We had given her a big fluffy blanket and a couch cushion (with no zippers on the upholstery) so she could make a small nest on the floor—Ms. Dale had warned us about the many dangerous uses of sheets. She’d also been very upset that we’d even given her something besides bare floor to keep herself warm, but I’d been adamant about it. We weren’t animals, and wouldn’t treat our prisoners as such. Cruelty in itself had never been justice. That was what separated us from people like Desmond.
The windows had been boarded up from the outside, and I had personally knocked out every pane of glass and removed any shards. I did not want her to have any shot at finding a weapon. I couldn’t risk anyone here, especially given how much I knew everyone wanted her dead.
I did too, and that was what made me hesitate. As a warden, I was used to doing things a certain way—a legal procedure, a trial, some impartial witnesses—even in the continually biased environment that was Patrus. This was all uncharted territory to me, and in reality, executions as a whole didn’t sit right with me, especially when it came to women. It may have sounded weird, but it only made me think of my late wife, and how she had suffered in the hands of a justice system working against her. We were a group of people basically enacting vigilante justice, and I didn’t want to make the decision until we had to—though that time was rapidly approaching.
At first, our route had seemed so clear to me: we would take Desmond, question her, and finally figure out all of the plans she and Elena had discussed and put into place. All that knowledge would become the lynchpin, and we could finally attack head on, unraveling the thread of their plans, making everything fall apart.
These were all woefully naïve thoughts. They had been from the start. Even from my vantage point at the door, I could see the intelligence glimmering in Desmond’s eyes. The calculations, the strategizing. Everything her eyes touched seemed to be undergoing an intense analysis.
“Come in if you’re coming in,” she said, shifting her hands under her hips and lifting herself into more of a sitting position. As she moved, the chains that connected her wrist and foot cuffs clinked against each other. Her left shin was encased in a bulky white cast, making the task of moving slightly harder for her, but she managed.
Ms. Dale stepped into the room first, her eyes taking in the surroundings as if she were seeing the room for the first time. Desmond watched her former protégé, a small, secret smile playing on her lips. “Not that I’m sure where I am, Melissa, but my congratulations on making this slap-dash of a prison so boring.”
“Well, you know us, Des,” Ms. Dale replied, coming around to face her. “We do so love accommodating you.”
Desmond chuckled, her eyes flicking to me. “Well, considering that I’m still in one piece and Mr. Croft isn’t throttling me, I guess that means I didn’t kill Violet. Bulletproof vest?”
I took a step down into the room, letting the door close behind me. “Maybe you missed.”
Her smile deepened knowingly. “Or that,” she amended dismissively. “So, we’ve moved out of the triage part of our little melodrama. Is this when the torture starts? I’m curious to see what the so-called good guys have planned for little old me.”
“No torture, Desmond,” Ms. Dale said flatly. “We’ve come to inform you that we’ll be executing you tomorrow.”
If Desmond was surprised by this, she didn’t show it. Instead, she pursed her lips thoughtfully, her hands flexing in her cuffs. “Oh my. So you’ve gotten tired of chasing the boys all around the countries, then?” She met my gaze, and I felt a flash of hate so strong it left me balling my hands into tight fists, the still healing scabs on my knuckles threatening to rip open. “I’m getting rather bored with them myself. I’m glad you all are getting the right idea.”
I couldn’t respond through the surge of fury that ripped through my body at the thought of abandoning the boys to their fate. I took a breath, searching for a way to turn this to my advantage. Ms. Dale stepped in, her training allowing her to maintain more cool than I was able to—but barely.
“You don’t think we really believe that tripe that you tried to feed us?” she said sharply. “There’s no way Elena would allow you to kill a bunch of her precious experiments just out of spite. She doesn’t believe in emotions. The whole concept is ridiculous. I expected better from you, in fact.”
“But it worked, didn’t it?” Desmond said, the corners of her mouth turning up just slightly.
“Not for very much longer,” Ms. Dale said, although the pause after Desmond made the remark was a little too long. “But we’ve made up our minds. Your days are numbered. The number is very short.”
