“You never knew he was against Dana? He never came to you with his plan of breaking people out?”
“No,” Mykail whispered. He looked down into his mug and sighed heavily. “I guess that means he doesn’t entirely trust me…”
“Don’t say that,” I said with a small laugh, cuddling closer. “Maybe he just didn’t know how to approach you.”
Mykail was silent, resting his head against mine, staring ahead distantly. His silence worried me. I could not understand why he was so upset. I was sure that Mark would have told Mykail about his plan to go against Dana if he had had the opportunity. I wanted to tell him that since he was one of Dana’s favorite experiments it was probably more difficult for Mark to go up to him. However, I remembered that Dana had shown intense interest in Mark as well.
I began to question why Mark had never approached Mykail.
Mykail turned his head and kissed my temple.
“Did you sleep at all last night?” he asked, his voice strained. I wanted to comfort him and tell him that Mark trusted him, but I knew that no matter what I said, I could not answer the question of why Mark didn’t tell him anything earlier.
I shook my head, deciding to let him change the conversation. “Only a little.” He smiled against my hair.
“You must be exhausted…”
“No, actually,” I chuckled. “Griffin gave us some pills and I am feeling a little hyper now.”
“You’re popping pills?” Mykail teased.
“He said the military uses them.”
“Well, that will help you act normal when you go to the Commission today,” Mykail grinned. I nodded, setting my half-empty mug down on the coffee table before cuddling closer, closing my eyes. “Are you cold?”
“A little,” I admitted, smiling mischievously. I glanced at him with a grin, feeling playful and wanting to take his mind off his troubling thoughts. “We have a couple hours before Mark comes to pick me up…”
“What do you have in mind?” Mykail smiled, seeing my suggestive behavior.
“Well…” I plucked the mug out of his hand and set it next to mine before climbing on his lap, my arms encircling his neck. “You could help warm me up…”
Mykail’s head dipped under my chin and he kissed down the side of my neck, causing my eyes to flutter shut.
“How cold,” he pressed a kiss to the dip of my collarbone, “are you?”
“Cold enough to want to stay close to the fire…” I breathed, my skin sparking where his fingers brushed my shoulder as he moved my shirt aside.
He began kissing down my sternum as my breath shortened.
“I guess we could celebrate…” he chuckled, his breath fanning over my skin and lighting my body aflame.
* *** *
“How is this arrangement going to work, exactly?”
“What do you mean?” I asked, brushing through my drying hair as Mykail leaned against the doorframe, watching me get ready.
“The fort and everything?” he clarified. “I mean, you will have to go back to school in a few weeks, and your parents will be home at the end of next week…who is watching over everyone while you’re gone?”
“Griffin and Tori seem to have it under control,” I assured. He blinked.
“Griffin and Tori? Wow, talk about friends in high places,” he murmured. I felt bad for bringing up all these people, knowing that it was just making Mykail wonder all the more why Mark didn’t include him on his list of close allies. “So, they’re taking care of that, and you’re planning the next move?”
“…something like that,” I muttered, feeling guilty.
“I see…”
“Mykail, I’m sorry.”
“For what?”
“That…you feel as though you’re not part of this,” I said, linking my hands behind his neck. “If I could sneak you out of here, I would.”
“I know…” Mykail nodded, though is voice showed his disappointment. I kissed him.
“I’ll talk to Mark,” I said. “It would at least be fair for you to go to the fort once before my parents come back.”
“That’s the other thing I would like to talk to you about,” he told me, his hand running down my arm and slipping through my fingers as I walked into my bedroom to grab my cell phone and purse. “We need to discuss how we’re going to interact with each other when your parents do return.”
I sighed as I placed my phone in the side pocket of my purse.
“I know we do…” I muttered. “I just…I would rather not think about it and enjoy the time we have remaining.”
“Lily, I…” Mykail stopped and shook his head. “Nothing, you’re right. We should enjoy this while we can.”
I looked him over carefully.
“What were you going to say?”
“Nothing,” he shook his head again. “It’s not important. I’m just…feeling a little useless, that’s all…”
I smiled sadly and walked to him, pressing my hand to the side of his face.
“I’ll talk to Mark,” I assured again. “I’m sure we could use your help.”
“Whether you need my help or not, I can’t be of any use,” he told me dejectedly. “When your parents get back, I can’t disappear. They’ll notice.”
Realizing that I had an excuse to sneak out of the house—particularly since so many people thought I was dating Clark—and Dana had made us sign a contract that Mykail could never be outside, I understood why he was so down.
I was not sure if there was anything I could do to change that.
The sound of the doorbell caused me to turn away and, even though I wanted to help Mykail, I was thankful for the distraction. I pecked Mykail on the lips, promising that I would figure something out. Then we both walked to the front door, where I met a very chipper Clark.
“Ready?”
“Did you take more of those pills?” I asked suspiciously.
“…so?”
I rolled my eyes and smiled. “Where’s Mark?”
“In the car,” Clark nodded back to the driveway. “Um…I think he’s actually pretty hurt. He doesn’t really want to move.”
