𝟕 𝐩𝐦 • 𝐒𝐚𝐟𝐞 𝐡𝐨𝐮𝐬𝐞
Clutching my Kindle close, I pace around the inside of the safe house–like a madwoman. Can I trust them? Once I am calm, it's almost 8 o'clock at best. He's been watching me pace the entire room.
"I can trust you with my Kindle, right?"
"You can trust me to protect it," he replied, his voice steady, matching my gaze. "And I can promise you that if I let it fall into the wrong hands, I wouldn't be standing here to talk about it. To me, that device isn't just hardware. It's the reason you're still breathing, and it's the only map we have to the people who took your mother."
"You think my mother's alive? But I thought she was dead," I say, looking at the thing in my hand.
"In my world, 'dead' is a word people use when they want a trail to go cold," he says, softly. "I saw the report from twenty years ago. A roadside accident in a remote part of Europe. Nobody recovered, just a burnt-out shell and a grieving family.
It's a classic extraction playbook. If she was carrying what I think she was carrying, she didn't die—she was harvested. Or she went to ground so deep even the sunlight couldn't find her."
I give them my Kindle, warily, slowly. Handing over my trust like it's something that can be shattered easily is one thing. It seems like I can trust them.
"What can be in there, Ethan?" My voice broke a little as I asked him that. "What can be so interesting that they are after me and this lifeline?"
He takes it from me, carefully, as if it might explode. Handing it to Luther, he replies, "It's not just a lifeline, Addison. That thing... That thing is a key. A key to unlocking everything. Addison... listen to me, she was not just a librarian; she was much more than that.
"Inside this 'manuscript' isn't just a story," he resumed, looking back at me. "Luther thinks it's a Shadow Registry. It's a list of every deep-cover operative, every off-the-books bank account, and every 'ghost' who thinks they've been erased from history. If that file is decrypted, the entire world's intelligence infrastructure collapses. Everyone comes out of the shadows at once."
I was trembling now, from my whole body. This was too much to bear. Was I about to pass out now? He grabbed me, maybe. Or maybe not. Luther was still doing something, with my Kindle, I am sure.
"Addison, look at me. Focus on my voice. Just my voice. Don't think about the registry. Don't think about the airport. Just breathe. In four, Out four. Do it with me."
I tried. I really tried, but the thin sheet of paper was pulled from me, and I fell, eyes closing. And for a few seconds, I stayed like that, but the poem's first end made me wide awake.
"The gears never grind... they only whisper when watched. Ink remembers what mouths forget, and silence is the truest index....If the story shifts, check the margins—truth is never shelved where it belongs..... Trust the girl who reads backwards. Burn the page that feels too easy."
Luther yelled in happiness, the fact that what I said opened something. Ethan's arms were where I stayed for a second too long before I pushed him off of me. And he smelled suspiciously of... "....home."
On the monitor, the fictional map of 'Clockwork City' is overlaid with something. My mother would know all this to have put this into my Kindle. Ethan's eye scans the whole thing, but something in the margins stops him short.
ꜱᴜʙᴊᴇᴄᴛ: ʟᴀᴢᴏɴʙʏ, ᴍ. (ᴅɪʀᴇᴄᴛᴏʀᴀᴛᴇ 4)
ꜱᴛᴀᴛᴜꜱ: ᴀᴄᴛɪᴠᴇ / ʀᴇʟᴏᴄᴀᴛᴇᴅ
ʟᴏᴄᴀᴛɪᴏɴ: ʙʟᴀᴄᴋ ꜱɪᴛᴇ 'ɪɴᴅᴇx.'
"She's not just alive. She's been running the Index from the inside. She didn't hide the data from them, Addison. She is the data. And she's been using your Kindle as a remote terminal to keep the file 'shelved' where no one would look."
He is not making sense, but he does smell like home. I lean in and inhale his shirt for some reason. And then he gets up.
"We have to go," he says, standing up and reaching for his things. "The 'thirteen' was a countdown to their arrival, but the 'whisper' just gave us a head start. They know we have the key, but they don't know we have the map."
𝟗:𝟏𝟎 𝐩𝐦 • 𝐋𝐮𝐭𝐡𝐞𝐫'𝐬 𝐕𝐚𝐧
"You smell like home...Ethan," I say, sounding like a love-sick puppy. I stare at him as he commands his people.
He stops whatever he was doing and turns to look at me. Luther whistles but doesn't turn.
"Home..." he repeats. "If I smell like home, it's because your mother and I were cut from the same cloth. We're the people who stay in the shadows so people like you can keep writing stories in the light."
But you should probably hold that thought. Because right now, 'home' is a moving target at seventy miles per hour, and we're heading straight for the person who taught us both how to hide."
I shake out of my daze and say, "So she is alive? I need to tell dad."
Before I can go to a phone booth and dial his number, Ethan grabs my hand to intercept me. "Addison, stop. You cannot call him. Not now. Not on any line that isn't scrubbed by Luther."
Behind us, Luther is already shaking his head, his fingers blurring across the keys as he monitors the digital wake the van is leaving behind. "He's right, Addison. If you ping a civilian tower with a 'Mom's alive' message, every hunter from here to Langley will be on our bumper before we hit the expressway."
They looked at me, repeating their earlier statement, expressing it in different ways, before I gave in. "The people who want that 'Index' will use him as leverage to get to you. Is that a chapter you want to write?"
That is the last line he said, and yet it cut deep. "Okay, I'll stay put."