by Emery Hale
Here we go, back to square one! I knew Grace didn’t like her, but Naomi had been my friend for years – didn’t she have someone like that on the outside world?
‘Why can’t you learn to follow my orders?’ I snapped harshly. I had to shut this down, she was my second but she had no right to question me like this. In front of my team, no less. This was big, I got that, but she should know me well enough to trust my judgment.
After everything that’s happened I didn’t need Grace’s emotions smothering me, couldn’t she have waited at least an hour or two before bringing this up? Why did it matter who made me Team Lead? I was the best for the job and everyone knew it.
That was when Grace started to yell.
‘Look at you, just like Harkness! Follow my orders – no sense of democracy!’
‘Oh, it’s democracy you want?’ I asked. ‘Well, maybe you should have said something to me instead of taking it out on Naomi!’
‘She is the problem! Can’t you see that?’ You’re meant to care about us, your so-called team, and yet all you want to do is bring her into the equation!’
‘I’m not the one who brought her here!’
Kayson’s eyebrows shot up.
‘Hey, she blackmailed me! If I hadn’t, the videos would have been released!’ With that Kayson turned, unlocked the door and marched out, like a child having a temper tantrum.
‘It wouldn’t have gone anywhere if they’d been released, we’ve discussed that already!’ Then she turned to us. ‘We would get the backlash, we would get punished because of it –’
That was it.
‘Punished? You don’t even know what that means. You haven’t exactly been on the receiving end of any of them.’ I crossed my arms, stalking towards her.
Maybe I was like Harkness. I needed them to take my orders because without that we’d fall into chaos.
Lily placed a hand on my arm and for a moment I thought she was going to pull me back but instead she slipped past me, her other hand curled into a fist.
‘I don’t think you’ve ever gotten so much as a bruise on yourself,’ Lily said. ‘You are so concerned about getting Naomi out of here so you don’t get marked up.’
Grace’s mouth fell open, utterly offended but she stayed quiet, she wasn’t even going to fucking deny it. The tight-ass bitch. It was one thing to tell me I wasn’t prioritising my team but it was another when she prioritised herself. Who the fuck did she think she was?
‘I have shifts on the ward, you seriously think I can go in there all beat up?’ she asked. ‘Never mind that, I’m not putting my neck on the line for someone I don’t know!’
‘Well maybe you should actually get to know her or see what she has to offer before deeming her useless,’ I said.
‘You know what?’ Grace asked the group before turning to me. ‘Considering that Willow died on the last op, Naomi’s not the only one that’s been utterly useless.’
SLAP
My hand sliced across Grace’s cheekbone before I could blink; she fucking deserved that. She stumbled back holding her cheek, but all she had in return was a bitter smile.
‘Are you shitting me, Grace?’ Lily asked, but her voice was different. It was like Grace’s words were a physical blow to her ribs, her voice weaker than before. ‘You’re blaming Jess for that?’
Grace never spoke, she just looked me in the eye, sporting that know-it-all glare like she always did. Was I meant to feel bad for hitting her?
‘If you look at it from the perspective of Harkness, what’s the reason our food supplies keep getting cut?’ she asked. ‘It’s cause Winters over here won’t do as she’s told. If you want an answer as to why we don’t have enough food to last the week, look no further than the famous Jessica-Grace Winters.’
My main concern was getting Grace to shut her mouth. All she ever did was take the high ground, never admitting when she was wrong or apologising for it. She called me a hypocrite. Who else could you blame, Grace? Oh right yeah, everyone but yourself.
‘Why haven’t you said anything before?’ I asked. ‘If you’re so jealous of me.’
‘Jealous?’ Grace said, like the idea was ludicrous. ‘I’m not jealous.’
‘Doesn’t seem like it, sweetheart.’ I replied bitterly, then I walked away.
Lily shouted some profanities at Grace but I wasn’t listening.
I didn’t need to follow protocol; I was going to do the best for my team and having Naomi here was a benefit. It wasn’t my fault Grace couldn’t see that.