“What?” I stepped out and craned my neck to look at the car, though I could only barely make out the outline of the experiment in the driver’s seat.
“Lily,” Mykail called, holding my coat out. “Go on, just ask him.”
I smiled, ducking back in the house once more to kiss him, taking my coat and promising him I would be back later before leaving a very depressed Mykail at home, locking the door behind me.
“Is he okay?” Clark asked, nodding to the closed door.
“It’s a little complicated…”
“That doesn’t surprise me,” Clark chuckled brokenly.
I got in the car and Mark smiled at me through the rearview mirror.
“Mark, are you okay? Are you hurt?” I pressed.
He took a deep breath and held up his hand, holding his forefinger and his thumb close together to signify a little.
“Anything I can do?” I asked, trying to conceal my worry.
He shook his head.
“Where were you hurt?”
He tapped his leg as Clark climbed in the car.
“Are you sure you’re okay?” I said, fixing Mark with my best mothering gaze. He nodded, putting the car into reverse.
“So, what do you think we should do if we see Dana today?” Clark asked.
“Well, hopefully, he’ll be so busy we won’t see him today,” I groaned, rolling my eyes. “I’m really too tired to deal with him, regardless of how much caffeine is pumping through me.”
Mark snapped his fingers twice and reached back, pointing to the light in the middle of the car.
“I mean…Dana doesn’t need to know that we went on a date last night,” I said, looking at Clark with a purposeful look. I got a thumbs-up encouragement from Mark.
“But, what if he asks where we were? He could have seen that we were together…” Clark tried to sound na
tural.
“Well…we can just tell him we were going out as friends,” I shrugged. “If anything, we should keep the information from him. We’ll just tell him we were home last night, and that’s all he needs to know.”
Even though we had agreed to remain quiet about anything that we might have been doing last night, I was still very nervous about seeing Dana. How would he react? Would he be angry? The Eight Group had said that he was furious when he found out what happened, would that carry over to today? Would he know immediately that Clark and I were involved? Would he try to interrogate us? Would he even need to?
I was nervous and hyper-aware of my surroundings when we got to the Commission. Though, I wasn’t entirely sure if the hypersensitivity was warranted concern or a side effect of the pills.
As usual, I waited for Mark to walk around the car and open my door, but I did notice the heavy limp on his right leg.
“He really is hurt…” I whispered, glancing at Clark. I wondered why I had not noticed last night.
Clark slid out of the car after me as I looked at Mark apologetically. He bowed his head, acting as though he did not understand my gaze though I knew he was trying to assure me that he was alright.
“He might not have noticed it until the adrenaline wore off,” Clark whispered as we walked into the lobby of the Commission of the People.
As soon as the doors opened, an amazing sense of power and an urge to gloat overwhelmed me. There were several members of the security detail behind the main counter, talking in hushed voices, looking over their tablets with intense eyes.
They turned to us when we entered, their expressions frantic. It took everything I had not to smile with pride.
One of the men whispered something to the rest of the group.
“What’s going on?” Clark asked, sounding authentic with his confusion and concern.
“Nothing you need to concern yourself with,” the man growled, setting down his tablet and walking around the desk. “Random intense search day today.”
Even though I knew I had nothing on me with dangerous information, I was still nervous. Clark and I both stopped, worried and curious. With the way the security was walking, it was obvious that they had been getting the stunned reaction all morning.
“Come on…” the man said as he approached me, placing his hand on my back and gently, but insistently, pushing me forward.
“What are we doing with him?” another man asked, pointing at Mark.
“Is that Mark?” the older woman of the group inquired as she motioned me to walk to her.
Mark nodded once.
“Go to Sean,” she told him clearly. “Just do basic checks on him and let him go. They’re giving all of the Eight Group medical attention.”
I glanced over at Mark worriedly, but did not get a chance to look at his reaction before the older woman pushed me to the door behind the front desk. I walked into the office, surprised to see another group of security personnel discussing something else.
“Patty,” the woman behind me called. A younger lady turned, her eyes glancing behind us as Clark and another member of security walked to the room. Instead of studying the woman named Patty, my eyes were drawn to the far side of the room where there were several stalls of black cloth. One of the stalls had another young woman standing in front of the drape while the other four were unguarded.
“Will you check her, please?”
“Sure,” Patty nodded. She motioned for me. Nervously, I followed as she led me to a stall and held the curtain aside. I stepped inside, worried and unsure what to expect. Patty followed, closing the curtain and turning to me with a heavy smile.
“I’ll take your purse,” she offered. I handed my bag to her, watching every movement. She unzipped the bag and opened it before glancing back up at me.
“Please remove everything except your panties.”
At first, I could only blink.
“What?”
“It’s an intense search day,” she said, taking out my phone and reaching outside the curtain, handing it to another person. She then resumed rummaging through the other things in my purse.
I waited for her to offer an explanation, but she did not. Nervously, I unzipped my jacket, slipping it from my shoulders and beginning to place it behind me before Patty stopped me.
“Right here,” she pointed between the two of us.
