a Renewable, but my twin brother was.”
I fell silent.
We reached another door, this one round and squat with a wheel on it. There was a small glass window in the top of the door, but it was so grimy that I could only see that there was light on the other side of it. The door was unlocked—Olivia just reached forward and heaved at the wheel, swinging the door open with a screech of hinges. Beyond it was a low-ceilinged room dominated by a long table covered in papers and halfdismantled machines. A few people stood around it, and heads turned towards us as we followed Olivia inside.
“Hey, guys,” she said as everyone’s eyes fell on me. “This is her. Lark Ainsley.”
I never told her my name. It was like someone had thrown a vat of ice water over me. Beside me, Oren tensed, drawing nearer to me.
Part of me knew I should just run. Wrench away some magic—because more than one of the men around the table was a Renewable—and cast some sort of barrier, and use the confusion to get myself and Oren out of here.
But I was tired of being batted around from prison to prison, from one group of people using me to the next. Enough.
“How do you know who I am?” My voice was tight, stiff—iron-cold.
One of the men around the table straightened, breaking the tableau. He was a tall man in his forties, with well-worn clothing and a thick stubble spreading down his neck. He was staring at me as though looking at a long-lost friend, like someone he’d seen once in a dream.
“You are her,” he murmured. His eyes were wide, wondering.
I braced myself, slipping into my second sight, picking my targets. Part of me recoiled at how easy this was becoming. Where was the girl who’d once had nightmares of a shadow child’s scream as it fell down a cliff face?
“Parker.” Olivia’s voice was low, warning. Though she wasn’t a Renewable, she could clearly tell I was bracing for something. I saw her move, place herself between me and the door.
He swallowed, wrenching himself out of his stupor. “Yes, I see. Lark—Miss Ainsley. Please, stand down. You have to understand what a huge moment this is for us. You’re her— you’re really her.”
“I don’t see it.” That was one of the other men, a younger one, his voice full of skepticism.
Parker shook his head, though he never took his eyes from my face. “Trust me. This is Lark Ainsley. Imagine her five or six years younger—it’s her. The girl in the journal.”
CHAPTER 12
It had been so long since I’d seen my own reflection that at first, the girl in the journal seemed utterly unrecognizable. Familiar, like I’d known her once, long ago—but there was no moment of instant recognition. Until I started flipping pages backward.
They’d given me and Oren each a room to stay in. Though they were barely bigger than closets, they had enough room for a bed. Oren was eating and showering—who knew when he was last clean? But I’d refused to do anything until they brought me the journal.
It was really more of a sketchbook. After the first few pages, which were covered in handwriting, the rest of the pages were filled with drawings and only the occasional caption or paragraph of text. Schematics for machines, mostly, with numeric notations and little else to contextualize them. Some I recognized from the machines I’d seen walking around the city outside, and others were wholly unrecognizable. I couldn’t even tell whether some drawings were of machines or simply geometric patterns, nonsensical.
But here and there, tucked into margins and occasionally dominating half a page, were sketches of a girl.
Me.
At first, early on, the drawings were clumsy, inexpert.
Drawn by someone with the ability to create technical drawings but for whom faces weren’t easy. But the artist had gotten better. Gradually, as the pages went on, the lines smoothed out. The eyes were more confidently placed, the hair following much more graceful lines. The drawings changed from something almost childlike to something admirable.
Even so, it was the early faces that seemed most like me. It was as if the artist had known me long ago and was drawing me from memory—but even as their talent at drawing increased, the specific details of my face had started to slip away. The last entry in the journal was just my face, a pencil sketch. Artistic, sweet. The mouth didn’t seem quite right— the cheeks were too round, the chin a bit too long. But the eyes were mine, and they stared back at me from the page, as though the child I’d once been had caught up to me. Below it was my name, Lark Ainsley.
When I flipped all the way back to the first page, my fingers froze.
Written there, in the neat, perfect lines of machineformed lettering, were the words:
Property of the Institute of Magic and Natural Philosophy
The journal was from my home city. And then, in that instant, I knew whose it was.
I bolted off of my bed and shoved the door open so hard that it slammed into the wall. Retracing my steps wasn’t easy—so many of the corridors looked alike. But after a few wrong turns, my heart slamming in my ribcage, I found the War Room, as Olivia had affectionately called it.
“Whose is this?” I gasped, brandishing the tattered journal.
My eyes scanning startled faces. Olivia wasn’t there anymore, but the man who’d recognized me—Parker—was. He looked from my face to the journal and then back again.
“Lark—” he began slowly.
I knew that tone. It didn’t mean anything good. “Tell me!” I could hear my voice cracking and didn’t care. I was so close. “Where is the man who owns this journal? Tell me, or I swear I’ll walk right out there and find Prometheus and tell him where—”
“If I could tell you, I would!” Parker shouted over me. His voice rasped uncomfortably; he was clearly not a man used to raising his voice. When I had to stop for lack of breath, he spoke more quietly. “We don’t know whose it is. It was here before we were.”
My stomach roiled. The jolt of recognition, of adrenaline as I ran through the corridors, receded, leaving me nauseous. “What do you mean, before you were here?”
“We’ve only been living in the walls for three, four years. It was after Prometheus took over and named our city Lethe. That’s when it became unsafe for Renewables to live openly. The earliest rebels against Prometheus are all gone now; it’s not exactly a healthy life choice to go off-grid. But the story goes that when the very first Renewables went on the run from Prometheus, they only found this place because someone else did first. Someone else made the door, the ladders.”
Someone skilled at moving underground, unseen. Someone at home in the tunnels under the world. My eyes stung, and I willed them to stay dry. I still didn’t know what these people wanted from me—I refused to let them see me weak.
