The sound of the car door closing surprised me out of my stupor. Clark stepped up next to me.
“Just take a deep breath,” he suggested. I obeyed, closing my eyes as I exhaled and forcing my heartbeat to slow the spread of adrenaline.
A valet ran outside and grabbed the keys from the driver. The man who had driven us walked to the lobby door, leading us silently. I willed my feet to follow, falling into step behind Clark.
The automatic door slid quietly aside. The woman at the reception desk flashed an impossibly white smile and stood.
“Hello, Clark,” she greeted in her shrill voice.
“Hello, Cassie,” he said. “This is Lily Sandover.” He motioned to me. “Mr. Christenson has given her clearance and she needs to finalize everything.”
“Oh, right,” Cassie said, rummaging behind her desk as the driver ran his clearance card over a device on the desk before pressing his palm to the screen next to it. Cassie pulled my attention away from what the driver was doing, as he turned his attention to the floor.
“Here is it,” she declared, grabbing a folder and opening it on the counter. She handed me a card in a plastic sleeve attached to an expandable lanyard. “Here is your clearance card. It’s best to keep it attached to a belt, or your belt loops,” she advised. She grabbed two devices on her desk and placed them next to the folder, hitting a few keys on her computer. One of the devices was a large flat screen and the other had ten, small round metal pads meant for my fingertips.
“Okay,” she said, motioning, “fingertips first. Place your fingers here and press down as hard as you can until I tell you to stop,” Cassie instructed. I did as I was told and then followed her instructions as my hand prints were also recorded.
“We already have your face, profile, and retinal scans…” she mused, glancing through the file. “Okay, give me just a moment.”
She fiddled with something behind the counter as I turned to Clark, who tried to smile reassuringly. Our driver was standing to the side of the reception desk, his hands folded in front of him and his head bent, eyes still covered, waiting for us.
“Okay,” Cassie repeated, turning away from her computer and grabbing a plastic tub filled with cell phones. Each cell phone had a rubber band, securing a piece of paper with typed names. I saw one with my name on it, and my hands went to my pocket, feeling the outline of my cell phone.
“Can I have your cell phone please?” she asked. I hesitantly pulled out my phone. She took it, transferred the name and rubber band and handed me the one from the tub.
“You can pick up your phone when you leave,” she assured. “This will be your phone while you are on Commission property.”
“But, what if my parents call?” I asked. “How will I be able to tell them I’m on my way home?”
“Oh, it’s still your phone,” Cassie explained. “It’s just a device that is friendlier to the machine frequencies in the building.”
I glanced down at the smart phone, suspicious.
“What do you mean?”
“There are jamming signals in some parts of the building,” Cassie elaborated. “This phone can work around those signals. It’s just for privacy so that no one can use their phone to spy on the Commission. So, don’t lose that phone.”
“What if I do lose it?”
“We shut it down,” she shrugged. “If we feel it’s necessary, we can also activate a self-destruct.”
I blinked in horror at the phone.
Cassie turned back to her computer and hit a few keys before grabbing a tiny plastic bag and dropping three microchips in it. She sealed the bag and placed it in a larger pouch, showing it to me.
“You’ll need these later, so I’m going to hand them to Mark for safe keeping.” She turned to the driver and extended the pouch to him, which he took with both hands.
“Alright,” she nodded to the card in my hand, “that will get you just about anywhere. It will take about ten to twelve hours before all the electronic locks recognize your hand and finger prints, so just stick with Clark today.”
“Okay.”
Cassie gave Clark his Commission cell phone as he set his other one on the counter. “Mark will check your bags and then you’ll be set.”
“Thank you, Cassie,” Clark said, pocketing his phone and ushering me to the side of the desk. Cassie walked to Mark and stood next to him as we approached.
“Check them,” Cassie ordered.
Clark handed over his backpack and Mark looked through it thoroughly. Even though I was sure that I didn’t have anything in my possession that could get me into trouble, I felt nervous. Once Mark finished looking through the backpack, he quickly patted down Clark, much to my surprise. The security that day was tighter than when my family came to the Saturday Commission meetings.
My bag was checked, as was my purse, and—to my discomfort—I was also patted down by Mark.
Once we were both cleared, Mark led us to the elevators.
“Are you alright?” Clark asked. My spooked expression must have been obvious.
“Uh, yeah,” I said. “Just a little surprised.”
“Sometimes the security is a little tighter. They randomly pick days to thoroughly check everyone,” he explained. “I guess today is one of those days.”
The elevator doors opened and Mark ushered us in.
“Four, Mark,” Clark ordered. He stepped in after us and pressed the button for level four.
“Floors one and two are call centers,” Clark explained. “They’re all grunt workers, more or less—bunch of people in cubicles. Level three is conference rooms and a kitchen. Level four is where my mom’s office is, which is where we’re going. Most of the Commission-Only staff have their offices on the fourth floor.”
“Commission-Only?”
