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This is the first time Henry hasn’t tried to put me back in my box, and that’s a good thing because I’m not fucking going. The nerve of those people to hunt my family bloodline down, treating us like pigs to be slaughtered when we have outlived our usefulness. They’re going to pay. They’re all going to pay.
He drives me to a building in the city, just one of the many tall erections that contains many dozens of floors and probably hundreds of offices. We wind down into a parking lot that is managed by a strong steel bar arm and a gatekeeper who tips his cap to Henry.
I start to feel that prickly feeling on the back of my neck that indicates this might not be what it seems. The parking lot is full of cars, but they’re all black, and their license plates seem oddly uniform.
“Where are we?”
“I suppose you could call this our den,” Henry says. “As I mentioned, we have been at work for quite some time.”
From the exterior, the building looks like it contains your average collection of accountants, marketers, office managers, and people whose jobs evade description out of sheer monotony.
From the interior, however, everything is sleek, cool, and highly ordered. Walking through feels like stepping into a spy movie or something.
Tinker waves to me from a bank of computers all tended by very serious-looking men and women. She’s a little bright spark in an otherwise intensely conservative space, and now I know why Henry had her come into our safehouse. She was one of the few people who felt like a person compared to the rest of these drones.
“What is happening?”
“This is one of our surveillance divisions,” he says.
That sentence is absolutely packed with meaning that he doesn’t bother to elaborate on. One of their divisions for surveillance? How fucking big is his operation?
“Don’t they make computers that do this automatically?”
“Yes. And they do it badly. Everyone here is capable of advanced human level analysis. The computers help, of course, but we are able to see what they might miss. Our enemies are adept at trying to hide, and computers can only pattern match. A wolf can sense what is not yet apparent.”
This, I realize, is not all in my honor. This is a project that has been in place for quite some time. It might be the reason he is so damn rich.
A little chill runs down my spine as I realize Henry has no need of a cage with me. He has ensured that the whole world is a cage. He has me, and millions of others captive like animals in a zoo, observed when something interesting is happening, and left to seek enrichment when it is not.
I glance over at him, take in his tall stature, his incredibly very nearly statue-like features. The man could have been carved by a master a couple thousand years ago. His hair has that curl in it that would make Michelangelo’s David more than a little jealous.
“Are you… are we…”
“Yes, dear, ask the question.”
“Are we the baddies?”
He laughs. “Because of this? No. This is a cost of doing business in the modern world. Information is power, and we have a great deal of it. Where it becomes evil is in the choice of what to do with it.”
“Feels like something one of the baddies would say,” I murmur.
“Good and bad are subjective,” he says. “This is the reason we have locations on every single one of the people responsible for what happened to your family.”
“You were just sitting on that data, letting them ravage my world?”
“We couldn’t afford to move before we were ready,” he says. “I’m sorry it wasn’t soon enough for… I’m sorry.”
“It’s okay,” I say, knowing that he’s done his best. More than his best, really. No other man on this planet would go as far as Henry has for me and my family, and the fact that he did it out of some sense of loyalty to my brother in the first place, when Rick ended up turning into a complete asshole… we really don’t deserve Henry. He’s the best man I know. I’d love him even if fate hadn’t made it literally impossible for me to feel any other way.
“It’s pretty far from okay,” he snorts softly. “What we do to each of these people is something we can decide together.”
“Or apart. I can go take care of them myself.”
“No,” he says firmly. “Together. You are no lone wolf, Fiona. You are my mate, and right now you are likely carrying a new generation of Swales. Wouldn’t it be nice if they could grow up without this darkness hanging over them?”
“You’d let them have my last name?”
“Baby. The Swale name will survive, even if your brother can’t manage to keep himself in one piece. I promise you that. I know it was frightening to have the wolves at the door last night, but that’s all it was. They’re never going to come over the threshold again. I promise you that.”
