Weavers (The Frost Chronicles) (21 page)

I held very still. “And?”

“I have not yet finished it. I am stuck. But I have the journal, and it proves that I will succeed one day.”

The notebook he’d showed me before. The hairs on my neck rose. “Tell me about the journal, Borde.”

He flinched at my sharp use of his name. “I...I don’t know where it came from, actually. It is very old, it seems. The leather is cracked and faded. The pages are filled with scribbles, inscriptions...phrases that I do not understand.”

“But what does that have to do with me?” He was rambling now. I had to make him focus.

Borde shook his head. He wasn’t going to tell me. Not yet.

“What of the riddle?” I demanded.

Borde blinked. “Riddle?”

“What woven secret will keep you warm?” As the words left my lips, I shivered. It felt strange and wrong to speak them here, in this strange time so far from my home, my people, my Frost.

“It is written in the journal,” he said. “Over and over again.”

A shiver ran through my body. I rose from the chair and paced.

“What is the phrase?” he asked, searching my face.

“It is a riddle invented by my father,” I said. “To entertain me and my siblings as children, and to...to communicate a secret about where a time travel device was located.”

Borde’s expression melted into pure amazement. His eyes widened and his mouth dropped open. “Oh,” he breathed.

“Perhaps I’ve said too much,” I said. “But you have not yet said enough.”

“There is much I cannot say. It is secret, all my plans and progress—”

“Who else knows about the journal?” I interrupted.

“No one,” he said. “I swear it. My wife knew it, but she is gone now. My children know nothing. My colleagues know nothing.”

That made me feel safer. I stopped pacing to study him. He looked sincere. But I still wasn’t sure that I could trust this man, although perhaps I had little choice. If Jacob knew what I was doing—or Atticus—they would be furious. Perhaps worse.

But he had information, and I needed it. “Can I see this journal?”

Borde’s hands stilled in his lap. He leaned back. “I...it is full of secret things. If you were a spy...”

“There might be things that I would know,” I insisted. “Things I could understand.”

Borde was shaking his head.

I tried to keep him talking. He’d been willing to converse about the Sickness, at least. “Can you tell me anything more about the Sickness,” I said.

“Not much more is known,” he insisted. “We are studying it, but...most of what we know is rumor and fantasy.”

“How is it treated?”

“The victims are isolated so they cannot infect anyone else. As they progress through the stages of infection, they become disoriented, sometimes crazed. They attack others in some cases, biting and clawing and spreading the disease even faster than normal. A person who breathes the air of an infected might catch the Sickness. A bitten person is certain to. Those who are infected must be quarantined, kept under watch.”

I breathed out slowly. “And if the disease doesn’t kill them?”

“Then they are no longer susceptible to catching it again,” he explained. “In fact, recovering victims of the Sickness are often physically stronger. The disease seems to fix many problems, things that might have otherwise been permanent damage. Eye disorders, autoimmune problems...”

I absorbed this. It was fascinating. “And I can carry the disease on my clothes, my body, even if I am uninfected?”

“Yes, although it spreads much faster through the infected.”

We needed to get away as soon as possible, then. We couldn’t risk staying any longer, no matter what Jacob wanted. My heart thudded. “Thank you,” I said. “Now, I only need one more thing before I go.”

He waited.

“I need to see the journal.”

He shook his head. “I cannot. I am sorry, but I cannot trust you enough to reveal its contents to you. Not yet.”

I made a small noise of frustration. Perhaps he thought he had weeks, months to observe me and determine my trustworthiness, but I had only days! And I could not tell him that. I could not reveal our scheduled departure to anyone else. It wasn’t safe.

“Fine,” I growled. “We shall talk of this again. Tell no one what I have told you.”

“Of course not,” he said. “No one shall know but me. And...and you?”

“Who am I going to tell?” I said, thinking that I dared not reveal what I’d done to Jacob. I wasn’t even sure if I could tell Gabe. Not now, not yet. Perhaps once we were safe in the Frost.

I almost laughed at the notion that the Frost was safer than this place. But in some ways, it was. At least in the Frost, I knew the rules, I knew the way the world worked, and I knew how to navigate that world, dangerous as it might be.

