Every Missing Piece

Chapter Eight

The empty hallway stretches in both directions as the lights above me softly flicker. The inside of the Assembly headquarters is just as needlessly extravagant as I expected it to be. My feet tap in staccato clicks against the marble floor, and paneling in a dark wood too fine for me to properly identify adorns the walls. Even though I'm stories above the rest of Gotten, I could just as easily be waiting underground as all of today's sunlight has been shut out from the windowless rooms. From what I've seen so far, the headquarters relies exclusively on fluorescent lighting, even though I know that the sun shines brightly outside.

Again, extravagance.

Somewhere behind that heavy wooden door, the Assembly waits for me. Maybe I could even hear them talking amongst themselves, already discussing my fate, if my heart would quiet long enough for me to listen.

And now I wait after walking ever so cooperatively into the palm of their open hand, all so they can kill me.

I'm not delusional. The Assembly's note didn't need to explain why they were changing the date of my meeting for me to understand. They know about the pill, and I know that they'll have to kill me for it and that I will go down fighting, even if I don't stand a chance.

There's a part of me, though, an insistent bright spot in an otherwise midnight universe, that refuses to believe. I have to remain hopeful, because if the Assembly knows my secret, then I must have been betrayed. After everything, I can't think that Mason would do that. There has to be another explanation.

Isn't my naiveté touching?

Just then, the door opens and there's no signal to go inside, no indication that this is anything other than the standard meeting with the Assembly that everyone has once they turn eighteen. I take a deep breath and I can almost believe that today will just be about evaluating my job performance. The idea evaporates into wishful thinking by the time I take my first steps into the conference room.

It takes a minute for my eyes to adjust to the dimness, but when they do, it takes all of my willpower not to sprint away until I'm running so fast that I've run back in time to that cursed day at the medic center so I can swallow the pill as I should have. Seated around a large, circular table, the Assembly stares at me, so unmoving that they could pass for statues. There's so many of them, a dozen at least, and one empty chair for me closest to the door.

Is the entire Assembly always present at the meetings? I always believed that there were normally only a couple of representatives present.

Then again, I suppose I'm not normal anymore.

Like the rest of the Assembly headquarters, there are no windows in this room either, but the lights are low enough to cast everyone in shadows. The walls are decorated with framed maps of Gotten, but they're like no maps I've ever seen. The lines on the yellowed paper are sparse and angular, like they've captured only the bare skeleton of the city. Even so, it is the most familiar thing in this room.

Because no one has instructed me to do otherwise, I take a seat. Even sitting down, the Assembly continues to study me intently as if I am more lab specimen than girl. It's funny, isn't it, how the one time Mason is nowhere to be found, I wish I could just glance over at him and know everything's going to be okay...no. I don't really want that.

Now that I'm sitting amongst the Assembly, I can finally see the vague, nameless faces that have manipulated Gotten's tangled puppet strings for so long. I've snuck fleeting glimpses of them, same as everyone else, but those were only enough for me to believe that everyone in the Assembly wears a dark suit and a stern expression. Just like Mason, but in reality, so different. The first thing I notice is that they're all old. Even in the dimness of the conference room, it's easy to see that their hair ranges from gray to the most delicate of whites. Some, probably too proud to wear glasses, lean forward and squint in my direction. Lines trace all of their faces, a symbol of the passing years that I will never live long enough to see.