On one wall: screens. Nearly identical to the wall a floor above, in the surveillance room that at that very moment Luca Reyes sat in. The difference was that here, in this black room, this secret room, there were a few more screens than Luca was privy to.
On one such screen was an image of Luca himself—his tall, lean body reclining in a chair, his dark hair splayed haphazardly over his eyes, his mouth set in a firm, determined line. It could be almost hypnotic at times, that line. That mouth. The face it was set into.
On another wall: a door, the only way in or out of the room, and in front of the door a canvas divider that stood nearly from floor to ceiling, shielding the rest of the room from the vantage of one standing in the doorway.
And in the middle of the room: a desk, large and wooden and ornate. Too large for a room that size, one might argue, but then one wouldn’t understand the value of a quality desk when one spends one’s whole life behind said desk.
Atop the large wooden ornate desk were few items, all things considered. A small stack of papers, files. A lethally sharp letter opener. A lamp that was heavier than it looked.
Behind the desk sat a person dressed in all black—black blazer over black collared shirt, with black trousers hemmed around the ankles and black socked-feet tucked into shiny black loafers.
The person in black had eyes trained on the wall of screens. Well, not the whole wall. That would be ridiculous. One particular screen.
The screen showed a small boy with dark hair and blue eyes—though you couldn’t make out the specific shade of his eyes through the camera feed.
He wasn’t doing anything, really. Sitting on a narrow gray bed in a narrow gray room. His room, the person in black knew.
He had been sitting there for a little over an hour now. This might not have been perceived as unusual, if the person in black hadn’t known where the boy should have been instead.
And where he had been an hour before.
Luckily for that boy, he had a guardian angel looking out for him.
And unluckily for the guardian angel, the person in black was also watching.
The person in black observed the small boy for a while longer, wondering idly what might happen next.
For the first time in a long time, the person in black did not know.
Chapter Seven
Another long night, nearly over.
Luca’s eyes trailed over the screens before him half-heartedly, knowing that he only had another minute left on duty before a runner came in and relieved him. Maybe Jamie would let him have the day off. Doubtful, but even the reds had to have a good day every once in a while.
At least Michael hadn’t gotten out again during the night.
Luca’s eyes shuttered as he recalled the last night shift he had worked. You wouldn’t know it to look at the kid, but he was always finding himself in more trouble than anyone in that building could afford. It was good he had Luca to look out for him, to protect him.
Whenever he was on duty, at least.
Luca had seen Michael wandering, as he too often did, down the halls that were off-limits and away from where all the other children had assembled to line up for roll call. Working fast, Luca had diverted all the cameras pointing at Michael, scrubbed any record of the kid being where he shouldn’t have been, and then he’d counted down the seconds until the morning shift runner came in to take over for Luca. The instant he was free, Luca ran in the direction he had seen Michael heading, catching up to him on the steep incline that led up and out of the sublevels.
“Michael,” Luca had gasped, out of breath from running half the length of the floor, and he pulled at Michael’s arm, causing the boy to jump.
Michael had blinked, like he always did when Luca had to come find him, and he stared up into Luca’s eyes in fear. “Luca,” Michael said in a small voice, his eyes searching around the corridor they stood in. “I—I didn’t mean—what—”
“Shh,” Luca said, grabbing the younger boy to himself. “It’s okay. They didn’t see. You’re fine.”
(Of course, someone did see—a certain someone dressed in all black and seated in front of a wall of screens one floor beneath the boys—but they could not have known that.)
Michael hadn’t said anything else, but he had let Luca lead him back to the center of the floor, where they slipped in line behind the others who were already amassed for roll call. Across the room, Caleb caught Luca’s eye, raising his eyebrows in question. Luca just shook his head. They had made it. That was all that mattered.
Now, Luca checked over the cameras one final time, spotting Michael sitting on his bed in his room, his back pressed up against the wall, his arms wrapped around his knees. At least he was safe, Luca thought.
Safe. Such a relative term.
But yes, in that moment, one could call Michael safe. As safe as anyone in the building could be.
They had both been lucky. Michael hadn’t been seen, and Luca hadn’t gotten in trouble for showing up late to roll call. He knew he couldn’t keep taking risks like that, knew that they were bound to catch up with him someday.
But did he have a choice, really?
Behind him, Luca heard the door opening and knew it was time to go. He straightened and said without turning back, “That time already.”
He received only silence in response. Twisting around in his seat, Luca saw the stoic figure of the runner who had entered the room, dressed in their signature blue scrubs, with a black mask covering the lower half of his face. The runner did not speak—they never did. He stared straight ahead with such a vacant look in his eyes that Luca wondered, as he often did, at the runners’ ability to monitor the camera feeds at all.
“Well, all right then,” Luca mumbled to himself, standing up. As he moved to pass the runner, though, the blue-clad figure held out a hand, halting him. Luca looked up at the runner with some surprise, a tendril of dread spiking in him, but then he saw something in his hand. A piece of paper, folded carefully in half. Frowning, Luca took the note out of the runner’s hand and opened it to Jamie’s slanted handwriting. Testing Room. That was all it said.
Luca’s blood chilled as he read those words, but he managed a nod. “Right,” he said, mostly to himself. “Sure. I’ll head there now.”
Of course he would. He always would.
And the knowledge that he would go there on his own with no urging or forcing was why Jamie had sent this runner with this note, rather than showing up himself to bring him there.
Trust. What a tenuous idea.
But Luca received trust in the building, and he had very little else that he could call his own. So, he left the surveillance room, pretending his hands didn’t have a slight tremor, and made his way to the testing room.
