Robert Crane - Family

Ariadne looked down. “Fair point.” She stood. “Let’s get this over with.”

“So that’s it?” I asked as she made her way around the desk. She halted a couple feet from me and stared back as I spoke. “So long and best of luck?”

“This is not the end,” Ariadne said. “But honestly, what do you want me to do? She’s got one of our metas as a hostage, you’re her daughter, and she’s proposing a trade. Either you want to go with her or you don’t. Either way, I need Kat back.”

“And if I stay, what guarantee do I have that I don’t get stuck back in the loneliest room in the house?” I set my jaw and readied for an argument of some sort.

“None,” Ariadne answered. “Your fate with us hinges on whether we can find our traitor. Right now the evidence – however weak – points at you. Sorry.” She shrugged. “You can either take your mother’s opportunity and walk free, or stay and let us try to resolve this situation. Your choice.”

“My choices suck,” I said. “I’ve worked for you for six months and you haven’t given me so much as the benefit of the doubt.”

“Oh, but I have,” she said. “More than once, in fact. I’m just keeping you out of a position to compromise our ongoing efforts. I don’t think you’re the traitor, but I’m double dumb if I’m wrong and I keep giving you the rope to hang us with.” She folded her arms. “If you want to leave with your mom, do it. I wouldn’t blame you. But don’t ask me to stand back and not do everything I can, take every reasonable precaution I can to tamp down all the security threats we have hanging out there.” Her mouth became a grim line. “So go, if you want. Stay, if you want. But know where you’ll be if you do stay, because you’ll be there until I can fix this situation.”

I swallowed hard. “And what if you can’t ever find the leak? The traitor?”

Her eyes hardened. “Then it’s still in the hands of the Director what would be done with you. But don’t imagine he’s much more lenient than I am. Assume he’d be worse, as you make your decision.”

I stared back at her, in the depths of her eyes, saw the feeling there beneath the gray, colorless exterior. “Are you telling me to go?”

She seemed to soften, her face falling. “Yes. Don’t make me lock you up again. Just go. Get out of here. I’ll find you once we find the traitor, and you can come back if you want. There’s no point to you being confined here. Take your mother’s out and get clear.” She pressed the watch back into my hands, the edges pressing against my gloves.

I looked at her, then at the watch, and my face dissolved. “I don’t have anywhere else to go.”

With greatest reluctance, she took a step forward and I felt her arm around my shoulder, and she gave me a squeeze, careful not to touch me with her skin. “It doesn’t matter. Just go. This is going very, very badly. We’re losing this war with Omega, and it’s not even close to the worst it can be. Your mother has been dodging Omega for years.”

I pulled back from her, and felt the moisture in my eyes. “Okay.”

She nodded at me, and I felt her hand on my back as I turned to look at Reed, who stared at me, impassive. “You know you always have another place to go.”

“I might have to take you up on that,” I said. “But…I guess we have something else to resolve first.”

He raised an eyebrow at me. “You want me to come along?”

“Sure,” I said, and led the way out the door, Reed and Ariadne a couple steps behind me. “Let’s go see my mom.”

The elevator ride was quiet and long. The atmosphere hung heavy in the box, neither Reed nor Ariadne speaking as we went down. I, too, held my peace, with nothing left to say that hadn’t already been said. When the tone dinged to let us know we’d reached the first floor, it startled me, sounding more than a little like a chime that precedes a bad announcement, like an impending execution.

I walked out the front doors of the headquarters building and saw a small assemblage waiting on the lawn. My mother was there, standing just behind Kat Forrest, who looked to be perfectly coiffed, her blond hair in order, her makeup applied like usual, her clothes in fine form.

I, on the other hand, was wearing the same clothes I had worn yesterday. My hair was mussed because I hadn’t bothered fixing it since I slept on it earlier. I didn’t wear makeup, so there was that.

My mother looked vaguely bored, studying her hands as though she were about to do her nails. Her dark hair was bound in a tight ponytail, just like she always wore it when we were sparring. She wore a black leather coat over a dark shirt, and tight jeans, much tighter than I would have felt confident wearing. Actually, they reminded me a little of Charlie. I realized with a shock, after a moment, that the reason she was looking at her fingernails was because she wasn’t wearing any gloves, which was highly unusual in my experience. Breaking a house rule; not at all like Mom.

The four members of M-Squad were spread out in front of her, from Clary at the farthest left to Bastian next to him, then Kappler, and Parks at the far right. Every one of them was on edge, standing tense, except Clary, who was already shifted into a rocky skin, presumably to counteract my mother if she tried to touch him. Mom, for her part, seemed unconcerned by this show of force against her, and I wondered what sort of ace she had up her sleeve that allowed her to be so indifferent to the overwhelming numbers against her.

“Hi, sweetie,” my mother said as we approached, looking up from her nails and giving me a fake smile, presumably more for the audience and less for me since I knew she was being false. “I was close by, so I figured why wait three hours when I could free my precious little baby now.”

“You are such a bitch,” I told her as I walked between Clary and Bastian to stand opposite Kat. I looked around my blond colleague to look my mother in the face as I said this.

“And you are awfully ungrateful seeing as how I’m getting you out of this little jam that your own bad decisions have landed you in.” She said it mildly, without much concern either way. In the past, the level of smartassness I exhibited with the one sentence I had uttered to her would have landed me in the box for days without much in the way of leniency.

“Because you’re playing at something else,” I said, letting my recklessness run away with me again. “You don’t care about getting me out except for as a means to an end. So what is it? You want Andromeda’s autopsy report? Want to see the body yourself? What is it about her that’s so important to you that you’re willing to come out of hiding and move heaven and earth, break onto the Directorate campus over and over to find out?” I blinked at her. “What is it about her…” I choked and hated myself for feeling this much emotion and letting it come out in front of everyone. “…that’s so important?” That’s more important than me? – that was what I wanted to say.

I saw the slight wash of emotion over Mother’s face, followed by the red flush of embarrassment. “This is not the time or place for…any of this.” She cocked her head and looked past me. “What. The. Hell…are you doing here?”

I followed her gaze to where Reed stood not far behind my shoulder. “Confabbing,” he said. “Trying to establish a tie between the Directorate and Alpha. What are you doing? Other than being a frightfully underwhelming parent to your daughter?”

I watched my mother’s complexion turn even more scarlet as she reacted stronger than I would have imagined. “Oh, that’s just…rich.”

“I’m sorry…” I said, not actually apologetic so much as confused, “…but you two know each other?”