“I have to go,” I said. “But we will talk again.”

I hoped it was true, because I needed to see that journal. I knew there were things he wasn’t telling me. It had something to do with my family—but what?

I picked up the sealed container, the thing that held Jonn’s secret, and left.

TWO DAYS UNTIL the jump, and I was a riot of nerves. My work passed in a blur. I moved like a dead woman through meals, through duties. Finally, after darkness had descended over the Compound, I paced the floor of my tiny room like a caged animal, making quiet noises of frustration as I tried to sort out the tangle of problems in my head. Jacob wanted to bring everyone. The Sickness made everything so much more complicated. And now Borde had a journal that held my family’s secrets. I had to know what else it contained.

If it had one of my father’s riddles, what else might the pages contain? The possibility burned inside me like a star, so bright it threatened to consume me.

A knock sounded lightly at the door. I stopped my pacing and gazed at it, my heart hammering and my mouth dry. Who could that be? Claire?

I answered the door. It was Gabe.

The sight of his face sent a rush of reassurance through me, and I leaned against the doorframe and shut my eyes briefly. I did not have the boldness to embrace him, but I smiled at him. Perhaps that was enough to convey my feelings.

“Hello,” he said. His eyes were grave, almost unreadable. “You look pensive.”

“I have much on my mind,” I said, flicking my gaze over him. “You look pensive, too.”

My whole body was a riot of nervousness and anxiety. The feelings were chewing me from the inside out. My eyes burned, but I didn’t break down. I just breathed in the air, the scent of the forest and the wind. Gabe slipped his arms around me. “Tomorrow we go,” he said. “We can deal with everything after that.”

“Jacob wants to take everyone,” I said.

“But what would you have him do? Leave them here? He can’t do that.”

I sighed, an admission of helplessness. “Sometimes there are no good answers, Gabe.”

He didn’t respond.

Finally, I untangled myself from the comfort of his arms. I needed sleep, although I wasn’t sure if I’d find it tonight. “I’ll see you tomorrow,” I said, and he pressed his fingers against mine in promise.

When I reached the room, I was still in a snarl of anxiety. I paced until my feet hurt, and then I lay on the bed and rehearsed everything that must be done. My fingers itched to touch the device, to feel it safely in my hands. I rolled over and got on my hands and knees, digging under the bed for the place where I’d crammed the case against the spot between the bed frame and the wall. A secret hiding place, impossible to see unless you were looking for it.

But my fingers brushed empty air.

I bent down farther, half-crawling under the bed, reaching again.

Nothing.

“What—?” I muttered, fighting panic. I shoved the panel aside and looked.

The space was empty.

The PLD was gone.

~

I ran through the forest without stopping. The new necklace of snow blossoms I’d hastily thrown on bobbed around my neck with each stride, and my breath hissed as it left my lips. The Security Center was my only hope to find him tonight. I reached the doors, and they opened for me because I had clearance. A whoosh and I was down the tunnel and into the hall. My footsteps clanged, echoed. I stuck my head into every room, looking for him. Where could he be?

“Jacob? Jake?”

A few heads lifted, none of them the fugitive leader I sought. I darted down another hall. My heart pounded and my whole body surged with fear and fire. We were so close. How could this have happened?

A flicker of movement snagged my eye at the end of the hallway.
Jacob
. He was exiting the room where he’d originally spoken to me, the room where we’d originally talked about the PLD. How fitting. How ironic. I bit back the panicked urge to laugh.

“Lila?” He crossed his arms, waiting for me. Smirking?

“You bastard,” I growled. “What do you hope to accomplish by these games?”

“What are you talking about?”

“Nobody knows how to work the device but me! You can’t cut me out. You can’t just take it and expect to—”

“Take it?” His face drained of color. “What...?”

“The PLD is gone,” I spat. Why was he pretending not to know?

He put out a hand against the wall to steady him. “
What
?”

“Someone took it.”

Jacob slammed his fist into the wall and swore loudly. I stared at him, taking in the reaction, and reality sunk in. “It wasn’t you.”

