***
I’ve been sitting outside Mr. Brookfield’s office for at least half an hour, just waiting to go into my meeting. My leg bounces up and down nervously. I almost feel like I’m at school and have been sent to the principal’s office awaiting punishment. I have no idea how this is going to go or what’s going to happen to me. I searched my room for a pen and paper last night to write down what I want to achieve from this meeting, to try to prepare myself, but by the time I found some in my bedside table, the only thing I could think to write down was Shilah’s name.
“Please, come in, Miss Daniels.” Mr. Brookfield’s voice reverberates through me, and it brings me out of my nervous twitching; I know I can’t show weakness right now.
As I walk into his office, my eyes immediately go to the drawn curtains behind his desk and wonder if they’ve been closed for my benefit, considering nowhere else in this place seems to have any windows at all. Will I ever see sunlight again?
“Please, sit down,” he tells me as he goes and sits at his desk. “So I see the test went well?”
“I guess so.” I don’t exactly know what he wants me to say about it.
“Great, well, I do have some very good news that I think you’ll be excited about. We currently have quite a few openings in our field agent department. It seems we’re quite understaffed after the whole blood test debacle.”
I narrow my eyes. “Blood test debacle?”
Mr. Brookfield sighs, “Listen, I’m going to level with you. I want us to get along, and I want you to feel like you can trust me and trust that we’re doing what’s best for the people of this country. Do you feel like you could do that, Miss Daniels?”
I don’t really know what to say to that. I guess there’s only one correct answer, even if it’s not the truth. “I do,” I say unconvincingly.
“Good, that’s really good of you, Allira. Now, regarding those blood tests, I’ll be honest with you. We may have administered them a little prematurely. We hadn’t done enough research into it, and when the results came back, a lot of them were inconclusive. They couldn’t give us a clear reading on who was definitely Defective and who wasn’t.”
“What? But that was the whole basis of my arrest? You were the ones who told me I was Defective,” I yell, my voice raised an octave.
“Oh, yours was positive … we just couldn’t be definitive that it was an accurate result. It has been working wonders as an interrogation tactic, though. You’ll learn all about those when you agree to what we have to offer.”
Hmm, interesting that he said ‘“when” I agree. Somehow, I don’t think I’ll be given much of a choice.
“Agent Jacobs believed he had enough evidence to arrest you and label you Defective, and well, it turns out he was right. Again.”
Hmm, it looks like Drew’s ego doesn’t just annoy me.
“Although the tests ended up failing, what it did do was alert us to suspicious people we had not yet looked at. After all, what was your family’s first reaction to the news your brother was about to be found out? You were all ready and prepared to flee, and you weren’t the only ones. This is why we need you now.”
I’m dumbfounded. This whole thing was a big set up, a way to flush out the guilty, and it obviously worked. We told Shilah to run, to start over again as we have so many times in the past.
“While we’ve since sent out a press release about the tests being faulty, our list of potential suspects has doubled with the ones who attempted to run. So now, we need all the helping hands we can get. So if you’re truly as understanding of our situation as you say you are, I’ll put you down for training—yes?” He’s looking into my eyes with an almost hypnotic trance, as if he’s urging me to say yes with just his stare.
“I don’t see why not.” I try to sound chipper about it and excited like he’s expecting me to be, but I know it’s just coming out sullen and mean. I hope they’re going to train me to lie better if they expect me to be any good at this—not that I want to be good at deceiving people. I don’t want to be in this situation at all.
“It seems like a night in a comfortable bed has turned you around then. I thought you were going to fight a bit harder than that.”
“If I’m being completely honest, I don’t want to do this, but I have a feeling you’re not exactly giving me much of a choice.” Did I really just say that out loud?
“Of course, you have a choice, Miss Daniels, I just don’t understand why you’d choose life in a cell, in the dark, a life of boredom and solitude, when you can have the chance to be free.”
“Exactly, it’s not much of a choice, is it?”
“Well, I’m glad you feel that way,” he responds.
I don’t know if he misunderstood what I said or he actually is glad that I feel like doing this for them is my only choice. I truly believe it’s the only choice if I ever want to see my brother again.
“The others told me you were going to be tough, but I had a feeling I was going to like you.”
Great, I’ve made friends with the person who ordered my beatings and torture. He’s smiling at me, and he’s looking so sleazy, I’m now trying my hardest not to vomit in my mouth.
“Okay, now we have some more delicate matters to discuss. Are you going to be okay with that?”
“I guess so.”
