Thankfully, the fact that I was late to dinner turned out to be a fairly minor problem.
I arrived a few minutes after the clock struck 5:30, a bit flustered and out of breath from running across the mansion. I quickly entered the room, apologized for my lateness, and scurried over to my chair without making eye-contact with anyone or really reading the room. It was only after I'd taken my seat, that I realized that there were only a handful of minders in the room. And a quick head-count revealed why. There were nineteen children in the room, and one conspicuously empty seat.
"Tanya, where have you been? And have you seen Jonah?" One of the minders, an older Nordic-looking woman who's name I didn't recall. Whoever she was, she looked fairly concerned. Though I wasn't sure if that was down to the whole situation, or if she was specifically concerned for the boy. Maybe she was his minder?
"Jonah? No, I haven't seen him. I was in one of the study rooms in the East wing." I replied as I racked my memory for what I knew about the missing boy. And frankley? It wasn't much. He had abnormally silver hair, and he generally kept to himself. But that was about what I could recall at the time.
Unfortunately, that wasn't the answer that the older woman was looking for, and she simply nodded before returning back to her post by the door. A few minutes later, dinner was finally brought in from the kitchens, and placed in front of the children. But the fact that someone was missing certainly had an effect on the other kids. The friendly chatter and eager appetites that had slowly developed over nearly a year at the mansion had been replaced by the same worried silence and unease that had dominated our first few days at the mansion. At least, for most other people. I simply focused on my food in order to avoid the awkward silence, and to avoid the prospect of leaving anything behind in case we were all sent up to our rooms while a thorough search of the grounds was conducted. A few of the other kids followed my lead, and before long most of the food was cleared away without anyone uttering a word.
I finished quickly, and just in time too, as a few minutes later a handful of other minders slipped into the dining room. The sudden movement inevitably attracted all eyes in the room, mine included. So I spotted Ludmila as soon as she entered the room. My carer wore an expression somewhere between concerned and… something else that I couldn't identify before her expression changed as she saw me. She immediately ignored the other minders, hurried over to me. "Tanya! Honey, I was so worried. Where were you? We looked everywhere for you!"
"Don't worry, please, I'm ok." I explained as she approached. Ludmila looked very happy to see me, but she stopped short for some reason, standing a respectful distance away and giving me a warm smile.
"May I have everyone's attention?" One of the minders, the one I assumed was the de-facto leader by how she carried herself, announced. She waited until all eyes were on her, before continuing. "It appears that your brother Jonah has disappeared. We've looked throughout the mansion, and we can't find him. So while we sweep the grounds and the forest beyond, nobody is allowed to leave this room without their handler."
Almost instantly, a small chorus of murmurs erupted around the table as the various groups of kids tried to figure out just what was going on, and just what had happened to their missing "brother" to cause this response. At least, that's what I assumed everyone was talking about, given what Valerie asked a few seconds later. "Tanya? What's going on?"
"I don't know. I think Jonah might have run away." I answered as Ludmila left to talk with the other minders. I highly doubted that they'd instantly started looking as soon as me and Jonah failed to show up for dinner. One of them would have easily found me, and I would have passed someone as I hurried to dinner. Not to mention that gathering up all but a handful of minders to search the building would probably count as overkill for one boy. Which meant that Jonah had been missing for a while. And because he hadn't been found yet, that only left one conclusion. He wasn't in the mansion anymore. Ergo, he'd legged it.
"Run away? But why would he do that?" Valerie asked, the shock in her voice telling me that she hadn't considered the idea until I mentioned it.
I raked my memory for anything that'd cause the missing boy to run off, but when nothing specific instantly came to mind, I just shrugged and gave a non-committal answer. "He never seemed happy here."
"But it's nice here! I can't believe he'd abandon us like this." Valerie shook her head, and I simply left her to simmer as I recalled everything I knew about Jonah.
Jonah was a loner. He kept to himself, and generally didn't speak much. But he always did as he was told. He didn't engage in a lot of the games and team building exercises during the shared free time periods, he'd just sit on his own or he'd try and do stuff alone. At first, I'd thought that it was simply down to him being shy, but after a few months with no change, I had to reevaluate him. Next I figured that he might have some sort of behavioral disorder, something that left him intellectually smart but socially lacking. But that didn't fit either, as there was a definite intelligence behind his eyes, despite his apparent difficulties with the various parts of the curriculum. The only thing he seemed good at was language, as he was naturally multilingual, but aside from that he was apparently lacking.
But now that I thought about it, he did carry himself in a fairly weird way. He'd always seemed a bit tense, like a coiled spring ready to jump. As if he was always on the lookout for a threat that wasn't coming. I hadn't really thought about it before, owing to the fact that I knew for a fact that my paranoia probably made me act in a fairly similar way to him. It wasn't something that I'd expect to see in a child, but a soldier…
Loner. Quiet. Tendency to follow orders. Poorly educated, but obviously attentive and intelligent. And he carried himself as if he'd been into combat.
