Alpha stops in the middle of a hallway and lifts a section of the dado rail and inserts a PIN code. “I can assure you, Celestine, that I did not alert them to your presence. I may have told a few people that you’d be here, but I’m not ready to announce you as a friend of the foundation yet.”
“Good,” I snap. “Because, right at this moment, I certainly am not a friend of the foundation; and if you think you’ll be allowed to homeschool me from now on, you better think again. I’m sure this is the last time you and I will ever be allowed in the same room together. I’m surprised they let you in the first place.”
“Like I said, the Guild encourages counseling of the Flawed. They felt that I would be a positive force in your life. That I could stop you from speaking out against them.”
I snort.
“I’ll tell them you were going to share your sob story and persuade them not to make mistakes, that life as a Flawed is miserable, that you weren’t going to glamorize it.”
“I wasn’t going to glamorize it.”
She looks at me in surprise. There’s a beep, and a door that I hadn’t noticed before suddenly opens.
“A secret door?”
“Not secret, just not as clearly marked,” she says defensively, with a sly smile.
Once inside, I find myself in an office. Walnut desk, shelves filled to the brim with books. Leather chairs with gold buttons. Photographs in gold frames covering every inch of the wall. “You’ll be safe here. They don’t know about this room,” she says quickly. “I have to go back and talk to the Whistleblowers, sort this mess out, but I’ll be back with your granddad. Stay here till I return.”
The door closes behind her, and I’m left in the room alone.
FIFTY-NINE
I BEGIN BY looking at the photographs. The same man is in all of them with different people. All formal business photographs of handshakes. Alpha is in some, standing alongside him, and I don’t know who any of the people in the photographs are. I see Alpha and this man in a frame on the desk, and I guess it’s her husband. I don’t know anybody else, but then the more I study the people in the photos, the more I recognize them as being with world leaders. Important men and women whom I see on the news on the rare times I watch the news. And I do recognize one man: Judge Crevan.
Alpha, her husband, Judge Crevan, and his wife. At a garden party, the ladies in summer floral dresses, all with a glass of champagne in their hands, all four of them looking like they’re in the middle of a big laugh, as though somebody had just said something funny. The best of friends. Again, I question Alpha’s motivations. Have I allowed her to sweep me away from the Whistleblowers, thinking she was helping me, and am now a sitting duck?
Another wall reveals a series of framed qualifications and accolades for a Professor Lambert. I hear a cough behind me and I turn around. Expecting to see a Whistleblower, instead I find a man in a crumpled shirt and jeans standing at yet another door that appeared from nowhere.
“Yes, yes, another secret door. She’s got quite the little rat maze going on down here.” He chuckles. “Bill,” he says, holding out his hand.
He wavers a little as he does this, loses his balance.
As I step closer, I can smell alcohol on his breath. He has gray stubble on his face and looks as though he’s gone a few days sleeping in the same clothes.
“You’re Alpha’s husband,” I say, recognizing him from the photographs.
He chuckles again. “Do you know, there was once a time when she was my wife? Anyway. There was once a time when lots of things were a lot of things. So you’re the one. The One.” He widens his eyes in mock-worship. “She’s been talking about you a great deal.” He studies me and then goes around to his desk and searches through the drawers. It takes him some time, enough for me to study him and the room he has come from. It looks like a kitchen, which no doubt has another door into another room. Why would they have another home buried beneath? In the last drawer he checks, I hear the clink of bottles.
He looks at me in mock-surprise. “Fancy that. Want a drink?”
“We’re not allowed to drink,” I say firmly, noting the branding on his temple.
“Ah, yes.” He chuckles again, and then he whispers, “Don’t worry, I won’t tell if you don’t.”
“The Whistleblowers are upstairs,” I say, astonished by his behavior.
“Oh, yes, the scary whistlers.” He whistles, imitating their sound, and chuckles. “I’m not afraid of them. Are you?” He pours the whiskey into a glass tumbler on a silver tray by the desk and sits down in the leather chair behind the desk. He sinks low.
“I’m afraid of what they’ll do to my granddad.”
“Don’t worry about your granddad. He’s a pro. He’s currently hiding in our morning parlor.” He presses a button under the desk, and the framed photographs disappear to reveal a dozen screens of CCTV images. “Fourth one down, third one in.”
I move closer to the screens and find the room he’s talking about.
“I don’t see anything.”