The Child Thief 4: Little Lies Read online

  To my surprise—and relief—Corona gave me a half smile and nodded.

  “I had a feeling you’d be the one to call us out on that, Robin,” she said simply. “The truth, then, because I don’t see how it will do any harm. Besides, you’re right. Some aspects of the warehouse mission were a test, as was your handling of the jailbreak and what happened afterward. However, they were never meant to be as dangerous and intense as they turned out to be. You have the right to know why we did what we did, and how we failed you, because it does lead into what we’re doing here.” She glanced down at her watch.

  “What’s our ETA, Savannah?” she asked on her comm.

  “At least ninety minutes left,” Savannah answered.

  Corona disconnected and turned back to us. “We discovered the auction site six months before the warehouse raid.”

  “About the same time I did, then,” Gabby broke in, nodding. “Something changed about it that made it more obvious to anyone who was looking.”

  Corona gave her an almost motherly smile. “Yes. The Little John team altered the server settings, and for a space of two to three days, it made their portal more easily traced. You must have happened upon it at exactly the right time to have found it. We’d been watching Ministry portal activities for some time, because we’d been notified there might be something there.”

  She glanced down at the blueprints in front of us, her face turning thoughtful. “We’d never seen the auction site before, of course, not being the target audience for it. But the minute we had our hands on it, we started doing some research. The site is very different from what the Ministry usually does. It’s not their usual distribution of children to the richer class, for those children to be brought up in better economic conditions. Or whatever their true reasoning is.”

  “You don’t think they just want to redistribute children for economic reasons?” I asked, catching on to the vagueness of her statement.

  “You’re sharp, Robin. I’m glad you’re on our team,” she said with a faint smile. “No, we don’t think their reasoning is purely economic. We don’t know their true motivations, but it’s fairly obvious, given the lack of consistency in their selection methods, that there’s more going on there.”

  I nodded in agreement, and she continued.

  “The site, as I said, is something different. And it seems to cater to a different set of people. An even richer set of people.”

  “Wait, richer than the rich guys?” Kory asked. “What does that even mean? Like there’s a … super-rich class?”

  “Something like that,” Corona hedged. “The auction site is specifically to take orders for children. People are able to request specific genders, looks, races, talents, bloodlines…” She shook her head. “We don’t know why. We don’t know whether it’s dangerous or even meaningful. We do know it’s different from standard Ministry operations. And therefore suspicious. So the decision was made to hack into the site, to see what they were doing, and why, and how much they were earning from it.” She finished with a shrug, like it was something people did every day.

  “We put some of our techs into a base of operations in that warehouse you raided, so they wouldn’t be traced back to any of the Little John holdings. And they spent months trying to hack into the site before they found a way in. They were, in fact, in the process of altering the site’s host settings with the idea of taking control of the site from the Ministry and giving it to us.”

  “Explains why it looked like the site was hosted in that warehouse,” Nelson said. “But why? What would you need with that site?”

  Corona sighed. “The Ministry had so many defenses in place we knew it was important to them. Who knew what else we could find by going through the site? Once we had access to it, trying to take it away was an obvious next step.”

  “And then we decided to raid the warehouse,” I said. “But why would you let us? If that warehouse belonged to Little John, why not turn us to some other mission? Nathan may not have suggested the mission, but he didn’t stop it when he could have.”

  “Nathan wanted to see you guys develop and then execute a full mission on your own,” Corona answered, her tone implying her negative opinion of the plan. “He cleared out the warehouse so there would be no possibility of anyone making a mistake and getting hurt, and let the whole thing go forward. He thought if you were invading a warehouse we already had control over, it would keep you safe while also allowing you to demonstrate what you were capable of.”

  “Yeah, that’s not what ended up happening,” Kory said. “What went wrong? The Ministry just happened to raid that warehouse on the night we were there?”

  Corona nodded. “That’s exactly what happened. We didn’t realize that they’d detected the hack as soon as we began it. While they couldn’t stop our people from getting in, and then begin altering the hosting information, they did follow the lines back to locate where the hack was coming from. Which meant they discovered the warehouse. Your team… got caught up in the middle, I’m afraid.”

  “Why didn’t anyone warn us?” Jace asked sharply. “We didn’t know we were trapped until Julia told us. And by then it was far too late.”

  “Nathan sent operatives in after you, as soon as we saw the Authority approaching,” Corona said. “He wanted to get you guys out of there. But you… well, you found his operatives and knocked them out before they could tell you to leave.” She gave a hint of a smirk. “It would have been deeply impressive if it had been the right people.”

  My mouth fell open, and I looked around to see that everyone else was looking pretty much the same. Everyone but Alexy, who looked embarrassed as all hell.

  “And you knew about this?” I whispered.

  She shook her head rapidly. “I didn’t know the whole story,” she said, her voice rushed. “I knew some of it, but I had no idea all of that was going on. As far as I knew, we were going into a real mission. And then when the Authority attacked, none of that mattered anymore. Then I was running for my life, just as much as you. Just as much as the rest of the team.”

