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I pull the meal from the delivery slot. There it is, cold and bland and blank, the Society’s stores served to us by the Rising.

I have learned a few things from the Archivists. Food is running out; therefore, it is valuable. So I’ve used it to trade my way out of my confinement in my apartment. I take the meal out to the Rising guard at the entrance of our building. He’s young and hungry, so he understands.

“Be careful,” he says, and he holds open the door for me as I slip into the night.

I feel my way down the stones and steps, my hands brushing against the sides and coming away with the familiar green smell and feel of moss. The recent rain has made things slippery, and I have to concentrate, keeping the beam of my flashlight steady.

When I reach the end of the hallway, I’m not blinded, the way I usually am. No flashlights flicker onto me, no beams swing in my direction as people notice me coming through the door.

The Archivists are gone.

A chill runs up my spine as I remember how this place reminded me of the crypt from the Hundred History Lessons. I close my eyes, imagining the Archivists lying down on the shelves, folding their hands on their chests, holding perfectly still as they wait for death to come.

Slowly I shine my light on the shelves.

They are empty. Of course. No matter what, the Archivists will survive. But they didn’t tell me that they were leaving, and I have no idea where they might have gone. Did they leave anything back in the Archives?

I’m about to go look when I hear feet on the stairs and I spin around, swinging up my flashlight to blind whoever has entered.

“Cassia?” the voice asks. It’s her. The head Archivist. She came back. I lower the light so she can see.

“I was hoping to find you,” she says. “Central is no longer safe. ”

“What has happened?” I ask.

“The rumors about a mutated Plague,” she says, “have been proven to be true. And we’ve confirmed that the mutation has spread here to Central. ”

“So you’ve all run away,” I say.

“We have all decided to stay alive,” she says. “I have something for you. ” She reaches into the pack she carries and pulls out a slip of paper. “This came in at last. ”

The paper is real and old, printed with dark letters pressed deep into the page, not the slick surface blackness of printing from a port. There are two stanzas; the ones I don’t have. Even though time is short and the world is wrong, I can’t help but glance down, greedy, to read a bite, a bit of the poem:

/> The Sun goes crooked—that is night—

Before he makes the bend

We must have passed the middle sea,

Almost we wish the end

Were further off—too great it seems

So near the Whole to stand.

I want to read the rest but I feel the head Archivist’s gaze on me, and I look back up. Something has gone crooked here; night is coming. Am I drawing close to the end? It almost feels like it—that there can’t be much farther to go, having come so far already—and yet nothing feels finished.

“Thank you,” I say.

“I’m glad it came in time,” she says. “I’ve never left a trade unfinished. ”

I fold the poem back up and put it in my sleeve. I keep my expression neutral, but I know she’ll hear the challenge in what I’m about to say. “I’m grateful for the poem, but you’ve still left a trade unfinished. My microcard never came in. ”

She laughs a little, the sound echoing through the empty Archives. “That one has come through, too,” she says. “You’ll receive the microcard in Camas. ”

“I don’t have enough to pay for passage to Camas,” I say. How did she find out that’s where I want to go? Does she really have a way for me to get to Camas, or is she playing a cruel joke on me? My heartbeat quickens.

“There’s no fee for your journey,” the head Archivist says. “If you go to your Gallery and wait, someone from the Rising will arrive to bring you out. ”

The Gallery. I’ve never kept it hidden, but something about it being used like this feels wrong. “I don’t understand,” I say.

The Archivist pauses. “What you’ve traded,” she says, very carefully, “has been interesting to some of us. ”

It’s like my Official, again. I was not interesting to her, but my data was.

When my Official said that the Society had put Ky into the Matching pool, I saw the flicker of a lie in her eyes. She wasn’t sure who had put him in.

I think the head Archivist is keeping something from me, too.

I have so many questions.

Who put Ky in the pool?

Who paid for my passage to Camas?

Who stole my poems?

This, I think I know. Everyone has a currency. The Archivist told me that herself. Sometimes, we might not even know what our price is until we are confronted with it, face to face. The Archivist could resist everything else in that treasure trove of the Archives, but my papers, smelling of sandstone and water and just out of reach, were irresistible to her.

“I’ve already paid my passage,” I say. “Haven’t I? With my pages from the lake. ”

It’s so quiet, here underneath the ground.

Will she admit to it? I’m certain I’m right. The impassive stone of the Archivist’s face looks entirely different from the flicker I saw on the Official’s face when she lied to me. But both times, I feel the truth. The Official didn’t know. The Archivist took my papers.

“My obligation to you is finished now,” she says, turning to leave. “You’re aware of the chance for passage to Camas. It is yours to keep or refuse. ” She moves away from the beam of my flashlight into the dark. “Good-bye, Cassia,” she says.

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