by Michelle Kay
The "bad news" had been about her mom and sister. Their status was listed only as "sold to third party"—whatever that meant. Even Elliot wasn't sure what to make of it, and had been confused further when a deeper investigation revealed the information for the third party listed as "private." That was when the urge to hit someone had risen inside her. How could they not know the information of someone they sold other people to? Did the Bureau just not care what sort of people they entrusted lives to?
In an attempt to sooth her own temper, to keep her promise of not lashing out at Elliot when things weren't going her way, she told herself that at least Anise was still with their mother. They were together, she had to believe that if she was going to hold herself together long enough to figure out what to do.
After successfully navigating the dump of frustration the bad news had offered, Clover had thought the "weird news" would be easy. She'd been wrong. Elliot had seemed particularly cautious about this bit of information. He'd prefaced himself over and over, saying that he didn't know for sure what it meant, but after he'd finally gotten to the point, after he'd finally laid the news out, Clover had left the room without a word.
Her father wasn't listed—at all.
He hadn't been sent to a finishing school, he hadn't been sold. He hadn't even been terminated. According to the data, Weston Rhodes had never set foot inside the Bureau.
Clover perched her feet on the chair cushion, the feeling of confusion reminiscent of the night she'd burned Elliot's Evaluator files. How could her father be unlisted? What did that mean? The obvious answer was that he'd never been picked up at all, but she refused to believe that; it was impossible. Could they have just not listed him? Thinking about it honestly was something she'd been combating since the beginning, but she knew that he would never make it through the evaluation system—unless he'd had some sort of plan to start with.
A clenching in her stomach forced a sort of strangled warble from her throat and she was glad she was alone. He wouldn't have a plan to get through the system. It wasn't a secret: how he felt about the finishing school system. Clover knew it better than anyone, because he was the one who'd shaped her own feelings about it. He was the one that had instilled the pride inside her that made death seem so much more appealing than a life like the one Hannah was living. Would he play the system? A week and a half ago, Clover wouldn't have.
She scrubbed her face with her hands, trying to banish the image of her father sitting in a cell. They could buy her brother, they could find some way to locate the third party that had her mom and sister. She could save all of them, but she wasn't sure anymore if she could lie about the chances of seeing her father again.
"You okay?"
Clover jumped in her seat. She’d not heard Elliot's bare feet padding into the room. She clamped her hands on her knees, not wanting him to see how pathetically she'd been rubbing her face, or how wet her hands felt afterward. "Not really." Honesty was becoming easier with Elliot.
He sat down on the couch he'd once been bound to as a captive audience for a branding. The room was silent for a long time as Clover rubbed her fingers back and forth across her forehead, pretending she could wipe away the squall of bad thoughts.
"We'll go find your brother tomorrow," Elliot said after a respectable pause. "We'll start with the easy stuff, and figure out the hard stuff as we go."
"Do you think he's dead?" Clover's voice croaked painfully on the last word.
"Your father? I don't know. If I had to guess, the obvious answer would be that he was never picked up at all."
"That's impossible. If he hadn't been picked up, he would have come back home. He would be here helping me."
"I'm sorry." Elliot's soft reaction made Clover realize she'd been shouting. "We'll get Reed back," he continued, after Clover settled down again. "Then we'll find out who bought your mom and sister. When they're all safe, we'll figure out where your father is."
Clover covered her face with her good hand, taking deep breaths to try and clear her head. Elliot was right—they needed to focus on what could be fixed immediately. She couldn't leave Reed in a finishing school for a single second longer than was necessary.
"Can we really go tomorrow?"
"Yeah. We'll take the train right after work. But you're on probation, so we’ll have to be careful, okay?”
"Okay."
