Thin. She looked thin. Tired, too, with those circles under her eyes that makeup had done little to hide. But she was alive. In the months since he had seen her, Halston had feared what might have become of her.

"Come to stare at one of the side show freaks?" she said. "I should start charging all of you; I'd make a small fortune off it."

He almost dropped the cup of tea he'd brought her onto her desk. "I'm sorry," he said. "I hadn't ..." He pushed the cup and saucer towards her, as if it might ward off her wrath. "I hadn't meant to stare, I had just wanted to be certain that you were all right." He gave a smile of the variety that girls usually seemed to like — neither wide nor flashy. "Have you been all right?"

His smile had no effect on her. "There are worse places to be a prisoner."

Halston winced. "You're not a prisoner when you've volunteered to work here."

She looked around the office. Few people were here at this hour; most of them had gone to lunch in the dining hall downstairs, but those who remained weren't close enough to hear this conversation. There were also no new potential volunteers in the holding cells. Taking up the cup of tea, she said, "If that's what you've been told, it's a lie."

Coming to her had been a mistake. "Archie was right," he said. "I shouldn't have bothered talking with your sort, not when so many of you keep trying to undermine the war effort."

Her laugh was low and beautiful. Why did it have to be beautiful? She took a drink of her tea, then made a face. "Sugar next time."

"Rations," he replied. "It can't be helped."

"Yes, just like keeping an American citizen captive couldn't be helped. I've heard it all before." She looked him over. "What are you, twelve or thirteen?"

Her blunt attempt at antagonism had no effect this time. "I'm twenty."

She drank again. "Twenty." A shake of her head. "And you just came from that Toybox place, right?"

"The Toyshop. That's not the official name, regardless, it's —"

Waving him off, she said, "The official name doesn't matter. The point I'm trying to make is that this isn't like your last job, playing around with weapons. It's people that are the toys here, flesh and blood."

"You're volunteers, and the Prime Minister has given us permission for what we're doing here."

Her expression chilled, not that it'd been very warm to start with. "I'm not a volunteer. You know that."

He looked away from her with a stab of guilt. "You might not have started as one," he said, "but you became one."

"I didn't."

"Forgive me if I shan't believe you."

The girl took a long, deliberate drink of her tea. She looked as if she were thinking about throwing it in his face, and he took a step back from her desk. "If Churchill knew half of what went on here outside his rare visits," she said, "he'd rescind whatever permission he's given. You'd agree, too, if you knew, if you'd seen ..." She stopped. After taking several breaths, she began again. "You haven't seen me since I saved your damned life, so you don't know what's happened to me." Her rising voice caught the attention of one of the men halfway down the room. She tended to her cup again.

Such strong language from a girl of her obvious class! How could she use it so easily? Perhaps there'd been more to her than he'd first thought. She offered a challenge, or, at the very least, a change of pace. He drew up a chair from one of the desks near hers, the one he'd been assigned. "Tell me."

She shook her head. "You won't believe it."

Ah, not very much of a challenge. Pity. "I take it that you won't tell me, then? That must mean you have no proof."

"You won't believe it, but you will." She set her tea down. "The longer you're here, the more you'll see."

"Like I said, you've no proof."

A small smile slid onto her face. "Carpenter. That was the man who stabbed you, wasn't it?"

"Yes," Halston said. Just where was she going with this?

"He's dead now," she said. "Your uncle killed him. Apparently Carpenter was feeling an attack of the conscience over what's been happening here." She took another drink of her tea. "That's why he ran. He wasn't selling secrets like your uncle claims; he knew Archie was insane before he was given this department."

"I don't believe you." Yet his voice didn't carry through the right amount of conviction.

She looked oddly happy at those words. "Good, don't. But believe yourself. There's the record room right over there. You'll see. This department started before the war, but it's been growing uglier by the day under its new emperor."

He rose. "I doubt that."

Her smile seemed poisonous. "Not for much longer."

But as he left, the doubt he held wasn't for what she had said. It was for what he had been told by other men, Archie included.

