Unraveled Read Online Free PDF Page A

of what’s going on within the sector.
    When we finally set out to view the area, the streets are empty. Given the near panic
     of the ship’s crew during our flight, I expected looting or mobs of angry people.
     But the capital is as still as death.
    “I thought you said there was rioting,” I say to Cormac as we ride through in a large
     motocade. I see no one, even though our van shines floodlights onto our path.
    “There will be rioting soon,” Cormac says.
    “How do you know that?” I ask him.
    “Experience.” His mouth twists into a rueful smile.
    “Oh.” Had there been other riots? How had they started? What had he done in those
     metros? I want to ask him these questions, but I keep quiet, listening to the terse
     conversations between the officers in the truck and paying attention to Cormac’s reaction
     to the empty streets.
    A blackout happened once in Romen when I was a little girl. There was no warning.
     No way to anticipate what was about to happen. Amie was only a toddler, and we were
     both outside playing in the yard while our mother finished the dinner dishes. I picked
     blades of grass and held them to my lips, blowing a stream of air across them to create
     a high-pitched whistle. Amie laughed and clapped her hands while our mother watched
     us from the kitchen window. And then there was no sky.
    It was as simple as that. In one moment I sat under the rose-tinged hues of sunset,
     entertaining my sister, and in the next, the world was black, blanketed in a sudden
     and absolute night. I remember the sounds of screaming, the wails of terror echoing
     through the darkness, but it wasn’t until my mother lifted me onto her hip, Amie perched
     on the other side of her, that she shushed me with a gentle: “Quiet now. It will be
     okay, darlings.”
    I’d lost my screams in the dark, unaware that the sounds I heard came from my own
     throat. Dad met us at the stairs, and mercifully, there was still power in the house.
     But none of us could tear our eyes from the missing sky. It was the absence of it—how
     half of our reality had vanished—that made it hard to swallow. Dad ushered us into
     the basement and headed back upstairs as we huddled in our mother’s arms against the
     wall. I ran my fingers along the bricks behind her back. They were solid. They were
     real. They wouldn’t disappear.
    I had never touched the sky. It was too far from the ground, even on my tiptoes, even
     when the programmed clouds floated so close that they seemed within reach.
    “Are the clouds real?” I asked my mother.
    She blinked at the question. “Of course, Ad.”
    “But we can’t touch them,” I pointed out. I could touch this wall. I could touch her
     and Amie. I knew they were flesh and blood and stone, but I didn’t know what a cloud
     was or why the sky was sometimes brilliant blue and other times dull gray.
    Now I realize my mother could have explained more about the looms and why this was
     happening. Instead she simply said, “No, we cannot.”
    It wasn’t an answer, even then. It was a clue. It was a different way to look at my
     world. We could not, according to my mother, but someone else could. It was the answer that
     stilled my breath as a girl. It stills my breath now.
    Right now, in this metro, families wait behind drawn curtains or in cramped basements,
     and parents offer words of reassurance. But they repeat the practiced lies of generations: This is normal. It will pass quickly. Don’t be afraid. And I know they say those things not merely to calm their children and stop the onslaught
     of innocent questions, but also to calm themselves. The population of the Eastern
     Sector has every right to believe this is a blip, a temporary issue that will resolve
     itself soon. But it’s been hours since we received the news of the blackout and soon must feel like a lie even to those saying it now.
    “Halt!” an officer yells, and the van squeals to a stop. In the middle of the road