by Michelle Kay
Clover was too distracted by the word 'Monday' to notice the absence of annoyance he had in his voice when he mentioned his missing laptop.
"What d'you mean, 'Monday?' We're going now."
The towering Bureau looked eerie without its swarm of workers funneling in and out of the giant maw of the building, and she was glad when they moved around to the nondescript side of the compound instead. The idea of walking through the cavernous atrium that made up the lobby without her usual cover of bodies made her uneasy.
At first, Elliot hadn't believed her when she'd said they'd be going 'now.' It had been foolish of him. But after she'd confiscated his paperwork, depositing it all on the ground beside the desk with one good sweep of her arms, he'd realized that she'd been very serious. It was good for both of them that his position at least granted him after-hour access to the main building.
On the side of the concrete fortress, down a service street, was a line of garage doors, probably used for sending and receiving shipments of werewolves. Beside the truck-sized doors was a smaller door at the top of a lone set of stairs.
Clover's fingers rubbed at the green trust badge she'd added to her uniform before leaving. Elliot had said it might make things easier, but that she should stay close to him anyway. She held her breath as they approached the unremarkable door. She wasn't sure why she was nervous, but she didn't breathe as he produced his access card and swiped it through a small black box beside the handle. The door buzzed and Elliot pulled it open like he'd done it a thousand times.
"There are still a few workers here on the weekends," Elliot explained as they made their way through back halls. "So don't do anything that'll draw attention to us."
Like many of the departments they passed once they were in the main halls, the Department of Evaluation was mostly dark when they arrived, the open space lit by only a handful of the florescent tubes that lined the ceiling. Elliot's shared cubicle seemed even more meager than Clover remembered, but as he sat down at this computer she felt a thrill of excitement banish her bad memories of the place. It was time. She was finally going to know where her family was.
- 18 -
"Clover, please. Please, will you stop pacing?" Elliot turned in his chair as she continued to prowl behind him.
It had been forty-five minutes since they'd gotten there, and Clover could barely contain her impatience. "Why is this taking so long?"
"It's a lot of information to load, and a lot of information to search." Even his seemingly unending well of patience was drying out. "If you have to pace, could you at least do it in the hall way. You're making me claustrophobic in here."
"You told me to stay close by."
"I know what I told you. And now I'm telling you to please go pace outside the cubicle. Just..." he turned back to the computer screen, his voice sounding like he was fighting for kinder words than what he actually wanted to say. "Just stay on this aisle."
She wished he could feel the hateful look she gave the back of his head before she walked out of the cubicle. Making sure to stomp her feet like she was spelling out her irritation in Morse code, she marched to one end of the aisle, then to the other, shooting Elliot's back another look as she passed the opening of his cubicle. When she made it to the other dead end she stopped herself from making another pass.
What was she doing? These were the temper tantrums Elliot had warned her about outside the boutique. Luckily, there was no one there to witness her childish behavior this time, but if she couldn't control it when she was alone, how could she hope to control it when she was under pressure?
A feeling of isolation crept up on her as she stood in the expansive room, the sound of Elliot's keyboard echoing from behind her. She hadn't realized how fully she'd accepted him as a partner in crime until she'd seen those files. She folded her arms over her stomach to ease the squirming she felt inside herself. She didn't want to be alone in this anymore. She wanted to trust him. She wanted to go back to the relief she'd felt when he'd pulled her into his side, shielding her from Rainer and from Mrs. Pierson. The woman's clawed hand had left an icy specter floating over her arm where she'd held her. But going back to that would mean forgiving him of his own crimes. She didn't know if she could do that.
Her footsteps were much quieter now as she wandered into the nearest cubicle. Like many of the other desks she'd passed, this one was laden with photos of children. She'd been horrified by the implications of what Elliot did, but the mother or father of the cake-covered child in the photograph did the same thing. Every person that manned every desk in the honeycomb of cubicles did the same thing. She wondered how many “Terminations” they'd circled. At her core, she knew the answer was 'more than Elliot had.'
Walking back toward the center of the aisle she peeked at Elliot's desk again. He didn't seem to notice her. She could just make out the line of his profile—his brows drawn down in concentration, his lips pressed into a line. He was doing more in that moment for her cause than she'd done at all. She didn't interrupt him.
As she neared the other end of the aisle again, from the corner of her eye, she caught sight of a narrow white door with a single square window built into it. She glanced back at the light coming from Elliot's cubicle. He'd said to stay in the aisle, but she was wearing her trust badge, and he was too busy to notice if she wandered a little further. Moving along the wall, she walked the perimeter of the room until she made it to the door. Raising onto her toes she could just peek through the window whose glass was crisscrossed with an embedded wire, probably to protect against breaking.
On the other side of the door was a hall filled with more doors like the one she was looking through, each with a little window of their own. She looked back at Elliot's lamp light again. He'd wanted her to stop bugging him. She surveyed the room, paying close attention to the corners. No cameras. She looked through the window again. No cameras in this hall either. The sound of typing was steady, and she thought she'd be back before he realized she was missing.