* * *

He didn't check the record room. Not that day. But curiosity got him the next afternoon. He read the file, saw the truth of things, then went straight to his uncle's office with it.

Archie looked in annoyance at the file that had been lobbed onto his desk. "It usually takes a week or two before new employees begin throwing things at me."

"You killed Carpenter," Halston said, before he'd completely closed the door behind himself.

His uncle leant back against his chair. "Carpenter tried to kill you and he tried to kill this department." Archie tucked the spilled papers back into the file. "If you'd read any farther, you would have known that before you came barging in." Holding the file out, he added, "Don't speak with Miss Easton more than you're required to do. She delights in tormenting the gullible."

A moment passed before Halston connected that name to anyone he'd met here. It could only have belonged to the girl. He should have asked it of her. "Miss Easton?" He frowned. "Why does that sound familiar?"

"Because other than the war, the newspapers and the wireless have been bleating about her." Archie gave a frown of his own. "When was the last time you've actually read anything outside work reports, Hall? What you'd been doing at MD1 was important, more than important, but it's not the only thing to pay attention to. There is a war on, you know."

"She's the missing American heiress?" Good God, she hadn't been lying. "She never became a volunteer after her interrogation, did she? If she had done, she wouldn't still be considered missing."

Archie sighed. "It sounds terrible, but it's a necessary evil. We can't win things without sacrifice. Her temporary discomfort —"

That confirmed what she had told Halston. "She has family looking for her!"

"Her temporary discomfort," Archie continued, as if he hadn't been interrupted, "is little compared to what scores of other people are facing. She gets more than most do. Her wardrobe includes silk clothes, for heaven's sake. She's hardly a prisoner."

"Can she leave any time she that she wishes to do? If she can't, then yes, she's a prisoner."

Disappointment hardened Archie's face. "Don't be a fool, boy. Not like that Carpenter had been."

Halston gave a start at the sudden coldness of his uncle's tone. He read the rest of the message in those eyes, cruel eyes that were the same dark blue as his own. Say anything, and you'll end up the same way Carpenter has done.

Did you know this story is from Royal Road? Read the official version for free and support the author.

It hadn't been the first threat that Archie had delivered to him, but it had been given in stark daylight and in a calm tone. So Halston said nothing, not even when he left Archie's office to go to his own desk. He worked instead. Once most of his colleagues had left their unnamed department, once Archie had left, he went into the record room again. He read many files for a long time, taking notes, until someone tapped on his shoulder. He whirled about on his left heel — always his left, never his bad side — to find the girl holding a cup of tea out to him.

"You looked like you could use this," she said.

He set aside some files so he could take the tea from her. "Er, thank you, Miss Easton."

"Eleanor, please."

Eleanor, yes, that had been her first name. He'd heard it on the wireless back when people had still been reporting her disappearance. That'd been months ago, however. Without any substantial rumors or proof, the story had sunk beneath the waves of war coverage. Yet he'd never seen a picture of her, not in all these months, so he'd never connected the American heiress to the miracle girl who had saved his life. Perhaps he should start reading the papers again, like Archie had said to do.

The thought of doing anything his uncle recommended almost put him off his tea, which included, by the grace of God, more than just water. Had he been alone, he might have sighed happily due to sheer gratefulness. "How did you ever find sugar and milk?" he said.

"I have extra rations."

"Because you're an heiress?"

She sat on top of a low table where he'd been reading his files, a move that temporary exposed her above the knees. Her stockings looked as if they might indeed be silk, a fact that Halston lingered over even as he looked politely away. "Because I'm a monster," she said, drawing down her skirt back where it belonged, and drawing his gaze, too. "If I didn't need them, your dear old uncle wouldn't let me have them."

"Why would you need extra rations?" He drank his tea. "You don't look as if you eat very much."

Gesturing to the pencil he had behind one ear, she said, "May I?"

