Every Missing Piece

Chapter Seventeen

Days pass. I spend most of them in silence and isolation. No one tells me what's happening: whether the guards are facing the Keeping, what the Assembly has planned for Gotten, when I will get to leave. I don't care. I can infer the answers well enough for myself.

Everything's hopeless. You'll be here forever. You're hopeless too.

I only have one way I can express my aggravation. I cut each and every trace of my rage into the door of my prison, one gash for every time the Assembly did me wrong. I've cut the bottom hinge of the door completely free, but I've been careful to hide signs of my progress on the doorknob and the other hinge from the guards. Miraculously, they haven't noticed yet. Slowly but surely, I am carving my own escape.

The only break in my routine is the regular meetings I have with Mason, and those are their own kind of monotony. True to his word, Mason has left all talk of escape and defying the Assembly behind us, but that doesn't mean he does exactly as Josef commands. He will not train another Assembly liaison. When he meets me for our sessions, we mostly sit in silence, staring anywhere but at each other until an acceptable amount of time has passed and a guard materializes to take me away. Mason seems nervous to talk to me since the last meeting with the Assembly. Good.

I'm still mad at him for giving up so easily. I'm mad at him for making me believe things could be different, only to tell me the next day that I shouldn't even try. I have nothing to say to him anyway.

Mason sits across from me now, his fingers tapping in some semblance of a rhythm on the table. I watch his fingers carefully, no, I refuse to look anywhere else. His hand looks too strong for someone drumming nervously.

"Mercy and I are still trying, you know," he says suddenly.

"If you say so."

"It's just difficult," he continues, "when the Keeping is stronger than ever and the Assembly is on full alert. If we don't play our cards right, not even the Desperates will be able to protect you. We haven't figured out the best way to proceed yet."

I stay silent. It's so easy for him to be patient. He's not the one who has family out there and who has to wonder with every passing hour if they're all right. He's not the one who is even now slipping out of the memories of everyone I've ever met.

No, I'm done waiting for him.

"You're mad at me." For the first time today, Mason meets my eyes. If there's an apology hidden in that look, then I don't see it.

"I'm not," I say, although that's a lie. "It's just frustrating to wait here when I could be doing something, especially when time is so important."

He sighs. "I never should have told you the plan. Not until we had more of it figured out, anyway."

"Yes, you should have! Why doesn't anyone get it? Every single problem-it comes from people not telling me enough! What else is going to have to go wrong before I'm not left in the dark?"

Mason flinches. "We're still trying," he repeats.

Yes, and it's not good enough.

Just then, the door flies open. I expect to see a guard waiting to end the lesson and take me back to my room, but Mathias stands there instead with a frown lining his face. "Josef wants to speak with you," he announces.

Mason and I quickly stand up, but Mathias shakes his head. "Not both of you," he says, and then he points at me. "Just her."

I don't look back as Mathias leads me away, but inside, I'm shaking. What could Josef want with me? In all of our encounters, he's managed to take something else away from me, and I don't think I have anything left to give.