Chapter 11 Landon #2
I try 1-8-8-3, the year on the title page of the oldest book I saw in there. Nothing.
Then I notice the runner on the floor in front of the office. It’s different from the others—lighter, almost white, with a blue diamond at the center. I remember the pattern on the rug from my bedroom. I walk back, double-check it: same blue, same motif, just repeated six times instead of one.
I return to the office, key in 0-6-0-1. The display blinks green, and there’s a quiet click.
The door opens on the second try.
Pays to enjoy puzzles. I chuckle, remembering that this exactly curiosity is what got us into this mess in the first place.
Inside, the office is a shrine to precision.
The desk is dark wood, surface clear except for a laptop, a closed journal, and a single black pen.
The wall behind the desk is covered in a grid of framed photos.
Most are landscapes, but there’s a handful of portraits.
In all of them, the subjects look just slightly away from the camera, like they know they’re being watched but refuse to meet the lens.
On the mantle is a picture of Briar and Bentley. Bentley’s arms are slung over Briar’s shoulders and he’s looking at him, smiling.
It’s… intimate. And it makes me uncomfortable, so I turn the photo over.
I close the door behind me, the lock clicking automatically. The windows in here are smaller, high up on the wall, but they let in just enough light to see by. There’s a faint chemical smell—toner, maybe, or ink.
I start with the desk. The laptop is password-protected, of course, but the sticky note taped to the underside of the desk drawer has a string of numbers written on it in neat, looping handwriting. I try them on the login screen. It works.
Rolling my eye’s at the simplicity of how Bentley’s mind works, I start snooping.
The desktop is organized in folders: “Work,” “Travel,” “Archive,” and a fourth folder labeled “Foundry.”
My hands sweat as I click it.
Inside, there’s a list of subfolders, each named after a year. The earliest is fifteen years ago, the most recent from three months back.
I open the first. There are photos, dozens of them.
Boys lined up in neat rows, all wearing identical uniforms—black track suits, white trainers, shaved heads.
Briar is there, front and center, smaller than I’ve ever seen him.
His jaw isn’t set yet, his eyes a little too big for his face.
Next to him is a bigger kid with a shaved head and a smile like a razor.
The caption on the photo says “Briar & Bentley. Month 1.”
I click through. The boys grow older, their faces harder, the uniforms swapped for suits and blazers, then for tactical gear.
Some are missing in later photos, as if they’ve been erased, and I know what that means.
In the “Year 5” folder, there’s a picture of Briar in a hospital bed, a deep cut running down his cheek. The file is named “Survived.”
I keep digging. There’s a PDF labeled “Behavioral Assessment—B. Harrington.” I open it.
It’s a psych evaluation, clinical and cold.
It details Briar’s inability to bond, his resistance to authority, his “demonstrated indifference to both positive and negative reinforcement.” The final line reads: “Recommend: targeted isolation, enhanced control protocols. Subject will be culled if progress is not made by end of cycle.”
I shiver, even though the room is warm.
I look up at the wall of photos and notice a picture I hadn’t in my haste to crack the laptop.
The biggest frame at the center holds a single image: Brooks and Briar, both in their late teens, standing shoulder to shoulder in front of a door that looks exactly like the one I just opened.
They’re both bruised, bloody, but alive. The date stamp is five years ago.
Below the photo, a brass plate reads: “First Class.”
I check the drawers. The second one is locked, but the key is taped to the underside of the desk. Inside, there’s a stack of files, all labeled “Asset: Harrington, Briar.” The first page is a printout of a test score: 100th percentile, “Compliance Scenario #27: Asset Protection.”
There’s a note in the margin, handwritten and angry: “If you keep saving him, he’ll never learn to do it himself.” I don’t recognize the handwriting, but the initials at the bottom are “A.B.”
I turn to the journal on the desk. It’s black, leather-bound, heavy in my hands. The first few pages are full of numbers and names, none of which I recognize. Then, in the middle, a folded letter on thick paper.
It’s addressed to “Brooks,” dated the year of that center photo.
I unfold it. The handwriting is blocky, almost childish.
You promised you’d get me out if it got bad. You lied. But thank you for the knife. It was sharp enough to remind me I was still alive. If I don’t make it, it’s not your fault. Tell the Director I was worth two of the others. — B.