Confused by the non sequitur, he handed it over without thinking. What little of her thighs he had seen had been very attractive, and his mind was still largely on them. If Archie wasn't lying and she was truly here of her own free will, then perhaps Halston might ask her if she'd like to go with him to —

She promptly stabbed herself through the hand, all the way through, with only a brief cry of pain.

He stared in horror as she wrenched the pencil out of her flesh. The wet sound it made when she pulled it free shocked him out of his trance. "My God, are you mad?"

"Sometimes," she said. "Look."

"I don't want to look."

But he did. The wound was healing. What had once been a clean hole through her hand was now closing up, muscle knitting together, then skin. The angry red wound became a scab, and the scab curled up and fell off to reveal a pink scar that quickly faded into nothing. She dropped his pencil in a nearby rubbish bin. "Sorry, did you still want that?"

He had somehow managed to hold onto his tea throughout the entire ordeal, spilling only a few drops in his saucer. Commendable, really. He set it down so he could grasp her hand. Inspecting her palm, he said, "How on earth do you do it?"

"Beats me." Her stomach gave a very loud gurgle. "Oh, just like clockwork." As he gave her a look, she continued, "If I use my power, I need to eat. A lot." She held out a hand to him, the one that wasn't covered in blood. "Would you mind?"

"Would I mind what? Watching you do something terrible again?"

"Would you take my hand? I'd like to get off this table, and I don't want to get it bloody."

He took her hand, and together, they got her back on her feet. If he held onto her a moment too long, she didn't seem to mind it. He grabbed up his tea. It would've been impolite of him to waste it. "You could've just told me of your power."

"Demonstrations are more effective than words."

That was true, though his appetite regretted what he had seen. He drank his tea, anyway.

"Come on," she said, leading the way out of the record room, "there's half a chicken in my icebox, and some ham, too. We can have sandwiches." She spun to look at him after she stepped out into the main office, her skirt flaring. "Do you eat ham? Mr. Crowther-Cohen said you're Jewish — or that he and your mother are, so does that mean you are, too?"

"I was raised Anglican, but more than a few small-minded bullies liked to tell me what I was or wasn't." Some still did, though they'd grown rarer as he'd grown taller. "And yes, I do eat ham. It'd be rather difficult avoiding pork, considering my father's German."

When he caught up to her, she turned back round to face forward. She glanced at her palm again. "Oh, that darned blood. It's harder to get off when it dries, so we'd better hurry. I can wash it off in the kitchen." She picked up the pace, and so did he. "That can't be easy. Having a German father at a time like this."

"No, it hasn't been," he said. "Although Father came to this country before the First World War, he's still seen as something of an outsider." At that time, his father had been little older than his son was now, an age that had seemed impossibly ancient when Halston had been a boy. "He's a German with Anglomania, straight down to his admiration of Shakespeare."

They moved out of the main office and into the lift, Halston waiting until she had got on before he entered. Once he had closed the gate, she turned the brass car switch to the left, and the lift began to sink down. "What did he do during the Great War?" she said, settling in rather closely beside him.

Halston found the lack of distance difficult to mind. "Father went into the British Army and served his chosen country well." A faint, sweet scent came to him. Her perfume. "Of course, he had his share of troubles due to his heritage. He likes to joke that he saw more fighting in the trenches from Britons than he had from Germans."

The lift came to an automatic stop with a loud chime, and she let go of the switch, which drew back into its neutral and upright position. Neither she nor Halston moved; the gate of the ground floor wouldn't open unless it was unlocked from the outside. One of the guards appeared at the end of the long corridor that led to the lift.

"He was eventually awarded a Military Cross for his gallantry, then had a bar added to it for the injuries that got him invalided out of the war," Halston went on. " 'I may have lost my leg, but I kept my pride,' he told me once. If he'd kept the leg, I imagine he would have attempted to volunteer for this war without thinking twice."

Eleanor smiled just enough to move the corners of her mouth. "What does he do now, your father?"

"After the war, he went back to university, then later became a professor of English literature. That was how he and Mother met, the university."

