The Child Thief 2: Deep Shadows

by Bella Forrest

We walked along the sidewalk, doing our best not to draw attention, but I didn’t think that was going to be a problem. We were on the run from agents of the Ministry, and we were still having trouble keeping up with the people around us. They flooded down the street, their faces twisted into scowls, and I wondered suddenly if I looked that way when I was on my way to or from work. Of course I do, I told myself. I hated going to work, hated that I was wasting my life in a demeaning, menial job that gave me absolutely no reward. A job I had to keep because the powers that be had declared me ineligible for anything better. They’d declared us all ineligible for anything better, I realized. They’d put an entire class of people below them—and now they were working to keep them there.

  It was despicable, and it needed to change.

  We dashed through the signal in front of us, then took a left down the street Jackie had pointed out. This way, we’d be right in front of Smith’s house, rather than across the street. It would be easier.

  Row houses again. Little tiny blocks that were masquerading as houses, all pushed up against each other like a child’s toys in too small a space. These were ugly. Nothing more than concrete, without so much as a layer of paint to make them more bearable. Most of them only had a single window beside their front doors. They must have been horribly dark and depressing inside.

  This was where my people were forced to live.

  My blood boiled at the thought of it, and I sent a promise out into the world that someday, I would be strong enough to do something about it.

  All thoughts abruptly flew out of my mind as the sidewalk in front of us became suddenly crowded. And not with normal citizens. People in blue suits spilled onto the concrete, all rushing from an unmarked van on the street toward one row house in particular.

  It didn’t take a genius to guess who those people were, or what they were about to do. Nor did we need to double check the address we had for Smith. We knew why they were here.

  The four of us turned as one and raced in the opposite direction. We hurtled down the sidewalk, weaving madly through the foot traffic as we came upon it, and counting on people to stay out of our way when they saw us coming. Jace and Ant ran much faster than us, but they hung back, grabbed our arms, and towed us along. Before long we were at the next corner and tearing around it, deciding at the last minute to go across the street and back up the way we came.

  “Those guys were definitely Ministry,” Jace gasped. “Definitely going up to a place on the row that we just happened to be going to.”

  “Doesn’t take much to guess what they were about to do,” Ant answered, his voice grim. “So, I’m guessing that’s the end of Smith.”

  “And the end of our search,” Jackie answered. “I don’t know about you guys, but I’m willing to say without a shadow of a doubt that they have that list of techs.”

  “And they’re going after all of them,” I finished, the breath burning in my lungs as we ran.

  I didn’t know why the Ministry was going after our techs, but there was no other explanation. Nelson had been caught during the raid, and it was conceivable that Naomi had been caught with her. Yet Smith had been included in the raid, and he had still drawn the Ministry’s attention. There was only one way for that to have happened.

  “None of those addresses are going to be safe,” I murmured to myself, horror dawning. Jace didn’t think the Ministry would search the anonymous addresses—the ones that were on what I was now thinking of as the List of Five Hundred—but I realized that he was wrong. The Ministry wasn’t the sort of organization to wait or be unsure of themselves. Hell, if we were right, they were killing our techs just for being on a list that had been housed in OH+! If they thought they saw an enemy, they were going to shoot to kill—regardless of whether innocent bystanders got caught in the crossfire. We might have a bit of time while they did some sort of due diligence on the addresses from the List of Five Hundred, but I didn’t think we could count on much of it. For all I knew, a team could be showing up at my home or Jace’s next week.

  Calm down, Robin, I told myself sternly. I had no idea whether any of that was true. No idea whether the addresses were even ours, or whether the Ministry would move on them. Still, it didn’t seem that farfetched, and my brain wasn’t thinking rationally.

  Across the street, I spotted blue-suited Ministry men skidding around the corner and darting in the opposite direction, undoubtedly in pursuit of us. My heart skipped a beat. They’d seen us at Smith’s house, but perhaps we’d fooled them by turning an unexpected way.

  Then I saw more of them coming straight at us, their uniforms standing out from the grays and browns which dominated the clothing of the working class.

  Jace cursed and jerked me down an alley, Ant and Jackie hot on our heels. We bolted along row after row of trashcans, ducking behind them as we tried to hide our progress from anyone on our trail. We’d managed to choose the right alley, as this one seemed to be the designated trash collection point. There were dozens of bins around. I wondered if we should stop and hide behind—or in—some of the cans, but I didn’t have a chance to ask. We were moving too quickly, and I could already feel a stitch forming in my side at the pace.

  I wasn’t going to be able to keep this up much longer.

  We shot out of the alley into the next street. Instead of turning, Jace flew across the street without looking for oncoming traffic. He dodged one car and ducked into another alley with the rest of us in hot pursuit.

  Halfway down that lane, we finally stopped behind a dumpster, unable to run any more. I tried to keep my breathing quiet as we waited to see whether we’d been followed.

  I ducked down lower, having been shoved behind Ant and Jackie, and tried to get a view of the street through Ant’s legs. I could barely see anything, but what I could see seemed distinctly… normal. Cars drove by and people walked along the sidewalk. There wasn’t a speck of blue to be seen. I wasn’t sure why the Ministry agents were wearing that specific shade of the color, but I was grateful it made them easier to spot.