But at the sight of the door I halted, and any arguments from behind faded to nothing, the weight of the room collapsing from the ceiling. Duke stood there, hands pressed against the open door. He stared at each of us individually, assessing us. How much had he heard?
Duke didn’t break the silence, it was Quinn’s shaky breathing that did, and his eyes quickly fixated on her.
‘What are you doing in here?’ Duke asked bluntly.
‘We needed to have a team meeting.’ I answered quickly, but I felt Lily shift from behind me. OK, maybe that wasn’t the most believable lie.
‘And you couldn’t have done that somewhere else?’
‘No.’
Duke slowly waded his way over to me, his eyes scanning my face and then my body. It was like he was trying to detect the lie, even though it was clearly right in front of him. We had no reason whatsoever to be in here, so why hadn’t he started yelling? Why hadn’t he dragged us all to Harkness’ office?
If Duke was truly Harkness’ right hand man, then maybe he couldn’t dish out punishments without his say-so. Did he have to wait for permission?
At my silence Duke slipped a black phone from his pocket and punched in a couple buttons, before taking it to his ear.
‘I need security footage of Command Room 3B sent to me,’ he said to the other person on the line.
Well, fuck.
Quinn had looped the cameras which would now show an empty corridor. Shit. Would they check the phone log? We’d called at least four people in the last ten minutes.
It would take around three minutes for the files to be sent over so I had to come up with something, but I was drawing a blank.
Grace spoke up. ‘Sir, we need to get going, I have a ward shift and Jessica has rehearsals.’
Duke didn’t look interested in what her royal highness had to say, not that anyone else in the room did either. She painted herself as such a saint, studying medicine, pulling shifts at the hospital, bandaging the team up after an op, but she was just in it for herself.
Duke slipped the phone back in his pocket.
‘Winters, tell me, why has Harkness taken such an interest in you?’ Of all the questions I thought this man would ask, that wasn’t one of them. ‘I assumed such punishments were kept for the seniors, but Harkness has taken a liking to you and your team.’ His beady eyes flitted behind me.
Hold up, liking? I’d hate to see what he’d do to people he loved.
‘No,’ I replied simply.
In my head I could almost predict what Grace was thinking, I could practically feel the snide smirk burrowing into my head. Her sickly sweet tone plaguing my mind.
She thought that Harkness had taken an interest in me because of my mother. Grace assumed that because he and my mother worked together I’d gotten ahead without trying. If that were the reason, I had no idea about it. I believed that I was the most suitable person for the job, proving it every day in training, fighting and standing up when no one else would. If Grace was after my job, she’d have a fight on her hands.
‘Interesting,’ Duke mused, before fixing on Lily. ‘You get in the gym, can’t very well be a Runner if you’re lounging about. I want fifty lines then three miles. Get it done in twenty-five minutes or you can forget the next supply delivery.’
You know, the start of that could be passed off as a coach talking to his star athlete, but then came the last bit, which in simple terms meant get your shit together or you’ll eat scrap
s for another week.
Then Duke nodded and left.
If I was brutally honest, we couldn’t keep living like this. Three weeks in a row our food had been cut back, how long could we go on?
‘Swap with me,’ I said, throwing off my hoodie and trainers, tossing them at Lily’s feet.
She smiled gratefully, taking off her boots. It was a good thing we were the same size.
‘What if Ames gives me something else to do?’ Lily asked. ‘What if I don’t make it in time?’ Her voice was drowning in worry.
I could take the hate and glares for the lack of food and so could Lily, but after last night, I feared her nerves might not be as resilient.
‘You will make it,’ I told her. ‘You have to.’
Chapter 13
Unconditional
Without judgement despite any and or all flaws.
NAOMI JADE
Surprisingly, sitting in the wardrobe for over an hour wasn’t the worst way to spend my time: I rearranged Quinn’s shoes into different categories, made friends with a tiny spider and waded through more of the security footage. At one point there was a classroom filled with students which looked pretty normal, but once I turned the volume up and learned that this ‘teacher’ was talking about emotional manipulation, that thought soon left me.
