THOMAS IN THE TOWER / 2
“Sir, I think we have a mole,” Thomas said. It was early in the morning, and sun was just beginning to rise over Columbia City, chasing away the aurora. He was seated across from his father in the General’s office, squeezing in this audience while the General signed off on some long-neglected paperwork. His interactions with the General had more or less always been this way, with the General only half listening as he attended to some more important matter of Citadel business. Thomas was used to it, but this morning he found it frustrating, and was doing a poor job of hiding it. The General despised signs of physical restlessness, so Thomas often had to resist pacing, drumming his fingers, tapping his feet—all those natural impulses that struck when he was agitated—but today he couldn’t.
“That’s ridiculous,” the General said.
“No, it isn’t,” Thomas insisted. Most of the time, arguing with the General was a fool’s errand, but Thomas wasn’t going to back down about this. If someone inside the Citadel was feeding Libertas information, Sasha was in greater danger than they had foreseen. “They took Juliana out of here right under our noses, leaving behind no trace of entry or exit. How could they have done it without the help of someone with intimate knowledge of the Castle? And Grant Davis—it’s not a coincidence that they had a patrol on the South End at the same time he came through the tandem. Someone told them to go there. They were waiting for him.”
“And you think it’s someone in the KES?” The General’s tone implied that he thought Thomas was being insubordinate. He would have to tread very carefully around this issue—except that he had no interest in doing so.
“The KES isn’t impervious!” Thomas gripped the wooden arms of his chair. The thought of one of his KES brothers betraying the agency and putting Operation Starling in jeopardy made him sick to his stomach, but he wasn’t going to turn a blind eye and keep walking into Libertas traps. Libertas had no idea who Sasha really was—that was a secret known by so few people that unless the mole was himself, the General, Gloria, or Dr. Moss, they couldn’t have any inkling as to her otherworldly origins—but that didn’t mean they wouldn’t find out, if the General ignored the fact that someone was funneling KES secrets their way.
“I know it isn’t,” the General told him sternly. “I’ve been part of the KES for thirty years, and I’ve seen many trusted agents exposed for the traitors they were. Do not presume to believe you know everything, Thomas; arrogance will betray you every time.”
Thomas sighed. “I’m sorry, sir.” His father was right; one of Thomas’s weaknesses was his propensity to mistake passion for understanding. He was devoted to the KES and its mission, but he had only been part of it for two years. There was still so much about the agency that he didn’t know.
“If you think there’s a mole, then find him,” the General said. “And find him fast. Because the world is about to change, and when it does, we must be at our strongest.”
“I will, sir,” Thomas said, energized by the General’s faith in him, grudging though it was.
“Good,” the General said, turning back to his paperwork. “Now go eat something. They can hear your stomach growling all the way up at the Academy.”
Thomas rode the elevator from the General’s office suite, which took up the entire 114th floor of the Tower, down to the 62nd floor, which contained the KES mess hall. The King’s Elite Service was a network that spread all over the country and the Tower was its nerve center. More than just a headquarters, the Tower was the workplace and residence of over twenty-five thousand agents and support staffers; they worked on the lower and upper floors of the building, but the middle floors were reserved for residential and other living spaces. Not all agents opted to take the General’s blanket offer of free housing, but Thomas hadn’t had a choice; when he received his assignment after he matriculated from the KES Academy, he’d been given his room number and that had been that. Housing quality was determined by years served, not by rank, so he had one of the smallest, least desirable rooms; it had a bathroom but no kitchen, so he was forced to take all his meals in the mess.
Not that he minded. The mess was one of his favorite places in the Tower, because it was where agents and staff came to socialize. He liked its noise and chaos; it reminded him of his time at the Academy. He’d only been there for a little less than six months, but they had been some of happiest months of his life.
It was a little too early for the breakfast rush when Thomas arrived at the mess, so there were only a few people scattered across the enormous dining hall, spooning oatmeal or scrambled eggs into their mouths while going over files or reading copies of the
Royal Eagle,
Columbia City’s largest daily newspaper. Thomas got his food and made his way to his usual table. He was looking forward to finally being alone, because it would give him some space to think about his rapidly growing pile of problems.
