The Gender Plan Read online

  I shouted the last part behind me, breaking into a jog, and then a run, across the dew-soaked grass toward the group of cars we’d brought here from our home base. I checked my watch. It was seven thirty. She’d been gone for hours, and it was dark. Something was terribly wrong—I wasn’t even sure how I knew it, I just did.

  Throwing my bag into the backseat, I leapt into the driver’s seat and started the engine with the keys that still dangled from the ignition. It turned over with a dull roar, and I threw it in reverse. Turning so I could see behind me, I started to accelerate, when the sound of the passenger-side door opened and Ms. Dale hopped in.

  “Ms. Dale, I—”

  “Oh, for heaven’s sake, Viggo,” she chided as she buckled her seatbelt with a click. She met my gaze, her eyes unmoving. “I’m responsible for her too.”

  It took me a moment to absorb what she was saying, but once it hit me, I closed my mouth and nodded. “Right.”

  The engine roared as I hit the gas, propelling us backward until we could turn around. I quickly turned the car, threw it into drive, and then headed out, trying to let the motion of the vehicle and the fact I was out here, trying to find Violet as soon as possible, soothe the worried knot in my stomach.

  It didn’t help.

  5

  Viggo

  I gazed out the window, the road flying under us as I held down the accelerator. It took everything I had not to just speed up, but I didn’t want to miss a single thing in the dark. Ms. Dale sat behind me, her eyes on our map of the country roads, surveying it and comparing it to the information Thomas had recovered about Tim’s possible location.

  “These files are eyewitness statements,” she murmured in the silence of the cab.

  I glanced over at her, the blue light of the handheld illuminating the sharp lines of her face. “By whom?”

  “People who live out here,” she replied, shifting slightly in her seat. “Taken from their debriefing reports when they went into the city to register. One man saw him lurking around his farm—that’s the one we just left—and another two spotted him on the road… heading south, but he cut into the tree line before they could stop to ask him for help, so no help there.”

  “And this last one?”

  “As odd as it seems, on top of a hill. It’s apparently very popular with lovers, and the two in question decided to take a small break from their drive. It’s only a few kilometers from this road.”

  “It makes sense,” I said. “He’d be staying in a small area, trying to find us.”

  She sighed and shook her head. “We were idiots to focus so much on the idea he’d been captured. We could’ve been scouring the area for him. None of this would need to be happening.”

  Her statement caught me by surprise. I shot her a glance and then shook my head. “That’s not necessarily true. You know that.”

  She pressed her lips together in a tight frown and then looked away, leaning heavily in the seat and lapsing into silence.

  The road continued to slip by, jouncing us as we rode in silence. It was gut-churningly painful, all that silence. It gave my mind the freedom to focus on the worry that had settled into every muscle of my body, making me feel like gelatin. All I could think about was Violet and Owen, hours earlier, searching on the very road we were driving on now… Them being taken… or… or worse.

  “Talk to me,” I barked at Ms. Dale when it became too much.

  I could feel the surprise radiating from her, even before she uttered, “What?”

  “This quiet. It’s not doing me any favors.”

  There was a pause. “Oh.” The silence rushed back in for a second as the old spy fidgeted slightly in her seat, readjusting herself. “What do you want me to talk about?”

  “Anything. Nothing. I don’t know… How’s Henrik?”

  I turned and saw her eyebrows rise in surprise. “Henrik?”

  “Yeah. He’s awake now, right? Growing stronger every day?”

  “He is.” Her tone was cautious, waiting. “So?” I gave a little chuckle and shook my head at her, meeting her gaze briefly before focusing again on the road. “What?” she asked insistently.

  “Nothing—you’re just really bad at this.”

  “What? Talking about another member of our team?”

  “No, talking about your relationship, Melissa.”

  I heard her tsk and smiled in the darkness. It always struck a nerve when I called her that. I still wasn’t entirely sure why. We all called each other by our first names—except her. Somehow calling her ‘Melissa’ over ‘Ms. Dale’ had never sat right. I couldn’t even think of her that way.