For some reason Kayson and his stupid egotistical voice kept butting into my mind; the entire night I spent with him was an act. The guy I encountered today was a different person, a dickhead to be blunt. Jessica sent him after me, like I needed babysitting. I’d have to bring that up at some point.
I clicked out of the security footage folder and shut the laptop. I could look at everything else later, right now I needed to get out of the wardrobe because I’d lost all sensation in my butt. Fear made me pause – what if someone was out there waiting for me? Sure, I hadn’t heard anything, but there was a pesky itch of worry. I had images of that woman standing there with a gun – or worse, Harkness.
BANG
The sound of a gun fired through my head, but then I realised it was actually the slam of the front door. Had they come for me?
‘I don’t care if she’s bloody royalty, she can shove her tiara right up her fucking ass. You know, I fear for her patients, she might murder them if she gets a tad jealous!’
Well, Jess was back.
Since that woman seemed keen to conduct whatever investigation under the radar, I assumed the coast was clear and crawled out of the wardrobe. I was a bit stiff from being stuck in the one position, but with some shimmying and destroying the better part of a shoe box, I tumbled into the empty room. Even though the door was closed and I was a floor up, Jessica’s brash voice continued to boom.
‘Does she not think I blame myself? I know this is my fault, but I don’t see her stepping up!’
What was she on about? I assumed it wasn’t about Quinn’s mum.
‘Naomi!’
Oh! That’s me.
‘Yeah! Still here, I’ll be down in a minute!’
As a pair of quick footsteps sounded from outside I left the room, but in doing so barged into Jessica and Quinn, who jumped back.
‘Are you OK?’
‘Uh yeah just . . . been stuck in your wardrobe for an hour.’ I said with a tired smile.
‘The wardrobe?’ she asked, confusion written all over. ‘What were you doing in there?’
‘There was this woman who came in, looking for something and I couldn’t hide in Jessica’s room so I hid in yours.’
Instead of singing my praises for outsmarting this woman, Quinn whipped out her phone, charging into her room while Jessica grabbed my shoulders and forced me in behind.
‘What are you doing?’ I asked.
Quinn darted to the other side of the room where her computer was and grabbed a cable, hooking it up to the monitor. Jessica ran to the window and pulled the curtains over.
‘The woman, what did she look like?’ Jessica asked.
‘I can’t see through wood,’ I said, but Jessica gave me a pointed look.
‘She had a pair of heels on, sounded on the older side.’
Jessica thought it over for a moment. ‘Helen,’ she said. ‘She manages the accommodation.’
Whoever she was, I’d managed to outsmart her. OK, she wasn’t looking for me but still, brownie points and all that.
As I glanced over to Quinn I saw that her monitor took up the majority of the wall, with two small screens either side and a rose gold keyboard beneath. An image popped up on the screen like some sort of group chat but when I took a closer look, it was actually a log.
FRONT DOOR OPENED AT 16:15
JGW DOOR OPENED AT 16:17
FRONT DOOR OPENED AT 16:21
QE DOOR OPENED AT 16:21
QE DOOR OPENED AT 16:22
WM DOOR OPENED AT 16:25
FRONT DOOR OPENED AT 16:30
FRONT DOOR OPENED AT 17:22
They had logs for when certain doors were opened? Well that was top notch security. Quinn studied them for a moment before pointing to the top of the screen.
‘The first one, that’s when we all left and the last one was us again, so we can cross those out,’ she told us. ‘Then Jessica’s room was probably Naomi?’ Quinn looked back to me and I nodded. She highlighted those three entries in blue, moving onto the next. ‘Then the third, that must be when Helen came in.’ Quinn highlighted that in yellow.
‘The Academy gives you access to these?’ I asked.
‘Security purposes if there’s a break-in.’ Jessica said. ‘So Naomi, you ran the moment the door opened, and then what?’
I felt like I was in a movie, the team coming together, figuring out a plan, taking down the bad guys.
