The Eighth Guardian (Annum Guard)

by Meredith McCardle

He lets go, and I glance at it. The Peel Academy seal is emblazoned at the top, and I immediately know what it is. It’s the commitment letter I signed my freshman year.

  “Read it,” Alpha says.

  “I know what it says.”

  “Read it,” he repeats. “Out loud.”

  Anger courses through my veins and seeps out my pores. But I take a breath, fan the paper in front of me, and start reading in a calm voice.

  “I, Amanda Jean Obermann, hereby give the United States government the authority to assign me to any given organization they deem necessary of my service, at any time such service is deemed necessary.” My signature is at the bottom.

  I drop my arm. “I’ve never heard of Annum Guard.” There’s still an edge to my voice.

  Alpha breathes a sigh. I can’t tell if it’s one of frustration or one of relief. “Well, there are certain things you’re going to have to take at face value, this included. So you have two options. Stay here, on a trial basis, or leave.”

  I straighten. “Leaving is an option?” Abe’s face flashes in my mind. I could see him tomorrow.

  Behind me, I hear someone say no in a hushed, angry whisper.

  “Of course it is,” Alpha says. “But probably not in the way you’re thinking. You’re done with school. You’ve graduated and moved on. Iris is a pupil no longer. And Annum Guard happens to be among the most secret government organizations in existence. You’re one of a handful of people who know about it, so I’m afraid we wouldn’t be able just to turn you loose. If you choose to leave, you will be . . . detained.”

  My mouth goes dry, and I feel little pricks of electricity in my shoulders. Alpha’s voice got low. Scary. Ominous, even.

  “Detained how?”

  Alpha’s mouth presses into a thin line, and he pauses, as if he’s trying to figure out how to word his response. “You’ll be taken to a secure facility where your actions and interactions will be monitored on a full-time basis in the name of national security.”

  My vision clouds as I read between the lines.

  “You don’t mean detained,” I say. “You mean contained.”

  Alpha’s lips curl up into the smallest smile, but he doesn’t answer me.

  “Where?” I demand.

  “Most likely Carswell.”

  I jump out of my seat with such force that the chair falls over. I know what Carswell is. It’s a women’s federal prison in Texas. And now I fully understand what detained means.

  Solitary confinement.

  We studied solitary at Peel. It’s a form of psychological torture. Humans are social creatures by nature, and you can’t change that. Cut off from contact, isolated prisoners slowly go mad. Years and years of untreated madness. And I already know what that’s like.

  My only thought is escape. I have to get out of here. Now. But before I take even one step, hands are on me from behind. Lots of them. My supposed teammates. Someone picks the chair back up, and I’m lowered down into it. I kick and fight, but it’s no use. It’s like ten on one.

  “You’re really going to have to learn to control your temper,” Alpha says in a flat, almost bored voice. “Now, do you choose to stay or to go?”

  “Do I really have a choice?” I spit.

  “Yes. You can choose to stay or go.”

  “So no,” I say. “I don’t have a choice. Of course I choose to stay.”

  Alpha nods his head. “On a trial basis,” he repeats. “You see, our numbers are set. Teams have always been made up of seven. The government is thinking of expanding us, but they’re not sure yet. You’re the trial. If you succeed, you’re in, and we’re open for business. If you fail, well . . . you’re out. And I’ve already explained what that entails.”

  I try to jump out of the chair, but several pairs of strong hands hold me down.

  “Why are you doing this to me?” My voice is bordering on wailing. “I did everything right. Everything. I’ve always played by the rules.” My voice cracks. “All I ever wanted was to—”

  I cut myself off before I say too much. No one here needs to know about my dad, although chances are they already do. They seem to know everything.

  “Was to what?” Alpha says. “Gain clearance levels? What makes you think you can’t do that here?”

  And there it is. Alpha knows. I’ve never told anyone my true motives in choosing Peel—the realization I had as soon as I found out what the school really was—not even Abe, but somehow Alpha knows.