Parker was still watching me, the others in the room silent. “We keep the journal close at hand. To study it. He or she had made it their job to study the machines here, figure out how Prometheus’s walkers and blades and ornithopters operated. And there are machines here Prometheus has never even dreamed of that we’re trying to build, to get the upper hand. It’s our only real weapon against him.”
I shook my head, trying to make sense of what he was saying. “This person—where is he now?”
Parker shook his head. His expression was wary—he hadn’t forgotten how ready I was to use magic against them earlier. But there was a sympathy there too, in his brown eyes, that made me look away. “He was long gone before we found this place. We always assumed . . . ” He hesitated, and I could feel his eyes on my face. “We always assumed that he made a move on Prometheus and failed.”
Failed. I stared at the wall, numb. Maybe it wasn’t him. Maybe it was all a coincidence.
Parker took a step back. “But we do have the other things he left behind.”
I couldn’t speak—my mouth was too dry, my throat too tight. But Parker must’ve seen my face, because he turned and went to one of the many chests lining the room. He lifted out a few papers, glancing at them and then setting them aside. Eventually he found what he was looking for.
It was a small box, no bigger than a backpack. He hadn’t left much behind. I sat down on the floor, ignoring the way the stares of everyone in the room burned holes in my back. There were a few commonplace objects in there. A lighter, a canteen, a roll of bandages and a tube of ointment. A flashlight. A pocket encyclopedia, a couple of other small books. A few parts from unidentifiable machines.
And a paper bird.
My fingers stopped a hair’s breadth from the crumpled, grubby paper object in the bottom of the box. Eyesight blurring, blood roaring in my ears, I almost missed Parker’s question. But only almost.
“Do you know who wrote the journal?”
“My brother.” I swallowed, but it didn’t help. My voice still sounded strange, like it didn’t belong to me and never had. “The journal belonged to my brother, Basil Ainsley.”
CHAPTER 13
Oren came to my room that night after I’d managed to swallow a few bites of dinner.
I had eaten apart from the others on Parker’s advice, both to let myself have some time, and to let the others come to terms with my existence. Apparently, the “girl in the journal” was almost like a religious figure among the resistance movement. I was the only name associated with the person who’d unwittingly founded their anti-Prometheus movement. There were those who thought that Lark Ainsley was the one who’d written the journal. A few even thought I’d come back to finish what I started and take down Prometheus once and for all.
I’d taken the box of Basil’s belongings with me when I left the War Room and spent the time sitting on the cot in my tiny room, searching each item for answers. I couldn’t quite bring myself to read my brother’s journal, not yet—it was too much like reading his last words, bidding him farewell.
After I’d answered his knock, Oren stood in the open doorway, characteristically quiet. His eyes rested on the objects strewn across my blanket, didn’t lift to look at me. He was looking better—less like he felt the need to pummel the nearest bystander, at least. I’d gotten used to the sky after a few days, so maybe he was slowly getting used to being underground.
“They don’t know what I am,” he said eventually, surprising me. I’d expected him to say something about my brother— no doubt he would’ve heard any number of things at dinner.
Part of me resented the fact that Oren, the monster, could move freely amongst these people, with no one staring at him or whispering his name. But I saw how much more settled he looked, how his shoulders had dropped and his barely scabbed-over hands had relaxed, and I couldn’t keep the resentment burning.
“I think there’s enough magic in the air here that you’d be fine, even if I wasn’t around.” I dropped my eyes back to the blanket. The paper bird my brother had carried with him lay next to mine. But for the fact that his was dirty, more crumpled, and torn, it could’ve been the twin of the one that had rested in my pocket since the day I fled my home.
Oren made a noncommittal sound, still lingering in the doorway. It wasn’t a big room, but I wished he’d decide whether he wanted to come in or leave. Abruptly, I remembered the chill in his voice when he said that saving my life in the woods by giving me food was a mistake.
“You could stay here, you know.” I kept my eyes on the birds, the identical folds and creases. “You wouldn’t have to risk hurting anyone else.”
“Are you going to stay?” The question caught me off guard, despite the fact that it’d been lurking at the back of my thoughts for hours. How could I sta
y in a city ruled by the man who killed my brother? And yet—where else could I go?
“I don’t know yet.” I heard him shift, the metal doorframe creaking a little as he leaned on it. “Parker says that Prometheus is one of the best manipulators of magic anyone’s ever seen. He’s responsible for almost all the machines here, and for the magic in the air. The lights, the air filters, everything.”
“But he does it using Renewables as slaves. And he’s a murderer.”
“Maybe.”
I looked up to find Oren watching me, his usually clear, fierce eyes troubled.
“But they say he’s been studying the—the shadows, as you call them.” His lips twitched around the word “me,” but he didn’t say it aloud. Our hallway was hardly private. “I’d be interested in finding out more about his research.”
I knew what Oren was after. If he was cured, he could live anywhere and never have to worry about the monster inside him ever again.
Despite the way he leaned against the doorframe, he seemed taller, more assured. He wasn’t sweating anymore, and he’d gotten a change of clothes from someone. Gone were the patched pants, the transparently thin shirt. He’d washed the Eagle’s blood from his face and hands. But for a few bruises, he could’ve fit in anywhere.
For a strange, confusing moment, I missed his ferocity. In my mind that was who Oren was—all action and quick thinking, instincts honed for survival. Strong, uncompromising. Even when he was afraid in the outside city, it was the fear of a caged animal waiting to be set free.
But now he had purpose.
“Then you should definitely stay,” I said, forcing myself to look down at my blanket.
The doorframe creaked again as Oren stopped leaning against it. He didn’t speak right away. I tried to imagine him hesitant, uncertain, but I could only see his new sense of purpose, changing him.
Eventually, he just said, “Good night, Lark.”
When I lifted my head again, he was gone.
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