The Child Thief 6: Zero Hour

by Forrest, Bella

  “If Nathan brought it to our attention,” Cloyd answered, “then I would assume that there have been multiple.”

  “That’s so brave of those workers,” Jackie added.

  “Brave, yes,” Abe replied. “But also stupid.”

  Jackie shot him a venomous look.

  “Those factory guards in Trenton were vicious,” Abe retorted. “They’d hurt you if you weren’t doing your job fast enough. So imagine how they would act if you started refusing to do your job and demanding better pay or breaks.”

  Ant shuddered. “I got beaten once for fainting from hunger. I was thirteen years old.”

  “But if people don’t start fighting, then nothing will ever get better,” Gabby said.

  “And they need help,” I said. “They don’t even have enough food. They definitely don’t have any strength or weapons to fight with. Little John needs to be there, or these people are just going to be killed off.”

  We got quiet as we all stared into our fire and considered that possibility.

  “Well, at least Nathan recognizes that now,” Nelson said. “And at least we got Aurora back safely. I bet she has a lot of good information that she can share.”

  “She obviously had at least some information that Nathan didn’t have,” I said.

  The team turned to look at me in unison.

  “Well, I hope so too,” Jackie replied. “But we can’t know that for sure.”

  “I think we can,” I replied. “Nathan had ordered Aurora not to have further contact with Little John, so he must’ve known she was in danger. But Aurora was caught talking to Corona. That’s how she got found out. So she must’ve had some important information to share if she was willing to risk it all like that.”

  Aurora seemed smart and capable if she had evaded capture for so long from within the government’s very grasp, so I didn’t think she would’ve been captured doing anything impetuous. She must’ve had a good reason. But I was impatiently awaiting the next meeting with Nathan so that we could figure out whether Aurora had some new information after all.

  “I wish we could’ve met Aurora,” Gabby said suddenly. She looked over at me, and her eyes lit up. “But you did! What was she like? I imagine her being so brave!”

  I shrugged. “Well, not many people are brave with the electric gallows around their neck,” I responded truthfully. Growing up rich, our family had watched televised public executions several times when I was younger. I shuddered to think of it. “But we know she’s brave just for the fact that she was willing to risk her life like that to help Little John.”

  “Yeah, but what was she like?” Gabby pressed.

  “Well, she was a lot like Corona,” I said.

  I paused. I wasn’t sure that Nathan or Corona was going to announce that information yet, and I knew they might have good reasons for keeping it under wraps.

  Jace glanced over at me as if waiting for me to continue but looked away when he realized that I wasn’t going to say anything else.

  “Well, hopefully we all get to meet her soon,” Nelson said.

  As if on cue, all of our phones began to vibrate or ring at once. I looked over at Jace in surprise. Maybe the leader meetings that the rest of Team Hood hadn’t been invited to were over now. Were we going back to larger team meetings?

  We all read in silence and then looked up at each other around the fire. It was obvious that we had all received the same message.

  Team meeting. Admin building. Come now. —Nathan

  “Finally!” Ant said, breaking the silence. “I was starting to feel a little left out.”

  We gathered our things and headed out of the camp quickly. It looked like almost all of the teams in Edgewood had been invited, leaving behind only the families and schoolchildren. If we were meeting in groups this large, that meant that Nathan might be planning missions again.

  And maybe he was planning something big.

  When we got there, the road was filled with people walking to Fiora’s office building. I wondered if we even had the room to sit with so many people in attendance.

  Jace reached down and held my hand as we walked.

  “This is a big meeting,” he said. “Think we’ll finally get formally introduced to Aurora?”

  “Doubt it’ll be a personal introduction with so many of us there,” I replied. “It’s probably more like a broad introduction of her to the crowd. But I’m planning on staying behind to meet her.”

  “They’ll probably explain all of her intel in the meeting, though,” Jace suggested.

