After the conversation with his father at the town house, Nick spent the night at Patch’s apartment, as he figured it was the only safe place for him to be. Once Nick and his friends were officially released from the Society, he hoped he would feel secure going back to his parents’ place, but until then, he wanted to stay out of their apartment. He had removed his computer and any significant personal belongings from his bedroom, and he was camped out in Patch’s living room.
Most of all, it felt important to be close to his brother.
The following morning passed slowly. Genie didn’t feel the boys should leave the apartment until they knew what was going to happen. As of noon, word still hadn’t come.
“This is just like them,” Patch said. “Everything at the last minute.”
“At least we’re prepared,” Nick said. “I’ve called Lauren and Thad. If the Council doesn’t comply, we send out the DVDs and the emails.”
“What about Phoebe?” Patch asked.
Nick shrugged. “I don’t know where she is. Lauren said she was out of town, but she couldn’t say where.”
“Girls,” Patch said, groaning. “I haven’t told Lia anything since you spoke with Parker. I didn’t want to scare her.” He paced around the living room. “God, why can I not call him my father?”
Genie stood at the door to the kitchen. “Because he’s not, Patch. Your father is the man who raised you. Parker may be your father in a technical sense, but not in the emotional one.”
Patch nodded sadly and looked at Nick. They both wanted so much to have a connection with their father, and yet he had made it impossible. Perhaps all they would ever really have as family was each other and Genie.
The phone rang in the apartment, and Genie answered it crisply. “I believe it’s for you,” she said to Nick.
Nick answered the phone.
It was Charles, asking them to meet at the town house at two o’clock.
In front of the town house was a security camera aimed at the front door. Patch pointed it out first.
“I didn’t notice that yesterday,” Nick said, “but maybe I wasn’t paying attention.”
“I’m surprised,” Patch said. “What’s the purpose of it? I thought they specifically didn’t want a record of people’s comings and goings.”
Nick shook his head. He was tired of trying to speculate on the Society’s methods.
Up the street, Thad and Lauren were walking east toward the building. The four of them had agreed that they would enter together. They had told Genie that if they didn’t report back to her in two hours at a specific meeting place, she should call the police as well as drop all the DVDs in a mailbox.
Nick had a sinking feeling as they ascended the steps of the sandstone building. He had hoped that Phoebe would return, that she wasn’t really still out of town.
“Hold on,” he said to Lauren. “Phoebe. Is she still away?”
Lauren nodded. “I’m sorry, Nick. I’ll tell you where she is after this is all over. I promised her I wouldn’t, but you deserve to know.”
It sounded so grave. Where was she? Had she met someone else? The thought sickened him.
When they reached the top step, the door was opened by Charles Lawrence. The lion’s head knocker rattled slightly in the breeze as he held it open for everyone.
Two of the Guardians, members of the Society’s private security force, stood in the vestibule of the town house on its kilim runner.
“We’re going to need to check each one of you,” one of them said. “No recording devices, you understand?”
Nick nodded to the others. “It’s going to be fine,” he whispered to Lauren and Thad. He didn’t really know, though, if it would be.
Patch was looking around frantically, as if trying to figure out what was going on. Nick gave him a friendly squeeze on the arm as they each were patted down by the Guardians.
“Come with me,” Charles said. He led them down a hallway, past the main staircase. After pressing a panel in the wall, a door opened, leading to an elevator.
“You want us to get in there?” Lauren said. “You must be crazy.”
Charles shrugged. “If you don’t want to do this, you don’t have to.”
Nick stepped forward. “It’s fine,” he said. “It’s an elevator. We’ve been to the upper floors. We know what’s up there, more or less.”
The four of them stepped into the elevator along with Charles and one of the Guardians. The elevator car was large, but it was still a tight fit.
Charles pressed a button, and to everyone’s surprise, the creaky old elevator started going down. Nick grasped Lauren’s hand, as he sensed she was the most frightened by it all. He didn’t know what was giving him the confidence to proceed, but he felt in his gut that they were going to survive this. He was reminded, though, that he had felt a lot of things in his gut in the last six months, and many of them had not gone his way.
The elevator went down what felt like two stories, and then everyone got out. They entered a long oak-paneled room. On its walls were bulletin boards containing newspaper clippings, maps, photographs, printouts of emails, and assorted lists. A bank of file cabinets flanked the wall on the left, and on top of them were multiple flat-screen televisions, one of them monitoring the front entrance, the others turned to muted news channels. A bookshelf nearby appeared to house yearbooks and other directories. On the right were four old-fashioned secretarial desks, lined up neatly in a row. On them were computers, printers, a fax machine, and multiline telephones. Across from the desks was a large oval oak conference table, a Harkness table similar to the ones they had in the Chadwick classrooms. Nick noticed that running along the walls and in front of the desks were brass curtain rods that were attached to the ceiling. Velvet curtains in a deep shade of burgundy were pulled aside at all four corners.
It was a conference room in which the meeting participants could either be privy to the mechanics around them, or be completely partitioned off from it.
“You are probably wondering why we have left the curtains open for you.” It was Nick’s father, standing at the other end of the room, in front of a doorway. “We call this the War Room. Some of the Elders wanted to hide our operations, to keep it all under wraps today. But I thought you should see what goes on here before you leave us. I wanted you to see how much work goes into this organization. This room is rarely empty. It is where everything happens, where all your text messages are sent from, via the latest technology. Where we decide when and how we’ll meet. How we have connected you with opportunities. Most of your classmates will never see this.”
The room was a contrast of old and new. The computers were the latest models, but the Edison bulbs and fixtures lighting the room could have been a hundred years old. The burgundy curtains looked like they were from an old Broadway theater house.
Nick looked at Patch, and his brother could merely shake his head.
“What do you think?” Nick whispered.
“I don’t really know,” Patch said.
Nick decided to speak up. “Why are you showing us this?”
“Good question.” Parker looked at the group of four. “I am showing you this because I never want you to take for granted the chance that you were given. The Society is a machine that could have worked for you. But sadly, you have all chosen to throw that away.”
He motioned for them to follow him.
Through the doorway was yet another room, but this one was filled with people.