Clover had expected the door to be locked, but as she pressed the lever-style door handle down, it clicked open without any resistance. Opening it only wide enough for her body, she slipped inside, easing it back into place. Even being careful, the sound of the door shutting echoed down the endless hall. The silence made her skin crawl as she approached the first door. Unlike the one that led to the cubicle room, this door, along with the others in the hall, had a smaller opening at chest height—like the mail hole in Elliot’s door—that was covered with a sliding piece of steel, a latch holding the plating in place. Beside the door, a file holder was bolted to the wall, a folder like the ones she'd found inside Elliot’s satchel—like the ones she’d burned—sitting inside it. The small photo from inside was paper-clipped to the front.
These were holding cells.
A shiver ran up her spine as the realization hit her. This was where they kept the subjects being evaluated by Elliot and his coworkers. This was where their fates were decided. Clover gripped her stomach again and moved past the door, and the photo of the thirty-something-year-old woman who was looking teary eyed at her through the photo. She didn't want to look in that window.
As she walked down the hall, as silent as if she were walking through a cemetery, she was overwhelmed by how many cells there were. Every twenty or thirty feet another hall broke off from the main corridor she was on. These smaller halls went on for some ways before turning or splitting again. Even though each hall was marked at the junction with wide, red letters and numbers, she wondered how anyone could navigate the maze they formed.
Every door she passed made her insides hurt more. There were so many people here, waiting to be sold or to be burned alive. She wondered what it felt like to be inside one of those cells. She wondered how anyone could survive the trauma. Children and mothers and men who knew their fate was only being temporarily postponed—every one of them was a stronger person than she was, because she knew she would tear her own throat out before letting someo
ne decide her fate.
She walked for several minutes down the mail aisle without seeing an end, then a distant murmuring caught her attention. Turning down one of the smaller aisles, she followed the noise, having to back track several times until she found herself on a narrow corridor labeled P-6. It was no different than any of the others, branching off several yards away into P-7 and P-8, but to her left, through the metal of the door, Clover heard what she’d quickly recognized as crying.
She tried to swallow the beating of her own heart when she saw the photo pinned to the folder—a little girl with a halo of black curls, too young to be her sister, but young enough to make her entire body hurt.
Looking through the window was a bad idea. She knew it was a bad idea. She knew it and she looked anyway. Inside, sitting on a cot built into the wall was a little girl smaller than her photo suggested. She wore a miniature set of tan coveralls that looked too grown up for her.
Clover’s hand came to the window, wanting to tap on it, wave to her, tell her somehow that she was going to be alright, but she froze once her fingers felt the chill of the glass. What good would something it that do? It might give her hope, but what was the point of giving her hope if she knew it wouldn’t save her. Wouldn’t hope just make her outcome more painful?
The helplessness that Clover had been feeling at the periphery of her mind crashed in around her like pillars of ice water. She wished that saving her family would somehow help this little girl—all the people trapped inside this labyrinth of cells—but it wouldn’t. It would only help her.
She watched the girl fold into herself, turn on the hard looking bed toward the wall. Clover had nothing she could give this child.
She pulled away from the door, not wanting to make any sound that might give this girl something to hope for. Everything hurt as she willed herself to go back to the entrance, back to Elliot—back to the people she might actually be able to help. Passing another junction, though, her senses were flooded by a familiar smell. It was weak, smothered by the scents of hundreds of other werewolves in that hall, but it was there. She knew this smell.
It took everything she had to not run as she bee-lined down several corridors, too distracted now to pay attention to the hall numbers.
Outside a nondescript door, pinned to the file, was a familiar face. Joshua Lowell, her pack-mate whose seven-year-old daughter had been complaining about her soggy letter only a week ago. A sensation like a hammer on her guts threatened to knock her feet out from under her.
Like she was being thrown forward on a tipping boat, Clover's body knocked into the door as she clawed her way to the bottom edge of the window. She wanted to see someone else inside the cell. Anyone else. But there, sitting on the same small cot that little girl had been, was her pack-mate, his head hung and hands gripping each other tightly.
"Josh!" Clover banged on the glass, not caring about the noise any more.
The face that looked up from the cot was so unlike the one she remembered. Josh was known for being the gentler of the two Lowell brothers. His eyes were kind, but now one of them was swollen shut and his face was gray. His lips, which were usually smiling, now looked grim and were marked by a patch of tidied blood where they'd been split.
He looked confused, but, as she waved her hand in the window, his good eye widened with realization and he launched himself from the hard looking bed. As he met her at the window, Clover saw his mouth working, but could only make out a muffled sound she thought might be her name. Immediately, her hands moved to the handle of the door. It was locked. Instead, she worked the latch which held the small slot in the door shut. With a little effort, the slat of metal slid away, then his hands were immediately clasping hers through the opening.
"Clover, what are you doing here?" He squeezed her hands between his rough palms.
Having never been closer to Josh than she'd been with any of the others, Clover thought it should be strange that he felt like the closest friend she'd ever had now. She could feel his usually steady hands shaking and she knew hers were trembling just as badly. Around his wrist was a metal bracelet with his personal numbers engraved across it in black.