First, there was Sasha. Just about everything to do with her was a problem. He hadn’t realized just how much he would like her, but he had, from the moment they’d met. At the time, he’d put this down to her resemblance to Juliana, but it hadn’t taken long for him to see how different Sasha was from her analog. If people were houses, Juliana was like the Citadel she’d grown up in—beautiful and well-appointed, but guarded and set apart—while Sasha was her grandfather’s Hyde Park Victorian—cheerful and bright, with the windows and doors flung wide open. Sasha was curious and interested in people besides herself; she liked to laugh and didn’t take herself too seriously, while Juliana, accustomed to being used and befriended for her position, kept everyone at arm’s length. Spending time with Sasha on Earth had been easy and fun, and he’d meant what he said to her on the beach: it had been the best night of his life. Despite the fact that he’d been on a mission, Thomas had never felt freer than when he was on Earth; it had been such a relief to live a normal life for once, even if it wasn’t—and could never be—his forever.
It was the run-in with Libertas in the Tattered City that showed him how much he’d grown to care for Sasha. He’d been so angry with her for running off, and worried for her, too, but when he saw her in that alley with that stringy haired Libertine’s arm around her neck, his blood had run cold, as if a splinter of ice had become lodged in his heart. Fear was an unusual emotion for Thomas—he’d been trained so well over his years of military education to control it, to process it into swift, precise action. He’d learned long ago how not to let it paralyze him, and it’d been years since he’d properly felt it, like a drizzle of freezing rain down his spine. But he felt it then, and he knew—she wasn’t just an assignment anymore, a counterfeit Juliana. She was Sasha, and he was in big trouble.
So, then, what to do about it? There could never be anything between them besides a brief, loose friendship; the tandem was too high a hurdle, and he got the sense—silly as it would have sounded if he’d said it out loud—that the universes would disapprove. Besides, her opinion of him seemed … variable. She’d despised him at first, after finding out how he’d tricked her, which was understandable. He was sure he’d be able to coax her out of it eventually, and convince her to trust him at least so far as to take the help that he offered her. He’d thought it was working, but last night she was angry again, and nothing he said or did seemed to please her. In the end, he’d just stopped trying to talk to her, dropped her off at Juliana’s room, briefed the night agent stationed outside, and returned to the Tower for some rest. He needed to figure out what was bothering her, and fast; if he didn’t, it could compromise the entire mission.
But Sasha was only one of many things that troubled him. The Grant Davis situation enraged him, even more now that he suspected someone in the agency of funneling intelligence to Libertas, and of course there was Juliana, who he tried not to think too hard about. He wouldn’t put it past Libertas to kill her if the General didn’t give them what they wanted, which he never would. The only comfort Thomas had was the knowledge that Juliana would be doing her best to give them hell, because that was her way. She wasn’t good at taking orders, the natural consequence of a life of privilege.
And then there was the mole. Thomas’s involvement with Operation Starling didn’t leave him with a lot of time to run his own covert internal investigation, and he had no idea where to start looking for the leak. The KES was a huge organization, a complicated hierarchy with a seemingly infinite set of moving parts. All missions, even Operation Starling to an extent, required the diligent work of hundreds of agents in a wide variety of fields to successfully pull off. Any one of them could be the chink in the KES armor, but ferreting him or her out would require an exhaustive search on a scale outside what Thomas could do on his own. He couldn’t let that stop him, though. He’d just have to figure out a way.
Lost in his thoughts, Thomas didn’t notice his brother until he took a seat across the table from him and gave him a hearty, “Hey T.”
“Lucas,” Thomas said. “What are you doing here?”
Lucas was KES, too, but he was a mid-level support agent with no field duties or on-call minimums who’d chosen not to live in the Tower. Thomas knew it bothered Lucas that his younger brother was a senior level active agent at the age of eighteen, while he’d been denied admission to the KES Academy three times. The Academy was the one place the General’s favoritism didn’t go very far. Potential recruits had to score above a certain level on a number of mental and physical examinations to even qualify, and despite all efforts Lucas couldn’t make the grade. Thomas was sorry for that, because he knew how badly Lucas wanted to be active, and how much he hated having to settle for some mind-numbing desk job, but rules were rules, and Thomas was pretty sure the world was better off not having Lucas Mayhew on active KES duty.
