The Gender Lie

by Bella Forrest

  “That’s interesting… why?” Everyone stilled and turned toward me, and I froze, my eyes wide. “What, too many questions?”

  Owen’s chuckle carried down the tunnel, and I felt the tension of the moment drift away. “Violet, you are terrible at spy craft,” he stated.

  “Why?”

  “Because you ask way too many questions for your own good.”

  Everyone had a laugh at that, and I flushed. If anything, I thought asking questions was the trait of a good spy. But then again, if being a spy meant having to act and play the role of somebody else, then I was never going to be good at it.

  We followed Owen for the better part of an hour, the green arrows winding us around until I had no idea where we could possibly be. After a few sharp turns, the sewer opened up into a junction point, with three feet of water ending at a concrete floor.

  We were standing in a pipe draining water into the pool below. Several other pipes were doing the same thing. There was a door on the far wall of the room with a single light hanging over it, bathing the room in a soft yellow glow.

  Owen pointed out the camera just behind the light and clicked his flashlight off. He jumped down into the water and pushed through it toward the concrete ledge. Climbing up on the ledge with a practiced grace, he motioned for us to follow.

  Amber handed me her bag and jumped in after him, grimacing at the water. “It’s cold,” she said as I lowered her bag and my own to her. She held them up high as I splashed down next to her.

  I hissed as the cold water seeped into my clothes. It came just past my knees, so it wasn’t terrible. However, my mind was racing at all the possible diseases in the pool, and I just hoped I’d have access to a shower soon.

  Owen extended a hand to Amber, helping her up, and then offered me one as well. I accepted it, and climbed up next to him. After we were all standing on the concrete island, Owen crossed over to the door.

  He proceeded to knock twice, then once, then twice again, a pronounced pause between raps. Immediately the door swung open, revealing a man with a bushy brown beard and a balding head.

  “Took you long enough,” the man said, annoyance in his voice.

  I studied him closely. He was shorter than Owen, and pudgy, wearing slacks that were slightly too big and a shirt that was slightly too small. Everything about him seemed disproportionate—from his small ears to his big mouth. Even his eyes were small, and they had a rat-like quality.

  The man looked at me and skirted back a few feet. “Who is that? That’s no man. Far too short, and lacking an Adam’s apple! Why’d you bring a new girl here? You’re supposed to tell me before you bring new people!”

  Owen held up his hands. “Thomas, this is Violet. She’s going to help us with this mission. Violet, this is Thomas, and he owns all the cameras in Patrus.”

  Thomas squinted at me, studying me from top to bottom. I offered a little wave, and he gave a sharp huff, before whirling around and disappearing into the room behind him. Owen offered me a shrug before following.

  Everyone filed in past me, leaving me standing there for several seconds with a stunned look on my face before following suit.

  8

  Violet

  The interior of the room where Thomas led us was much more luxurious than I had anticipated. The door opened into a short hall, which then opened up into a massive room. Large screens hung from three of the four walls, curving inward and around. Various images of people blinked in and out across the screens, presumably camera feeds that had been patched directly into the room.

  In the center of it all was a long table containing three computers and a single chair. Against the walls was a mismatched assortment of chairs and sofas. There were doors to the left and right leading into two separate rooms—storage rooms, it seemed, gauging from what I could make out through the narrow vertical windows cut into the doors.

  Thomas twisted around and gave an imperious tilt of his head. “This stuff is more important than you, so don’t touch any of it,” he announced.

  I widened my eyes at Thomas’ hostile tone and gaze, but Amber paid no notice. “Surely you don’t mean me, Thomas,” she crooned.

  “Especially you,” came Thomas’ dry reply, and everyone burst out laughing. Amber clapped Thomas on the back before trapping him in a hug. He struggled for a few seconds, his face growing red, before eventually relenting to Amber’s hug.