“The people who don’t hold any other office,” Clark elaborated. “Your father, for example, is Chief Regulator for the Western Region and he’s also in the Commission. My mom is Advisor of the Commission, and that’s it. She’s Commission-Only. Your father’s not.”
Once on the fourth floor, Mark stepped out, bowing his head as we passed.
“We’ll be right back,” Clark told him. I followed Clark quickly and, when we rounded the corner, I leaned closer.
“He’s creepy…”
“No, he’s not so bad,” he assured with a small smile. He stopped and knocked on the door with the nameplate that read Danielle J. Markus. He opened the door slowly without waiting for an answer.
When I saw the elaborate, immaculately-kept office of Clark’s mother, I was both surprised and confused. The office was bright and beautiful with large windows that let in sunlight and gave the room a warm, inviting atmosphere. The office was a stark contrast with the offices I had seen in the lower levels of the Commission, but the homey atmosphere only served to unsettle me more.
It was all a façade for the sinister Commission of the People.
“Oh, Clark, you brought Lily,” she greeted, standing and walking around her desk to us. “How are you today, dear?”
“I’m well, thank you, Mrs. Markus.”
“I’m so thrilled that Clark will finally have someone his age to talk to while he’s here,” Mrs. Markus said lightly, looking at her. “I’m sure he’s been really bored stuck here with no one to talk to.”
“The other kids, like Melissa, they don’t come here?” I asked. I was pretty sure that it was just Clark, since Dana had developed an obsession with him, but I figured that at least some of the children of the other advisors would also be around the Commission from time to time.
“No,” Mrs. Markus answered. “Melissa is involved in hunter-jumper activities after school, so she’s a busy girl.”
“What’s that?”
“Horseback riding,” Mrs. Markus clarified. She turned to Clark. “Are you giving her a tour?”
“A short one,” he affirmed. “I’m showing her around up here before we go downstairs.”
“Okay, I should be
down around five,” she said. “Lily, if you ever need anything, you can just come up to my office before five. I’ll be in my other office after that, if you need me. Don’t be shy.”
“Thank you, Mrs. Markus.” I forced myself to smile. I wasn’t sure if I was angry at her for not noticing what her son was enduring, or if I felt sorry for her for being so disillusioned about Dana and the Commission. She acted as though nothing was out of the ordinary, and it was sickening.
“Alright, you two have fun,” she said. “Clark, Dana wanted to talk to you when you were done showing Lily around.”
“Why?” he asked, a tremble in his voice. I felt my heart sink at the worried expression on his face.
“You’re not in trouble,” she assured with a light laugh. “He just wanted to talk to you about something. He didn’t say what.”
Clark nodded, his eyes dropping to the carpet.
“Okay, I’ll see you downstairs later,” he murmured as he walked to the door. I followed him, looking nervously between Clark and his mother as we left.
“Alright,” she called. “Love you.”
“Love you, too,” Clark repeated mechanically.
I closed the door behind us as Clark began walking to the elevator.
“Anyway, that’s really all you need to know on this floor,” he said quietly. We rounded into the elevator corridor and Clark pointed to a placard on the wall. “If you are ever asked to go to an office, here is the map of the offices on this floor. There is a map on each floor.”
Mark pressed the call button for the elevator when he saw us.
“The fifth floor is the Records Department. These are the other workers who file everything into the system about who was taken by the Commission.”
“They note everything?” I asked, knowing that both of the people with me would understand what I was really asking.
“No.” Clark shook his head. “Those are the basic files, just keeping track of families and who was taken on what date. They do not say anything about what happens to them after. Those records are downstairs.”
“But they can access the other records from their computers, right?”
“If they have the clearance, I would assume so,” Clark guessed. We stepped into the elevator, Mark stepping in after us. “Seven,” Clark told him.
The driver pressed the button and the doors closed. I looked between the back of Mark’s head and Clark, uncomfortable.
“Floor six is more offices, mostly for those people who live downstairs.”
“People live downstairs? I mean…besides the scientists?” I asked.
“Yes, lots of people,” Clark affirmed. “The sixth floor is generally empty—it’s really just for show. If ever someone who does not know about the Enterprise projects wants to meet with those people, the sixth floor is where they meet. It keeps the other secrets of the Commission under wraps. Seventh floor is Dana’s office. Sean’s office and a few of the other people who are really close to Dana will also have an office up there. That’s another floor that is generally dead.”
“Then, why are we going there?”
“Just so you know.”
The doors opened and, once again, Mark stepped out, folding his hands in front of him and bowing his head, looking at the ground through his glasses as we walked out of the elevator and rounded the hall.
Clark led me down the halls, pointing out Sean’s office as we passed.
“So, if I need to talk to Sean for any reason, this is where I would go?” I asked. “Or does he have an office downstairs?”
“He has an office downstairs where you will more-likely-than-not find him. Otherwise, he is with Dana.”
We turned another corner and found the office with Dana’s name next to the door. I hesitated. Clark turned to me when he realized I had stopped moving.
“What is it?”
“He’s…is he in there?” I asked meekly. I thought about how strange it would be to see Dana in a room as light as Mrs. Markus’ office. I had never seen what Dana looked like in natural sunlight.