  “Mr. Croft, my personal life is not for public dissemination,” Ms. Dale said archly. “Whom I spend my time with is really none of your concern.”

  “Oh, come on. We all know that something’s going on with you two. How is hiding it—”

  “Look, just because some of us choose to be more discreet in our relationships—”

  “At least you admit that you’re in one.”

  Another quick glance at Ms. Dale made me grin. Her mouth was a circle of surprise, her eyes wide. As soon as I looked, she closed her mouth with a cluck of her tongue and then looked out the window.

  The quiet returned, and I sighed. Maybe I had pushed her a little too far. Maybe I should—

  “Did you have problems with Violet? With how hard she’s been pushing herself, in spite of barely being out of her sickbed?”

  I blinked. She was actually asking for my advice? That was new. And… nice. “Yeah, actually. It wasn’t easy to come to terms with.”

  “How did you manage?”

  “Well, first I had to resist the urge to tie her to the bed,” I said, and she chuckled.

  “Yes, well, I can understand that.”

  “Henrik’s pushing himself too hard?”

  She looked at me, a sardonic expression on her face. “Of course he is. He keeps getting out of bed and trying to move around, despite Dr. Tierney’s advice. Oh, that’s the turn.”

  I slowed, turning the wheel, and stopped when the headlights cut over the grass of the hill. Ms. Dale sat forward, and I knew her eyes were glued to the same thing mine were. We got out of the vehicle, squatting down in front to peer at the dust on the side of the road. Fresh tire prints marred the surface, the tread identical to that of the vehicle we drove in now—like all of Ashabee’s cars, designed by him, Amber had said, to be bulletproof.

  “They were here,” I said.

  Ms. Dale stood up, her eyes following the lines. “But they’re not anymore. I think they went that way,” she said, pointing down the road in the direction we had been traveling.

  “Is there a back way to the camp I don’t know about?”

  She shook her head and went to the car to retrieve the handheld. I climbed in too, not wanting to waste a moment. Ms. Dale began moving the map around on the screen, scanning. Then she made an irritated noise.

  “Ashabee’s,” she said in disgust. “Of course—what an idiot I’ve been.”

  “What? Why?”

  She looked at me, her eyes holding my gaze. “Viggo, we’re within a mile of Ashabee’s property. It’s the last place Tim saw us, so…”

  “So he went back and has been hiding out there? No, then they would’ve found him. They’d be watching the place.”

  “Yes, they’d be watching for anyone coming or going, sure, but they might not be watching the entire property. Look, the dates on these sightings were right after the palace fell. He walked back—probably slept in the barn for warmth, walked down this road to travel more easily, and then climbed the hill to try and find it. He’s very likely to be there.”

  “Do you think Owen and Violet went there?” Ms. Dale nodded, her face solemn. “Of course they did,” I muttered.

  I threw the car into gear, and Ms. Dale frowned. “We should call for backup,” she said.

  “There’s no time for them to get here. Besides, a two-man team draws a lot less a
ttention.”

  She exhaled sharply. “That’s the stupidest thing you’ve ever said. I would’ve accepted something like ‘our enemy is distracted and probably not paying attention’ or ‘we know the property better than they do,’ but that one was pretty lame.”

  I gritted my teeth together. “Yes, for those reasons too, but mostly because we can’t just leave them there.”

  Ms. Dale rolled her eyes and patted my forearm. “Relax, Viggo, I didn’t say we weren’t going. So stop growling at me and start driving.”

  I readjusted myself in the seat, tamping down the sudden rage that had formed in my stomach, and then pressed the gas, throwing us forward. It took a few heartbeats for me to completely calm down. When I did, a question instantly popped into my mind.

  “You said earlier that I wasn’t the only one responsible for her.”

  “I did.” Her tone was guarded, but I forged on.

  “Was that because of what you did?”