I dropped the coat where she designated before pulling my sweater over my head and placing it on top of my jacket. I unbuttoned my jeans, watching as Patty abandoned her search of my purse and put on latex gloves, stooping to pick up my clothes, feeling along each seam.
I shimmied out of my jeans and placed them in the pile with my socks and shoes before I hesitantly unclasped my bra and let it fall to the ground as well, covering my bare breasts with my arms.
It felt like hours that I stood there, almost completely naked, while every seam and pocket of my clothing was checked before my boots were inspected thoroughly.
The woman sighed and nodded to me.
“Please turn to face the wall and place your hands at the level of your ears.”
Startled, I could not move for several long moments, but I finally obeyed and turned around, placing my hands against the cold wall with my back facing her, anxious.
Her hands, still covered in the cold latex gloves, ran along my neck, shoulder blades, spine, ribs, and hips before running down each leg. After the annoyed thought that I was getting a physical, I remembered my tracers and my heart leapt into my throat. The only one that was still on my person was the one that was supposed to be in my shoulder, which I had sewn into a small pouch that I could attach to the label of my bra. Realizing that she had passed over the tracer when checking my clothes eased my mind, but I wondered if she was looking for the bumps of my tracers or if she was satisfied by just seeing the scars.
Suddenly, her thumbs were pushing into my lower back, as her fingers enclosed around my hips. I gasped, cringing as the pressure became painful. My legs buckled and I tried to squirm away but she held firm.
“Sorry, have to do this,” she murmured behind me.
“What?” I snarled after the released pressure allowed me to breathe again.
“Turn around.”
I slowly obeyed. She ran the same sweeping motions over my body down my front, passing over collar bones, under my breasts, down my ribs, hips, and legs before she instructed me to lean against the wall. Nervous and not sure what she was going to do, I leaned my shoulders against the wall as her hands went to my hips again, her thumbs pressing hard just inside my hipbones, causing my hips to slam back into the wall as I bit my lip against the shout of pain.
Patty backed away and I caught my breath.
“What the hell?” I snapped.
“Have to make sure you’re not hiding anything inside your body,” she told me simply, as though it was an obvious answer. I ground my teeth angrily. She smiled thinly. “You can get dressed now. Your phone should be coming back soon.”
“This is fucking stupid…” I muttered under my breath, snatching my jeans from the ground, rubbing the areas where her thumbs had been.
I hurriedly redressed, thankful that they did not catch the chip attached to my bra as I put it back on. Patty watched carefully, increasing my anxiety, but I tried to ignore her.
My phone was returned as I stepped out of the stall and they told me to wait for Clark before I was allowed to leave the horrific inspection.
By the way he looked when he stepped out of the makeshift inspection area, I could tell Clark went through the same treatment.
We were escorted to the elevators where we were finally left alone.
“Holy shit…” I let out an exasperated breath.
“Tell me about it,” Clark murmured. “Were you okay with your tracers?”
“Yeah, you?”
“Yeah.”
“How?”
“Mark put the one in my ankle back this morning,” he whispered with a s
igh. “He must have known…”
We said nothing else during the elevator’s descent.
I was expecting a lot of commotion when the doors opened but, instead, there was an eerie silence. I stepped out of the elevator, looking around the dark hallway.
“Is that a good or a bad sign?” I whispered.
“I don’t know…” Clark admitted. “Come on, let’s just find a conference room. Maybe someone will tell us what’s going on.” He fixed me with a serious look, reminding me that we were not supposed to know that there was a real problem.
We walked through the empty meeting room. Even though the room was normally occupied with empty chairs and tables through the week, it seemed far more ominous now. I continued to tell myself that my knowledge of the escape was causing me to be hyperaware of the silence, but another part of me knew that there was a dark energy around the Commission of the People that day.
Stepping into the hallway with the conference rooms, Clark looked at the schedule of the first room.
“Cancelled…” he hissed.
I looked at the darkened room and nodded with a wobbly smile.
“I guess we’ll take this one.”
While I was nervous at the feeling in the Commission, I was also extremely curious. I wanted to know who had told Dana that there had been a breach and how he had reacted. I wanted to know the official number of people missing, and how many guards had fallen in the ordeal.
“So, what are you doing today while we’re stuck here?” I asked.
“Well, I was going to try and do some of the reading we’re supposed to be doing over break,” he said, looking at me seriously. “You do remember that we start school in…like, two weeks, right?”
“Really?”
“Yes,” Clark laughed brokenly.
I bit my tongue and sat at the glassy table, looking at the surface with disinterest.
I did not want to tell Clark that I remembered when school started and how much reading I had to do during break, but the truth was, I did not care. After the thrill of last night and the incredible accomplishment, school was incredibly dull.
Through my entire life, I had been worshipping the country that had been painted in a way to make me proud to be a citizen of America. But when I moved to Central, I realized that the picture I had held dear, the picture of my own country, was nothing more than that: a picture. It was not the reality. The living, breathing country of America was warped and distorted, ugly in its wicked facets and policies. The Commission of the People had never been an entirely pleasant subject, but I understood it as a festering wound in America’s side, oozing and bloated with infection. To heal the country properly, the Commission had to go.
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