“So where am I to die? Here in this room, or shall we go for a lovely stroll in the forest?”
“Forest. We don’t want to expose the children to that level of violence.” Ms. Dale gave Desmond a tight smile. “We had a sort of compromise—Viggo didn’t want to execute you, but he was outvoted. Then when it came down to timing, there was a bit of an argument, hence the compromise.” As she spoke, Ms. Dale paced the room slowly, her arms crossed under her chest. “Basically… you get a final request, within reason.”
Desmond looked at each of us in turn, and then gave a surprised laugh. “Dear God, is that the best you can do? This… little sashay around the room with a hokey story about how you all agreed to execute me… Please. You are too soft to do something like that. You can’t even muster the practicality to sacrifice a few orphans.”
I emitted a bitter laugh. “I can’t believe that I spent forty-five minutes in a meeting arguing to keep you alive, even though I know you are never going to provide any information to us.”
My retort caught her off balance, and she considered me with a long smile. “It’s a pity you didn’t consult me before you voted. I could’ve helped your argument immensely. But I suppose, since you’re so set on executing me, it doesn’t matter now.”
I ignored the hook she was trying to set, and took a step forward, changing tact. “Aren’t you tired of all this? All this fighting and killing people? I know I am, and I’m half your age.”
“Closer to a third, actually,” Desmond corrected me primly, her fingers coming up, jangling the chain through the gray and white hair hanging in curls around her face. With her hair down, she looked less severe and more elderly. Frail and fragile. I noticed the translucency of her skin, how the tips of her fingers were slanted down, likely from arthritis. Like this, she appeared almost… soft.
She met my gaze, a sardonic smile playing on her lips. “As for my request, where’s my son?”
I already had my answer for that. “You’re not going to see him.”
“Is that his decision, or yours?” The question was delivered casually, but it packed a solid blow. I hadn’t had a chance to ask Jay what he wanted—I had just made the decision. “That’s what I thought,” Desmond whispered, her lips curling up and around into a circle as her smile grew. “You know the difference between you and me, Mr. Croft? At least my soldiers know that I’m going to be making all decisions on their behalf, with their lives, before I go off and do it.”
“That doesn’t make it right,” I snapped back.
“Winning makes it right.” Desmond rested her shoulders back into her pillow. “And, by the Mother, I will make sure that I take everything away from you, starting with those boys, and ending with Violet. And if dying is what it takes to do it, I accept that price gladly.”
The hatred was back, thick and acrid on my tongue, as I thought of the way Desmond had fired at Violet, and how Violet had dropped, lifeless, to the ground. For Desmond, it had been as simple as breathing, but to me… In that moment, I’d thought she had robbed me of any last hope I had for the future. The despair alone had threatened to crush me—I couldn’t bear losing Violet. Not now, not ever.
Ms. Dale noticed my rising temper and stepped in between us, blocking my view of Desmond. I moved around her as she spoke, but also took a step back, cautious enough not to get too close t
o her. “You’ve given us your request. We’re done here.”
She turned and pressed a hand to my chest, sternly mouthing the word ‘go.’ I robotically moved back a few steps, and then turned, gaining control of myself. I left the room, Ms. Dale hot on my heels. I watched as she locked the door, then hid the keychain in the next room—with our team coming and going, we needed an accessible place to keep it.
The hatred that had cloyed my chest a moment ago had started to dissipate, my anger draining away bits at a time. I had never felt so out of control in an interrogation room, but then again, I had never had the chance to interrogate Desmond. “I’m sorry,” I said roughly. “I thought I could handle that better, but—”
“It’s Desmond,” Ms. Dale said, her voice bitter. “You’re not the only one who can feel her like something greasy on the skin. She’s an expert at this, so it’s going to take a while to break her.”
“That last part… she didn’t sound like she was lying,” I said, hating that I even had to entertain that thought.
