We don’t say anything else on the walk to Austin’s office. By the time we arrive, everyone is already there. Al sits on the very edge of one of the chairs in front of Austin’s desk, akin to a Feral poised to pounce. Jay stands next to her, hands clasped behind his back. Austin sits at his desk.
“Ah, good,” Austin says as Mendel and I enter. “Now we’re all here.”
I hesitate before going to sit in the chair next to Al. Mendel comes to stand behind me. Al seems to share the feeling that something is wrong, because her eyes are searching Austin’s, looking for the source of the problem. Jay looks equally uneasy even as he smiles at me in greeting. At least we all seem to be on the same page.
“I’ve called you all here for an important announcement,” Austin says. His eyes are unusually serious. “The rebels have contacted us. They want to arrange a negotiations meeting.”
For about three seconds, everyone is too shocked to speak. Al is the first to say, “What?”
“It came as quite a surprise to us as well,” Austin says. He holds up an envelope for us to see: faded cream in color, someone’s signature scrawled across the front beneath the words For General Austin. I recognize the signature instantly. Ellis.
Fury and shock spike through my blood like white-hot fire. There’s no way Ellis wants to negotiate anything. The rebels’ aim has always been one and one alone: to destroy the sectors and all the ungifted living within them.
Jay’s eyes snap to me. Are you okay?
Right. His gift. Of course he’ll notice if I get angry. I need to keep my emotions in check.
I nod infinitesimally to him.
But Jay isn’t the only one to notice my anger.
Who’s Ellis? Mendel asks me internally, thinking that he might as well try to communicate by thought since he assumes I’m always reading his mind anyway.
He doesn’t expect me to reply in his head. The rebels’ founder and leader.
Why is this my first time hearing such an important name?
Probably because you never tried to learn anything about the rebels.
Cathwell—
Austin starts speaking again, sparing me from having to continue with Mendel. “This letter was left in my inbox yesterday morning. Someone must have snuck in and left it.” Austin seems to grit his teeth here. “Regardless, it requests a meeting between Nytes only. An emergency meeting of the High Council was called, and it has been decided that the four of you will represent the military in negotiations.”
“Wait, you mean you’re actually going through with this?” Al asks. “Isn’t this obviously a trap? Request some of the military’s strongest soldiers to come alone, then ambush and kill them. If they really wanted to negotiate, they would ask to meet you directly, or set up a line of communication.”
“The Council said we cannot assume they have the technology to communicate with us in such a way,” Austin says. “That it would be only proper to meet them face-to-face in a show of goodwill. We can’t start off trying to gain peace with them by outright saying we don’t trust them enough to meet in person.”
“The rebels don’t want peace,” I say. It’s hard not to spit the words out one by one. “They want to annihilate the ungifted. You know that.”
“I do.” Austin holds my look. “I told the Council it was almost certain the rebels were plotting an ambush, but they insisted on going through with the peace talk. They decided we shouldn’t plunge headlong into a war that might otherwise be prevented by diplomacy. The matter is out of my hands.”
“Diplomacy?” I can’t contain the venom in my voice, seeping into my bloodstream, the air in my lungs, my anger poisoning everything inside me and threatening to spill out. I feel Jay’s eyes on me. I tell myself I need to calm down, but I can’t. “You know how Ellis is. The Council is sending us straight into a trap. We can’t go through with this meeting.”
“I have protested and provided as much evidence to my case as possible. I was ignored.” He closes his eyes, and I imagine him pacing back and forth behind his desk despite the fact he’s completely still. “The requested meeting date is in four days. You are scheduled to head out in three. There is little time in which to convince the Council to back out.”
“Even if we had more time, convincing the Council seems unlikely if they’ve already set their sights on this,” Kitahara says. I feel his eyes still on me, worried, but unable to do anything right now.
Austin shakes his head. “The Council thinks if they send all of you, you’re more likely to be safe. Or at least take down a good number of them with you. Either way, I will continue to work on convincing them. In the meantime, they have stated you are all on standby in order to prepare for this meeting.”
“What if we refuse to go?” Mendel asks quietly. The way he says it, and the fact that it’s the first thing he’s said, takes me by surprise. “We do have a choice in the matter, don’t we?”
Austin’s jaw clenches. “The Council has informed me that any who refuse to take part in this meeting will be court-martialed and charged as a traitor without question.” When no one speaks, he says, “That’s all for now. As soon as I get more news, I will contact you again. You are dismissed.”
I’m the first one out of the room. I’m so agitated by Ellis’s letter and the imminent ambush that I can’t calm down, can’t think straight, can’t put words together correctly.
“Cathwell, wait up,” someone says from behind me. Mendel. “Tell me really. Who’s Ellis? Why did you get so mad when you saw that name on Austin’s letter?”
I stop, but he doesn’t, so he ends up a few strides in front of me and has to turn around. My hands are clenched into fists at my sides, digging into the fabric of my pants. I glare at the ground, afraid of what I might say if I look at Mendel directly. Behind me, I hear footsteps as Jay catches up to us.