  “It’s good to finally meet you,” Quinn said to Thomas after the hug was finished. He extended a hand, and Thomas wrinkled his nose at it before taking an index finger between two fingers, shaking it, and dropping it just as quickly.

  “Quinn,” he said, his tone stiff. I hid a smile by turning around, busying myself with taking off the bag I was carrying. Carefully, I peeled off my goatee and began sliding out of my jacket, shirt, and padding. I could hear the exchange of conversation behind me, little snippets of familiarity that reminded me of my outsider status.

  “Still working the mines, huh, Mole?” came Solomon’s deep baritone.

  “I have asked you repeatedly not to call me that, Solomon,” replied Thomas, his higher-pitched voice containing a barely concealed impatient sound.

  “Oh, come on, Thomas,” Amber said, her voice filled with a teasing note. “All you do is work in this hole and you barely see anyone! We have to keep you socialized, or else you’ll go off the deep end and destroy the city.”

  “Amber, that is a statistical improbability on all fronts—do you know how much Semtex it would take to destroy the entire city? No? Well, the answer is far more astronomical than you could guess.”

  I had just stepped out of my pants and padding as he said that, and I whirled around. “You… you haven’t really made the calculation on how much explosive it would take to blow up the city… have you?”

  Everyone froze and Thomas cocked his head at me, studying me behind the lenses of his spectacles. He pushed them up the bridge of his nose. “As a matter of fact, I have,” he said, his voice flat and even.

  I could feel everyone’s gaze fall on me, waiting for my response. “But why?” I asked, not sure why anyone in their right mind would want to do that.

  Thomas gave a small shrug. “Because I like math problems,” he replied.

  My jaw slackened as I took in the diminutive man in front of me. Everything about him—from his pudgy middle to his balding head—seemed so non-threatening that it was hard for me to wrap my head around his answer.

  I transferred my gaze to Owen, who chuckled. “Thomas is good at what he does, Violet. He’s a strategist.”

  Thomas nodded several times, reminding me of an over-eager child searching for his parents’ praise.

  “I… see…” I replied, uncertain of what else I could say.

  Thomas and I eyed each other warily until Owen clapped his hands together. “Thomas, could you please bring us up to speed on the information you’ve gathered about the facility?”

  Thomas moved to his workstation while the rest of us huddled close. He started clicking a few keys on the keyboard when he froze. “Do you mind?” he asked, and we all backed off. Solomon and Quinn busied themselves with dragging a few chairs over from near the walls, while Amber began to follow my lead and strip out of her costume.

  Only Owen and I remained behind Thomas, watching the smaller man work. He was humming something under his breath, but I couldn’t make out the tune, until I caught a word—“programming”—and I realized he was singing instructions to himself.

  The mannerism was so strange that I had to shoot a glance at Owen to see if he heard it too. His blue eyes found mine and crinkled in a smile that made me want to throttle him for a moment. Him and his damned secrets—there was no reason for him not to tell me about Thomas.

  In fact, I was even more irritated with Owen for putting us in a room with a clearly deranged lunatic. Who knew what sorts of things were going through his head? Was he calculating how to kill the five of us if the mission went bad, or had he already done
that? Would he sell me out to the government? I wasn’t naïve enough to think that the Patrian government had not put a hefty bounty on my head.

  Thomas lifted his hands up in silent victory, breaking me out of my suspicious thoughts. He clicked a few buttons, and then the screen directly in front of us—which took up almost the entire wall—lit up to show an empty road.

  We all fell silent as we searched the image, trying to see what Thomas saw.

  It was Owen who spoke first. “All right, I’ll bite, what is this?” he asked.

  Thomas beamed up at him, his face squishing together like a toad about to fall asleep. “It’s the only camera feed I could find remotely near to the location you and Desmond provided,” he said, an edge of excitement to his voice.

  Owen frowned, his eyebrows coming together. “Thomas… this video shows us absolutely nothing.”