Had Jonah been trained as a soldier? The idea of a white boy being a child soldier didn't tend to match a lot of people's mental images of an average child soldier, but that didn't eliminate the possibility. Maybe he'd grown up in a militant location? Rhodesia could be a good bet, I'd read in a magazine that families on remote farms needed to train everyone to handle a gun, including the children. If he'd come from a country like that, then a healthy paranoia would have been drilled into him, and learning how to escape and evade capture could have been something his parents or other carers would have taught him over more academic studies.
Either option would explain his demeanor and lack of education. And I wouldn't have been surprised if those skills were related to him making the grade to get brought here. He certainly wasn't the sharpest tool in the shed, and he didn't seem to have much interest in getting book smart. Yes, the people who'd scouted out kids for this program had probably seen some level of higher intelligence behind his skills, and had recommended him for our little boarding school just for that. Which meant that the people looking for him would be hard pressed to find him.
Which in turn meant that we'd be stuck in here for a long time while the rent-a-troops and the various members of staff tried to search the forest for a military-trained kid who didn't want to be found.
I sighed, and before getting out of my seat, and walking over to one of the windows. If there was nothing to do inside, then I'd keep myself interested by watching what was happening outside. It was just after dark, though there was enough ambient light for me to see what was happening outside. From the looks of it, the news of a missing child had already spread, and it was all hands on deck to find them. There was a lot of people mustering in the courtyard outside, and they were breaking down into small three or four strong search parties to try and find Jonah. As each group formed, they were handed various pieces of equipment, before making their way towards the open gate. Due to the distance I couldn't tell what the teams were being given, but I could tell that at least one armed guard was assigned to each group.
I almost jumped as someone hugged me from behind, but I relaxed when I realized that it was Ludmila. My minder must have wanted to hug me earlier, but must have decided against it for some reason or another. Either way, she gave me a slight squeeze before she started to speak. "I'm glad you're safe, little misha. I was worried when you didn't show up. Where did you go?"
"I was in one of the study rooms, one without a window. I'd been there for a while, but nobody came to look for me, so I didn't think anything was wrong." I said truthfully. If I'd known that Jonah had gone missing, then I certainly would have considered trying my luck. If only down to the fact that two people escaping at the same time tends to increase the chances of either of them escaping.
Ludmila started to speak, but the word died in her mouth before she even finished the first letter. It instead came out as something between an "Ah" and a "Huh" at best. She went quiet for a few seconds after that, before giving me a small kiss on the back of my head, and quietly muttering to me. "That's alright. I'm just glad you're ok. I would have missed you, you know?"
I said nothing at that, but I brought a hand up and laid it over hers. Ludmila took the small gesture of acceptance, and gave me another squeeze in return, before leaving me to reflect on our short chat. From the sounds of it, either someone hadn't searched the east wing, or Ludmila hadn't been told that I was there. If I had to guess it was probably the latter, breakdowns in communications were common enough, but that didn't explain her reaction. Sure, the two of us probably had one of the better child-minder relationships in the mansion, but never been this… touchy-feely before. Though I couldn't think of a reason why. Maybe she was just worried about losing her paycheck?
Either way, I put the thought out of my mind, and went back to watching what was happening outside. In the time it had taken me and Ludmila to speak, and for me to think about what had happened, it had gotten considerably darker. A lot of the staff had left, and from the looks of it, there was only a handful of people left to leave. But whoever these people were, they weren't taking any chances, as a pair of off-road pickup trucks were wheeled out of the storage building. The remaining personnel quickly mounted up, and drove out of the compound. The last guards on the compound closing the gate behind them.
I was about to look away, when my wandering eyes homed in on a flash of movement along the outer wall. I snapped my head over, and caught a glimpse of something small slipping over the wall, silhouetted in the dark by the glow of the truck's headlights.
"Tanya? Are you alright?" Ludmila asked, having noticed my sudden focus on a particular section of the wall. Or maybe I'd tensed up at the sight and she'd gone off that. Either way, Ludmila was quiet for a few seconds as she tried to spot what I'd seen, before giving up and asking me. "Did you see something? I didn't notice anything?"
"I think…" I began, only to stop as I considered what I was about to do. On the one hand, if I told her what I'd seen, then she'd probably pass that information off to the other members of staff, who in turn would tell the search teams. If I was right about spotting Jonah, then they'd have a better idea on where he was, and they'd be more likely to stop him from leaving. And given how often I'd thought about getting out of here, could I really blame him for wanting to leave.
But then I considered just how far the people here might go to stop Jonah from leaving. Or, even worse, stopping him from telling other people what was happening here. Sure, nobody would really care about the reasons why we were here, but even so the sentence "dozens of kids held in a mansion" would get the police moving no matter where you were on the planet. After all, if they hadn't taken the lethal option off the table, then they wouldn't have put an armed guard in every search team. And was I really comfortable with one of my fellow subjects putting themselves at risk of death, only for a fleeting chance of escape?