Ms. Dale scowled, flipping her braid over her shoulder. “Well, at least we haven’t taken any steps backward. Viggo, the two best ways of breaking someone are through fear or guilt. We tried fear, but Desmond is old. She doesn’t have much left to fear. She’ll lie through her teeth to save her life, but it doesn’t help us much if we have no cross-references. Maybe we should try guilt, see if we can’t shake something loose.”
I frowned. “You want to use Jay?” I did not like that idea at all.
“Ask, yes. Use, no. But… she did ask for him.”
“Please. She was just doing that as a mind game, trying to throw you off balance. We shouldn’t ask Jay if he would be okay with…”
Ms. Dale shot me a warning glance and then nodded to a place just past my range of vision. Turning, I paused when I saw Jay standing there, his arms full of split wood, staring at both of us. His dark hair clung wetly to his forehead, his cheeks stained red from exertion. “Shouldn’t ask Jay if he’d be okay with what?” he asked, bending over to deposit the wood into the pile next to the hearth. The bits of wood clattered as they hit the stone floor. It was the only sound in a room gone silent.
I licked my lips, suddenly nervous. This wasn’t an easy thing to talk to anyone about, but especially not the son of our prisoner, a boy she had personally sacrificed to Mr. Jenks’ terrible experimentations.
“Do you want me to—”
“No,” I said, cutting Ms. Dale off. Jay dusted off his hands, watching the two of us, and then shook his head.
“You were in with my mom,” he said after a pause. “Trying to ask her questions?”
“Kind of,” I hedged. “She… um… She asked about you.”
Jay didn’t say anything, didn’t even move, for a long time, his eyes drifting toward the door separating them. “She wants to see me?” Even after all she had done to him, there was no denying the slim sliver of hope amid the naked pain that his neutral voice didn’t begin to mask.
I moved over to him, unable to stop myself. “You don’t have to see her,” I told him. “Not if you don’t want to.” Dropping an arm over his shoulder, I tugged him a little closer to me, relieved that he let me, but still worried by the tension radiating from his frame.
“She knows things,” he said hollowly. “Things that would help us.”
“She does,” announced Ms. Dale. “But Viggo is right. You don’t have to see her. In fact, it’s probably better that you don’t.”
“Why?” Jay cocked his head, his gaze on the door finally breaking as he regarded Ms. Dale.
Ms. Dale hesitated, and then reached out and took his hand. “You know, for a second, I honestly wanted to convince you to do it. But after thinking about it, I realized that no information is worth you being hurt for. And that’s all Desmond would do—she’d try to hurt you.”
Jay considered this. “When I was little, before… before the facility… she used to be away for long periods of time. I never knew where she was or what she was doing. But… I always knew when she got home. It was usually late at night, but the first thing she would do was come in and check on us. It would always wake me up, and I would get so excited she would climb into bed with me to keep me from waking Lee. She’d hold me and tell me stories…” His voice cracked, and he looked down, tears dripping down his face. Even though he was a young man, he looked very much like a small boy in that moment—hurt and lost. It made my soul hurt, seeing him that way. “How can I talk to her, when she isn’t even the same mother I remember? What if all that was a lie and… and she never really loved me? I couldn’t even believe her if she told me that those moments were just as special to her as they were to me… because… because…”
“Because if they were, then her putting you into the facility would make you hurt even more,” I supplied softly.
He sniffed, tears rolling down his cheeks in big fat drops. His shoulders shuddered slightly, and I took a step forward, wrapping an arm around him and holding him tight. “You only have to see her if you want to,” I told him as he bit back a tiny sob. “No one is going to judge you for not wanting to. Not one bit. We all love you, Jay, and we just want to make sure you’re okay, no matter what you decide, okay?”
Jay nodded stiffly and stepped back, scrubbing his face with the sleeve of his dark green sweater. He began to move, but I held on to him. “If you need to talk, we’re always here for you.”
Jay sighed, his shoulders heaving under my hand. “I know that, Viggo—I do. You, Tim, and Violet are like family.” He paused and looked over my shoulder, shifting awkwardly. “You too, Ms. Dale.”
She chuckled knowingly. “You won’t hurt my feelings if you don’t want to make me your battle ax of an aunt, Jay. What’s important is that you feel safe, and happy.”
