Family (11 page)

I considered the only fortunate part of this being that headquarters would be close to abandoned when I arrived, just as it had been when I left a few minutes earlier, the people who worked there already gone for the evening. I especially didn’t want to face the thought of the people around the campus seeing me in such a state, looking like hell, my face and clothes dirty and even ripped in a couple places from my rough landing after being taken down by Eve’s net. I looked down and saw smudges of brown dotting my grey t-shirt. I couldn’t imagine what my face must look like, but I could feel some of the dusty grit on my forehead and cheek.

The route back to the headquarters building carried us past the dorms, and as Clary led the procession off the path and across the grass, I realized too late what he was doing. Bastian and Parks said nothing until we rounded one of the glassy corners of the building and I saw the boxy outline of the cafeteria and the shapes within. By then it was too late, and as I started to resist, Clary twisted my arm, urging me to go on.

“You are such an ass, Clary,” Bastian said under his breath. Parks let out a hiss of breath to agree.

We walked past the cafeteria’s massive, open glass walls, already committed to our path. Clary marched me on, my arms snugged behind my back in a prisoner-like state, my shoulders hunched and my frame bent so he could control my movement easier. I didn’t look to my right as we passed the cafeteria. I didn’t need to. It was dinnertime, and I had seen silhouettes behind the glass; people rising from their seats and coming to the window to look at me being led along by three members of M-Squad, like a felon, in front of pretty much everyone I knew.

The heat burned in my cheeks and I pushed down the tears again, this time of humiliation and rage, and I tried to quicken my pace, but Clary held me back now, and I heard a little guffaw from him as he slackened his tread to draw out my perp walk. “You having fun with this?” I asked him under my breath.

“Sienna girl, I am having as much fun as I could possibly be having. What’s the matter?” he asked with a laugh. “You not enjoying your fifteen minutes of shame?”

“No,” I said hoarsely. “No, I’m not.”

He chuckled, a sound like a wheezing heifer. “Don’t do the crime if you don’t wanna do the time.”

“Stifle it, Clary,” Parks said.

“What are you getting all up in my grill for, Parks?” Clary said with disdain. “We caught her with a woman who broke into our facility.”

“Talking, Clary,” Parks said. “And nothing else that we could prove.”

“Prove, schmove,” he said. “She’s guilty as hell.”

They marched me through the heavy glass doors of the headquarters building, into the elevator, and we rode up, Clary still affecting his rubber form, keeping my arms locked in place. I felt it every few minutes as he would subtly increase the pressure on my arms. Not so much Parks or Bastian would notice, or enough to make me cry out, but enough to cause me pain. I wanted to hurt him, but even stomping as hard as I could on the instep of his foot (the preferred remedy for dealing with someone restraining you in such a way) would produce only more pain for me.

When the elevator doors opened, I stepped out and started toward Ariadne’s office, flanked by the three of them. Her office was against outside windows. The windows that looked from the cubicle farm into her office had the blinds closed and when we reached the heavy wood door, Bastian stepped in front of me and knocked. He looked down at me from his six foot-plus height, and I caught a hesitancy that verged on remorse. He didn’t say anything, though, and after a moment a voice called from inside for us to enter, and he opened the door.

Ariadne was standing behind her desk, her dull gray suit marked contrast to the orange cast of the world outside the window behind her. It was early evening now; the sun was sinking lower in the sky and on the other side of the building to boot, so most of the grounds were shadowed, the lawn dark in the shade of headquarters. Ariadne looked at me in surprise, blinked a few times, her gaze swinging from me to Clary, who was still clutching my wrists, and thunderclouds moved in over her brows. “Clary…what the hell are you doing?”

“Ma’am,” Bastian said. “We caught up with her talking with her mother in the woods.”

“Her mother?” Ariadne asked. “Her mother was the intruder?” She looked at me in sharp disbelief.

“Yes, ma’am,” Bastian said. “Eve and Parks went after her, but she managed to get to a car and escape.”

Ariadne stood in the middle of the office, her red hair a perfect match for the light on the trees in the background. “Clary, Bastian, Parks…out.”