My stomach twists.
I close the journal, put everything back exactly as I found it. I want to believe I’m done, but there’s one more thing—an envelope taped to the underside of the desk, right where a nervous hand might reach for comfort.
It’s sealed, but I open it.
Inside is a single photo, glossy and recent. Briar, in the room upstairs, asleep in the big bed, a stitched cut on his arm and one on his stomach. He looks almost peaceful, mouth just barely open. The angle is from the doorway.
The back of the photo is blank except for a single word: “Safe.”
It’s from last night.
I hear the click of the lock before I hear the footsteps.
I look up.
Briar stands in the doorway, arms folded over his chest, face unreadable. The light from the hall cuts across his features, sharpens the planes of his cheekbones. For a second, I think he’s going to kill me.
But he doesn’t.
He steps into the office, closes the door behind him. The silence is thick.
He looks at the photos on the wall, then at me.
“Curiosity again,” he says.
I nod, throat dry.
He leans against the desk, close enough to knock me off the chair if he wanted.
“Did you find what you were looking for?”
I meet his gaze. “I don’t know.”
He nods, as if that makes sense.
“Brooks wasn’t just a friend, was he?”
Briar’s jaw works. “No. He was the only reason I survived training. The Director wanted me dead by my first year. Brooks and I went through levels together, graduating with honors, much to the Director’s chagrin. He kept me alive against all odds. I owe him my life.”
I process this. “Why tell me?”
He shrugs, a motion that seems so ridiculous coming from someone of his size. “You like to know things. Better you hear it from me.”
He glances at the open laptop, the still-unlocked drawers, the photo on the desk.
“You know the difference between you and me?” he asks.
I wait.
“You need to understand. I don’t.”
He closes the laptop, picks up the photo, folds it, and slides it into his back pocket.
Then, he leaves the office.
I sit there for a long time after, the cold creeping up through the soles of my socks.
Outside, a storm is brewing.
Not nearly as bad as the one that’s starting in here.
I wait for him to return, for Briar’s shadow to darken the hall and his voice to summon me for whatever version of punishment he thinks I deserve.
Instead, ten minutes later, he comes back, closing the office door behind him with a click. He takes the chair across from me, not the desk, and sits with his hands loose in his lap, like he’s about to talk a jump case off a ledge.
“I was waiting for you to kill me,” I say, voice thin.
He doesn’t laugh, just tilts his head. “Why would I do that?”
“I broke into the files. Read everything.”
He shrugs. “If I wanted them gone, I’d have burned them. I’m not the only person with ghosts. Nice job figuring out the code. A little inside joke between Bents and I.”
I sit up, the blanket slipping off my shoulders. I let it pool on the chair and face him, letting the cold prickle the skin on my arms.
Briar’s jaw is tight, but not from anger. He’s just bracing for something.
“I’m not good at this,” he says. “The talking part. But you want to know, so I’ll tell you.”
He pulls up the sleeve on his right arm, reveals a line of scars in a geometric pattern—perfect little dots, like a row of stars burned into the skin.
“First year, we slept in wire bunks. Foundry made you sleep on metal so your body would learn to ache. You only got a mattress if you broke someone else’s spirit in training. ”
He rolls up the sleeve further, shows a bite mark, barely visible unless you know what you’re looking for. “Brooks gave me this one. First time I ever fought back. He told me that pain was a gift, and he was right. It made me stop wishing for comfort. Made me wish for survival.”
He lowers his arm, leans forward. “The Director—he was supposed to break us. Make us into assets that would do anything, kill anyone, never question the order. Brooks believed in the program, but he didn’t like waste.
He liked watching people reach their limit, just to see if they’d snap back. I always did.”
I don’t know what to say. I want to reach for him, but the look on his face makes me think he’d break my fingers if I tried.
He continues, eyes locked on mine. “Most of the kids in those folders? They’re dead now. Or worse—dead inside. I was only alive because they wanted me to prove the system worked.”
I find my voice. “But you weren’t like the others.”
He shakes his head. “No one is like the others. That’s the trick. They tell you you’re a monster, but all they want is for you to be useful. The second you’re not, you disappear.”
He glances at the photo on the wall. “When I aged out, they assigned me to the Ministry of Design. I thought I was free, but it was just another test.”