Chapter 2: 10.15.3030--3:08 ​PM

Jo meets members of the secret society after bargaining with King Ander.

  The hallways of the palace were lined with several different versions of Orientem’s flag. The most common was positioned between every three, and it had stripes of yellow and black down its sides. Like a bloody bumblebee. There was no sign of any greens or purples, and whoever decorated had very clearly gone out of their way to avoid having any of the Pale country’s colors. I could only assume that the yellow stems of flowers had been developed with a technology tasked only with erasing all green from the capital. Come to think of it, I’d never seen green or purple while walking the streets of New York either. 

“Where are we going, again?” The king swiftly turned on me, his yellow cape swooshing along beside him.

“Shut up, will you?”

“Yes, Your Majesty.”

“And stop calling me that.” We’d passed a total of nearly five trillion doors--all yellow--a few maids, and a butler already, and the next turn led us into another one that seemed even longer and busier.

“Would you rather be called a cow?”

“Frankly, yes.”

Three hundred doors, ten maids, and a butler later, King Cow halted in his tracks, smartly ducking out of my way, as I was paying no attention to whether or not he was stopping or going. The black and yellow floor was more interesting. I opened my mouth to berate his unpredictable walking, but he brought his hand so close to my face to shush me that he nearly touched my lips. 

We’d stopped next to a life size statue of a man who was dressed like a general, though I honestly had no guesses as to who it might have been. With no warning, the rock split right down the middle of his nose and continued down his torso until it reached the floor. The contraption opened to reveal a steel-lined elevator.

“Hurry up and get in. I’ll be down right after you.” Tentatively, I stepped up onto the platform, and the statue closed again, leaving me in total darkness as I began to fall.

The descent wasn’t actually that long, but it was dark enough that I had to fight the urge to scream. My hands tried to grab something to slow my fall, but the grooves in the metal were too small for gripping. The bottom of the chute made a dull thud when I hit it, not an echoing sound, rather a one-and-done sort of deal. 

At first, the search for a door of some kind was calm, but as soon as I heard another body tumbling above me, I began to kick at the walls.

The boy king landed on top of me, chuckling to himself as I struggled out from under him. “Will you get off? Please, Your Majesty.”

“One, I told you not to call me that. Two, are you blind? Look to your left. There’s a glowing red button that says--in lit-up words--’press here to open door.’” It was at that moment that I decided that I really wanted to kill him. 

“Except that when Your Cowness came down this little slide, he trapped my arms, so he will have to be the one to press the red button.” The weight on my back shifted as he presumably reached for the button. The panel of dark metal in front of my face hissed and slid open to reveal a tall door. As if nothing happened, the king stood, brushed himself off, and marched away, leaving me to eat his dust--literally. 

I muttered a dirty insult not fit to be repeated before brushing myself down and stumbling after him. 

The door led to a hallway lined with the same thin metal sheets that were in the chute. The king was gone, but there was only one hallway that had a door at the end, so I followed it in hopes of remaining not lost. 

Upon entering, I chose not to first see the king standing in wait, rather I took the time to inhale the aroma of importance which the room possessed.The entire far wall was lined in desks piled with computers and notebooks and control panels. It was something out of the future. Darks--and Pales--roamed busily around the room like it was a hive, leaning over panels, pressing buttons, monitoring screens. Almost every person had on a pair of headphones with one ear swiped to the side.

I let the fantasicality of it sink in before paying any attention to the king. He would have intimidated me, standing so rigidly with his arms crossed, but his lack of height really put him at a disadvantage. Standing, he came up to maybe--and this is stretching it--my chin. I was pretty sure I’d seen that yellow cape before on his father, and on him it just brushed the floor. On this king, there was about a foot or two of cape trailing behind him instead of floating just above the ground. 

“Done,” he asked, unclipping his cape and tossing it at a hook on the wall. He had no sense of aim, so the cape missed the wall by a few feet.

“You missed.” The door closed behind me. 

The girl who entered was a Dark dressed in a yellow ball gown. Her hair was in free-flowing thick curls that exploded around her small and if you looked closely, you could see a tiara hidden among the organized mess. Everything about her was stunning, even so that her crooked nose--likely broken at a young age and never fixed--played into it all. “You know, you should be glad you were born a king, because you would be pretty lame as a soldier.”

