A Place Where There Is No Darkness

Six

The rest of the ride went by in an awkward silence, but none of us seemed to care enough to try and speak again. I looked out of the window, trying to find interesting shapes behind the tinted glass, just so that I wouldn’t have to look at anyone.

The high buildings and busy streets gave way to smaller towns and eventually to green lawns and bulky forests. I watched the countryside speed by with respect, wishing instantly that I could lie on the soft grass, breathe in the fresh air and relax, forget all my worries and sleep peacefully for a while. It had been ages since I’d last had the privilege to do that. There was a bone-deep weariness in my muscles and my head, one that doesn’t go away with a one night’s sleep but would rather need a lifetime of peace to vanish completely.

On and on we went and at some point, Mitchell turned to me again. I didn’t see it, but I heard his expensive shirt rustle behind me. Besides, I could feel his glare on my back clearly enough.

I didn’t say anything.

For a while, he didn’t either. I wasn’t sure what he was thinking or doing.

Then he said, “I’m going to have to bind your eyes.”

Seriously, I wanted to scream and shout then, but I was way too tired and besides, I knew nothing good could ever come from being rude to the people that had your life in their hands. I’d learned that the easy and the hard way, and more than once. I had to get my game face on, start playing my cards right, get over this, save Willy. Only then could I relax.

So I only sighed. “Do it, then.”

I sat still while Mitchell placed a blindfold over my eyes and carelessly bound it behind my head, weaving a few strands of my hair into his work so that my skin was stinging bluntly by the time he was finished.

“All done,” he said, probably speaking to the driver. “We’re good.”

The next part of the drive was boring to say the least, and so I let my thoughts roam. I was good at letting my mind off its reigns and still keeping it away from the important things, but this time, it kept looping back to Willy, Willy, Willy. Willy as a baby, Willy sleeping peacefully, Willy the last time I saw him. They were pleasant thoughts, but given the situation, they hurt, which was why I was ecstatic when I felt the car slow down and then heard the engines turn off.

“Are we here?” I asked, trying to sound bored and collected. Whether I succeeded remained unclear.

“We are,” Mitchell retorted calmly. “Don’t take off the blindfold and follow me.”

“How am I supposed to do that?” I protested.

“Oh, you’ll manage.”

And I did. I followed the sound of his steps and sometimes a hand – probably Mitchell’s, since he was the only one I could hear near me – shot out and pulled me in the right direction.

The ground changed from gravel to stone to something else, smoother and cleaner, and I knew we were in the building. We took many turns – much too many for it to be the most direct route to anywhere. I knew that. At first, I tried to keep up and count our steps, but I soon found myself hopelessly lost. Which was, of course, exactly what Mitchell was aiming for.

Finally, after what felt like an eternity, we stopped. My ears were immediately assaulted by a myriad of noises – someone washing their hands here, someone else sipping their coffee there, someone conversing quietly, their voices drowned out by someone conversing not-so-quietly, someone toying with paper, other sounds I didn’t have the time to identify. Before I could make anything of it, or even gather my thoughts, Mitchell pulled the blindfold away and I stared.

We were standing on a railing, looking down on a huge room. The ceiling was high enough for five or six grown men to be stacked on top of each other and still have room left to breathe. There were hundreds of desks, thousands of computers, tablets, phones. There was a kitchenette on one side – huh, funny how that was one of the first things I noticed – and there was a huge screen that covered the whole opposite wall. There were chairs moving around, papers flying, pens passing from hand to hand.

And then there were the people. They buzzed around like in a huge, disorganised beehive. There was no apparent order behind their actions, but it was obvious everyone knew exactly what they were doing and why. This man shouted over to that woman and drowned out that girl’s reply to that other woman, but they only glanced at each other, smiled, and repeated whatever words hadn’t reached their destination. The room itself seemed alive with so much activity.

I let my eyes roam over the people last, taking in as much of their faces as I possibly could. I stopped short when my gaze swept over a young man in his late twenties. I looked him up and down, took in his suit, his tie, his shoes. He had dark hair, curly, and a wicked smile to go with his witty eyes.

Last time I’d seen him, he’d been dressed a bit differently. More shaggy, less expensive. But he was doubtlessly the same guy. What were the chances?

I was hoping I could get away without him noticing me – in a room this full such hopes didn’t seem too ludicrous –, but as soon as my eyes landed on him, he turned around and locked gazes with me. He seemed just as surprised as I felt and immediately changed course, heading towards me.

Since it was at that exact moment that Mitchell decided to descend the stairs as well, we met awkwardly somewhere in the middle, standing on the steps uncomfortably.

