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The Creweler’s studio walls are blank, and the loom sits empty. Loricel must be at dinner with the others. Maybe they’ll assume I’m with Cormac and not come looking for me. The screens in the room reflect the default program, and I take a deep breath and consider where I should look first. I only have to tell the walls where I want to be and the tracking program will display that place. These walls can show me anywhere in Arras, but I’m not sure how long I have with them, so I better make my time count.
‘I am in the great hall at dinner,’ I command, feeling a little silly.
The walls shimmer and the great hall weaves itself across the space. I stand in the dead centre, the table stretching out around me. At the far end Loricel sits, speaking to no one. Meanwhile the other Spinsters make lively conversation that I can’t hear. Each woman’s skin is a pale version of its natural colour – chalk white or dusted chocolate or muted honey. I watch as one girl throws her head back, and in my own I hear a maniacal cackle as others clap and wave their hands in exaggerated gesticulations. This is how they close their day: at a long table filled with puddings and roast meat and delicate breads filled with sweet cream. A few gulp down thin red wine. One snaps her fingers and a young man appears to refill it. His face
is blank, except for the dullest hint of disgust in his electric-blue eyes.
I stare at him. Dressed in his evening suit, he bears little resemblance to the scruffy boy who carried me across that stone cell, but his eyes are the same as the day we met, the day he bandaged my hands, the day we kissed. I have to turn away or I’ll rip right through the wall to get into his arms.
All around, eyes fix on me. I feel exposed, but then I realise I’m standing in the spot where the main dish will be placed, a large ham or turkey or duck. One by one, the Spinsters seated near this spot begin reaching out towards me, their hands returning with knives and forks full of steaming, white meat. I’m being eaten alive.
I bite my lip to keep from laughing and focus on what I now know. I have located both Jost and Loricel. I want to follow Jost, but this is my only chance to find the information I need to get to Amie if I want to pull her location up on the loom.
‘Show me the offices,’ I command, and the scene shifts to a busy building where smartly dressed men and women bustle about with stacks of papers. It’s a scene outside the Coventry. My command must have been too vague.
‘Show me the offices inside the Coventry,’ I try, and the image flickers to nothing.
Pulling the digifile from my pocket, I slide open the secret file and am delighted to discover that Enora included a map of the compound. I shift the image, searching until I find what I’m looking for: the research laboratories. Next to them I spot a single room twice their size. It’s marked ‘repository’. They’re both located near the clinic where I was mapped. Calling up the labs on the wall, I see a few men clad in white jumpsuits busily working with tubes and looms. Their workday must not end at the traditional time. I close my eyes and mutter, ‘Repository.’
I can’t look. Something about the large block on the map raises the hair on my neck. Slowly I open my eyes. Large steel shelves rise up in neat, symmetrical rows, lined with thousands of tiny metal boxes. Moving closer, I examine them to find each is labelled with a sequence of fourteen numbers and letters. It takes me a moment to realise I’ve stopped breathing.
Fourteen.
03212144 WR LM LA
The sequence drilled into my head as a child.
‘It’s how we’ll find you if you’re ever lost,’ my mother said.
It’s how they find each of us.
Date of birth. Sector. Metro. Mother’s initials. Child’s initials.
I stare at the box in front of me. Whose sequence is this?
My hand reaches out to open it, but my fingers hit the wall screen.
‘It’s an illusion,’ I remind myself. The screens look so vivid that for a moment I thought I could reach out and riffle through the boxes.
I nearly drop the digifile from my sweaty hands, trying to find the information on the map, but thankfully it’s there: a list of coordinates that will call up the Coventry’s weave on the machine. Sitting at the loom, I punch in the codes and watch as the Coventry’s weave spins across it. Next to me the command panel blinks red, flashing a reminder: partial within boundary diameter. It means I’m looking at a piece of the weave that contains the very location I’m in. Maela showed us this piece before, but I wonder now, as the warning light flashes at me, if I’m risking its stability to manipulate the compound from within the compound itself. But I can’t think of a better – or safer – idea. And, I argue to myself, why would Enora have given me this info if I wasn’t meant to use it? But . . . if I’m being honest, this is possibly the stupidest plan ever. I’m not sure if it’s possible to remove a piece from the loom’s weave and place it into the room’s actual weave. Probably because no one has ever been desperate enough to try it. Except me.
I run my hands along the top of the loom, the weave shocking the tips of my damaged fingers. Slowing them to a soft trailing motion, I adjust the view on the loom, zooming into the weave until it focuses, mirroring the map Enora left me on the digifile, and then I see the outline of the repository. Keeping my fingertip carefully on the spot, I tease a few strands of the area out, carefully, so as not to remove the entire room from the weave, which would surely draw immediate suspicion. Holding it delicately in my left hand, I reach up into the air with my right, and concentrating until the room’s weave shimmers into view, I draw apart the strands of this room, hoping my theory is correct and that I can transplant threads from the loom into the weave of Loricel’s studio. If so, then I hope to create a rift between her studio and the repository that will allow me to enter the secure facility. I weave the strands from the repository into this space and cautiously peek through.
It’s not a bad first try, except that I’ve woven it in upside down and I’m looking at the ceiling, the storage units suspended overhead. There’s no way I can open those boxes this way, so I step back through to Loricel’s studio and fix it.
There’s a faint hum filling the other room, and I shiver as I step through. It’s at least thirty degrees colder in here than any other space in the compound. I pull my jacket tighter and step up to the nearest shelf; there’s only one way to find out what’s in there.
The boxes latch on the right side, and I have to try twice to raise the tiny lever. In response, the front of it slides away, revealing a small crystal cube. I reach in to pull it out. A thin strand of light shimmers, suspended in the centre and woven into a delicate knot. I turn it over in my hands and the thread doesn’t move. It’s too thin to belong to the person with this identifying sequence. I’ve seen individual threads after removal, and they’re comprised of several strings knitted together; I’m sure that this is only part of the ripped thread. On the bottom, I notice an etched code composed of a series of numbers and varying bars. Sliding my digifile next to it, I open a folder labelled Tracking and press the small screen up to the code. A pulsing icon flashes immediately and then a new dataset appears:
NAME: Riccard Blane
PERSONAL IDENTIFYING SEQUENCE: 06022103 EN BH BR
OCCUPATION: banker
REMOVAL DATA: 10112158 EN
REQUEST CONTACT: Amolia Blane
