My eyes rolled hard and I clicked my tongue. “If you’re wanting intel on Whitespire and the oligarch who send their kids there, I’m not going to be a part of it,” I told him. That place should’ve been paying for my therapy, but here I was, walking into a place where people killed for a living—that was therapy enough.
“No, that’s not what we’ve—I mean, Mercy has called you in for,” he said, leading me down the hallway. There was a secondary gate and at it, a window with bars and a sliding glass door. A young guy sat at a desk, his hair slicked back, he smiled, showing a gap-tooth.
“Hey, River,” he said. “Is this the guy?”
“Artemis,” I told them. “And you are?”
“I’m Pavel,” he said. “And I’m going to need your full name and any weapons you’ve got on your person. All of them.”
River looked me up and down and smiled. “It’s procedure. No weapons inside the safehouse,” he said. “Anything you’ve got, gets put in a lock box with your name, and you can have it when you leave.”
“That also includes any keys,” Pavel said. “They can be just as dangerous as any knife.”
My brows narrowed, trying to figure out how a place functioned without any sharp objects. “How do you eat in there?” I asked. “What if someone has a tough steak? Can they not use a knife?”
Pavel snickered. “River said you were funny. If that does happen, our kitchen staff are equipped for it. Trust me, anything you need, Mercy will get. It’s for everyone’s safety.”
I didn’t mind parting with my knife, I didn’t quite care if I didn’t get it back. I handed it over alongside the keys from the studio apartment—someone else would probably be given that, I probably shouldn’t have even taken the keys. “I’ve not had a lot of stuff for a while, so that’s everything.”
“No guns?” River asked, his mouth slightly slack. “But you—you’re an amazing shot, how do you not have a gun on you?”
Was this another way of him trying to get information out of me about Whitespire? If so, I wasn’t being suckered into answering. I shook my head. “I guess I’m just lucky like that.”
“Also, do you like the clothes I picked out?” River asked.
“Damn, you picked these for me?” I asked, now looking at his straight-laced outside with his shirt tucked into his slacks and the belt around them pulled tight. “Are you sure?”
“Absolutely, I only lie when necessary, and this isn’t necessary,” he said, as Pavel nodded to his comments. “It’s honestly one of the best perks of the job. I get to play around with all the tech, and I also get to outfit the—workers who use Sanctum.”
“You’re almost ready to go through,” Pavel said. “Just need your fingerprints, a retina scan, and you to say your name into this microphone.” He pulled around an entire tech box and placed it perfectly within the confines of the square window opening.
I followed the instruction, like a kid on Christmas, I just wanted to head inside and see what all the fuss was about. I knew this place was spoken of highly by Donovan—and still, I didn’t want to see him here, but it would be nice to know why he kept me away—considering all the help they’d been, and could’ve been to us.
Once we were through the gate, there was an elevator. I couldn’t hold my surprise. “Shut the fuck up,” I let out. “We’re going down, obviously.”
River laughed. “It is better, yes, building beneath the city rather than above, technology hasn’t advanced that far, with the slight exception of satellite drones, they know something we don’t, but I just can’t prove it.”
He was a little quirky, I liked him. We headed to the lowest floor, his admission. There was no punch panel of numbers, it was a wave of his card and down we went. My stomach fluttered a little with the speed and my ears popped.
“Fudge,” River said as the elevator dinged. He rushed to put his glasses on. “Before we go inside. You need to sign this NDA.”
“Ok, sure,” I said, turning to see the elevator doors open, and the sound of a waterfall. “What do you need?”
“Palm here,” he said, presenting his tablet to me. “And your signature.”
With a pen, I signed the tablet, I couldn’t see what or where I was signing, but it was done. And on a heel, I turned to see bright lights, a water feature with men in all black sitting around it, sipping large colorful drinks.
“This is the atrium,” River said softly, encouraging me to leave the elevator.
I didn’t know where to look—so I looked everywhere, trying to find where the source of the light was coming from, it was above, I knew that much. There were so many floors all of them—up and up, my eyes couldn’t focus on the top from the searing light bearing down upon me. I grabbed the nice sunglasses and slipped them over my face.
The atrium, River called it, was like a hotel lobby, all marble floor, the fanciest hotel lobbies I’d only been to when I travelled with so-called friends from college. I looked around, a dose of anxiety spiking as I shouldn’t be searching for Donovan, but he was probably behind this—I just knew it. We had unfinished business, and since he’d left me in the middle of the night, I wanted to repay him the favor with a knife in the back and maybe my fingernails in it too, how hard would it be to carveArtemisinto his skin anyway—the idea pulled a smirk across my lips.
“Hello,” a voice called out to me, and River gestured to a set of marble stairs descending into the atrium. A woman with tanned skin, and dark hair all shiny with a wave I wanted to touch. It just looked so silky. She was dressed in a black suit and a pair of Louboutin’s, the red heel giving it away. “Artemis, I’m Mercy,” she said, closing her mouth and giggling.
“Hi, hi, yes,” I said, offering a bow of sorts, which only elicited another giggle. “Thank you for inviting me.”
“You don’t know me,” she said. “But I’ve been watching you. I would’ve invited you in sooner, but—” she licked her lips in pause. “Let’s go to my office.”