Elliot stood, waited a second, as though to see if she would go back upstairs with him, then walked silently from the room. Later, after she'd scoured every scenario that would leave her father unlisted in the Bureau's database, Clover returned to the bedroom. It was already dark when she let herself in, but she could still see the outline of Elliot's body nestled in the blankets that made up her floor pallet. An unwanted squirming had started in her stomach as she crawled into the soft bed he'd left open for her. He was definitely going beyond what was required to get his imagined cure, and Clover hated the now familiar ache of guilt.
"I don't need this." Clover felt like she was a child again, anxious to get out of an adults grasp so she could get on with her life. She was at least old enough now to keep from stomping her feet as Elliot fastened the splint around her two still-swollen fingers.
"If you hit them while you're working they'll just take longer to heal."
"Let me rephrase. I don't want this."
Elliot looked at her steadily, but the eye-rolling was implied. He finished wrapping her fingers, then insisted on changing the bandage on her ear.
"We should have gotten this stitched." He was chastising himself, then he addressed Clover more directly. "I know you don't want to seem injured in front of everyone—that you don't want to give Dom the impression that he's won—but I think playing the victim could buy us some time."
Clover hated that he was probably right, and probably the only one thinking about their mission logically.
"I know it's hard for you, but keep your head down. You have a way of challenging people just by looking at them. Don't do that. If you see him, duck your head, look pitiful. If you're not a challenge, then he'll lose interest in you." Elliot's words were stern, but his fingers as he changed the bandage were soft. "As soon as work is over, we'll go find your brother."
"Why can't we go now? We could just skip going to work."
"The last thing we need is to draw more attention to ourselves. Dom wasn't surprised you were missing yesterday, but if we both go missing then he'd know we were up to something. And no, you can't go on your own. If you're caught violating your parole, then I won't have the option to bail you out again."
Clover huffed without meaning to, though Elliot didn't seem to take offense.
"Not like I could buy him without you there anyway, mom."
"After bailing you out, and after the number of times I've put up with you hitting me, I think I at least deserve this much respect. Your ear's finished." He tucked the extra gauze back into the first aid kit.
"I haven't hit you in days."
"You've been in jail for most of that time. Or asleep."
"That still counts."
"Go put your shoes on."
Elliot walked away from her, and Clover considered kicking him in the backs of his knees. She kind of missed the meeker version of her prisoner—the one that would let her do whatever she wanted and didn't talk back to her. Instead, Elliot had turned into a nagging parental figure who always knew best. Despite that, it was nice having someone to rely on. She figured she could put up with his attitude. At least as a "thanks" for getting her out of that cell.
It wasn't until Clover reached the circle drive of the Bureau that she realized her heart rate had been slowly increasing since they'd left the house. Now she felt her feet begin dragging, her body intrinsically knowing to stay out of the building. Even when she wasn't thinking of it, her body remembered what had happened inside those walls. Her good hand found the splint on her broken fingers and she squeezed until it hurt, as if her fear came directly from her injuries. It wasn't until
a Bureau worker who had been keeping pace behind them bumped into her that Clover realized she'd nearly stopped all together.
"You okay?" Elliot's tone was similar to the one he'd used the night before when he'd come to check on her in the sitting room, but it was quieter this time, and his face was set in the indifferent expression he wore when they were in public.
She let go of her fingers. They were in public, and she needed to remember that. As they entered the atrium of the lobby, Clover took a few deep breaths, reminding herself that she only had to get through the rest of the day. She could be with her brother in less than ten hours, and that was enough incentive to keep moving forward, even though her body begged her to leave.
"I'll come for you as soon as I'm done," Elliot reassured her as he dropped her off at the maintenance room. "Remember, just keep your head down. And, you know, don't beat anyone up."
Despite the nervous, queasy feeling that had formed in her stomach, Clover couldn't help but smile a little. A week ago, she wouldn't have pegged Elliot for the type of person to have a sense of humor.
"I'll try to contain myself."