  Thomas nodded. “They run their cameras on a closed system,” he said, standing up. I watched as he waddled over to some file cabinets that were tucked away in a corner. He pulled open a drawer and retrieved a thick folder. “You and Desmond are definitely onto something—it took a lot to get these blueprints.”

  He rolled out the bundle of papers on the table. “They don’t even exist in digital media—if they had, I would’ve found them. As it stands, I had to liquidate the supplier just to be sure word about this didn’t get out.”

  Owen’s gaze found mine and I frowned at him, crossing my arms over my chest. “Thomas… you know you’re not supposed to liquidate the assets,” Owen said.

  I rolled my eyes at him. If he thought I was so dumb as to not know what an “asset” was or what it meant to “liquidate” one, he had another thing coming.

  Thomas raised a dismissive hand, his entire focus on the blueprints in front of him. “He wasn’t an asset,” he said. “Not one of yours, anyway. The Porteque gang are the only ones who will miss him, and as far as they are concerned, he just disappeared.” Thomas looked at me, his lenses reflecting the white coming off the screen. “I know how to cover my tracks,” he finished.

  The words sounded threatening, and I didn’t like them at all. I took a step forward, but Solomon placed a heavy hand on my shoulder. I looked up at him, and he shook his head, mouthing the word don’t at me.

  I felt my mouth flatten into a thin line as a wave of irritation rolled through me. I backed off though, distancing myself a few steps. Thomas was dangerous—he had just confirmed it—and for some reason he had decided to focus on me. I wasn’t sure why he had, but if he did try anything, I was going to be ready for it.

  Thomas had already continued speaking, in spite of my disturbance, and it took my brain a moment to catch up with him in the conversation. “The building is an original, which is why it’s perfect! Lots of things were built and then torn down in the early days, so this place is practically a relic. The security around it will be antiquated at best. I also managed to get eyes on the facility, and there’s only a handful of guards!”

  “Inside?” Owen asked.

  “No—all of my intelligence says that they are outside. I got a hold of the shipping invoices from the past year, and it helped me narrow things down considerably based on who signed for them. There are several buildings on the property—five, to be precise: two warehouses and three office-like structures. Now, I’ve managed to narrow the location of the surgical laser to one of these two buildings here. Most of the shipping manifests indicate that medical supplies are being kept in a specific office in this building, while in the warehouse, they’re being housed between aisles A and D. It was the best I could do.”

  “How do you know all this?” I asked, cutting in.

  Thomas faltered, his mouth working up and down. “I… I have a thing that… that I use…”

  He floundered, looking to Owen for support. Owen patted him on the shoulder and I found myself frowning again at the tender support Owen was giving him. “It’s okay, Thomas. Violet should know better than to ask a magician to reveal his tricks.”

  I gaped at the admonishment so casually leveled at me, and for a moment, I felt my temper boiling up. I wasn’t trying to cause problems; I was just curious as to how he got his information. Until I reminded myself that it ultimately didn’t matter—as long as I could get what I needed to help Viggo.

  I smiled at Thomas. “Owen’s right. I’m very sorry, Thomas. This is excellent work.”

  Thomas eyed me dubiously for a few seconds, and then nodded with a huff, turning back to Owen.

  I didn’t know what the deal was, but it was clear that Owen was indulging Thomas, and I intended to ask him about it later. Owen and Thomas were already bent over going over the plans, so I had little choice save interrupting them and risking antagonizing Thomas further, or being patient and seeing what the plan was.

  I decided on the latter, and busied myself like the others with cleaning the clothes that we had brought in and then taking a shower.

  Hours later, after examining every angle, we had come up with a rudimentary plan. More than that, though, I began to be more understanding of Thomas’ weird mannerisms. A part of that, I admitted, was because Owen was right—he had a keen strategic mind that worked far better than the five other minds in the room. He had a knack for seeing the angle, and his ability to process numbers in his head was fantastic—he’d pitched and thrown away dozens of ideas, all based on some hidden formula for success that was buried in the recesses of his brain.