“Who wouldn’t get angry hearing that name?” I ask. “Ellis is manipulative and cold and unrelenting. She formed the rebels solely for the purpose of killing thousands of people, and she won’t stop until she gets what she wants. The Council are a bunch of fools to believe she could actually want peace when her goal is to wipe out the sectors altogether.”
“You talk like you know her well.”
I flinch and brush past him.
I must’ve hit it right on the mark. He almost follows after me, and I don’t know what I would’ve done if he had, but a soldier coming from the opposite direction hails him. I make sure I’m long gone before they finish.
22
JAY
MENDEL IS ALREADY in our room by the time I return from the training hall. I’d considered going after Lai following our meeting with Austin, but she was so upset and appeared so very not willing to talk with anyone that I decided to let her be for a while. Besides, I needed to vent out my own frustration at the situation first.
My roommate is at his desk. His presence on my grid appears neutral, focused, although there’s an undercurrent of anxiety. Understandably. He’s sketching away at something, as he typically does when he’s not in the woodshop. The soft scratching of lead against paper fills the space. Eraser shavings coat his desk, and I wonder how he can stand to not brush them away.
“We haven’t talked lately,” I say after we exchange greetings. He shrugs in that way that means he may or may not have even heard me. “What did you and Lai talk about after the meeting with Austin?” I was only able to catch the tail end of their conversation before Lai fled, and I wonder whether their talk had something to do with how upset she was.
Mendel spins around in his seat to point his pencil at me accusingly. “Since when did you start calling the lieutenant Lai?”
Oh. Right. “Since she asked me to,” I say, well aware that that’s stretching the truth since she asked me an extended period of time ago and I’ve only just recently acquiesced.
He shakes his head and resumes his work.
“So?” I ask. “What did you and Lai talk about?”
“Nothing
important.”
There’s no itch behind my eyes to say he’s outright lying, but the tone of his voice says his words aren’t entirely true, either.
Okay, so being straightforward isn’t going to work. I need to go about this more delicately.
I peer over his shoulder to get a glimpse of what he’s sketching. The drawings are disorderly and overlap, layered in different-colored pens, but it appears to be a design for … a box? I’ve never seen him draw anything save furniture or buildings before. The design is intricate, with tiny detailed patterns and twisting curves.
“Hey, can you not breathe down my neck?” Mendel asks. He slams his sketchbook shut and glares at me, his presence flashing an irritated pink, but I’m not certain why. It’s not as though this is the first time I’ve looked over his shoulder to see his drawings.
“Your work is amazing,” I say. “You like designing, right? It’s my first time seeing you work on something other than furniture.”
“It doesn’t hurt to broaden your skill set,” Mendel says, though not with hostility. I choose to take that as a good sign.
“What’s the box for?” I ask. He stiffens, and I wonder whether it was a bad idea to ask. I had assumed he’d say it was merely for fun, as with all the furniture he previously made with no special purpose. I suppose this one is different. “Sorry, you don’t have to answer.”
“No, it’s fine,” Mendel says. “I … happened to talk with another officer earlier. An Etiole.” He pauses. “I’ve been trying to pawn off some of this furniture on the other soldiers, and she came to pick up a chair today. We started talking, and eventually we got to the topic of the potential war with the rebels. She told me she thought about dying a lot when she’s standing on the battlefield. When she asked if I did, I said no. I didn’t. What about you?”
I recall the many times over the past four years that I’ve been preparing for a mission. It wasn’t generally death that hovered over my mind, but whether or not we could execute our given job properly. My teammates now are strong enough that there’s no need for me to worry about them, and I’m not generally involved in close combat myself. The few times I have been, it was typically against small numbers, with someone fighting beside me and not enough time to consider it. The last mission was an exception.
“I suppose not.” It likely doesn’t help that I never became overly involved with anyone at Eastern, nor was I ever part of a team prior to this, so if someone died, it was sad, but not a personal loss. I wonder whether I would feel the same now, to lose any of my teammates. I shudder. “What does that have to do with the box?”
“She said it’d be nice to have something to leave behind for the people she cares about after she’s gone,” Mendel says. “Something for them to remember her by. And I thought it sounded kind of poetic. I decided to make this box with that in mind, but…” He trails off. I haven’t the faintest idea what he’s thinking.
He doesn’t appear willing to pursue that line of conversation, so I say, “Lai is fully convinced Ellis will ambush and kill us.”
Mendel snorts, but at least he appears engaged in our conversation once more. “Not that she’ll explain why. I swear, she needs to be less secretive.”
“Is that why you followed her out of Austin’s office?” Come to think of it, it’s strange how regularly he confronts her directly, without appearing to care about her distractedness getting in the way. Actually, he confronts her a lot more than seems normal. Almost as though he’s aware of just how in-the-know she is.
“More or less,” Mendel says. “Did you talk to her, too?”
“I’m planning on it.” I decide to go a little further. “She can be hard to talk to sometimes, though. I wonder if she’s even aware of what’s going on around her half the time.”
“If only you knew,” Mendel mutters.
“What do you mean?”
“Nothing. She can just be weird is all.”
“Why are you lying?”
He stiffens. “What?”
“Just now. Why did you lie?”
