Taken (Erin Bowman)

other half of my uniform from the bathroom floor. I should find Emma. I still need to tell her what Frank told me about Harvey and his project. We could get breakfast together, talk over our meals, and attempt to block out all of Union Central around us. If we try hard enough, maybe it will be like we are back in Claysoot, where things were easy. Maybe.
    As I approach my door, I hear voices on the other side: Marco and Frank.
    “He’s still out?” Frank asks. I feel a surge of gratitude, knowing he’s checking in on me.
    “It’s been roughly twenty-four hours, but that’s pretty standard,” Marco says. “He should be up soon.”
    “I want to know the moment he is. In the meantime, get me answers. I’m too busy with Harvey to deal with this right now, and, so help me, I do not want all this hard work crumbling because of one missed Heist.”
    “I understand, sir.”
    “Good,” Frank says. His footsteps click down the hallway, but then they pause. “Are you coming?”
    “I haven’t slept in a while. First the boy, then that meeting you called yesterday. I thought maybe I could take a break.”
    “You don’t deserve one,” Frank says. His voice is still as buttery and smooth as ever, but it makes the obvious authority in his words that much more powerful. “We’re receiving an update from Evan’s team before they head out to the forest. I want you there.”
    Marco sighs. “Yes, sir.”
    I listen to their footsteps trail off, and then open my door a crack. The hallway is empty. I try to comprehend what this means.
    Yesterday Frank told me I was a miracle, a mystery, the potential key to saving our town, but while talking to Marco just now, he hadn’t seemed nearly as pleased with this possibility. If I’m honest with myself, he sounded terrified by the idea.
    I realize my hands are shaking. Frank is upset because he hasn’t been able to free the people of Claysoot or make sense of my escaping the Heist yet. That’s all. That must be it. I’m being irrational and suspicious because everything is so new here and I’m still trying to adjust.
    I repeat this to myself as I leave my room in search of Emma.
    The door at the end of my hallway is locked. I halfheartedly wave my wrist in front of the silver box as I saw Frank do when he led me to the dining hall, and to my surprise, the door slides open.
    I walk through, staring at my hand. There is the faintest purple bruise on the inside of my wrist. I must have been granted access to these doors during my Cleansing. How, I’m not sure, but it’s the only thing that makes sense.
    I wander the hallways until I come across a stairwell. I take it to the main level, again using my wrist to gain access, and walk to the dining hall by memory. I grab some food and find Emma eating oatmeal and sipping a hot cup of tea. After she reacts to my haircut, running her hand over my scalp and teasing me endlessly, I fill her in. I tell her about Harvey and the Laicos Project, Frank and his goals, the curious conversation I just overheard. Her fists ball up the way mine had when I tell her about Harvey’s experiment.
    “I’m being paranoid, right?” I ask when I recount Frank’s tone outside my bedroom, how he sounded upset that the Heist failed to take me on my eighteenth birthday.
    “I don’t know,” Emma says. “If he’s trying to solve the Heist and free Claysoot, he should be happy you weren’t Heisted, not worried.”
    “Exactly what I thought.” I touch Ma’s letter in my pocket. The answer Frank seeks is written on that parchment, but I suddenly feel that sharing the note would be a terrible idea.
    Emma looks down at her tray. “They think we’re dead, don’t they?” Her voice is dull and flat.
    “Who?”
    “My mother. Maude. All of them. Blaine told you they planted replacements. If he’s right, bodies went back, like they always do, and they think we’re dead.”
    I picture Carter, collapsed and sobbing on a bed in the Clinic. She’d had a baby girl. She wasn’t supposed to lose her child. I don’t answer Emma’s question, but we both know the answer is yes.
    “Let’s go for a walk,” I say. “We could use some fresh air. And maybe we can dig up some details on this place in the process.”
    “What exactly are you looking for?”
    “Why Harvey even started the Laicos Project. What kills climbers in the Outer Ring. Why the Heisted boys appear here in Union Central.”
    She smirks at me. “And you think you’ll find those