He nodded again, wiping his nose. “Thanks. I, uh, I’d like to go. I kinda want to be alone… so I can think.”
I nodded. “Of course.”
With that, Jay turned and fled from the room as if Desmond herself were chasing him. Watching him go, I felt my heart ache in response to his pain. He’d find someone to talk to about it—Tim, Violet, Quinn. He wasn’t alone, and we wouldn’t let him be.
That was what family was for, after all.
14
Violet
“Look, we need to have a plan together before we talk to these rebels,” said Ms. Dale, her cheeks flushed. “If we present them with two different ideas, then we’ll only be sending mixed messages.” I suppressed a smile. The argument had been going on for the better part of fifteen minutes, and I could tell Ms. Dale was not going to give up.
Then again, judging from Viggo’s body language, neither was he. “I understand that, but we cannot overlook the water treatment plant! There is something going on there. Elena wouldn’t leave the city alone for this long without having something up her sleeve.”
Across the table, Amber met my eyes, an impish sparkle in her own. She held her mouth in a slight pucker, giving her a vaguely fish-like appearance, and then began puffing out her chest. I hid my smile behind my hand, recognizing the joke for what it was—Ms. Dale had a habit of sucking in her breath before going on a particularly long tirade, and Amber had pulled it off perfectly.
Ms. Dale didn’t break Viggo’s eye contact, but she snapped her arm out in front of Amber’s face, wagging a finger in warning, and I hid my smile again as Amber made a comical face of alarm, her mouth turned downward in exaggerated mortification.
I sank down in my seat, trying not to laugh as Ms. Dale began sucking in her breath to respond. Laughing in the middle of a heated debate between Ms. Dale and Viggo would only result in instant attention, and I wanted to remain out of this fight. It had become circular at this point, and frankly, it was beginning to grate.
I understood both sides well enough to know this was a difficult choice to make. Viggo wanted to commit all of our resources to the water treatment plant, just in case something was going on there. Ms. Dale wante
d to commit them to eliminating all the Matrian forces keeping the citizens inside from leaving, as well as the contingent stationed on the bridge. Both arguments had valid points, with one big exception—since the interrogation of Desmond had gotten us absolutely nowhere, there was no evidence anything untoward was going on in the plant. Viggo was working purely from conjecture at this point.
Still, in my mind, he was right. The Matrians holing up in there was too odd an occurrence for us not to take it seriously. I understood that the math supported Ms. Dale’s plan, but it seemed like we were forgetting one important thing: Elena would stop at nothing to get what she wanted.
“All right,” I said loudly, rudely butting in during Viggo’s rebuttal. “Let’s stop arguing and think this through rationally.”
Viggo bit off a growl and Ms. Dale gave me an irritated glance, but they both sat down. I shared a crooked smile with Amber and then looked at Thomas, asking the strategist, “How—in the simplest terms possible—does the plant work?”
“It’s quite simple. Water is pumped up through an underwater spring, and then processed for purification. It spends several days in the ponds out back, so the ultraviolet radiation from the sun can kill some of the bacteria that came up from the recesses of the earth. Then the water is pumped in through the first initial filter—but this one is only designed to keep out larger bits of sediment. The water is moved inside to the massive vats, boiled, and then processed through a pipe system that has more fail-safes than a bank. The result is clean water.”
“All right. So, could Elena get enough access to the system to dump something in there? Like a toxin or poison or something?”
Thomas looked up, his eyes shifting back and forth behind his glasses. I liked to think of it as his thinking face, and I could imagine all the vast calculations he was doing as floating numbers scrolled before his eyes. After a moment, he nodded. “In most of the scenarios, I theorized that the water treatment system could be overcome if the mechanical, electrical, and technological backups were simultaneously taken down. But the timing on this would have to be flawless. In addition to that, parts of the system would have to be reprogrammed to be allowed access to the recycled water. King Julian—King Maxen’s grandfather—was paranoid about keeping the water as tamper-proof as possible, and he managed to create quite a fascinating puzzle.”