  “I have my own questions for her,” I replied. And the questions I needed answers to definitely wouldn’t be addressed in the meeting. I wanted to know if she knew anything about Mavis Preston, my daughter’s adoptive mother. Had they worked together? Had she known her personally?

  We reached the admin building only to see that no one was going inside. A crowd of team members was standing on the porch and throughout the yard surrounding the old building. I squinted to look but didn’t see any of the base leaders as we approached.

  As we swung open the wrought-iron gate and entered the yard, I began to scan the crowd to see which teams I recognized. Bridge and his medic team were on hand, and so were Zion and the combat team. Alexy was there with the flight team. And I noticed Silver, too—the edgy, blue-haired mechanic who worked with Henry.

  But Henry wasn’t there.

  I still didn’t see Robert either, but that didn’t seem as out of the ordinary. After all, the teaching staff wasn’t involved in the mission work back in Edgewood. That probably hadn’t changed in Brightbirch.

  Still, their continued absence did nothing to quell my suspicions.

  I walked through the crowd and up to the porch. Luka was there with some other people I assumed were Brightbirch team members.

  “Why is everyone outside?” I asked Luka as I stepped up onto the wooden porch.

  “Door’s locked,” Luka replied. “I’m guessing they’ll be coming out to receive us.”

  “Probably trying to keep us from trampling Fiora’s house ferrets,” Zion quipped as he walked up to us. Then he turned to me. “Glad to see you here even after taking a bullet last night.”

  Gabby’s eyes grew wide, and she turned to look at me. “You got shot?”

  “Just a bruise, really,” I said, trying to reassure her.

  Nelson narrowed her eyes and spoke more sternly. “You need to have that checked out at the hospital, Robin. Just in case.”

  “I wasn’t going to miss this meeting,” I replied.

  At that, we heard the click of a deadbolt unlocking, and we turned and watched the door swing open. Fiora was standing there in equestrian wear and bright coral lipstick. She was wearing a big and hospitable smile, like always. To my surprise, I noticed that her macaw was perched on her right shoulder, its yellow eyes curiously peering out at the crowd.

  “Very glad to have you all, but unfortunately I just don’t think my old stairs could take that type of beating,” she said with a laugh. “So we’ll be holding our meeting out here. Much nicer being outside anyway.”

  She stepped out onto the porch and was followed by Evers, Liza, and Arlo.

  “Other base leaders?” Nelson asked me quietly.

  I nodded. Nelson had always been the smart and observant one.

  The door shut behind Arlo, and I furrowed my brow. Where was the rest of the executive group? Where were Nathan and Corona?

  And where was Aurora? I was hoping this meeting would be based around her intel, which might not be the case if she wasn’t in attendance.

  Behind me the crowd began to murmur and shuffle. I whipped around to see that the group had parted to allow Nathan, Corona, and Aurora through. They were walking up to the porch.

  I noticed again that Corona and Aurora looked alike, but the effect was magnified when they were together. They walked similarly, held their shoulders back in the same proud and graceful way, and had the same eyes and color of hair. I wonde
red if it was obvious to anyone else in the crowd.

  Nelson shot me a look, and I knowingly half-smiled in return. Observant indeed.

  “I see we’ve reached Fiora’s occupancy limit,” Nathan joked as he made it up the porch steps. I moved to the side to allow him room. Aurora noticed me and smiled and nodded in recognition.

  Fiora chuckled. “But it’s such a nice day that it shouldn’t matter too much,” she replied with her hands on her narrow hips.

  “A nice day in more ways than one,” Nathan said, still addressing Fiora but casting a quick glance toward Aurora and Corona. He turned to address the rest of us. “Teams! As you may have noticed, it is time to operate on a larger scale.”

  Jace cocked an eyebrow and looked over at me. I had a feeling he was wondering the same thing I was. Why was Nathan going from one extreme end of the spectrum to the other? Previously he had been too suspicious to trust even his most seasoned teams. But now he was risking inviting the mole to every meeting?