"What are you doing here?" she mirrored. "What happened? Did they take Heather too? How long have you been here?"
"A few days," he said, shaking his head in disbelief. "Heather wasn't with me. I was with some of the other guys. We were out looking for you. You disappeared, what happened?"
Guilt speared Clover to the door. This was her fault. She was the reason he was sitting in a cell waiting to be incinerated. The now familiar taste of bile soaked the back of her throat.
"God, Josh. I'm sorry, I'm so sorry." Tears poured from her eyes without resistance. She'd always been afraid of seeming like a child if she was seen crying, but now she realized that a child is exactly what she was. She was a young, stupid, irresponsible child, who might have just killed an innocent man because she was too suspicious of even her own pack to trust them with the truth. "This is all my fault." She held his hands tighter, as though she could pull him through the door to safety, if only she could get a good enough grip.
"Clover, what are you doing here? Why are you dressed like that?"
It was heartbreaking to know that he was only worried about her as he sat in his own grave. Clover had always been paranoid that she was not as good a person as the others in her pack, and now she knew she'd been right.
"I came here to find my family." She sobbed as she looked at him through the barred glass, unable to lie about her intentions anymore. "I got the uniform from Hannah. I kidnapped a bureau worker. Josh, I'm sorry."
A look somewhere between shock and admiration passed over Josh's face. "Everyone thinks you were taken, or that you're dead. Saundra's heartbroken."
Clover set her jaw against the guilt of her aunt unnecessarily mourning her loss. She had to pull herself together. "Well then," she began, wiping her face with the cuff of her sleeve before taking his hands again. "We'll just have to go tell her everything's fine. We'll tell her as soon as I get you out of here."
"Clover." His voice was gentle, and she hated herself for being the one needing comforted, but it was in his nature.
"No. It'll be fine. I can get you out of here." She could see the sad look of disbelief on his face, like he was tasked with telling a child that no matter how much you wished for something, magic wasn’t real. She knew that he was the worst possible candidate, and she could tell that he knew it too. He was a man in his prime, after all, with a strong will and strong body. No one would okay him for a finishing school. No one except Elliot. "I promise, I can make this okay. Elliot, the guy I kidnapped, he's an Evaluator. He can make sure you get sent to a finishing school. Then he can buy you and you and I can go back home. Together."
"No. Clover, they would never take me, and even if they did, I refuse to be a slave."
"You won't be!" Clover felt her throat constrict around a sob as she tried to convince herself of her own words. "Please, Josh. Please, just trust me. I can make this okay. Just, you just have to play ball with them, okay? Just do everything they say. Don't fight them. Just cooperate and I swear, I can get you out of here." She had to wipe her face again.
"Clover." His voice was low and steady, which only made Clover hurt more. "You need to calm down, okay?"
"I won't! What about Heather? Are you just going to leave her?"
He reached through the slot and laid his broad hand over her cheek the way her father used to. She shook her head at him as he smiled the way someone who'd come to terms with their fate might. "It'll be okay. Everything's gonna be fine, but you need to go home now, alright?" He wiped some of her tears with his thumb as he looked down through the window at her. "Your mom and dad would be so proud of you right now, but you're in so much danger here. They wouldn't want you risking your life like this."
Clover shook her head again. She wanted to close the slat. She didn't want to hear this.
"Go home to your Aunt Sandra, ok
ay? She needs you. And I need you to do something too, okay?" His voice finally caught and he swallowed as he regained his composure the best he could, but Clover could hear the lump in his throat now. "When you get there, I want you to tell Heather that I love her, alright?" He sniffed and cleared his throat and Clover couldn't convince herself to interrupt him. "You promise me you'll go tell her, okay? Tell her I'm sorry, but that I want her to stay home. Tell her to never come looking for me."
Clover knew that message was aimed at her as much as it was at his little girl, and it made her heart break in a way she hadn't felt since her aunt told her that her family was gone. How could she tell him 'no'?
Clover opened her mouth before she knew what she was going to say, but then the sound of a distant door clicking shut echoed through the twisting corridors. They both went still, looking in the direction of the main hall.
"You have to go," Josh said, his voice quiet but urgent.
"Do what I said, okay?" Clover urged, her lungs paralyzed by the shot of adrenaline.
"Okay, just go." He was pushing her away from the door now.
At the last second, Clover remembered to close and latch the small opening that had acted as their portal to each other. If she was caught, she at least wanted to keep them from knowing that Josh had been the one she'd been talking to. She didn't look at the door again as she made her way back toward the main corridor.
For a moment, she hoped the sound was only Elliot coming to find her, probably angry that she’d wandered off. Then she heard more than one set of shoes.
She would walk quietly back to the main door. Quiet was good. If she was quiet she may even get out of there without being seen once. The space was huge. There was a chance she could avoid them. But the nature of the space, with its diverging hallways and smooth walls also meant she couldn’t tell where the sound was coming from, or even how many pairs of feet there were. As she backtracked, the echoes rose the sound she’d initially heard into a cacophony—an army rioting through the halls.