“Wow,” the twenty-something guy said. His name was Frank, I remembered. Well, not his real name, of course, but the one he’d offered me, anyway.

At a loss for words, I only nodded.

“So you’re the criminal that’s helping us with the Elite,” the agent said matter-of-factly and shook his head. “I haven’t seen this coming. Though I probably should have.”

I smiled. “You should.”

“What’s going on?” Mitchell demanded next to me and Frank whipped around, as if noticing him for the first time. He cleared his throat.

“Uh, well, this is the girl that saved my life.”

“Hey!” I griped. “I told you not to tell anyone!”

“I’m sorry. Sorry. I just told a few people. Really. Like three or four. My boss. My wife.”

“And Mitchell.”

Frank smiled. “Yes. Right. Mitchell.”

I rolled my eyes. I didn’t know Frank very well, but it was still nice to see at least one familiar face in this strange, foreign world. I’d met the man back when I was still working for the Elite. He’d been an FBI agent, undercover, and he had got surprisingly far. He’d come into the inner circle and thus very close to actually cracking the case and putting some people – including me – behind bars. But things went south, he was made and I was tasked with killing him. I’d avoided that, told him to go home and never to speak of the incident again. Of course, I knew the Elite would find out either way, and they did, and after that they didn’t trust me all that much anymore. Maybe it was part of the reason Orwell had deemed me fit for sacrifice in the end.

“So, how’ve you been?” the man asked.

“In prison.”

“s**t, I’m sorry. I’m only putting things together now. If I had known …”

“Nothing you could have done.”

“Well, of course.” He sighed. “What were you in for?”

I was about to answer, but Mitchell picked that moment to chime in, obviously trying to restore his role as the person in charge. “Double homicide.”

Frank arched his brows and looked at me, apprehensive. “Did you do it?”

I shrugged. “I neither confirm nor deny it.”

“Of course she did it,” Mitchell offered his two cents. “Otherwise she wouldn’t have gone to prison. There was compelling evidence.”

Frank shook his head. “You don’t know the Elite, man. Not like me and certainly not like her.” He bobbed his head in my direction. “Maybe you shouldn’t jump to any conclusions just yet.”

Mitchell frowned but didn’t say a word. I smiled up at Frank, surprised to feel actual gratitude towards him. The emotion was so unfamiliar and distant that I didn’t even know what it was at first. But to finally have someone on my side again, someone who didn’t judge and actually seemed to like me, was almost more than I could handle.

Although, to be fair, I had saved his life, so it was really the least he could do.

“Well, I have to get back to work, but it was very nice seeing you again,” Frank said. He smiled generously. “If you need anything, my desk is right there on the far left, third one down. You just say the word. I’m happy I’ll be working with you on this one.”

“You will?”

“Sure. Excluding you, I’m probably the one who knows most about the Elite in this room. Unlike some of these newbies here.” He nodded not-so-subtly in Mitchell’s direction and winked. I grinned.

“Okay, I have to go. We’ll be seeing each other.”

He shook my hand, clapped Mitchell on the back and walked off.

The younger agent looked a bit grumpy, probably because his inexperience had been referred to again – and not even by me. He retreated into his own head and walked slowly down the rest of the steps, leading me right through the bustle of the room. Someone bumped into me and then had the audacity to look offended, someone else almost spilled their coffee all over my clothes – which were still a wild, ugly orange, as I realised, covered only with the long, black cloak still draped around my shoulders. I put asking for a new batch of clothes on my to-do list.

We reached an office and Mitchell put a hand on the door handle. But we didn’t enter. He turned towards me, his hand still outstretched, and fixed me with a fierce glare.

“Listen, just because you saved my best friend’s life does not make us friends,” he whispered heatedly.

Best friends? Well, that came as a surprise. Seriously, what were the chances of this, me ending up here, with the person I’d saved and their friend as my – what? – superior? Like, one in a million? A billion? I smiled sweetly. “I wouldn’t dream of it.”

Mitchell nodded and pushed the handle down. And we entered.

***

The man in the chair looked serious and dull. The conversation ahead promised to be even more so. He looked up from his work, nodded at us and gestured for us to sit down.

“I understand you are going to help us take down the Elite?” was the first thing out of his mouth. No hello, no nice to meet you. Fine by me. I could play that game.

“If by take down the Elite you mean save my brother, then yes, you understand correctly.”

He leaned forward, arms resting on his desk and fingers intertwined. If he was trying to look more serious, he needn’t have bothered. “You see, we have to agree on a common goal here. If I’m to give my agents for this, saving your brother isn’t enough. But if we bring down the whole organisation, you should get him back anyway.”