  “But we will no longer allow ourselves to be divided, and in that vein, I want to introduce you all to someone very special to us,” Nathan went on. He reached out his hand to beckon Aurora to come forward.

  Aurora was dressed elegantly in clothes that undoubtedly belonged to her mother, and had many of her mother’s graceful qualities, like clasping her hands at her front and doing small bows when addressed. But from what I remembered, Corona hadn’t actually raised Aurora at all. If I recalled correctly, Nathan and Corona had found Aurora after she’d been redistributed but had chosen not to recapture her to spare her the pain of losing her new family and friends. I remembered being struck by the selflessness and love of Nathan and Corona’s act.

  But I wasn’t choosing that path for myself yet. Hope was still young, only two years old. If I could find and reclaim her soon, I didn’t think it would do much damage in the long term. But if it took too much longer, that wouldn’t be true anymore, and I would have to consider the same painful decision that Nathan and Corona had made. I might also have to face a future where I could only love Hope from afar until she was old enough to make her own choices. My heart sank considering it.

  Aurora had reached Nathan’s side, and, without being prompted further, she began to speak. It was obvious that this wasn’t her first time addressing a crowd.

  “Little John members,” Aurora began in her clear and striking voice, “allow me to thank you for having me. And for saving my life last night. I owe you a great debt. A debt I hope to repay with information that was previously too dangerous to transmit.”

  The crowd was silent as we waited for Aurora to continue.

  “I worked in the Department of Records,” Aurora went on, “and as such I had access to identities, archives, and various financial ledgers. Before I was ousted, I came across an unusually cozy relationship between the regime and a mega-conglomerate of businesses called Preston Industries. If you’ve ever used fuel, had the unfortunate experience of drinking Nurmeal, or worn cheap blended fabrics, then you’ve dealt with one of the many large businesses under the umbrella of Preston Industries.”

  Preston. It was the last name of the family that had adopted Hope. But it wasn’t an uncommon last name, especially among the wealthy. So that didn’t strike me as particularly odd.

  “Like many businesses, Preston Industries pays zero taxes and is beholden to no regulations. But unlike other businesses, Preston Industries seems to be funneling money into the regime in other ways. Lots of money. I was discovered when I started doing independent research into the business practices and trusted the wrong person.”

  Nathan stepped forward to speak.

  “With Aurora’s latest intel and her guidance, we were able to do some digging from Brightbirch using the Artemis Protocol that is still in place. We were up all night with our research. And what we were able to deduce is that Preston Industries is effectively funding the regime, and it is likely that they have taken over the legislative branch almost entirely. Preston Industries began pumping money into the regime’s campaign even before they were elected, and we believe that Burchard promised Preston Industries the type of business deregulation and removal of worker protections that has sunk the country into the state it is in today, all so Preston Industries could profit.”

  So the regime itself could basically be considered one of the businesses under Preston Industries’ umbrella. I was shocked. Was the regime not as all-powerful as it seemed, then? Or could it be that the government and Preston Industries were the same entity?

  Because if not, what would they be without this giant company funding them?

  “But worse yet,” Nathan continued, “it would appear that not all of Preston Industries’ business dealings are made public.”

  I looked warily around at my team. They all looked as anxious as I felt hearing this news. What could Preston Industries also be doing that was even worse than what we’d heard?

  Nathan looked back at Aurora as if he was waiting on her to make the announcement. So Aurora must’ve been with Nathan last night as they made these gruesome discoveries, or maybe she had known it before she was rescued. I held my breath as I waited for the rest of the information.

  Aurora began to speak again, prompted by Nathan’s look.

  “It would appear that Preston Industries has gotten into the arms-dealing business, selling military-grade weapons to factions the world over who would overthrow democratic governments and replace them with regime-friendly tyrants.”