“Technically, I wasn’t born a king. Just putting that out there. And I can easily walk over and hang it up manually, thank you very much.” Likely for the sake of feeling kingly, the boy picked up the cape to prove it. “This is--”

“--Georgia Candice Leitner. Sister to the king and unfortunately so. Welcome to the PDRA--Pale Dark Reunion Association.” 

There were two different ways to shake someone’s hand. You either avoided eye contact and let your hand go limp upon contact with the other person, or you performed with a firm grip and long eye contact. The latter way either scared you off or made you want to get closer. 

Georgia’s shake was one of the last type. I cringed as she squeezed my bones together, trying to keep the smile on my face a greeting and not a grimace. Typically eye contact didn’t bother me--in fact, mine normally bothered others--but hers made me far too uncomfortable for my liking.

“You know you don’t need to come greet every recruit as they walk in the door. We want then to help us--not flee.”

“Any recruit who flees after a handshake isn’t worth recruiting.” The king rolled his eyes and strode swiftly to an unattended control board.

“Any princess who scares off her people probably shouldn’t be a princess.”

“Touche.” She flipped her cape at the king’s on the wall, and it floated to the floor. “I’m going to go change out of this wretched thing.” Chuckling, the princess strutted back down the endless hallway, gown shifting back and forth across her legs.

“...And you’ve passed the first test. Congratulations.” Not one thing about his attitude actually said “congratulations.” “I’d say about ninety percent of recruits end up quitting after they meet her.”

“You haven’t given me a chance to quit yet.”

“Ah, but you will recall that you have no choice.”

“I could walk out right now.” The king snapped his fingers and the heavy metal door slammed shut, revealing two armed muscled Darks in uniforms. “You’ve convinced me.”

“Good. Luke?” One of the Darks snapped to attention. “Are Lola and Jones here?”

“Yessir. At the main control.” 

The king led me deeper into the sea of half-headphoned people to an exceptionally bright panel of buttons and switches. Hovering over the board was a tall, pale, dark haired woman in black cargo pants and a hoodie.

“This is our kid genius, Jones. Also the youngest on the mission. Ten years old.” I studied the curves of her body. They were definitely not those of a ten year old. Besides, as a typical rule, nerds didn’t have muscled biceps.

“Ten? She’s tall for a ten year old.”

“She? I’d say he looks his age.” Recognition dawned on him. “It would seem we speak of different people. Jones is over there,” he redirected, pointing to the far end of the panel, where a young, tanned boy with brown curly hair and large round gold-rimmed glasses sat poring over a battered notebook. Barely audible were mumbles of confusion.

“No...no, that can’t be right. Log three...one billion one hundred sixty-two million two hundred sixty-one thousand four hundred sixty-seven...eighteen...no...nineteen. Yes, that must be it. So...nineteen out of twenty...oh, heavens…”

“Jones?” The sound that came out of the boy was that of a strangled calf. 

“Gosh, Ander. Warn me next time, will you?”

“This is our new recruit. And this is Junior Jones.” As Junior stood to offer a handshake, his glasses dropped to the floor, but he paid them no mind.

“But I like to be called Jones. It’s less...paternalizing.”

“The problem with you and paternalization is that you’re so paternalizable,” the woman bent over the dashboard muttered.

“First of all, ‘paternalization’ is not a word. Second of all, I am not paternalizable.”

“That’s debatable.” 

“This is Lola. She’s the muscle of the team.” Lola looked me over from head to toe. 

“Who did you say this is?” 

“This is…” He trailed off. “You know, it’s funny how long one can go without knowing one’s name. I have not yet been gifted with your name, miss.” I remained stubbornly silent. “I apologize for the confusion, but that was me asking for you to tell us what you’d like to be called.” I smirked, he sighed. “Please?”

“Fine. But only because you’re so polite. My name is Jo.”

“Which is short for…?”

“You asked what I wanted to be called. I’d like to be called Jo.”

“If we’re going to be so stubborn, then what is your given name, Jo?” I really did not feel like sharing with him my given name, so naturally, I lied.

“That is my given name, Your Cowness.”

“We’ll see about that.”