“I guess.”

“Good.” He nodded and tried to smile, which didn’t go half as badly as I would have expected. He actually looked kinder from one moment to the next. More approachable, less cold. “Because we have to be on the same page with this. We all have to follow a plan. The same one. Otherwise it doesn’t work.”

I shrugged. “I’m okay with that, but let me just tell you this up front: if at any given moment I have to choose between your plan and my brother, I choose my brother, hands down. Just so you know.”

He thought about it for three and a half seconds, then nodded. “Fair enough.” And with that, this part of the conversation was finished. He looked down to his papers, flipped a page, wrote something down and then faced me again.

“Now, where are you supposed to meet the Elite?”

“In front of the prison. They said that the exact location would be forwarded to me, so I expect to be told there.”

“Good.” The senior agent nodded and wrote something else down. “And we have twelve days left to come up with a plan, correct?”

I shook my head. “Eleven days, eighteen hours and forty-nine minutes.”

He looked surprised. “You know your time, don’t you.”

I shrugged again. “I have a head for numbers.”

“That’s a neat trick. Good, now that we’ve got the boring things out of the way, let’s talk strategy. Have any ideas on how you want to pursue this?”

At once apprehensive and delighted to be asked about my opinion, I smiled. “I go in, do what they say, get Willy out.”

“That sounds simple. And not really thought through.”

“Well, I haven’t had a lot of time to think it through,” I countered.

“But more importantly, it lacks an essential point.” He looked at me meaningfully.

“Which would be what, exactly?”

“I thought we talked about this,” he grumbled.

I was getting angrier, too. Just what exactly did they expect from me? A single person wasn’t going to make the Elite crumble, that was for sure.

“Oh, right, I have to take them down, too. Sorry, unimportant details like that tend to slip my mind,” I groused right back. “What would you have me do, then? Nothing too dangerous, I hope?”

He had the nerve to chuckle. “Wouldn’t you consider everything concerning the Elite dangerous?” he challenged.

“I would, but you don’t seem to have got that memo.”

That, of course, was Mitchell’s cue to step in. “Don’t talk like that to–“

But the older man put up a hand and Mitchell shut up instantly. It was like an off-switch. I found myself instantly interested in learning that trick.

“You do understand that we need a more elaborate plan than that, right? One that isn’t destined to fail right from the beginning?”

I raised a brow, calmer and more in control of the situation than only seconds before. “Are you saying my plans are bad?”

He shook his head. “Of course not. Just suggesting that they need a little more work.” He smiled again, looking annoyingly pleasant. “The first thing we need is a way for you to get information to us. The Elite is probably overly careful, so bugs and mikes are definitely out of the question. Brainstorm on that a little until tomorrow.”

I nodded, unexpectedly eager to be included in the process of forming the plan.

“Also, I’m sending someone in with you.”

“Excuse me?”

“Yeah, I think Mitchell here will do fine.”

For a few seconds, I was speechless. I looked frantically from Mitchell to the older agent and back, hoping against hope that someone would object or start laughing and tell me it had been a joke. When that didn’t happen, I struggled to get my words back where they belonged, which was in my mouth.

“But … I mean, I don’t think that’ll work. They’re already suspicious of me, I can’t just bring someone new along.”

“Brainstorm that, too.”

“But–“

He sighed, looked up from his papers and directly at me again. “Look, I need someone with you. Really, this is non-negotiable. Someone has to protect you and also–“

“Keep an eye on me. I get it.”

He sighed again. “I’m sorry, but officially you are still a criminal. We have to do this my way.”

I threw a sidelong look towards Mitchell. “Do you think he’s up for it, though?” I questioned wickedly. “Not a bit too green around the ears?”

The young agent’s cheeks got red and he turned his fuming gaze on me. “How dare you–“

“Stand down, son,” said the older man. He, of course, knew precisely what I was playing at and faced me head on. “I trust agent Mitchell with this. That is going to have to be reason enough for you to trust him, too.”

I rolled my eyes. “He’s going to have to get his temper under control, though.”

Mitchell wanted to throw something back, but the other agent once again raised his silencing hand. “There’s nothing wrong with his temper. You, on the other hand” – and at this he smiled almost delightedly, as if he was indeed impressed with some part of my character – “you’re just nasty. Now get out of my office, both of you. I still have some work to do, you know.”

When I stood up and left, I couldn’t help but wonder what I’d gotten myself into and if maybe, for once, I was in too deep to get back out alive.