“Of course not,” he snapped. “Why would I do that?’

“I...” To help the fugitives? I didn’t finish my sentence. I just stared at him, trying to think. Of course he wouldn’t. If he was fighting so hard to take everyone, did I really think he’d simply leave me?

Jacob scrubbed his hands through his hair and began to pace. “Who else knows about it? Think!”

Who else could have known about the PLD? Its existence had not been revealed to the other fugitives...no one except Gabe, but it couldn’t have been Gabe. He was on the list. He was coming back with me...

My heart dropped like a stone.

Doctor Borde
. He knew about the device, at least vaguely. It would have been easy for him to track down my room number, and search my room.

I’d been so foolish. I should never have trusted him, not even for information about the Sickness. And now, it was all falling apart. I sagged against the wall, trying to think, but my thoughts were slippery, loose, scattered. He might be in his private laboratory. I had to try, at least. “I—I have to go. Contact Gabe. Tell him to look everywhere he can think. I—I’ll find you.”

And before he could reply, I ran.

I had to get the device back tonight. If we didn’t, the time window would close, and we’d be stuck here for another few weeks, at risk of exposure to the Sickness. Every day we remained here was that much more dangerous. Every day we remained here was another day Jonn, Ivy, and Everiss were without me.

What if we never got it back?

I refused to entertain that idea.

My heart pounded in time with my feet as I sprinted up the path and into the deeper forest, heading for Borde’s private laboratory. Dark air swirled around me, hot and cloying, and sweat streamed down my back and soaked my hair. My side ached and my lungs burned, but I kept running.

Borde answered the door on the first knock. His hair was disheveled and his clothes dirty, as if I’d interrupted him in the middle of an experiment. At the sight of me, he opened his mouth as if to protest. I burst past him before he had time to invite me in or refuse me access.

“Give it back!” I demanded as soon as I’d reached the middle of the room. I scanned the shelves, the tables. I saw nothing resembling the PLD—but would he really be so foolish as to leave it lying out? He probably had it hidden away somewhere I’d never find it. I had to intimidate him. Threaten him. Something. I was desperate.

“You can’t have it,” he burst out, and fury took over my senses. I crossed the room in two strides and grabbed his arms.

“Give. It. Back.”

His eyes widened until his pupils were just blue circles floating on a sea of white. “I—I cannot. It is mine. My research—”

“It is not yours. It belonged to my family.”

“I found it—”

I let go of him. “Not your blasted journal, Borde. The PLD!”

“PLD?”

“The device. The device that’s going to take me home, the one we talked about. It’s gone. Don’t play dumb. You must give it back, or...or I’ll tell the other scientists about the journal. About your secret experiments. About what you gave me—”

He threw up his hands to quiet me. “Wait. Wait. The device has been stolen?”

I stopped, panting, as Borde stared at me with wide eyes.

“We need to make the jump tomorrow,” I said.

“Oh no,” he muttered.

“WHAT DO YOU know?” I demanded.

Instead of answering, Borde turned on his heel and disappeared through the doorway behind him in a flutter of shirtsleeves. I stood still for a second, my feet stuck to the floor and my head swimming with frustration and confusion, then I ran after him.

“Borde?”

No answer. Had he run away? Had he tricked me?

The hallway was dark as a cave, but I trailed my hands on the wall and followed the crack of light at the end. I entered a small room with a plain cot in one corner piled with rumpled sheets. Borde was rummaging in a closet. He yanked out a coat and a long, slender metal object. I took a step back, and he looked down at it and chuckled.

“It’s a light,” he said, clicking it on with his thumb. “I’m not going to hurt you.”

I hovered in the doorway, not trusting him. Right now, I didn’t trust anyone.

“Come on,” he said. “We have to go now.”

“Where are we going?”

“To find your device.”

“How are you going to do that?”

“I think I know who might have taken it.”

Instead of going out the front door, he led me down a flight of narrow steps and into an underground cavern. Lights snapped on, brilliant lights that hurt my eyes. A vehicle sat before us, glittering in the glare. Borde opened the door and climbed onto the seat. He motioned to the place beside him. “Get in. This will be faster.”