  I glared at her, wanting to be angry, but knowing from the panicked look on her face, and my memory of that night, that she was telling the truth. She might have been a Little John operative before, but, starting that night, she’d become part of Team Hood.

  “If you were in the Ministry’s system for that long, and saw the auction site from the inside, why don’t you have more information?” Nelson suddenly asked. “Why don’t you know everything about everything? Shouldn’t you already have all the information you need on the holding centers and all that?”

  “We printed out everything we could in the weeks that we had the site in our hands,” Corona said. “You would have seen some of those files in the warehouse, when you were searching for it. But we didn’t have time to get much, and what we did get didn’t have anything to do with the holding centers. That site is kept separate from anything the CRAS is doing. There was no overlap. So, although it gave us numerous records, that was all it gave us. And then it was snatched out of our hands again.”

  “So, it gave you information, but not the information you needed,” Nelson concluded.

  “Exactly. It gave us information that might be helpful at some point but is relatively useless when it comes to infiltrating any physical holdings of the government. Which is what we need to do.”

  She glanced at her watch, then climbed to her feet.

  “Come, it’s time for disguises. We must be nearly there by now, and I don’t want this ship hanging around near the holding center any longer than it has to.”

  She hustled into the front of the passenger area, where I now noticed the printer from Edgewood was sitting.

  We all shuffled after her, trying to turn our minds from what we’d just learned to what we were about to try to do.

  22

  Printing our new disguises was made slightly more difficult by the turbulence around the airship, but soon we all looked like different peop
le. In fact, the faces were also different from the ones we had used during our visit to the Gem holding center.

  “We’re not wearing the same disguises?” I asked, seeing my eyes in the face of a middle-aged woman with features so nondescript they were immediately forgettable. The clothes Alexy had handed me from a large trunk filled with various outfits were the same: pale, bland, forgettable.

  “No,” Corona said, coming up behind me to check her new ensemble in the mirror. She had a new temporary face as well: a sharp, androgynous beauty who exuded an air of untouchable power, bolstered by the outfit she had already been wearing. Her hair was once again hidden by a wig, this one of long, reddish brown hair.

  She was stunning, and eye-catchingly so. It was a far cry from the dowdy and nondescript picture I and the rest of the team presented. Surely drawing such attention was a risk? Then again, maybe that was part of her disguise. If she was supposed to be a rich donor, it would mean she had enough money to go through whatever facial improvements she wanted. Every adult I’d known when I was living with the Sylvones had been stunning; artificially so, if they hadn’t had it naturally. It was what the richer class did.

  Maybe Corona going into a holding center as anything less than stunningly attractive would have seemed out of character for her class.

  “The holding centers do give tours to donors quite often, so my request won’t raise any red flags,” Corona continued. “The same donor and the same group of people going to two different holding centers on consecutive days would be cause for suspicion, though. We might be able to fend it off, but I’d rather we didn’t have to. My cover story and the people who are waiting to support it can only stretch so far. Besides, if they decided to investigate while we were in Asus, it would cause a world of trouble. It’s better if we look like different people.”

  I nodded and reviewed the rest of the group. Jace had become less ruggedly handsome, in favor of a more polished and sophisticated look. The eyes, as ever, were the same, glowing with humor as he grinned at me in recognition of the ridiculous situation in which we found ourselves. Despite the different face, the different smile, my stomach flip-flopped at the look, and I could feel myself blushing furiously, so I quickly turned to the others and tried to distract myself.

  Gabby had been made to look just a bit older than she really was, her hair haphazardly twisted into two long braids. She did not look happy about the new face and was pouting like a child, complete with chubbier cheeks than her own.

  Alexy, with her partially shaved head and sharp bangs, had been given a more masculine face and outfit, both of which she pulled off really well. Nelson looked like… I did a double take. It was as if Gabby and I had been blended together into one face.

  “Isn’t it dangerous to use something so close to one of our real faces?” I asked no one in particular.

  “Every face we print is either a real face or a combination of two real faces,” Corona answered. “There has to be a reference for the machine to process or edit. Most of the scanned faces are of…” She paused. “People the Ministry and Compliance Authority have no current record of. It’s quite safe, I assure you.”

  I looked in the mirror again with a renewed sense of respect for the features I was wearing. This was a person, a real person. Or at least a version of her. At the very least, it was a combination of people.

  “It’s kind of weird, right?” Alexy said, coming up beside me and adjusting her glasses. “But a little inspiring, too.”

  I nodded, glancing at the reflected scene behind me. Kory and Jace were standing beside one another, laughing quietly about something… and at that moment, I noted a slight flaw in our plan.