Clary tensed and I felt his grip tighten on my wrists. “But—”

“Out, Clary. Wait in the hall.” She said it quietly but firmly. I heard Parks and Bastian move to comply. Clary was rooted in place, though, as if his brain couldn’t quite process what he was been asked to do. “I’m not going to ask you again.”

“She could be dangerous, you know,” Clary said behind me, and I could hear the defensive heat in his voice. “What if she kills you and makes her escape out the window?”

“Then you’ll have a really fun time smearing her all over the campus,” Ariadne said, as though indifferent to the prospect.

Clary seemed to ponder this for a minute before I felt his hands release my wrists. “Oh. Huh. Yeah, that’d be fun.” His heavy footfalls cut a path out the door behind me.

“You want me to leave, too?” I heard a voice behind me and turned my head to see Reed in the corner, leaning against the wall, looking pretty dapper for a guy who’d been out of it when last I’d seen him. He was wearing a black suit and his dark hair was up in a ponytail, a splash of color from his collared dress shirt, which was pink. It actually looked good on him.

“You can stay,” Ariadne said, remaining standing. I realized, not for the first time, that Ariadne was taller than me. She never really felt that way, though, for some reason. She stared at me, and I stared back, and neither of us said anything.

“Well, gosh,” Reed said, “with this being such a great, not-at-all-awkward moment, that’s an awfully enticing offer, but why don’t I just go ahead and mingle with metal head and the M-Rejects while you two hash out whatever dramatic tension you’ve got.” He slipped behind me and opened the door, shutting it behind him.

I stood there, bedraggled, haggard, a torrent of emotions still buried. I didn’t want any of them bleeding out now, or in the presence of any other person, come to it. “Sit down,” Ariadne said, gesturing to the chairs in front of her desk.

“I don’t think I’ll be doing your upholstery any favors,” I said, massaging my wrists where Clary had twisted and clamped on them. They ached, but they were the least of my problems. I tasted blood in my mouth and a pain on my tongue told me I’d bitten it when I hit the ground, though I hadn’t noticed at the time. I was sticky from old sweat and my jaw hurt, along with the rest of my body, a half-dozen aches reminding me that Eve hadn’t been gentle with her application of the net. I guess I hadn’t earned much goodwill with her, though, if I thought about it.

“Sit,” she said, and this time it was quiet, no order, just a gentle invitation, absolutely at odds with what I thought I’d get from her.

I sat, lowering myself into the faux black leather. I felt it hit my back awkwardly, as though it was forcing me into better posture than I wanted to adopt at the moment, making me sit upright when I wanted to slouch and play wounded, wanted to keep out of eye contact so she couldn’t delve into me and see how hurt I was by everything that had occurred.

“What happened?” she asked me, taking her own seat and causing her chair to squeak at the wheels as she slid it to move closer to the desk.

I pursed my lips. “I got done with my meeting with Mormont and went to the woods for a few minutes to just…” I paused, trying to find a way to cover what I really wanted to say, which was to be alone and cry where I hoped no one would see or hear me. “…try and gather my thoughts. My mom said she saw me walking across the campus.”

“What did she say to you?” Ariadne’s eyes were rimmed with concern, and I couldn’t tell in my present state whether it was real or not. My bullshit detector was broken, along with the rest of my emotions.

“She asked me where Andromeda was. I told her.” I thought again of Andromeda, who had saved my life, and how I couldn’t do the same for her. I wished I had taken the bullet and not her. “I asked her about Kat and she evaded.” I felt a shudder as I thought about how Mom had treated me when she wanted to restrain me. “She ripped me a new one about being lax in my habits. Same old story.” There was a gap of silence after that, and I didn’t want to break it, so I stayed as stoic as I could, even as I turned over the insults my mom had hit me with in the few minutes I had talked with her.

“Michael Mormont gave me his recommendations of what we should do with you while he continues his investigation,” Ariadne said, breaking the silence. She had her fingers palm down on the desk, and stretched out in front of her on the black surface.

“Draw and quarter me?” I suggested. “A public flaying? Whipped naked through the campus at noontime?”

“He recommends we take you into custody,” she said softly, and I didn’t react. I didn’t know if I had it in me to even try to run, assuming I had anywhere to go other than my house, where they would surely catch me in less than an hour. “But I want you to know,” she said, catching my attention even as I felt my body slacken, as though I could slide out of the chair like the emotional jelly that I was by this point, “that the Director and I have discussed it, and we’ve discarded his recommendation. We don’t believe you’re the traitor.”

