I counted the fourth row from the left and walked down the aisle, a few paces behind two women who walked with hands clasped, whispering to each other. The one on the left wore her hair loose over her shoulders; she threw it back and leaned into the one on the right, smiling. The one on the right glanced back at me and released her partner’s hand abruptly. It wasn’t uncommon for two women to come here under the guise of friendship to make a child together. They would explore the Archive together, and then one of them would meet with an Archivist alongside a man willing to play the part. The Archivist, none the wiser, would help them narrow down the kind of resurrection they wanted to facilitate.

  I turned at the end of the row to give them privacy. I knew what it was to be something you were not permitted to be.

  My existence, as well as my siblings’, was blasphemous. People didn’t resurrect their own genes—to do so was considered dangerous, for practical as well as mystical reasons. We were each of us born with a virus, passed on from mother to child, and there was no cure. It deteriorated our genetic code from the moment we were born, introducing abnormalities, aberrations. Genes therefore needed to be edited before they were passed on, so that every child could be born with a clean slate—so that they wouldn’t die young, as my siblings and I would.

  But for the mystics, not the scientists, there was another crime in having a natural-born child. Each person’s ichor was like a tapestry containing the many threads of those who lived before. When combined with another person’s ichor, that tapestry grew richer and more complex. But ichor couldn’t convey the soul through the cells until a person’s death. Having a child of your own flesh, while you were still alive, meant having a child who wasn’t a part of that tapestry. It meant having a child who had no soul.

  Like me.

  In the gap between the shelves, I saw the couple stop near the end of the row. The woman on the right tugged the placard out of its place next to one of the samples, and they both crouched to read it, the woman on the left resting her chin on the other’s shoulder. I could have moved past them, but I lingered, watching them instead as they read the summary of a life they found on the little metal sheet.

  They would choose two souls in the Archive that they found worthy of resurrection, and in doing so, at least in theory, they would choose their child’s story before they were born. I wondered what kind of story these two would want. A quiet life, maybe, unremarkable but peaceful, kind. Or perhaps—drama, a tragic end, a life of tumult and potential. In the Archive, you could read a person’s story and remake it. Combine it with another pattern, to heighten it or temper it. The possibilities were endless, overwhelming.

  It didn’t matter if a person wanted a child or not. It didn’t matter if they changed the rest of their body, if they embraced a new name—if they were viable, the state considered them a woman, and they were required to carry a child, even though only half of them would survive it. Our species would die without this law, people were so fond of saying. And perhaps they were right about that. Every year, we were shrinking. Contracting. Receding.

  Regardless, I didn’t see, in the women who walked beside me, separated by shelves of samples, any hesitation, any resentment. That their bodies were considered vessels for the continuation of the species rather than things that belonged solely to them did not appear to weigh on them. They looked caught up in this mystical alchemy, genes and ritual stirred together in the incense- and dust-saturated air of the Archive.

  Or maybe I was just seeing what I expected to see. Pol often said that I saw the world in extremes. And I often reminded him that it was an extreme world.

  The couple turned at the next throughway, and I continued ahead to the sealed records at the very back of the space, where the famous, the notorious, the prominent were kept. Their genes couldn’t be repurposed without express permission from the state. That was where my parents’ ichor resided.

  Ichor, I heard my mother say, sneering, in the back of my mind. No one likes to use the technical terms for things, do they? Not enough romance in “egg” and “sperm” for them.

  I was sure that Kreon would hold my parents’ ichor hostage, using the threat of their permanent destruction to control us. We couldn’t resurrect them, but as long as they were stored here, someone could. One day. And I had believed in resurrection, once. Even now that I didn’t … Pol, Ismene, and Eteocles still did, and I wouldn’t be the one to take the hope of my parents enduring away from them. And so the axe blade was always dangling over us.

  It was even darker here, the channels cut in the ceiling farther apart. Each sample occupied a space the size of a book, making the library comparison even more apt. During the day, a dim light glowed beneath each one, to illuminate the name written on a label beneath. In a slot beside them was a slate with a description of their lives. I didn’t need the label to find my father and mother, settled next to each other in a place of prominence, near the front. Oedipus. Jocasta.

  Oedipus, who would have been our first freely elected leader. Jocasta, who sought to give childbearing to everyone—thus freeing those who didn’t want it. A scientist in a city where only men were scientists; an impossibility of a woman.

  Some people came to the Archive to grieve. I heard their whispers even then, like a distant stream. I wondered what they said to the dead. I didn’t come here to tell my mother and father my secrets, my sorrows, and my regrets. I came here because it was the only place where Kreon wasn’t watching. I knelt on the stone floor in front of my parents’ names, set my sandals down, and opened my bag. I took out the Extractor and held it up to the light.

  It was one of my mother’s old ones, I was sure. We had so little of her, of him. Distributing their possessions was a rite of mourning, and we had not been permitted to mourn. The closest Ismene and I had come was preparing the bodies. I had stripped them bare; Ismene had washed them. Ismene had said the prayer; I had done the Extraction, plunging one instrument into my father’s body, two inches below the belly button, and another into my mother’s. It could only be done on the dead. I closed my eyes, and forced myself to imagine doing it to Polyneikes, but try as I might, I couldn’t envision him dead. He was only ever sleeping.