  His words replay in my mind. I could have clearance. It’s the one thing I’ve wanted since I was seven years old and figured out that asking my mom about my dad was getting nowhere. I could finally—finally—discover what happened to him. Why he died. What his mission was. I wouldn’t have to speculate, to build an explanation in my mind around a sole pair of U.S. Navy dog tags I found hidden deep in a shoe box at the back of my mom’s closet. My mind wouldn’t go back and forth between thinking my dad was a fighter pilot who got shot down in a covert mission in Somalia or a Navy SEAL who was taken hostage and killed in North Korea. I could know the truth.

  An image of my mom from this past summer flashes in my mind. It was the week before school began, and she hadn’t left her room in days. I went in to check on her and discovered gashes all over her forearms. Some were scabbed over, but others were fresh. I recoiled in horror—self-harm was a new one for her. Dried blood caked her fingernails, and she twisted her fingers in the air as she looked up at me. Stared at me. Like this was my fault.

  Guilt washes over me. Because I left. Left the room. Left the house. Left the state. I couldn’t deal. But maybe I could go back to her if I knew what happened to my dad—and then maybe, just maybe, my mom could get closure and seek out the treatment she so desperately needs.

  I hold up my hands in submission, and my teammates behind me slowly walk away.

  “I’m sorry,” I say. I don’t know how much of that apology is true, but it’s a start. If it’s going to get me to the truth about my dad, it’s the only start I have.

  Alpha sits back down, and the man to his right—Zeta, I think—slowly nods his head, as if he knows something I don’t.

  “Violet!” Alpha announces. I hear someone stand up behind me. “Show Iris to her room. I think we’re done for the night.”

  Violet is suddenly by my side. “Come on,” she whispers.

  I stand, but no one else in the room moves. I follow behind Violet, glancing down the row of chairs as I pass. I’m staring right at Tyler—Blue—but he won’t make eye contact with me. I have to talk to him. Tomorrow, I guess.

  We’re back in the too-bright hallway, and I squint and raise my hand to shield my eyes.

  “You get used to it,” Violet says as she makes her way to a door all the way down at the opposite end of the corridor.

  She punches in a code and opens the door, which leads to a concrete stairwell like you’d find in any hotel or office building. Gray walls, metal railings. We walk up one flight of stairs, where there’s another door ahead. Violet places her hand on a metal scanner outside the room, then enters another code, and the door clicks unlocked.

  She opens it to reveal the most gorgeous room I’ve ever seen in my life. There’s plush sage-green carpeting with ivory swirls and a round marble table directly in the middle of the room. The table must be five feet wide, and nearly every inch of it is covered with flowers. All white flowers in a bunch of clear vases. There are roses and lilies and hydrangeas and a number of flowers I’ve never seen before and have probably never even heard of.

  My eyes are drawn up to a massive crystal chandelier hanging over the table, then to a wooden staircase that curves up to the right. This place can only be described as a mansion, and I’m pretty sure my jaw has dropped open at this point.

  “What is this place?” I ask.

  Violet’s beside me now. “Annum Hall
. This is where we live. Come on, I’ll show you to your room.”

  Violet starts up the stairs, but my feet are cemented to the floor. There’s a pair of French doors off to the right leading into a dining room. Inside is the longest table I’ve ever seen, and chairs are lined up uniformly around it. The table is set with china and crystal, and even though I’m too far to really see the place settings, I’d bet you anything that’s real sterling silver.

  Holy crap.

  This place is out of control. I grew up in a two-bedroom Cape with unreliable plumbing and a measly nine hundred square feet. When I first went away to school, I was impressed with the fact that it had a heating system that actually worked, rooms with polished wood floors, and tables that weren’t duct taped together. I thought that was the big-time.

  I see now that’s like bragging about your used Chevy to someone who just rolled up in a Bugatti.

  We get to the second floor and keep going up the staircase to the third. There’s one massive window and seven closed doors making a U around it on this floor. Four doors to the left of the window, three to the right. I memorize this detail.

