Follow Me Through Darkness by Danielle Ellison

Author:Danielle Ellison
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Follow Me Through Darkness
ISBN: 9781939392688
Publisher: Spencer Hill Press
Published: 2014-11-07T16:00:00+00:00

6 MONTHS BEFORE ESCAPE

I WAIT AS LONG AS I CAN before I have to go visit my father at headquarters. This isn’t a pleasure trip. I need his signature so I can keep teaching lessons to the younger kids. At this point, everyone my age is doing the thing they will do forever. I don’t want to do anything forever, especially not what they’ve assigned for me.

Director.

I’ve known all year, all my life, what my fate would be when I turned eighteen-Assistant Director Cornelia Ambrose. It’s the one thing I don’t want, but I’ll never be able to avoid it, not entirely. This is a delay tactic. We haven’t been on the best of terms, but it’s all I have. I’m still his daughter, and that has to count for something.

The hallways here always put me on edge. I don’t like being able to see myself in the floor, to hear my shoes as I walk. The walls are so white and the lights too bright. I feel like I’m out of place, and everyone is watching me contaminate the space. Plus, I know what’s underneath the shiny layers of tile and laminate-the dead awaiting the ceremony we have four times a year.

Father’s office is in the far eastern corner of headquarters, so I have to pass by the Healer unit and the Troopers station before I make it to his quarters. I try to block out what lies beneath me and beside me.

“Cornelia,” Mary Jenks says. She’s my father’s assistant, though I’m not sure what she assists him with. She’s a short woman with blonde hair cut to her shoulders, and she’s always wearing black dresses and shiny shoes.

“I’m here for my father.”

Mary flips the papers on her clipboard, her brow furrowing. “You’re not on his schedule.”

I put on my best innocent, doting daughter face. “He’s so busy, I know, but it should only be a minute.”

She smiles at me, eyes darting around before landing on me. “He should be back soon. You can sit in his office if you’d like.”

I thank her and go inside. My father’s office is dark. The walls are brown here, unlike the rest of headquarters. A bookshelf covers the back wall of the room, filled with the history of the Compound in ledgers from previous directors. There’s a couch the color of the tide and two chairs that are near his massive, disheveled desk. If not for the floors that still shine under my feet, I wouldn’t recognize the place.

I take a seat in my father’s chair behind the desk. When I was a little girl, it made him look so big and powerful. Now, sitting here makes me anxious. I don’t want this life. This job. It’s changing him, and I don’t want that either. I look down to his desk and see a ledger open on the surface. I shouldn’t-I know I shouldn’t-but I look at it.

The script is tiny, hard to read. I have to squint to make out the small letters.

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