  Our faces might be different, and Alexy, Corona, Gabby, Nelson, and I might be easily forgettable in terms of body type. Jace and Kory were a different matter. They hadn’t grown up in cities or lived long on the limited, poor food most of our team had. They’d grown up with fresh air and food straight from the wild and had lived a physically demanding life; both were big boned and muscled in a way you rarely saw. You certainly didn’t see two people who looked like that in the same place and at the same time.

  For future missions, it might be wise to alternate which one came with us, perhaps leaving them both behind on occasion when Ant and Abe and Jackie were back in rotation. Because having both Jace and Kory with us, consistently, was going to give anyone watching something they could latch on to as different.

  After a quick onceover to make sure we were as prepared as we could be, Corona gave us a nod and got back on the comm with Savannah.

  “We’re over the holding center now and will be touching down on their tarmac in just a moment,” the pilot said. “I’ve got the sun shields up over the cockpit windows, so they can’t see any of us up here.”

  “Good work, Savannah,” Corona said. “Thank you for a smooth flight.”

  “No worries, boss,” Savannah replied, a slight grin evident through her voice.

  Beside me, Alexy muttered under her breath something about flight times and altitude control and handling turbulence properly.

  I interrupted her griping. “Is it common for airships to land at the centers? Or is this part of the rich donor ruse?”

  She shrugged. “From what we’ve observed, there’s a decent amount of air traffic in and out of the centers, especially this one. Donors, parents coming to collect kids, kids being shipped out to parents, deliveries, Ministry visitors, and so on. We won’t be too conspicuous, don’t worry.”

  I gave her a quick smile and turned my attention to the window and what lay beyond. We hadn’t had an overhead view of Gem, but from what I’d been able to estimate of the ground we covered in that center, it could have fit into one wing of the enormous, sprawling Asus center. The place was freaking enormous—and like all other government buildings, it was a series of uninteresting square blocks and wings, with almost no windows, painted bright white. Across the front of the building, I could make out the agency’s title and creepy logo.

  “Do they try to make all government buildings look as uninviting as they possibly can?” Alexy muttered from beside me. “Like we’ll just forget to notice that they’re stealing our kids if their buildings blend in?”

  “Blending in is the opposite of what they’re doing, if you think about it,” I answered, glaring at the building coming up in front of us. The people who worked in there might be the people who helped take Hope from me. Or helped take away Alexy’s baby. Or Jackie’s younger sister. They might have handled Ant and Abe. They’d certainly handled thousands of other children who had been ripped from their parents and handed over to strangers.

  I hated that building. Hated everything it represented. Hated every person who worked in it. The hatred burned through me as I closed my eyes and focused on what they’d taken from me. Hope. I concentrated on the few memories I had of her in the hospital, years ago. Her eyes, still just narrow slits against the bright light of the world. The peach fuzz across her hair, colorless in the way that meant it might become bright red or dark brown, or even a muddy blond. The tone of her skin, so pale that I could see the blood vessels underneath it.

  She’d been so tiny. And I hadn’t been able to protect her. Hadn’t been able to hold on to her tightly enough. Because of people who worked in these buildings.

  “What other building looks like that?” I asked, trying to keep the venom from coloring my voice too much. “None. Everything else is made of brick or painted a color, even if it’s gray. That pure white… no, they want to stand out. They want these buildings to be frightening.”

  “I think you’re right, Robin,” Corona said from my other side, and I noticed her giving me a very careful look. “I’ve always thought they were more threatening than benign. And intentionally so.” She eyed the block letters across the front, advertising this as Ministry property, and shuddered. “They look like places where people get locked away and never escape from.”

  We watched the building and the campus
around it draw closer and closer, steadying ourselves before we finally bumped to the ground.

  Once we were on the ground, Corona straightened, steeling herself.

  “Everyone, get your comm links into your ears,” she said sharply. “Savannah, that includes you and your team. I want to be able to contact anyone we need within seconds. Keep the links on and open. Don’t switch channels. If we do get separated, don’t panic. Keep in contact; maintain open communication about where you are and who you’re with. We don’t automatically run for our lives if we’re pulled in different directions. We take the opportunity to learn as much as we can, and then we rendezvous and get out of there. You’re going to see more here than you did at Gem, and you might not be able to retain it as easily, so use the electronic tablets you’ll find in one of your pockets. If anyone inquires as to your position, you are all my assistants. Rich people get as many as they want, so I doubt anyone will question me having so many. No one uses their real names if one of the employees asks. No one uses any handles you used in OH, OH+, or any other portal. We were being handled by Little John people at Gem. Here, we’re going to be receiving attention from Ministry employees, and we can’t be too careful.”

  She paused and glanced around at the group, her eyes intense.

  “Be careful. Pay attention. We’re going to be taking the tour with a… friend, but that doesn’t mean we can’t get in trouble. Make sure you always have at least one other team member with you. The Ministry likes to single people out and make them disappear, and that’s a lot harder to do if you’re always with one or two other people.”

  She smoothed her hair, adjusted the blazer of her pantsuit, and started strutting down the ramp of the airship, her shoulders straight, her stride confident.