Children born to serve The Society didn’t get that life. We were duty bound to follow the rules. To fit in. If we didn’t, there were always consequences, and we wouldn’t like them. Most of the time, they were idle threats, but I had heard of other kids being cast out to fend for themselves. I couldn’t do that. I wanted to control the empire I came from. If that meant I had to pass a few party tricks along the way, so be it.
Mateo hung up. “He’s on it. I don’t know why we wouldn’t have been able to find out about her. That school isn’t too far from here. It makes no sense.”
“Unless someone wanted her identity to stay hidden?” William asked.
We all turned to look at him.
William held his hands up in surrender. “Come on, you guys haven’t figured it out yet that what we’re all attached to isn’t some scary fucking shit? Think about it. People who try to take on The Society end up dead or they disappear. I don’t want to have any of those things happen to me, so I’m quite happy to just play this role, thank you very much.”
I couldn’t blame him.
Not that I knew much about The Society. My dad believed in giving me some information in very small doses, and by small, I meant what he considered suitable for me to know, nothing else.
Blowing out a breath, I looked around the bleachers. “We’ve got to be heading back.”
“I don’t like this,” Mateo said. “Do you expect us to lie to her?”
“I expect you to do whatever is necessary for the good of all of us,” Gideon said. “You know how this works. If you’re willing to risk the wrath of our fathers and the whole … society, then tell her the truth, or follow my lead and maybe we can all make it out of this alive.”
There had to be another option, there just had to be. I don’t want to lie to Sian, nor did I want to put her at risk.
I was so fucking tired of playing all these games. None of them make sense. For the last couple of months, I felt like I’d been playing catch-up.
We all headed back to school, without a plan, or with any way of truly knowing what the hell to do. This was all bullshit. It was only a matter of time before all of this blew up in our faces.
****
Mateo
The guys decided to take Sian back to our dorm, but I headed to Fred’s room. He let me in with a roll of his eyes.
“We’ve got to stop meeting like this.”
“These are the only meetings we’re allowed.” I closed the door and locked it, turning to see him already seated at the computer and typing away. “You got anything?”
“Not much. I mean, this society shit that you’ve told me about, their firewall is fucking hot stuff, man. I’ve never seen anyone’s like it.” He let out a low whistle. “It’s taking me some time, and it doesn’t help that you’ve asked me to do this undetected. It makes it slightly trickier.”
“But you can do it?”
“Yeah, I can do it.” He ran his fingers through his hair. It looked like he’d done it so many times that it was now really greasy.
I was tired.
After Gideon’s confession of the agreement he made with Sian, and just all the normal school bullshit, I was more than ready to call it a night. I didn’t even care that my dick wasn’t going to get sucked tonight.
“So, I did find a slight trace of Sian’s time at River High, and to be honest, even there it was like she didn’t exist.”
“Tell me more.”
“We all have documents, right?”
“I’m guessing so.” This wasn’t helping my headache.
“The only trace I found was when she came to this school.”
“But I thought you said that it was gone. There was no trace of her,” I said.
“Exactly. Someone did a crap job of trying to completely erase it. So long as you know what you’re looking for, and I mean dates, times, locations, and all people involved, most of the time you can find anything. When I didn’t have the school, I didn’t know what direction to go down. Also, here is another interesting fact, according to these papers I found.” He clicked and pointed up at his screen. “The woman who enrolled her was a Drew Roberts.”
“I know her nanny was named Drew.”
“Exactly, but Roberts? It’s a pretty common last name, but get this, another little interesting detail right here. She’s a distant relative of Sian’s mother, and here is your evidence.” He clicked away and there was the picture of Joan and Drew Roberts.
“Okay, let me get this straight, Sian’s mother had a distant cousin take care of her daughter. Drew became the mother to her and enrolled her into the school.”