“I didn’t lie.”
“Mendel. You can’t lie to me without my knowing, although I appreciate the effort. I’m aware you know something about Lai that you’re not telling me. Seeing as how we’re heading to our possible deaths in a handful of days, I’d be happy if you could be open with me. Or at least not insult me by trying to convince me of a lie.”
Mendel’s eyes narrow as he watches me. His presence pulls in on itself. “I don’t see why I have to do anything you say. You can be our leader or whatever else you like, but outside of military operations, I don’t answer to you.”
“I’m not saying you have to,” I say calmly. “I’m merely asking you not to look down on me by telling me things we both know aren’t true. I doubt you’d be happy about it if our positions were reversed.”
He pauses. For someone who gets annoyed at even the smallest of things, he must know what I said is true. “Fine. Fair enough.”
“So how is it that you’re always able to talk to Lai normally?” I ask. Being direct really won’t work. In that case, I’ll make it appear as though I’m asking for his help. It’ll make him feel above me, and he’ll be much more likely to talk than if he feels as though I’m demanding answers from him. “She seems to stay on topic much more often when she talks with you. What’s your secret?”
His irritation still remains, but sure enough, his presence swells. His voice, however, is careful. Careful not to lie. “It just took some talking out between the two of us.”
“Really? What kind of conversation was that?”
He hesitates. “Well, we had it while playing cards, so I guess you could say it was pretty relaxed.”
“Another lie?” I ask mildly.
Mendel scowls. I wouldn’t have anticipated he was this bad at getting out of things without resorting to lying. “Fine,” he says. “We made a deal, and it was obvious she could pay attention when she wanted to.”
“A deal?” That wasn’t what I was expecting. That wasn’t what I was prepared to hear. I had only been trying to see how much he knew about Lai and maybe get a hint as to what had upset her so much following our meeting with Austin. “What kind of deal?”
However, Mendel has realized his mistake. He’s watching me with once more narrowed eyes, more cautiously than he’s ever looked at me. “Did you do that on purpose?”
“What kind of deal, Mendel?” I ask. “How much has Lai told you?”
“How much she’s told me?” Mendel repeats. “How much has she told you?”
This conversation is going in circles. “Tell me about your deal. Tell me what you know and I’ll tell you what I know.” So long as it isn’t something Lai hasn’t yet told him.
Mendel examines me carefully one last time. Then he tips back in his chair and hooks his feet under his desk to steady himself. “I lost all my memories from before four and a half months ago. Cathwell promised to help me get them back in return for me cooperating with the team. That was our deal.”
I examine him closely, but he doesn’t appear as though he cares in the least about what he just said. My gift didn’t detect any lies, so he’s undeniably telling the truth—but how can he be so nonchalant about saying he doesn’t remember who he is? He doesn’t even appear bothered that I now know, although when I check his presence, it beats an irregular pattern born of nervousness.
How did he come to join the military? I’m not able to imagine them taking in someone who has absolutely no recollection of who they are. Not to mention, Mendel already has a relatively disagreeable personality as it is. Why would he even agree to join? There are so many things I want to ask, but I’ve already pushed much further than I meant to.
At least now I know why Mendel began complying with whatever I said on our second mission. What about Johann? Did Lai make a deal with him, too? Much as I try, it’s difficult to imagine the sergeant major being persuaded into anything.
“I’m sorry about your
memories,” I say quietly. “I didn’t know.”
He waves me off. “You weren’t supposed to.”
“Then why tell me? You didn’t have to answer my question.”
He appears to consider his words before answering. “Earlier, you used your gift to gauge my emotions and push me into telling the truth out of irritation, didn’t you?”
I don’t answer.
He laughs, once, short. “You’re better than I thought. Or worse. So? What do you know about Cathwell?”
“I know she’s the type of person to do whatever she feels she needs to in order to accomplish her goals,” I say, thinking of the Order and her time in prison. That seems a safe thing to admit to. “I know she cares a lot about establishing peace between the gifted and ungifted.”
At that, Mendel laughs once more, this time with venom. “Peace? Cathwell? The only thing she cares about is running around manipulating people into doing what she wants.”
“Isn’t that a little extreme?” It seems a huge, unfair statement to make when Lai isn’t even here to defend herself.
“You just don’t know her well enough yet,” Mendel says with hard eyes. “I don’t know if she’s told you about her gift, but she’s been using it to dig around into our personal lives to find something to hold over us. I have a feeling she did the same to Johann. If she hasn’t done it to you, it’s only because you’re already playing the role she wants you to just fine. You can’t trust her.”
I want to object. I want to say he’s mistaken, and that he only thinks that way because Lai needed his help and offered him a deal in which he’d benefit more than if he refused. That he didn’t have to accept, and he could’ve done whatever he desired, no matter what Lai said.
However, I recall just how many secrets she’s been keeping and still keeps; how she pretended to commit a crime to leave the military, how she’s been hiding the Order and its information all this time, how she’s been pulling strings behind the scenes for over a month now. If I hadn’t spoken with Mendel, I wouldn’t have even been aware of that last fact.
A Soldier and a Liar Page 21