  I put the Extractor back in my bag, and took a deep breath. The name “Jocasta” was scribbled in poor handwriting on the label. It took me a few seconds to remember that it was mine. Those days had passed in a fog.

  “Hello, dear,” came a soft voice on my right.

  I jerked to attention. Standing at the end of the short aisle was Eurydice, Kreon’s wife.

  People called her the angel of Thebes. She was fine boned and delicate. Her skin was so pale that in sunlight, you could see right through it to the blue veins and straight tendons beneath.

  “Hello.” I picked up my sandals and stood. There was dust on my knees, dust on my heels.

  “I apologize for interrupting,” she said. “I came here to see my own mother, and thought I would say hello to yours on my way out.”

  “Your mother is still here?” I asked. Though children weren’t permitted to resurrect their parents—it was considered incestuous, as well as selfish, not to contribute to genetic diversity—a prominent family like hers was a desirable one, in the Archive. I had assumed that someone would have brought Eurydice’s mother forth by now.

  “My mother was a Follower of Lazarus,” Eurydice said. “She’ll be here until the end of everything. Or so she believed.”

  Followers of Lazarus—we called them “Fools,” an easy nickname, hand delivered. They believed a creator would raise them from the dead via their ichor when the world ended, and as such, they requested that their material be used only if there was no alternative. It was noted on their placards in red. My mother had criticized them regularly, claiming that looking forward to the end meant no longer striving for survival, no longer valuing humanity. Despite that, I felt more kinship with them now than I ever had. Sometimes the end was all there was left to long for.

  “But you don’t agree with her,” I said.

  Eurydice smiled. “No. I believe in the enduring nature of the soul, as she did, but I don’t believe in the end.”

  “I don’t think I believe in either,” I said, and in this place that so many thought of as holy, it felt like a confession. I touched my mother’s name with just my fingertips. “I don’t think if I used her ichor I would get her back. I think she’s gone.”

  “Those two things do not have to coincide,” Eurydice said. “If a soul endures, then perhaps—it simply endures, no matter what we do. If not in ichor, then elsewhere.”

  “How do you know a soul even exists?” I said.

  “I suppose I don’t,” Eurydice said. “I simply don’t prioritize certainty.”

  Her eyes were gentle. It was tempting to think of her as a flimsy thing. But no flimsy thing could have been with Kreon for so long and remained herself.

  “Shall we go?” I said. “Or do you want a moment alone with her?”

  I nodded toward my mother’s slot. Eurydice just shook her head, and we walked together down the aisle. I thought of the couple from earlier, finishing their perusal, talking about the kind of child they wanted. Once they made their selections, down the road, the Archivist would combine the cells they selected, the souls they selected, and implant them in one of their wombs. After that, I wasn’t sure. Maybe she would die in childbirth. Statistically, it was as likely as survival. But even if she did survive—women were protected by the home, and only men could move freely outside of it. Would those women raise a child with two men who favored each other? Would they try to scrape together a life on their own? The memory of them scolded me. What a small creature I was to fear and hate the thing they were risking everything for. But a small creature I was, and I could not be otherwise.

  The air was hot outside the Archive, and it was always strange to go places with Eurydice, who was the closest thing to royalty that existed in our city. People gathered around her like supplicants, eyes sparkling, mouths smiling, hands reaching. She was overwhelmed by them, searching for exits, but I couldn’t help her. Their eyes skipped over me as if I wasn’t there. It was kinder than acknowledging what I was.

  Her eyes fixed on something in the distance, and the smile she gave was relieved. Kreon’s face surfaced from the crowd and I fought all my instincts to recoil. He was surrounded by space, as if he emitted a repulsive force. He walked up to Eurydice, taller than she was and broader, and kissed her cheek. Everyone around us watched.

  Lingering a few feet behind him was my eldest brother, Eteocles. Our eyes met.

  “Brother,” I said. “I trust you’re here to visit our parents.”

  “Hello, Antigone,” he said with obvious unease.

  Eteocles was Kreon’s shadow, these days. He hardly took a step without clearing it first.

  “Antigone,” Kreon said in what might have sounded like warmth if his eyes were not so full of scrutiny. He didn’t bend toward me to kiss my cheek. He never touched any of us if he could help it, as if our profound emptiness could leech the life from his body if he did.

  “Uncle,” I replied.

  “You’re alone?” It was clear he didn’t approve. “Did you come to pay your respects to the dead?”

  “I came to ask a question,” I said.

  “Did you receive an answer?”

  So many were listening to us. I smiled.

  “I’m at peace,” I said. “That’s answer enough.”

  Kreon’s eyes glittered as they met mine. Over his shoulder, Eteocles’ eyes darted from mine to Kreon and back again.

  “I am glad to hear it,” Kreon said.