Elliot kept his disinterested expression, but winked discretely at her, and Clover felt her heart rate begin to slow. He scanned the room, and for a moment Clover thought he was looking for his brother, then he nodded one more time at her. After spending the last day-and-a-half with him constantly at her side, it was hard to watch him go. She didn't like the idea, but as long as she didn't let him know that he'd become her security blanket, she figured she could live with the embarrassment of it.
She moved toward the back corner where her work group congregated, and as the eyes of other workers turned in her direction, she thought that telling Elliot was worth the humiliation if it meant she didn't have to be alone. The chaperone agents, with their brown shoulder guards looked venomous, and the workers shuffled away from her, like they wanted to make it clear to the agents that they had nothing to do with her.
She squeezed her splinted fingers again and tried to look straight ahead. She'd been expecting some sort of attention. After all, the last time she'd been seen by her coworkers had been on the previous Friday, when Pierson had plucked her from the ranks. Showing up now, days later and bandaged, she shouldn't be surprised that they looked uneasy.
When she found Connell, he looked at her with a sort of disgust she'd not seen from him before. "So you actually came back."
"Yes, sir."
"I don't want you talking with any of the others today, you understand?"
Clover's eyes moved to Jeannette and Isaac. They were watching her, and while their expressions weren't as tense as those of the other workers, they still looked averted their eyes.
"Yes, sir."
His warning had been unnecessary. The other workers in her group side stepped her as they gathered their supplies. She'd considered asking Jeannette why everyone was avoiding her, but when she saw the older woman scurry away when she had tried seeking, she figured that her days of relying on her coworkers were over.
From across the room, standing out in the sea of black and brown, Clover caught a clips of red. Near the entrance, where Pierson stood to keep an eye on the crowd as one unit, she saw the black hair and red shoulder guard.
Rainer stood casually to the side, his mouth moving, but the sound of his voice lost in the noise of scraping buckets and squeaky carts. Clover knew that Pierson had been involved with her stay in the Bureau's holding cell. She'd not laid eyes on the woman, but she'd recognized her voice, and suddenly she knew the astringent woman was behind the poor reception she'd received from her coworkers.
Clover tried not to watch them—just looking at Rainer, even from a distance, made her body shiver and forced bile into the back of her throat. Just knowing that he took up space in the same room made her skin tingle with the memory of cold metal licking her skin.
Standing at the faucet, filling her mop bucket, Clover dared another glance at them. They were looking at her. She wondered if she was imagining it—how could they pick her out of such a big crowd?—then Rainer brought his fingers up to caress his own earlobe. Instinctively, Clover's hand moved to the bandaging at her own ear, and then he smiled in a gross display of gratification that told Clover she'd performed exactly as he'd hoped.
Clover's hand flew to her side and she felt her face heat up with shame. She turned her attention back to her bucket and squeezed her broken fingers until the pain was all she could think of. The white-out was a relief, and by the time she'd managed to lower her heart rate, Rainer was gone again. In his place, Clover heard the clacking of Pierson's heels as the woman approached Connell, who was still nearby, watching Clover like she might slip through the drain under her bucket.
"I'm changing your work region to number 5-2-7." Pierson said, turning a raised brow toward Clover. "The incinerator's holding cells."
- 26 -
The rattling wheels of the cart bounced down the hall, scouting the empty space ahead of them and announcing their arrival to the deepest part of the Bureau. They were underground. She knew even if she had no way to prove it. It wasn't just the time they'd spent on the elevator that gave that impression, either. The walls felt heavier there, like they were barely holding back the meters of dirt that would bury her and her crew alive if given the chance. Claustrophobia wasn't something Clover struggled with, given the small space she grew up in, but she found it hard to breathe with the weight of the building hanging over her head.
Clover gripped the cart until her hands hurt, happy that the thing was noisy enough to provide a vague sense of privacy. With a compulsive glance over her shoulder she realized she couldn't see the elevator any more. Her internal map of the place was becoming harder to read every day. Where was she in relation to the cell she'd stayed in?