“We need you. You see, there are still many people out there with defects that we need to find so they can get treatment here and you’ll be so—”
“I’m sorry, I have to stop you right there,” I interrupt. I can’t take another lecture on Defective people needing treatment. “I’ve heard this spiel before, I hear it every year when you make us take your tour. I’ve been here for how long now? I have not once been offered this so-called treatment. The closest I’ve come to receiving any sort of help is when I injured my foot, and it had nothing to do with my defect. I think I’ll be more cooperative when you’re more honest with me, and the truth is, you want to round up every last one of us to live out our days here with absolutely no intention of treating us for our so-called disease. Am I correct?”
“Ah, there’s the spark Agents Jacobs warned me about. You’re half right, Miss Daniels, yes, our current plan is to follow the law, which right now only consists of separating those who are Defective from those who are not. We have scientists working full time in our research department, trying to come up with a cure, and I’ll be completely honest with you, we’re not as close as we’d like, or even as close as we’ve let on to be. So until we’re successful in developing a cure, essentially yes; most Defective people live out their days within these walls, but you have the chance to have so much more than that. Our current situation isn’t ideal, but you should know from your history lessons in school, it’s better than the alternative—don’t you think?”
I hang my head sheepishly. “I agree, it’s better than the alternative.” Public executions would be worse.
“You though, you’re special. I’m offering you a chance at going back into the real world. I think you’ll be very appreciative of the fact that I’m not forcing you to be like the others. You’ll spend the next few weeks being trained to work in the field, you’ll go undercover to where suspected Defective people live, and because of the nature of your ability, you’ll be there to help out your partner agent who’ll be assigned to you later. We need to find you the perfect partner, someone who can really benefit from your amplification ability. That is, if you’re still okay with this plan?”
I think now’s the time to bring up Shilah, “I’ll agree to help you—”
“Excellent,” he interrupts.
“—If”—I continue, taking a deep breath. It’s now or never—“I can have a few things in return. I don’t have many bargaining chips, but I know how useful my ability could be.”
His face hardens, his eyes darken, and a crease in his forehead appears. “I’m not usually one to negotiate, Miss Daniels, and if you push it any further, you may just end up back
in unpleasant surroundings.”
“Well, the way I see it, Mr. Brookfield”—I try to use the same condescending tone he used on me without going over the top and pushing him over the edge—“if I don’t agree to help you, I’ll no doubt be sent back down there anyway, right? I’m not looking for a negotiation, I’m just wanting some compensation for my services. I think that’s fair, don’t you?”
“You’ll be paid all of your expenses while you’re out in the field. As I’m sure you are aware, there’s no point to giving you a wage because you’re given everything you need here.”
“Oh, I don’t mean of the money kind. I’m thinking more along the lines of my brother. I want my brother to be treated the way I was last night. I want his apartment to be close to mine, and I want to see him regularly.”
“That seems reasonable, is that all?”
“One more thing. I don’t want him to be trained to be a field agent.”
He sighs and thinks about it for a moment. “I can agree to those terms, and I can assure you, your brother has been treated with the utmost respect. We did have plans to train him up, train him to harness his ability—it would be quite useful. However, he’s either too young or too stupid because he’s not going well with the training. His ability isn’t growing at all, it’s very sporadic and random.”
I’m trying ever so hard to bite my tongue at him calling Shilah stupid, as I have a feeling he said it just to annoy me.
He continues talking when he sees I don’t react. “So we have a deal then?”
“I have one more request, a favour really,” I rush, trying to get it out. Breathe, Allira, just breathe. “I need to say goodbye to someone in The Crypt. Would it be at all possible to see him again?” I want to apologise to Tate for not being strong enough. I’m essentially selling out my own kind, even though it still feels weird for me to group myself with Defective people. I still feel like me.
“And here I was thinking you were completely heartbroken over your first boyfriend.”
Does he know everything about me?
“It’s not like that,” I say, adding “you asshole” in my mind.
“If you say so, Miss Daniels. But that’ll be fine anyway. Now that you’re with us, you’ll have the security clearance to go down there when you want.”
I’m floored. Just like that? I want to ask what else I’ll have security clearance for, but he dismisses me with a wave of his hand, and I get up to leave. I’m kind of surprised how easy that conversation went.
As I’m being led back to my room, the guilt about giving Drew such a hard time hits me like a ton of bricks. Haven’t I just agreed to do what he does? What if he only did it to protect his family? That’s what he said, wasn’t it? I’d like to think I could do it with a little more class and decency than him, but I’ve essentially agreed to do to others what has been done to me. I haven’t even started the training yet, and I’m already racked with guilt. I don’t know how I’m going to do this, but I know I have to or Shilah will. I’m protecting him—something I promised my parents a long time ago that I’ll always do.
My room is easy to find, room ninety-three—level nine, apartment three. As the elevator doors open to my floor, I see him. There, sitting at my door is the one person I’ve been wanting to see ever since I was first brought in here: my brother, Shilah.