I felt a slight warmth, amazement, and felt a choked sensation in my throat. “But…what about all the things that have gone wrong…James…and I mean…what I did…”

“Mistakes,” she said, soft again, “not malicious.” She pursed her lips. “But we trusted the three of you to get the job done when we sent you on assignment, one that ended up evolving into something of vital importance at a time when we’re under more pressure than ever before, and we find you’ve been drinking on the job and…taking random men back to your hotel room who turn out to be spies for our enemy.” She said it softly, like everything else, and it wounded me even worse. “Do you have anything to say for yourself?”

I coughed, fake. I needed to clear my throat. “I don’t have anything that doesn’t sound in my head like an excuse.”

“I’m disappointed,” Ariadne said. “I guess I’d come to expect more out of you than this.”

“You didn’t even want me to go on this assignment,” I said quietly. “Remember? You were still holding a grudge from when I took Eve out of the air with a rock.”

“I wasn’t holding a grudge,” she said. “Scott is immature and acts like it. Kat’s a sweetheart, and she’ll go along with whatever he says because they’re attached at the…” She blushed. “…because they’re attached. But you,” she said, and leaned forward, fingers interlaced, “you always marched to your own tune. Since the day you got here, you’ve consistently been one of the strongest metas not only in power, but in personality, weathering adversity I couldn’t imagine.” I could see by the look on her face she was telling the truth. “You never let it weigh you down, and you never followed anyone’s orders if you didn’t want to do something. You’d let the whole Directorate hate you before you caved on doing something you didn’t believe was right. Remember Gavrikov?” She stared at me. “So I sent
that
girl out on an assignment, and when she didn’t show up, I guess it surprised me.”

“I can do better,” I said. “I’m sorry.”

“I know you can,” she said sadly. “And I hope you get a chance to prove it. I know you hate me, but the Director and I have invested a lot of faith in you. I just hope it pays dividends at some point.” She looked down. “But right now it’s not looking too good.”

I started to respond, I did. I wanted to say something about how bad I’d screwed up, about how much my judgment had been off, and how I really didn’t hate her. But I waited a moment too long and there was a knock at the door. “Come in,” Ariadne said, and the door opened to show a small, geeky guy with glasses and kind of a bowl-shaped haircut that reminded me of pictures I’d seen of the Beatles. He was wearing hipster glasses, which I hate. Unkempt, a ragged overshirt with holes in it covering a t-shirt underneath with the name of some band on it I doubted anyone had heard of.

“J.J,” she said with a nod. “Progress?”

“Big time,” he said with a smile, and stepped into the office.

“Just a second,” she said, and looked out the door behind him. “Reed, you can come back in now.”

Reed appeared at the door, sliding into the room unmussed and without a word. He resumed his place in the corner and I watched a cell phone slip into his pocket from one of his hands. He really did look good in the suit, but his persona was off somehow; I realized after a moment his expression was guarded, more closed than I’d ever seen before from him.

J.J., as Ariadne had called him, sat in the seat next to me, a tablet computer in his hands. Tufts of cat hair streaked his dark blue skinny jeans. “So, the basics of what they did here were a deeper encryption than just relying on the normal OS security protocols—”

“J.J.,” Ariadne said, “I don’t care about that. What did you find on the computer?”

“Wait,” I said. “Is this about the laptop I recovered from the Omega safehouse?”

“Right,” the hipster geek said with a nod. “I’ve made sure it was clear of spyware, tied it into the network, and backed the contents of the hard drive up onto our servers so you can access it from your computer.” He waved to the laptop on the work hutch behind her. “But here’s the gist: a list of U.S. Assets for Omega – though they don’t quite call themselves that on their internal docs,” he said. “It’s kinda vague, but I got some analysts sifting through it now. Looks like street addresses for safehouses, facilities, the works. Some names of employees.”

“Anything in the immediate area?” She looked at him and his gaze popped up from the tablet computer.

“A guy here in Minneapolis,” J.J. replied. “James Fries? Looks like they’re paying for him to live the high life; he’s got a condo in downtown.”