A constricting sensation pinched at Clover's throat and she took a deep breath, needing to remind herself that she still could.
The heaviness of the door at the end of the hall was just one more ominous sign for her to add to the growing list. As Connell tapped a button on the access panel, though, the brutish slab of metal swung like it was no heavier than the kitchen door at Elliot's house, whose window still sat broken. Beyond the door was a smaller space—a little chunk of hallway sandwiched between two sets of the heavy, metal doors. On the long end of the walkway was a door that looked just like any other inside the Bureau, and the agent who exited the small office looked just like every other worker. If she'd not known any better, Clover would have thought they were in for a normal day of cleaning, but hidden behind the familiar smells of the place, she could detect something foul—something sickly.
"Palmer." The office worker—a man in his forties—shook hands with Connell. "Unusual for them to send a new cleaning crew down our way."
"Connell." He gave Palmer a one-shouldered shrug as they shook. "Guess we just got really lucky today."
Clover had known from the moment they'd received the orders that Connell was as unhappy about it as the rest of them, even if she got the distinct impression that he was upset for a different reason. Her work crew, which was already a quiet bunch, had seemed more solemn than usual. While this punishment was aimed at her, she knew she wasn't the only one who would be suffering.
"Well, I'm sorry we had to call you at all. We can usually make it to the end of the week without trouble, but we had really high numbers early in the week. That always makes the mess worse. We can't even get the new bodies in without walking in their mess at this point."
"Sounds great."
Connell's sarcasm disgusted Clover, and while Palmer hadn't said what sort of "mess" he'd meant, Clover knew. With the little context their conversation had provided, she managed to place the sour smell she could only guess seeped from the second set of metal doors—sewage. Clover looked at Jeannette, who she'd still not had the chance to talk to, and saw that her face was sickly grey.
"It's against regulations to open the cells, so don't worry about the mess in
side. We just need the walkways clean enough to walk on." Palmer handed Connell a white mask to wear over his mouth and nose, then offered him a small pack of gum. "Chew it while you have the mask on. Nothing keeps the smell out, but it helps, trust me. I'll buzz you in."
Palmer went back into the office, the sound of the closing door bouncing around the small space, reminding them that they were trapped in there. Clover looked to the other members of her crew again, hoping for reassurance. No one looked at her.
The sound of the latch clicking open on the massive door made Clover's stomach lurch. She wasn't ready, but the vault-like door wasn't waiting on her, either. Hot air rushed into the cramped space, carrying the putrid smell of sewage and decay with it. At first, Clover wondered if the heat came from the fires that stoked the incinerator, but soon she recognized the moisture that overtook them. It was the same sort of humid swelter that hung inside the freight cars during the height of summer—it was the sort of heat created by too many bodies trapped in too small a space.
Clover wasn't sure what she'd expected from a place that housed men who were there for no other reason than to die, but she'd learned already that trying to guess what the Bureau was capable of was pointless. Despite the immense size of the room, the ceiling hung low. The cage-like cells were cruder than the ones in the Evaluators' hall, or even her own cell—each roughly twenty feet wide and deep made exclusively of bars. Every cell butted against its neighbor, a grid of walkways crisscrossing between groupings of four joined pens, forming a grotesque scaled model of an inner city. Clover assumed the network of walkways reached the far wall of the room, but the sheer number of bodies squeezed into each cubicle made it impossible to see more than a yard in any direction.
There was a low hum of voices that kept the room buzzing, but given the tremendous number of bodies in the space, it still felt uncomfortably quiet. The men swayed and shifted like cattle who had lost their drive to move at all. To Clover's left she heard Isaac gag, and that's when she realized what they were standing in. The aisles that rimmed every cell block were covered in a thin layer of liquid—a seeping concoction of feces and urine. Looking toward the nearest block of bodies, she realized it was overflow from what had pooled inside the cell long enough to overtake the small lip that was meant to hold the waste back.