  Violet stops in front of the first door on the left. She pulls a key out of her pocket and hands it to me.

  “Welcome home,” she says. There’s an air of sarcasm in her voice.

  The key is plain silver, like the ones you can get copies of in any big-box hardware store. I’m a little disappointed that it’s not another old-fashioned skeleton key.

  I stick the key in the lock and open the door. The room is small, but it has the same plush carpeting as downstairs. I immediately notice there’s no window—no sunlight, no means of escape—and a momentary sense of panic washes over me. I breathe it out. Fear isn’t going to change the situation, only make it worse.

  There’s a single four-poster bed centered on the wall straight ahead, a dresser on the left wall, and a desk and hutch on the wall with the door. There’s a closet and another closed door on the right wall. A white duvet clothes the bed, which looks soft and fluffy and more luxurious than anything I’ve ever owned. It sure beats the cheap, poly-blend comforter in my room back home in Vermont or the Peel-issued thick, navy blanket that itches when you lie on top of it.

  “This is all mine?” I ask, which—dammit, I totally sound impressed. I don’t want to sound impressed.

  Violet clears her throat. “All yours.” She steps in and opens the door on the right. “This is all yours, too.”

  It’s a bathroom. It’s painted a very pale lilac and has black-and-white tile, a pedestal sink, and a claw-foot tub. The entire place is sparkling. It’s like the “after” bathroom on a home makeover show.

  “I kept it really clean,” Violet says behind me. Her voice is clipped, angry even. “Use it well.”

  I turn to look at her. “This room was yours?”

  She nods. “Everything here works on a hierarchy. This room belongs to the most junior Guardian. I moved into Indigo’s room, and so on. Red moved downstairs. I know Indigo probably tried to keep his room clean, but he’s still a boy. There’s a boy smell in my new bathroom.” She says it like it’s my fault.

  I step back into the room and open the top door to the dresser. It’s full of socks and underwear; and, holy crap, unless they’d managed to go out and find the same hot-pink underwear with tiny black skulls I’d bought like two years ago, I’m going to guess this is all my stuff, which means someone was rifling through my underwear. I slam the drawer shut.

  “So this is your room,” Violet says in a tone that makes it clear that she just wants to get out of here already. She has one foot outside.

  “Violet?”

  Her neck cranes back around. I know I shouldn’t ask. It’s showing them my number one weakness, giving them something with which to manipulate me. I should keep my head down, follow orders, and climb the ranks. It’s what my dad deserves. But another part of my heart won’t listen.

  “I had—have—a boyfriend.”

  “Abraham,” she interrupts. “Yeah, I know. I read your file. What about it?”

  Her tone rubs me the wrong way. It’s combative and off-putting, and it doesn’t look as if I’m going to be making friends with any of the girls here. Strike that. Considering my only other option is Yellow, I think it’s safe to say I’m definitely not going to be making any female friends here.

  And then Violet confirms this fact. She reaches up and tucks a purple hair behind her ear. “What are you, one of those girls? The ones who think the world revolves around them because they have a boyfriend?”

  My head snaps back. “That’s not at all what I just said. And I’m not one of those girls.”

  “Good to know.” Violet narrows her dark-brown eyes. “Because you really need to forget about that boyfriend of yours. That’s in the past. You’re Annum Guard. Well, for now, at least.”

  The implication is obvious. She wants me to fail. She doesn’t want me to be in the Guard.

  Well, screw her. Screw Yellow. I forget my dad for a second and take a step closer to her.

  “Do you feel threatened by me?”

  “Why would I?” She laughs, although I can tell it’s a nervous laugh. Good. “You don’t belong here. You’re an outsider.”

  I raise my eyebrows. “Outsider?”

  Violet’s face falls. She’s said something she shouldn’t have. I’m an outsider. What does that mean? I’m getting the feeling from Violet that this organization is very . . . cult-like.

  “Stay in your room,” Violet tells me, and I laugh. She’s sending me to my room? But then she points to a camera hanging over the stairwell and to another one in the corner by the massive window in the hallway, and I can’t believe I didn’t notice them before. “They’ll know it if you don’t.”