  We stayed behind the dumpster for what seemed like forever but was actually less than two minutes, before Jace finally exhaled.

  “I don’t think we should stay here for much longer,” he whispered. “I don’t think they saw us hit this alley, but they could search here soon. And it’s definitely not safe to go back the way we came. We’ll have to see if there’s another opening at the other end. Everyone back toward me, carefully. We’re going to stay sheltered by this dumpster for as long as we can.”

  We began backing up, as ordered, taking slow steps backward and keeping our faces to the front, the better to see any Ministry agents coming for us.

  When Jace was out from behind the dumpster, he spoke again.

  “Okay, I’m out. Keep backing up, guys. Ant, the minute you’re free of the dumpster, we turn and run. Stay in single file and stay up against the wall. Make yourselves as small as possible.”

  I followed Jace into the open air and watched as Jackie did the same. We all held our breaths as Ant appeared, braced up on our toes as we waited for the signal to sprint. The minute Ant was free of the dumpster, Jace gave the order, and we fled, praying that we’d find an opening, and not a dead end or Ministry agents.

  But seconds after we started running, we heard shouts of discovery behind us, followed by the pounding of footsteps. A quick glance over my shoulder showed me that the Ministry agents were somehow already in the alley with us—and that they were gaining on us quickly.

  “Guys, we’ve got company!” I shouted, increasing my pace as much as I could.

  How had they found us so quickly? What had they been doing, just waiting for us to leave the shelter of the dumpster to start chasing us again?

  It didn’t matter. We were in deep trouble.

  I forced my tired limbs to sprint faster, when a man in black suddenly darted around the street corner in front of us and grabbed Jace. Shock coursed through me, and I screamed, but before I could even process wh
at was happening, a set of hands shot toward me as well. They grasped my shoulders, and I struggled violently, desperately trying to get away from them.

  Who were these people in black, and what did they want? Were they with the Ministry? I found it hard to believe that they weren’t, given the situation—and that made me fight even harder.

  I wasn’t going to die today. I absolutely refused to.

  But struggling did me little good when another pair of hands landed next to the first and started dragging me away. I screamed again, but then another hand—how many hands did these people have? —slapped down over my mouth, silencing me. Terrified, I cast a glance behind me to see that black-clad men had captured Jackie and Ant also. We were all being dragged toward a van.

  A van with tinted windows.

  A van that looked distinctly like government property.

  I started to fight again, but then a voice hissed into my ear. I grew still at what it said.

  “Stop fighting me, for God’s sake! We’re here to help. Zion and Alexy sent us.”

  It shocked me enough that I stopped moving entirely. Ant and Jackie appeared to relax suddenly too, as if the men who were holding them had just spoken the same words.

  How on earth would Zion and Alexy have sent anyone to help us?

  How were they going to help us when the Ministry was chasing us?

  A second later I had my answer.

  The four of us were shoved into the van, and the rest of the crew jumped in after us. I counted ten of them, and I wondered how on earth we’d all fit in here, but then had to secure myself against a seat, because someone had jumped into the driver’s seat and started the vehicle off down the street without warning. I couldn’t see where we were going through the divide between the back and front, a fact which filled me with anxiety.

  The vehicle made large, sweeping turns and a few sharp ones. The squealing of tires and several loud cuss words accompanied the journey. I held tightly to Jace, trying to keep myself from flying right across the van and into the lap of one of our rescuers.

  If that was what they truly were.

  I wasn’t convinced, and if we’d been given a choice about going with them, I would have thought twice about it. But they’d just pulled us out of a difficult situation, and being trapped in this van, we didn’t exactly have any other option but to trust them.

  Could it be that we’d just met up with previously unknown allies, at exactly the right time and place? Our luck hadn’t been that good up to this point, but that didn’t mean it couldn’t happen, did it?

  Then, just as suddenly as it had taken off, the van did a large spin, moving at least 90 degrees so that it had to be facing the other direction, and came to a screeching halt. The men in black jumped out, leaving us sitting in the vehicle alone. Our mouths fell open as we stared at the scene unfolding outside. Through the still-open doors of the van, to my shock, the men in black were battling with Ministry agents. Ministry agents who had lined up and blocked the street—and brought cars with them to build an actual barricade.

  We’d run from one set of agents only to be trapped by another.

  Now the men in black were fighting in hand-to-hand combat, one man in black for one Ministry agent. While it appeared they were outclassed in terms of weaponry, the Ministry agents had nothing on them when it came to actual fist-fighting. In fact, it looked like all of our mysterious allies had extensive training in martial arts. I didn’t know much about that sort of fighting, but the men who had helped us were spinning and cartwheeling across the ground like ninjas. They managed to kick and punch the Ministry agents in between their moves, and the government’s men were going down quickly.

  The men in black were impossibly winning a fight that they should have absolutely been losing, considering their opponents. It was the first time I’d ever seen anyone defeat a government agent, and it took my breath away as I realized the implications. If it was possible to beat the government once…

  “We’ve got to get out of here while the Ministry agents are otherwise engaged,” Jace breathed in my ear. “This is going to be our only chance. If the men in black lose this battle, we’re going to be trapped.”

