Nothing about Cormac’s dismissal of me or the Agenda stings, because he fails to understand. Even now, I’m only beginning to comprehend it myself. “Those desperate men are your people, and they believe their legend.”

“What good is belief? Perhaps saying that you believe in something helps you sleep at night, but you and I both know there is no power in that.”

“It’s not just the belief,” I say as a sense of purpose plants itself in my brain, growing roots that lodge within my soul. “It’s the possibility, and once people see what is possible, even in one tiny, insignificant moment, they’re capable of imagining more. There is power in imagination. Undeniable, unpredictable, uncontrollable power. You’re right. The Whorl might be nothing more than a dream, but the idea has given people the ability to dream again. You won’t find it easy to control them now.”

Cormac’s jaw tightens, but there’s no trace of anger or annoyance or even amusement. He’s calling my bluff.

“But you already know that,” I continue. “Girls and boys deciding not to marry. Spinsters refusing to stay at their looms. What will you do when all the Spinsters begin to dream?”

But he only smirks. “Every society must evolve.”

He raises his fingers and trails them through an invisible pattern in the air. After a moment, a crack in the fabric of the room appears.

“What did you do?” I ask in a breathless voice.

“There are those who said men shouldn’t have this power, but I disagree,” Cormac says. “Not just any man should have this power. But I am not just any man.”

“You’ve been altering yourself,” I realize aloud. His erratic behavior. The scar I glimpsed. It makes sense.

“Isn’t that why you kicked Kincaid out? For perverting the research behind the Cypress Project?” Dante asks. “Or did you kick him out to steal his idea?”

“Kincaid was a fool. He was always too busy showing off to consider what the people around him needed.”

“Does that sound like anyone we know?” I ask in mock innocence.

“It takes one to know one,” Cormac points out.

He might have a point. Even now I’m too busy showing off and talking back to consider what I need to do in order to ensure that the others survive this.

“So you’re a Spinster—or are you a Tailor?” I ask. I pull against the rope binding my hands. I wasn’t scared to be in the same room with him before. Now I am.

“I’m a thinker. A Tailor. A Spinster. A spy,” he says. “But most important, I’m a Creweler.”

“I don’t believe you,” I say, because I need it to be false. I need to believe he doesn’t have these abilities.

“Oh, rest assured, Adelice. Thanks to your measurements, our scientists have been able to synthesize a genetic compound that has given me the same set of skills you possess.”

I stare at him, trying to wrap my head around this. The thing is, it’s not simply that Cormac has been altered to have these abilities. They’ve been synthesized, like in the earliest experiments with the serums on Earth. Experiments that had gone horribly wrong. The fact is, Cormac is merely a test case, which explains the unpredictability of his behavior and his erratic attitude in the past few weeks.

“I thought you seemed off,” I say to him. “I wrote it off as stress, but it seems it was more than that. You’ve been running your own personal Cypress Project all along.”

Cormac hadn’t been losing his mind. He’d been warping it, pushing his own genetic abilities to the brink.

“I don’t need your condescension, Adelice,” Cormac says. “Nor do I appreciate it.”

“You’re insane,” Dante says. “Can you appreciate that?”

“I’m powerful,” Cormac says. “If I were insane I wouldn’t be nearly as successful as I am.”

“You have an entire world living a lie—”

“That they’re eager to believe,” Cormac interrupts me.

“You think lies are that easy to swallow?” I ask. “Arras knows you’re full of it, Cormac, and soon they’ll have proof.”

“And who is going to show them?” he asks. “You?”

“Believe me, I’m up for the challenge.”

Before he can retort, a shrill siren sounds. Jax has managed to trip the protocols and set off the evacuation alert. Now we merely need Cormac to say the pass code and Protocol Three will be initiated.

That shouldn’t be hard, given his god complex.

“I see you didn’t come alone,” Cormac says. “What were you saying about wanting to come back and make things work?”

“I have no idea what’s going on,” I say, keeping my face blank. In truth, I don’t know where Jax is.

Cormac holds up the PTD that Jax gave us to communicate and waves it at me. “Who’s at the other end of this?” he asks.

“No one you know,” I say.

“Not my dear Erik then? Pity. I would love to rip that nuisance right out of Arras. But it is someone you know, Adelice. You pulled a little trick once at the Coventry,” Cormac says, “and I’ve often thought of it. You disregarded proximity standards. Do you remember?”

I know what he’s talking about. I had called up the repository in Loricel’s room and rewoven it into the strange screens in her studio, so that I could enter it and search for information about my sister. Because I was manipulating the space around me, I risked the integrity of the Coventry’s weave. It shouldn’t have been possible for me to do it, and it probably wouldn’t have been if I had been using any loom other than Loricel’s. Still, the loom had warned me by issuing a proximity alert. I have no idea what that has to do with the PTD that connects me to Jax, though.