in a black siphon that looked like a glove with no fingertips. It, like all of the siphons she had seen, was made of metal, but it had once been painted green. The paint was peeling at the edges, and there were large scuff marks and scratches across each plate. There were noticeable screws around its edges and visible hinges made of different colors of metal, suggesting that it had been repaired more than once.
He hummed, a low rumble that she thought she might feel buzzing in her fingers. She felt the tension around her ankle break, like a cord snapping. He kept his hand outstretched and continued to hum, though he changed the pitch somewhat. Her leg slowly lowered, her body righting itself by degrees. Soon she stood in front of him, her hand still held in his for a moment before they both realized it was no longer necessary.
Now that she was on the ground, she could see that he was a head taller than her, which was no small thing, given that she was tall herself. And he wore dark, muted colors, gray and navy and black, with that odd swath of fabric around his shoulders like a hood. It was pinned at his shoulder, not by the gold finery of Aelia and her peers but by what looked like a large bolt. She smiled faintly at it. It almost seemed like a joke, to mock the same people who had summoned her to Genetrix.
“Thanks,” she said. “You said that was a . . . prank?”
“Yeah, the Unrealist artists’ collective have been setting up traps all over the city for a couple months now. Snares, they call them. I read their manifesto the other day—someone wallpapered a train with them.”
She was about to ask what Unrealists were but then she remembered she was supposed to be blending in as much as possible and swallowed the question. “What did it say?” she said instead. It seemed like a safe thing to ask.
“They contend that the introduction of magic unmoored us from the practical and therefore from reality itself,” he said. “And question whether there’s such a thing as a fact when half the things we used to regard as facts are being upended. Hence the reversal of gravity that you just experienced.”
They had a point, she thought. Gravity was a law, and magic upended it. Unraveled it. What else did magic unravel?
Time. Space. Whole dimensions, maybe.
“Well,” she said. “Interesting or not, I hate them.”
He laughed. His entire face crumpled when he laughed, and his mouth opened to reveal a row of slightly crooked teeth. “They’re a nuisance,” he said, “but a harmless one most of the time.” His eyes shifted down to her hands. “No siphon of your own? A bold choice.”
“It’s being repaired,” she lied as smoothly as possible. She was the worst of all of the Chosen at lying—even Albie had been more convincing than she was—but she had practiced enough now that she wasn’t completely hopeless. “It’s a piece of shit,” she added for authenticity.
“Sounds like mine,” he said, wiggling his fingers. “I know someone who does cheap repairs, though.”
A silence fell between them. Sloane knew she should stop the conversation there, thank him again, and go back downstairs to meet Kyros. But it had been a long time since she had spoken to someone who didn’t know who she was or what she was. A lifetime, in fact. She wasn’t so eager to give it up.
“So—you like the paintings?” he said, gesturing to the three canvases.
She stepped closer to read the placard on the wall: “Tenebris,” Charlotte Lake, 2001.
“I heard the artist speak last night,” he said. “She said people assume they’re a view from the USS Tenebris before the incident, but they’re actually from the perspective of magic, looking through the veil at the lights of the Tenebris.”
Sloane didn’t know what to say. She didn’t know what the USS Tenebris was—aside from a naval ship, obviously—or what the incident was, though it sounded familiar.
“I don’t know how to look at art,” she said. “There hasn’t been much room in my life for it.”
“What’s been taking up all the room?”
She considered that for a moment, then replied, with a hint of a smile, “Mayhem.”
He laughed a little, but his eyes lingered on hers, like he knew she wasn’t quite kidding. “I’m Mox,” he said, holding out his siphon hand for her to shake.
“Sloane,” she replied, wrapping her fingers around the metal. It was cool