  I glanced at him and realized that he was right. I’d been so enamored by the black-clad men’s fighting style that I hadn’t even thought about what might happen if they lost the upper hand.

  “How do we get out?” Ant hissed. “There’s sort of a battle going on right outside the doors.”

  Jace turned toward the driver’s seat of the van, ducked down, and tugged at some sort of lever he’d spotted. Another door opened in the front of the van, right next to where Jackie was sitting.

  Our escape route.

  Jackie and Ant jumped out of the van, and Jace and I followed. We turned and raced up the street toward the nearest train station. With the government’s men distracted, we could get on a train and get back to familiar territory before anything else happened.

  At least, that was the hope.

  25

  “What the hell was that?” Ant gasped, throwing himself onto his bed and putting a hand to his heart. “Where did all those Ministry agents come from? What did they do to Bobby and Smith? Are all the techs dead? They obviously know about them, right? And who the hell were those guys in black? Finally, and maybe most importantly: are we even sure it’s safe to be here? What if they have my address?”

  “I think we should tackle one question at a time, Ant,” I told him. “Let’s start with what the hell just happened?”

  “I’m going to say let’s start at the beginning, with the Ministry knowing who our techs were,” Jackie said. “They’re going out of their way to take them out. Why?”

  “And how?” I asked. “This confirms that they’re the ones in OH+ for sure then, right? And that they’ve been going through all the files stored there.”

  We’d returned on the train. It had been a quick trip, but we’d spent the entire time either reflecting or afraid to speak.

  I was deeply confused about what had just happened, and my brain had gone through a hundred different possibilities since we’d left the scene of that battle. But I’d also been paranoid that we might have been somehow tracked or followed without our knowledge, and I’d gone out of my way not to say anything that could give us away.

  I suspected the others had been going through something similar.

  We’d decided that Ant’s apartment got the nod when we returned, as the closest to the train station. We hadn’t wanted to be on the street for long.

  Now that we were here, the floodgates had opened, and we couldn’t seem to get the questions out fast enough. Personally, my tension was increased by the fact that I suspected the Ministry also had our addresses—and would be coming for us sooner rather than later. In which case being at Ant’s apartment was the height of stupidity. I still hadn’t heard much from Gabby about it, and though I was sure she had some really good excuse, I wished desperately that she’d at least text me.

  Until then, we were going to be banking on the idea that the Ministry might not have accessed the List of Five Hundred. That our addresses might not be on that list. That the Ministry was focused on hitting the techs before they did anything else.

  “What about the fact that they could be coming after us next?” I asked, voicing my thoughts. “If they’re going after the techs because they have this list”—I held my phone up and waggled it, indicating the list we’d been following—“then it means they could also have the list of five hundred additional addresses, the ones without names attached. If any of those addresses belong to us…”

  “It could have just been because of Nelson,” Jace said quietly. “They’re going after the techs, and there are other ways they would have the contact information for those specific people. Maybe they reverse-hacked Nelson’s computer and she had this list sitting on it for some reason. Maybe they’d hacked Nelson’s system long before the raid even happened and have had this list for some time. We know
that site belongs to the Ministry now, but they didn’t know it when they were working on it. What if they just weren’t careful enough? What if the Ministry had snare protocols set up way earlier than Nelson realized?”

  “Even if she knew, what if her security aspects weren’t strong enough?” Jackie asked. “I mean, she didn’t know who she was going up against, did she? What if her security was designed for someone of her own capabilities but not for something as big as the Ministry?”

  I exhaled, running a hand down my face. Nelson had thought we were just going against an independent group, and we knew at this point that the Ministry had much bigger hacking toys than we could have imagined. There was every chance in the world that Nelson had been outclassed without even realizing it.

  It was likely that she’d led the Ministry right to everyone else on her IT team, including herself. Even if she hadn’t done it then, they’d had access to us all the moment they’d been in the portal—which had probably happened because of her.

  “There’s another possibility, though, isn’t there?” Ant interjected, and we all turned to him. “We know Nathan had their addresses in OH+. We know because that’s what we’ve been using to try to track them down. Why are you skipping the completely obvious conclusion that the Ministry is in fact using the same list we’re using? Robin’s right. They could absolutely be coming for us next, if they move on to that other big list and it has our addresses on it.”

  “They would have started with the techs,” Jackie murmured. “It would have been their natural first step.”

  Ant nodded. “Obviously. As far as they know, the techs are the ones running this party. They’re the ones who hacked into the auction site, after all. They’re the ones they know about for sure if they reverse-hacked Nelson and found a list on her computer, and it matched up with the list they found in the OH+ archives. Maybe they think that includes everyone. Maybe they think we’re all techs and there are different lists of us for some reason.”

  “Well, regardless of how they’re choosing their targets, they’re taking out anyone they think knows about the site,” Jace concluded. “That’s going to include those of us who were on the raid, regardless of whether we were part of the tech team or not.”