  The other reason was because I began to notice how he looked at Owen from the corner of his eye. There was something hidden behind his gaze, an affection that I recognized on an instinctual level: Thomas was deferring to Owen for everything. He only listened attentively to him, focusing solely on Owen and his ideas.

  Suddenly, a lot of his mannerisms clicked in my mind. He was a beta. Betas were males who were less aggressive, and tended to defer to whomever they felt their alpha was. Only betas were allowed in Matrus, alphas being considered too dangerous. But in Patrus, being a beta was not a good thing. They were bullied and beaten by alphas. Some elected to undergo a re-education program, but many of the subjects committed suicide during the process, unable to cope with their own existence.

  I wasn’t sure whether Thomas had undergone the re-education program, but it was clear that he had suffered a lot at the hands of the alphas, given his jumpy nature and childlike malevolence. It made me feel sorry for the smaller man, or at the very least, sympathetic. No wonder he had joined up with the Liberators—he had a grudge the size of both countries toward Patrus.

  Looking around the table, I realized that we all did. Maybe not directly, but if I looked at it through the lens of a Liberator, then both countries had done one thing or another to harm their people. And, if I was honest, I had a grudge against them too—not just for myself, but for every male and female they had wronged over the years with their tyrannical dictates and legislations.

  9

  Violet

  Even though I knew that waiting was the longest part of any mission from my experience with Lee, this wait was really getting to me. I waited three whole days for Owen to announce that we were ready and if he hadn’t told us the time had come for action on that third day, I felt I would have gone off the hinges on the fourth.

  I understood, in part, the delay. There was specialized equipment that needed to be ordered from trusted sources. Then that equipment had to be moved, which took time and planning. If any of it was discovered on a routine spot inspection by the wardens, then it would be seized and the people we had hired to help us would be tracked down, questioned, and potentially executed.

  I also understood Owen’s insistence that I remain underground at all times. I hated it, but I understood it. Each minute topside represented a risk of me getting discovered or caught. One slip-up and I would jeopardize everything that we were hoping to accomplish on the mission.

  Still, none of that helped me to deal with the claustrophobic feelings of being trapped down in the small spac
e of Thomas’ lair. I tried to remind myself that I had just lived for over two weeks underground in The Green’s facility, but it didn’t help. For one thing, that facility was much larger. I wasn’t constantly having to step around someone or over something to get from point A to point B.

  Calling Thomas’ home a hole in the wall would be a fair comparison. The two rooms that were off to the side of the main one were cramped, with even tinier bathrooms to bathe in. Amber and I got more space in the second room, seeing as only the two of us shared it. Owen, Quinn, Solomon, and occasionally Thomas shared the room on the other side, and it was an equal size.

  There were no beds to sleep on, so we made nests on the floor—similar to what Tim had done in my room in the facility—and curled up on the unforgiving concrete. It was cold, hard, and unyielding, and I hadn’t slept well since we arrived.

  Every morning after we woke, Owen would hand us our assignments. While everyone else received assignments that would send them topside—like going to see the weapons supplier or finding someone who could secure night vision goggles—I was always given the same duty: Stay with Thomas and make sure he had everything he needed.

  Even though I had come to understand Thomas, that didn’t mean I necessarily liked him. Pitied, yes—but the man was hard to read, and even harder to get along with. After a few tries at being social, I had given up and busied myself studying the plans or cleaning my weapon.

  I tried to work out, but Thomas complained about me doing sit-ups and push-ups in the main room, then in any of the side rooms. He said the repetitive motion made him nauseous.

  I didn’t argue with him—there was ultimately no point. It was his place. I considered, briefly, moving my daily exercise outside, but the smell coming from the sewer alone was enough to dissuade me.

  So, when Owen breezed in one day after meeting with his transportation guy, saying that the last piece of what we needed had fallen into his hands, I could’ve kissed him—that was how eager I was to get out of this hole and finally get what Viggo needed.