“I highly doubt it,” Clark muttered. “He’s never up here.”
“Are you sure?”
“No,” Clark admitted. “Do you want me to check first?”
“No,” I said quickly, realizing how silly it was that I was getting nervous. I was trying to get close to Dana to stage a revolution against him. I needed to come to terms with the fact that I was about to see him every day.
That still did not keep my heart from speeding up as we approached the looming door.
As Clark predicted, the room was empty. I looked around the large, elaborate office and was, once again, surprised by the light and warmth of the room, particularly considering that it was the office of the leader of the Commission. He had a large desk and simple black furniture, including bookshelves lined with large, old-bound books, a sitting area with a glass coffee table, and large pictures of American landscapes hanging on the pristine white walls.
“This is his upstairs office,” Clark said. “There is one thing about this place that you should know.” He motioned for me to follow as he stepped around Dana’s desk to his computer, the screensaver showing the seal of the Commission. Dana’s desk was clean, as if it was out of a catalogue.
Clark pressed a random key on Dana’s computer. The screensaver clicked off and the screen lit up with a fully-booked calendar of the month, showing the events for the day to one side.
“You can always access his updated schedule from here,” Clark explained. “You can access it from any computer in the Commission, because everyone is always updating his schedule, but this is the one place you can view it undetected.”
“Undetected?”
“See the cameras?” he asked, pointing to the corners of the room. “They’re fake.”
“How do you know that?”
Clark hesitated and then took a deep breath, hanging his head.
“Let’s just say that I got brave once and wanted to show my mother what Dana had done to me…” he mumbled. “I asked Sean to show me the security footage from this office and he told me that there were no live cameras in here. I hacked into the security mainframe just to be sure.”
“You can hack into the security mainframe?” I gasped.
“That’s not difficult,” Clark muttered. “It’s the records that are difficult to get into without being detected.” He turned to the computer and clicked a few things on Dana’s schedule as I looked back to the cameras.
“So Dana has been in this office…”
“I said rarely, I didn’t say never.”
“Are there cameras in his other office?”
“Yes, but only two, so there are a lot of blind spots,” Clark explained. “Apparently, Dana has a meeting with the security detail today, so we need to have Mark downstairs in ten minutes,” Clark explained. He turned away from the computer. “Ready for the tour of the basement?”
“As I’ll ever be.”
“You only saw the labs and some experiment cells last time. I’ll show you around the offices and such,” he explained, leading me out the door and back to Mark. When we got into the elevator, I saw Mark pull out his own elevator key to take us to the basement level after Clark told him where we were going.
I was silent on the descent to the basement, as was Clark for a few seconds before he spoke up.
“Mark, meeting in ten minutes,” he said. Mark nodded once, still facing the closed elevator doors. There were a few awkward seconds of silence before Clark took in a breath like he was going to say something. He stopped and closed his mouth. Confused, I tried to ask him with my eyes what was wrong, but a movement caught my attention. Mark slowly turned his head to look at Clark, silent, staring at Clark from behind his glasses.
Clark let out his breath and shook his head, smiling thinly.
“I’m fine,” he assured, his tone suggesting Mark was a close, concerned friend and Clark wanted to assuage any worries he might have.
No
w, I was really confused about the chauffer.
Mark was still for a few moments before he turned back to face the doors of the elevator, remaining silent.
Once we reached the basement, Mark led us into the familiar hallway. It didn’t look any different from all the times I had already been there, but knowing that I would be coming to that place every day gave me a new perspective on the dimly-lit hallway of elevator doors.
Mark bowed his head and turned, walking to the Commission meeting room. When he was out of sight, I rounded on Clark.
“Does he not speak?”
“He can’t,” Clark whispered, walking in the same direction.
“What?”
“He can’t speak,” he said. “He’s a former experiment. Dana damaged his vocal cords and larynx. He can’t speak. He can’t really understand English, either.”
“He’s a former experiment?” I gaped.
“Now you have met the gift Dana gave to my family,” Clark murmured. I stopped him.
“Wait, he’s a gift from Dana?” I repeated. “But…he looks normal. And he can go outside with you.”
“Next time we see him, I’ll show you,” Clark said vaguely. “There’s something about him that you didn’t see.” He jerked his head to the door. “Come on, I’ll show you around. We can talk more when we’re in one of the conference rooms.”
I followed, unsettled at the realization that Mark, who had been driving us around and leading us through the building, who had patted me down as a security measure, had suffered under the Commission’s cruel experimentation.
“There are three doors out of the meeting room,” Clark explained. “You always want to take one of the two on the right,” he motioned to the doors. “The door over there,” he pointed to the left, “is where the scientists and other basement residents live. They are essentially dorm rooms.”
“Including Dana’s bedroom?”
“Yes.”
“Have you ever been in there?” I said slowly, not sure if the question would upset him.
“No,” Clark laughed. “I don’t really have a reason to go back there. I don’t even know what the rooms look like.”
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