  What came next was a script of courtesy. Kreon ensured that I would return home. Eurydice would remain a bit longer, waiting for him to finish his business, and Eteocles would accompany me back to the house. God forbid I be alone.

  In silence I descended the steps behind the older of my two brothers. One, two, three …

  4

  Eurydice

  My mother thought I was a prophet. I was never clear on why. She would just say she felt it in her bones, like that was enough. Only no child wants to be taken as seriously as my mother took me. Every word that fell out of my mouth had meaning, to her. So I stopped talking. I must have gotten used to it, because sometimes it was still hard for me to find the words.

  My mother was always looking for something bigger, something more. She was always looking for an ending. Maybe that’s why she chose one for herself when reality failed to satisfy. When the prophet daughter had nothing to say. Silence, I suppose, is its own kind of message and its own kind of ending. Just not one that anyone wants to hear.

  I visited her every week without fail. I liked the walk to the Archive, even with Nikias a few paces behind me as a silent protector. I liked to stand at the top of the hill and look at the city and recall its size. So often it felt too fragile, like the very foundation of it was about to crumble. But nothing so big, so sprawling, could be so easily felled.

  I hadn’t expected to see Kreon here. He didn’t make a habit of coming to the Archive, because walking among the dead wasn’t useful, and he did like to be useful. He looked out at the Trireme, fixed in the launch position, and I looked at the corner of his jaw, rough with a beard.

  “What brings you here?” I said to him. We were surrounded by guards, but that was always true. I felt like we were alone.

  “Heli, who oversees the Seventh,” he said. “His daughter is here. She got into some trouble, and he asked me to handle it myself, as a personal favor to him.” He turned toward me and took my hands. “I’d like you to come with me. I’m sure your presence could only be helpful to her.”

  He wasn’t asking, but I nodded. He moved my hand to the crease of his elbow, and together we walked alongside the Archive building to the back, where the laboratories were. As we walked, I looked up at the row of columns that framed the building, worn by the wind. I had lived forty years and still I marveled that something weak could wear away at something strong, given enough time. A raindrop tunneling through a mountain, a breeze smoothing the rough edges of stone.

  “You shouldn’t be seen so often with our niece in public,” he said to me as we walked. “That’s twice in two weeks now.”

  “It is seen as compassion,” I replied.

  “Today it is,” he said. “Tomorrow they may remember too clearly what she is.”

  His lip curled, and I recalled the day his brother and sister-in-law were killed in the street, how he asked about the children with hope in his voice. He would never dishonor his family by striking out at them, but he had thought perhaps the violence of the riot had solved his problems for him. I had never tasted such rage as I felt that day.

  The back of the Archive was smooth, faultless stone with no windows. I released Kreon’s arm to let him precede me into the building. There, attendants sprang to their feet to greet him—and me—with respect. They offered us tea, and figs, and a place to sit, and Kreon refused all. He asked to see the girl, and one of the attendants rushed ahead to ready her.

  “Remember to be soft,” I said to him, as we waited. “If she is in trouble—”

  “I will be what I am,” he replied firmly. “For softness, I have you.”

  Had I always been soft? It was difficult to say. I was a willful child. The scars on my knuckles—the punishments of frustrated teachers—testified to that. So, too, my refusal to speak to my mother, knowing she would weigh every word that came from my lips too heavily. But I was soft with Kreon. I saw in him what others didn’t.

  The attendant gestured to us, and we followed her down a long, dim hallway to one of the examination rooms. This was a place for everything related to childbearing. Jocasta had once worked here, hidden in the back so none would see that the laboratory was occupied by a woman. I came with her once to look at her work, but I couldn’t make sense of all the glass tubes, the worn books, the glowing microscope.

  We stopped before the laboratories this time, and the attendant led us into an examination room. It was small, with an exam table and a stool and a small cabinet full of equipment. Lying atop the table, her body covered in a white sheet, was Clio, daughter of Heli, steward of the Seventh District.

  She was hardly more than a child, her cheeks round, her body slender as a deer. Her eyes were unfocused and red with tears. A clump of hair clung to her lip, unnoticed. She saw Kreon, and she struggled to sit up.

  “Please, be still,” I said. “We come as friends.”

  Kreon raised an eyebrow at this, but didn’t contradict me.

  “Is my father angry with me?” she said, her voice small and scraped.

  “Does he have reason to be?” Kreon said.

  “I don’t—” She choked a little, and looked away. We waited in silence for the end of the sentence, which didn’t come.

  I laid a hand on Kreon’s shoulder.

  “Let me speak with her,” I said.

  “Heli asked—”

  “Heli asked you to handle this personally,” I said. “And what am I but an extension of you?”

  Kreon’s eyes softened by a fraction. He nodded and stepped out of the room. I could feel something ease in the air after his departure, like a strong wind had settled.

  I drew the stool to the side of the exam table, and perched on top of it. Clio’s hands were folded over her abdomen, her nails bitten down to the quick. There was a poster on the wall beside her, a diagram of the woman’s reproductive system. Poised above the pink of the uterus was a slim needle—an Extractor, to show the correct angle of approach.