I thought about it for a few seconds, before coming to a decision. This place gave me the heebie-jeebies, and the attempts to indoctrinate all of us into agreeing with Lord Henry's bullshit were constant and hard to ignore. But at the end of the day, life here wasn't so bad that it warranted putting your life at risk for the chance at escape. And I wasn't about to let someone throw their life away over it. At least, not while I saw potential in them.
I sighed. This would be annoying to sort out. But the potential payout was worth it, even if Jonah hated me for it. Either way, I said what I'd seen clearly and calmly. "I think I saw Jonah scale the wall."
Ludmila was silent, but she quickly ushered me away from the window, and towards the "head" minder, and told me to tell her what I'd seen. The older woman exchanged some words with my handler in the staff's unknown language, before leading the pair of us out of the room. A quick change of shoes later, I was led out of the mansion.
"Allright Tanya. Ms Ludmila says that you saw Jonah climb over the wall. Can you show us where you think you saw him?" The older woman asked, with a tone that told me that she didn't believe me for a second. Chances are, she thought that I was either mistaken, or telling a lie so that I could get out of the dining room.
Thankfully, my eyes hadn't deceived me. As we approached the wall, the unnamed handler switched on a torch, and played it across the wall. And sure enough, right in the area I'd pointed out, there was a half-size wooden ladder propped up against the wall. The head handler swore to herself in a language she thought I didn't understand, before leading our small group towards the gatehouse, and out around the other side of the wall. With a little more direction, a small search team consisting of me, Ludmila, the lead handler, and an armed guard managed to find where Jonah had dismounted from the wall. Two small foot-shaped indentations in the ground on the opposite side of the wall, from where the boy's feet had dug into the soft ground.
The guard inspected the impact point with his torch, playing the light over the ground before tracking a rough path towards the treeline, around a hundred meters away. "Ok. So now we know where he's gone. If he's behind our teams, we can double-back and converge on this area and pen him in. Ms Anderson, Ms Ludmila, can you please escort the little lady back inside? We can handle it-"
"No. I want to help you find Jonah." I interrupted the guard; drawing all eyes, and all flashlights, to me. After instinctively flinching at the sudden light, I doubled down on my point. "He already sent your teams out on a wild goose chase, probably to wear them out so that he could slip past them when they make their way back. So he probably knows how to get away from people who are searching for him."
"Listen here kid, you and the other kids may be a bit more valuable than most, but none of you have the same experience as me and my boys. Wherever this missing kid is hiding, we'll find him." The guard snorted, completely dismissing my involvement in the search. If I didn't have a stake in the search before, then showing up that guard gave me all the motivation I needed.
Was it a spiteful reason? Sure. But his attitude stank and the best way to correct it would be by humiliating him. So I stood up a bit straighter, and hammered home my point. "I don't know where Jonah came from, but if he's gotten this far then he's a lot better than you give him credit for. He's no spoiled brat, and because you're so willing to underestimate him, you'd probably let him slip away. So no, I'm not going to go back inside."
"You little-" The guard began, taking a wrathful step towards me before someone stepped in front of me, and a loud slapping noise rang through the air. The man stumbled and clutched the side of his face, still reeling as the person who'd disciplined him spoke.
"Sergeant, while I'm not nearly as experienced with Tanya as Ms. Ludmila, she's absolutely right about your attitude. So I'm more inclined to side with her than you." The older handler said, her voice as cold as ice when she addressed the man with a rifle. She didn't wait for him to reply before wheeling around, and kneeling down in front of me. Her tone pulled a complete 180 as she switched to a softer and kinder voice. "Tanya. If we found Jonah, do you think you'd be able to convince him to come back?"
I nodded, choosing to trust in my long-nurtured skills rather than simply sitting back and letting the adults bumble around. Sure, I didn't really *know* Jonah. But I knew the kind of person he was. Best-case scenario I'd be able to convince him with a pragmatic argument. Worst case scenario, I'd have to try and pin him in place while calling for one of the stronger adults to come and help drag him back to the mansion.
"Ok then. If Ludmila trusts you, then I trust you." Ms. Anderson gave me a reassuring smile, one that actually lifted my spirits a bit. The fact that Ludmila trusted me would have been good enough, but to be trusted enough to join the search for one of the other children meant that I was trusted more than the other kids. It was one thing to not be a flight risk, but it was another thing entirely to be trusted with helping a search party.
Which of course meant that I couldn't mess this up. So I stood up a bit straighter, and smiled back at Ms. Anderson. I looked around the group, acknowledging the proud expression on Ludmila's face, and the fact that the guard looked like he wanted to be anywhere but here. This team was nowhere close to what I'd worked with in my last life, but neither was I. And moping about it wouldn't change anything. So instead, I took charge of the small group, and mustered all the confidence I could. "Ok! Let's go find Jonah!"
And with that, I lead the march across the open ground, and into the forest beyond. I was so confident in my skills that I didn't notice the pair of eyes that watched us go…