  She shot me a glance and then looked away, clasping her hands together in her lap.

  In a moment of duress, back when we were more enemies than friends, Ms. Dale had confessed to me that she had been the one to select Tim as a test subject during the Matrian screening process for boys. At the time, she had been following orders from her higher-ups, testing young Violet’s loyalty to Matrus, but I knew it had eaten her up inside ever since she had seen the true horror of how the boys were “trained” in the Facility. I was picking at a sore spot, I knew that. But I wanted to understand. Needed to, really.

  I turned right down the road that would lead us to the mansion, and Ms. Dale sighed. “Of course it is,” she confirmed. “I… set Violet down this path. Regardless of my intentions, I did. And in doing so, I hurt her, and more specifically, her brother, more than I thought was possible. The suffering she’s endured all stems from me, from a decision I made.”

  “Not all of it is your—”

  “Spare me, Mr. Croft. I am looking for neither forgiveness nor platitudes. Yes, I was ignorant of the use of the boys, and yes, I didn’t have a choice about whether or not to send Violet to Patrus. I just put her in a position to choose, when she shouldn’t have had to. And from that moment, her fate was sealed. Every step on this path exists because I forced her to choose.”

  I fell silent, uncertain how to respond. After a moment, Ms. Dale added, “I owe Violet a debt I can never repay. And given that disaster seems to follow her around, I realize that maybe I have spent too much time trying to fix the problem, and not enough time trying to take care of her. Just like I spent too much time fixated on what she could do for Matrus, and not enough time trying to learn who she really was. Maybe if I had, I would’ve realized—”

  She drew silent as we both noticed it at the same time—a bright red glow on the horizon that I recognized. Something was on fire, something bigger and more out of control than the little blaze we’d set at Mr. Kaplan’s. And I knew, within my core, that it was Ashabee’s mansion.

  I pressed down on the accelerator, watching the speedometer needle drag upward, climbing to its zenith, the engine roaring noisily, and we raced down the road next to the wood.

  Slowing enough to make the turn, I pressed down on the brakes hard, stopping short with a jerk that caused the seatbelts to lock up. I unhooked mine as I rolled down the window, leaning over and clumsily keying in Amber’s code. The unbroken side of the huge gate rattled as the machine whirred, pulling back before us and revealing the mansion—half of it ablaze, thick black plumes of smoke reaching out into the sky.

  Even from the distance, I could see a lone, dark figure standing on the driveway, watching it burn.

  6

  Violet

  The tiny elevator creaked under my weight, and I looked up, through the mesh, as the darkness around me continued to press in. I didn’t know where the ceiling was, couldn’t see it in the gloom. Whatever Ashabee had designed this tiny elevator for, he hadn’t done a good job. Why wouldn’t he have included proper lighting? I fidgeted and checked my watch, my nerves making it hard to sit cramped up in this tiny space, my feelings swinging from impatience to nausea.

  It had been another twenty minutes of gear gathering, planning, and searching since I’d last checked. Not good—who knew what Desmond was up to? Maybe she’d already found another way into the basement. I’d have no way of knowing in this black hole. My heart beat faster, and I felt the sickness rising in my stomach again, but pushed it down. I tried to calm myself, if only a little. Maybe she’d decided we were dead and left.

  I shook my head at myself. As appealing as it sounded, that idea was the dream of the hopelessly naïve.

  Just then, the green light, which had been blinking slowly as the cage rose, became steady again. Then it went out, and the cage shuddered to a halt. This was it, then. A new type of fear gripped my shoulders as I realized it was time to see if I would even be able to implement my plan.

  Licking my dry lips, I turned my focus onto the gate in front of me, sliding it open. A panel sat in front of me, cool to the touch. I felt my way around the edges, and detected a small bump under my fingers. It was about the size of the tip of my pinky, and spherical. Even in the shadowed light cast by my flashlight, which I’d lain on the floor of the elevator cage, it was hard to see.