"Was she another student?" Eleanor said. "Or his student?"

"Another student, from a different university. But Granddad — her father — had been a professor of my father." The guard was taking his time getting to the lift, but Halston minded that about as much as he minded Eleanor's closeness to him. "She visited Granddad one afternoon, saw my father lingering after class to ask the old fellow a question, and was instantly smitten with the young, wounded hero. She pursued him, a rather easy thing to do when he was on crutches."

This time Eleanor laughed instead of just smiling. God, what a delightful sound. She began to say something, but the arrival of the guard kept her from it.

Halston only just managed not to curse the man. He found himself hurrying after Eleanor, who had left first — she was surprisingly fast for such a small thing. They turned down another hallway, pushing deeper into the ground story. "Before I start detailing all my ancestors," he said, "what about you? What about your parents?"

"Oh, you probably know all about them." She gave him a sly glance. "You were in the record room just now."

"Yes, but I haven't read your file." He had been tempted to rifle through it, but had restrained himself. Reading the intimate details about someone with whom he would be working struck him as wrong and cowardly. If he had anything he wanted to know, he could either ask her or wait for her to trust him enough to tell such things. "I haven't read any files on any of my colleagues, or the current volunteers."

The joy in her expression dimmed. "We're not all volunteers," she said, "but all of us are subjects."

His temple pounded at the mention of this very familiar topic. "You're an American, not a British subject."

"Don't pretend you're obtuse," she said, catching onto his deliberate mistake. "We're subjects as in experiments, ones who don't get to choose what happens to them."

Archie had said she liked tormenting the gullible. But he had also confirmed what she had said: that she wasn't here of her own free will, and that he had killed Carpenter. Hadn't ordered him killed, had killed him directly. Even with all its blacked out lines, the file on Henry Carpenter had made that much clear.

With all that in mind, could she be telling the truth now? Could she be telling the truth on everything? Or had Archie been right in his assessment of her, the girl who didn't weep like an ordinary one would've done? The civilian who had come to England during wartime?

She had told the truth on other questions that had been answered, so it was possible that she could be doing the same thing now. As for what Archie said of her, those claims were suspect after all that he had done.

Those things sat uneasily in Gerver's stomach long after he entered the dining hall with Eleanor.

They went to the kitchen, where she washed her bloodied hand while he got things out of her refrigerator. It had a chain and lock on it, the key of which she had given him from around her neck. They made sandwiches, then sat down at the kitchen table to eat, rather than going back into the dining hall. Halston barely touched the food she had offered him. She said, "If you're not going to have that, I will."

"Please do."

She rose, leaning across the narrow table to take Halston's plate. Instead of doing so, she covered Halston's hand with one of hers. "Don't blame yourself," she said. "Someone would have caught me eventually. That's the nature of men, to cage what they can't understand."

He said the first thing that came to mind. "I'm sorry you think so little of my sex."

Her kindness, it was to blame. He could have withstood hatred, but kindness? What could he do with kindness in a situation like this? How could she be kind? If she hadn't saved him, she wouldn't be here. Yet she was here, and she still kept her hand on his, attempting to comfort him.

"It wasn't an insult. I'd meant 'men' as in 'mankind,' dear boy." Despite sounding perfectly polite, her eyes mocked him. "Though you must admit that men have had the run of things for a long while."

Halston pulled his hand from hers. "I'm hardly a boy."

"You're twenty." She took his plate up, then sank back into her chair. "That's young in my book."

"You're only a year older than I am."

She smoothed her napkin back onto her lap. "Thank you for reminding me," she said, as if he had told her that she had dropped a few pence on the floor, "I'd nearly forgotten."

He almost said that she was being ridiculous, until her face turned from innocent to impish. Being ridiculous had been the point. Although she was a prisoner in this place, she had wanted to cheer him up. It should have been the other way around. The small gesture lifted his heart, just as the little laugh she gave did. For a moment, she let him forget about the guilt he well deserved for being one of her many jailers.