  I shrug, like, I’ll think about it, even though I’d be foolish to try to leave. I step back into my new bedroom. “Thanks for your warning. I’m sure it comes from a place of love and concern.” And then I shut the door.

  A quick glance at the clock tells me it’s four in the morning. Ugh. I can feel the physical exhaustion straining my limbs, even though my brain feels as if it’s been shot with adrenaline. I yawn.

  I flop down onto the bed but almost immediately sit up. I want to look around before I pass out. For kicks I open the rest of the dresser drawers. Shirts, jeans, sweats—they’re all there. My old, dingy workout pants are hanging on the left side of the closet, which makes no sense—who hangs up yoga pants?—while the right side is full of a bunch of clothes I’ve never seen in my life. There’s a lot of pastel, a long tweed skirt that looks like it would make me itch for days, and a bunch of fabric that doesn’t seem very breathable. Maybe that’s Violet’s leftover stuff. Whatever. I’ll burn it as soon as they give me match privileges.

  I wander into the bathroom and sit on the edge of the tub. I turn the knobs on the tap and let the warm water spill down over my fingers. There’s a faint smell of lavender in the room.

  I rip off the Peel tie that’s still hanging around my waist and pull the torn dress over my head. I slip off my shoes and socks and kick them and the tie into the bedroom. The dress gets stuffed into the trash can under the sink.

  The water is bordering on being too hot, so I turn the cold water knob a little more as I sink down into the tub. I’m probably still in Boston, unless I somehow passed through a vortex in the stairwell that unknowingly whisked me to, I don’t know—Utah? But I bet I’m in one of those brownstones on Beacon Street, probably one of the few that hasn’t been converted to condos or apartments. This place must have cost a pretty penny.

  It’s good to know where I am, to have a handle on my location in case I want or need to escape. And I know Boston. I could disappear here in a second. Of course, not with this tracker in my arm.

  I look down at my right forearm. There’s a puffy lump just below my elbow. I touch i
t, then immediately wish I hadn’t as pain spirals down the entire right side of my body. Dear God. There’s a tracker in my arm. For the rest of my life, someone is going to know my location at every second of the day. I plunge my head under the water and let my mind wander to Abe as I come up.

  Maybe I should put him out of my mind. Maybe that would make this easier. Let me focus. But I can’t. Abe is a part of me, just as I’m a part of him.

  Abe and I got off to a bit of a rocky start. We met the first day of freshman year, in the auditorium. Classes were pretty standard fare—we were all put in the same math, government, computer, and science classes, and we’d already been to Practical Studies (which is just a fancy word for a class that teaches you how to spy on people, shoot sniper rifles, and dismantle bombs); but when it came to combat training, we got to choose. I’d scanned the options and picked Krav Maga. I’d never heard of it, but the subtitle of “Israeli hand-to-hand combat” sold me. The Israelis are pretty badass.

  After I’d circled my selection, I’d leaned over to the guy next me, who happened to be Abe, and seen that he’d circled karate.

  “Karate?” I’d laughed. “What are you, seven? Going to work on your orange belt?”

  Abe had stood and stormed off, clearly upset; and then his roommate, Paul Andress, had taken his place.

  “Way to be an asshole,” Paul had said. “He’s a second-degree black belt already, and his sensei just died.”

  I’d swallowed a lump in my throat, but then Paul put the icing on his cake. “His grandmother was his sensei.”

  So yeah, my first interaction with Abe was to make fun of his dead grandmother. That’s one for the scrapbook.

  I apologized the next day, and Abe forgave me because he’s the most wonderful person in the world. And that was that. Abe and I became an “us.” I went home with him for holidays. His family opened their arms and invited me in. They became my family because my real family is the definition of dysfunctional.

  I shake my head, like my brain is some sort of Etch A Sketch, like it will rid the image of my mom that’s flooding my mind. But there she is. And right behind her is the guilt.