  My eyes widened. The regime was trying to increase their sway on a global scale? That idea was terrifying. Would all of the developed countries of the world soon be as money-hungry and awful as ours had become? Little John was having enough difficulty fighting tyrants in one country. If the regime spread like a cancer all over the globe, it might become unstoppable.

  Aurora looked over at Nathan as if requesting permission to continue, and I stared intently at her, knowing that there was more coming.

  Nathan nodded, and Aurora turned back to face all of us, looking deeply uncomfortable. Or possibly afraid.

  “That’s not all,” she said. “It would seem that Preston Industries has also been working with the regime to find a new revenue stream. And the regime was happy to oblige. From my position in the Department of Records, I was able to see some of this happening firsthand before I realized what they were doing.”

  Nathan placed a comforting hand on Aurora’s shoulder as her eyes began to water. Whatever she was about to say, it had obviously affected her on a deep and emotional level.

  “With the regime’s help,” Aurora continued, “Preston Industries has been able to make money off the sale of a new and in-demand product.”

  I closed my eyes, suddenly understanding what she was about to say.

  “Redistributed children.”

  25

  The team-wide meeting had adjourned shortly after Aurora’s awful revelation. No one had left in high spirits. With the regime’s dirty laundry now out in the open, the drive to move forward in our fight was at its strongest. I could sense that people didn’t just want to return to their camp like nothing was wrong.

  They wanted to fight. And they wanted to do it now.

  With everything that we knew, it was impossible to keep still in Brightbirch without some sort of plan.

  “Robin,” Corona said, interrupting my thoughts.

  I turned to see Corona and Aurora approaching me from the other side of the porch and smiled at both of them in greeting.

  When Corona reached me, she suddenly embraced me in a big hug. I grimaced slightly from the force on my bruised side, but Corona didn’t notice.

  “Robin, you and your team have done us a great service,” Corona said, pulling back to look at me. I noticed that she had tears in her eyes. “I just wanted to thank you in person.”

  Aurora stepped forward then.

  “I wanted to thank you, as well,” she said, sticking out her hand to shake.

  I turned to
her and grasped it firmly. “You’ve saved our tails before too,” I told her. “We owed it to you.”

  Aurora shook her head. “I was working from the shadows and in secret to assist you guys,” she said. “But you and your team went out in the open and risked your lives. And your identities.”

  “My identity has been known for a very long time,” I assured her. “We’re just glad to have you here safely with the rest of us.”

  “And I wouldn’t have my daughter without you,” Corona added.

  I heard the rest of Team Hood, with the exception of Jace, collectively suck in their breath with surprise. I tried to feign a look of surprise as well.

  “Come now,” Corona said with a wry smile. “I’ve always known you to be a smart girl. No need to pretend you didn’t know.”

  “You two certainly favor each other,” I replied with a small grin. “But I also overheard Aurora talking to Nathan last night.”

  Corona looked over at Nathan lovingly. “Nathan treats Aurora like his own daughter.”

  “Aurora is my daughter, as far as I’m concerned,” Nathan said. “Even if I didn’t meet her until she was already grown.”

  Nelson spoke up then, obviously still awash in unanswered questions. “So how did you get Aurora into the capital as a plant?”

  “Actually,” Aurora answered, “I was already working for the regime. But I took advantage of my position and did a little digging into my own records. That’s how I found Corona.”

  “We had been waiting and hoping to hear from her,” Corona said with a faraway look in her eyes. “Ever since we first found her when she was a child. But when she grew up and we saw that she was working for the regime, we were afraid she would never want to meet us.”

  “Why did you?” Ant asked Aurora.

  “Perhaps like some of you, I had always felt like there was a hole inside of me somewhere. Like no matter what I did or where I went, there would always be some void that I couldn’t fill,” Aurora said. “And I finally realized that it was because I needed to know where I came from. So I found Corona and reached out to her in secret. And the second I heard her voice for the first time, it felt like that void had finally been filled. And I decided to dedicate myself to helping spare others that terrible uncertainty.”