‘I ran in here and hid in the wardrobe,’ I told her, trying to hide my excitement.
Quinn nodded but she pulled a face as her eyes ran over the remaining time stamps.
‘Helen was in here for three minutes, what was she doing?’ Jess asked me.
‘She was looking for files I think, on Quinn’s computer, but she was also on the phone with someone. She thought that you’d done something,’ I said, looking in the small blonde’s direction.
Jessica pinched the bridge of her nose. ‘Quinn, tell me you were careful and didn’t leave any trace of the server for them to find?’
‘No, of course not,’ she said, then pulled out a little black box – I presumed the one she’d spoken about earlier – from her bra. ‘I keep it on me when I leave, just in case.’
When Jessica looked back to the monitor for a brief moment, I saw the sharp edge of sadness cut through her face like a knife. ‘Helen stayed in Willow’s room for a further five minutes before she left, why?’
Willow? Could that be the girl from the hit and run? I had a theory that Jess knew her, but I never imagined she lived with her.
‘Willow?’ I asked. ‘She was the girl in the news, she was killed in a hit and run.’
‘She’s more than that,’ Quinn said sharply, her nails etching into the white wooden desk. ‘She’s not just some girl.’
I sighed. OK, maybe jumping on the bandwagon so fast was a bit insensitive.
‘You’re right, I’m sorry.’
Willow was more than just a mere acquaintance then? I guessed she’d been as close as the rest of the girls were on this team. Now I thought about it, half of the team was gone. Did something happen at the Academy? From the way Jessica came in shouting the place down, it must have.
‘I know you were close with her, Quinn, but Helen thought you were a hell of a lot closer,’ Jessica said. She didn’t seem bothered or affected by what I said, that small glimpse was all I got in terms of emotion. ‘They must have thought that you two were up to something. Was she helping you develop the server’s algorithm?’
Quinn shook her head, protesting. ‘No, Willow was hopeless with coding.’
‘The Carrier and the Technical Support, would have been a scandal,’ Jessica laughed.
‘W
hat?’ I asked, confused.
‘Nothing, just positions in the team,’ she told me, before she turned back to Quinn. I would ask more about those so-called ‘positions’ later.
‘Dig into Willow’s past, I’ll get into her bedroom see what I can find.’
Then, just like that, Jessica was off, heading for the door. As I glanced back at Quinn it wasn’t just a glimpse, there was a tidal wave of grief plummeting through her body. Her eyelashes fluttered, knuckles turning white, her whole body rigid – with one touch I knew she’d collapse. Quinn was a lot more than a mere acquaintance to Willow, a hell of a lot more. Maybe the pair could have been like sisters? Even that conclusion didn’t fit the profile. Oh God, were they more than just friends?
I thought Jessica had left the room but when I turned, she still stood there, leaning against the doorway, sympathy in her smile.
‘You can go through her room if you want,’ she said softly. ‘Willow would have wanted you to do it. Besides, you know where all the secret compartments are.’
Quinn stood up a little straighter, bit her lip and nodded quickly.
‘Thank you,’ she said, before running into the hallway out of sight.
Jessica closed her eyes for a brief moment, taking in a breath before she shut the door.
‘You know, seeing you here, it’s – I only ever imagined something like this would happen.’ Her voice was different now, soft and void of anger. ‘You’re actually standing here.’
I tried to understand where she was coming from, I suspected moments like this were extremely rare. With the security and staff, I imagined any contact from the outside world was scarce. This place was starting to look like a cult.
‘Yeah,’ I replied, ‘and I’m not leaving you, not again.’
I dropped the laptop on Quinn’s bed, slowly edging my way towards her. I’d read somewhere that after trauma fast movements were a no-go so I stuck to slow and steady, since it always won the race.
As I got closer I smelled that same perfume from her room, something refreshing but brittle with salt. When I took her hand I felt the small thin scars on her palm; her whole body told me a different story to the one that’d come from her mouth. I hated myself for not seeing the signs until now; she’d been at the mercy of Harkness all this time.