“Just because I don’t live here doesn’t mean I’m not entitled to free breakfast,” Lucas said, lunging across the table to liberate a piece of bacon from Thomas’s plate.
“Actually,” Thomas said, swiping at his brother with his fork. “That’s exactly what it means.”
“Too bad.” Lucas set to work devouring Thomas’s scrambled eggs. “What’s on today’s schedule, princess? Manicures and dress fittings?”
“No, the fitting was yesterday,” Thomas said in bemusement. Lucas rolled his eyes.
“I used to be so jealous of you,” Lucas said, downing half of Thomas’s orange juice in one gulp. Thomas stared forlornly at his breakfast tray, the contents of which were swiftly disappearing. Lucas’s very presence was growing more and more annoying. Thomas hoped he’d get to the point soon. “But if being an active agent means tea parties and fashion shows all day, forget it. I wouldn’t trade jobs with you if you paid me.”
Oh, yes you would,
Thomas thought. He wasn’t fooled by Lucas. He knew his brother would kill to be doing what he was doing, and he didn’t even know about Operation Starling, or the true nature of Thomas’s most recent work. The thought of how envious Lucas would be if he did know warmed Thomas’s heart a little. “What do you need from me, Luke? Money?”
Lucas grimaced. “When have I ever asked you for money?” Thomas opened his mouth, prepared to launch into a long list of examples, but Lucas cut him off with a raised hand. “No, this isn’t about money. It’s about Mom.”
Thomas sighed. “I thought so.”
“She’s fine, by the way. But she misses you. I know you don’t believe it, but she does, and she wanted me to ask you to come out and see her.
Again
.”
“I will,” Thomas said, concentrating on the remnants of his breakfast in an effort to avoid Lucas’s gaze. It seemed like every time he saw Lucas these days, all he wanted to talk about was what a terrible son Thomas was being, and how it broke Alice’s heart that the youngest Mayhew never made it out to Montauk to visit. But it was more complicated than that, as Lucas knew full well. Alice didn’t care if he came or not; she may have told herself she did, but that was only because not caring made her feel guilty.
“When? I just went out there this weekend. Would’ve been nice of you to come with me.” Lucas eyed him carefully, and Thomas wondered if his brother knew he’d been away. By virtue of their different roles in the KES, weeks could go by without the Mayhew boys getting even so much as a glimpse of each other. But Lucas was acting shiftier than usual, and Thomas had a feeling that for all his scolding, Lucas wanted Thomas and their mother to remain estranged. It guaranteed that at least one of their parents preferred him over Thomas.”
“I’m sort of busy at the moment,” Thomas said.
“What, carrying Juliana’s train?” Lucas scoffed. “Yeah, real important work you’re doing in the Castle there, toy soldier.”
“Hey!” Thomas snapped. “Don’t call me that.” It wasn’t easy to ruffle his feathers, but that nickname got under his skin. “Toy soldier” was what they called recruits at the KES Academy, not active duty agents, and it wasn’t a term Lucas was entitled to throw around in either case.
Lucas put his palms up in a gesture of surrender. “Sorry. You need to lighten up.”
These days, it was as if he and Lucas were only a breath or two away from open hostility. There was nothing Thomas could do about Lucas’s jealousy. He wasn’t about to quit the KES, or fail in order to make Lucas look better by comparison; he couldn’t help who he was, or the fact that he was good at his job. It was a shame, though. There had been a time, not that long ago, when his brother was his best friend, his most trusted confidant. He felt the loss of Lucas’s affection more keenly than he would admit out loud, and he was starting to wonder if they’d ever be close again.
Thomas stood. “I’m going to go get some more food, and then I have to head over to the Castle. So …” He trailed off, waiting for Lucas to pick up on the hint.
Lucas nodded. “It was good to see you, T. Mom’s not the only one who misses you, you know.”
Thomas wanted to believe his brother was being sincere. “I miss you, too,” he replied.
That, at least, was true.