  I grasped it between my fingers and then twisted, freezing when I heard a small click. The panel gave a little, and slowly, very slowly, I opened it a crack, peering through it for any sign of life. Heartbeats passed as I strained for any indication that I wasn’t alone. Silence greeted my caution with open arms, beckoning me forth. So far, so good.

  I gently pushed the panel with my fingertip, watching the gap grow wider as it swung out into a dim room. When I heard it bounce off the wall with a little thunk, I froze, my heart skipping a beat, my eyes searching the darkness for signs of Desmond or her entourage. Nothing stirred.

  I grabbed the flashlight and swung it around, illuminating the room. The beam of light cut across a door on my right, a shelf with several books and picture frames, a wardrobe, a nightstand, a bed… Gauging from the narrow stature of that particular piece of furniture, I was in the servants’ quarters on the second floor. Carefully, I unfolded my legs and slid out from the elevator, letting my feet land softly on the hard wooden floor. I crouched, and immediately let out a gasp as my legs almost gave out on me. My muscles were deadened from the position I’d been sitting in, pins and needles already jabbing around my feet and shins.

  I held on to the frame of the elevator, using my left hand and my right shoulder as a brace to keep from falling, and waited for the numbness to recede. As soon as my legs felt relatively normal again, I straightened my knees and grabbed my bag and the rifle from inside the elevator.

  Leaving the grate open, I closed the panel, and then studied it. On one side it was stone, but the side facing the room was covered with wood, with nobs fastened to it—a garment or tie rack, clearly, judging by the row of long strips of fabric in simple navy blues, browns, and blacks that hung from the knobs. Actually, though… The tie on this particular knob had a flashy design with bold geometric patterns and colors shooting through it. Clever.

  Secure in the knowledge that I could find my way back to the elevator, I turned and tossed my bag onto the bed, glad to be rid of its heaviness for a moment. I moved toward the door, getting ready to turn my flashlight off, when a picture caught my eye. It was a picture of Jeff—Ashabee’s former manservant. He had his arm thrown around an elderly woman with thick round glasses. They were pressed cheek to cheek, her hand on his other cheek, his arm draped lovingly around her.

  The scene was nice. It seemed strange that Jeff had left it in the move. Maybe he’d forgotten it?

  Something made me shove the picture into my pocket, and then I put the thread of curiosity aside. I needed to know what was going on. I stuffed the smallest handgun into my waistband, leaving the rest of the backpack on the bed. Then I clicked off the flashlight and moved toward the dim l
ight shining under the door. I opened it gently, trying to mute the click as much as possible. I pulled it open a fraction of an inch, then a bit wider, until I could stick my head out into the corridor beyond. I was alone.

  I pressed my head against the door and exhaled in relief. Then I moved, creeping as silently as I could back toward the servants’ stairs at the rear of the house—the ones Ashabee’s secret doorway sat above.

  Jeff’s room was very close to the stairs—probably since he was the most called-upon member of Ashabee’s staff—so it took me only a few moments to reach them. I circled the still intact landing carefully, pausing when I heard the distinct sound of Desmond’s voice wafting up from below.

  “—again, requesting update on a heloship evacuation route at my position.”

  There was a burst of static, and then a nasally voice piped through. “With regrets, ma’am, the queen has ordered all heloships on standby. There is a crisis in the city, and we’re still assessing the risk.”

  Desmond spat out a curse. I crept closer to the stairs, testing my weight on each floorboard before I moved onto it. With all the rubble below, I had expected this thing to be a mess. But somehow, it continued to be structurally sound. Ashabee must have brought in a brilliant architect when he had the mansion built. At this point, it wouldn’t have surprised me.

  “Thanks for the update, Control,” said another female voice. I bit back a smile—clearly Desmond was tired of talking. I was glad that she was frustrated. It wasn’t much to make up for the horrors she had put us through, but it was a start. I slid farther behind the landing, trying to find the place where I could peer down and see how many guards there were. So far, I’d heard one.