Interlude [h.s]

fifty-two

THE PALACE

Jayden enters the bedroom in a rush. "What are you doing?!" he exclaims when he sees Jackson rummaging through the things that were left behind.

It's been a couple of days since the President and Lark went missing. He was able to keep them away from her old room at first, not wanting them to go inside and destroy everything while looking for some proof that could tell them what happened—proof that they can't get in the President's rooms, since they're locked and no one knows how to get inside.

But that was only until Evie spoke. She said she saw Mr. Styles and Lark together, and suddenly from the victim his friend turned into the enemy. Jayden thinks it's ridiculous. He remembers her dedication—he remembers the way she looked at him. She could never hurt him—not when she looked at him like he'd just told her every light of Northfair shone for her.

"This is ridiculous—"

"Ridiculous? Did you just say ridiculous?!" Jackson hisses, standing up with a piece of paper in his hand.

"I know her, and she wouldn't—"

"What's ridiculous is that our President is missing and she was the last one to be seen with him! Do you know what's even more ridiculous, though?" He lifts up the piece of paper. "She had the code to open the library door hidden in her wardrobe."

Jayden's eyes widen and he steals the paper from his superior, gasping when he recognises the digits written on top of the paper. What shocks him even more, though, is the longer code written just above it. Only one code in the Palace has that many digits. "Didn't the President change the code to his rooms recently?" he asks quietly.

Jackson crosses his arms. "He suspected someone had accessed his living quarters without his permission. He asked us to check the cameras, but nothing suspicious was found."

"This is his old code, isn't it?" There's dread in Jayden's voice.

He doesn't know what to think, doesn't know what to do. There has to be a reasonable explanation, something that will make more sense than the one he's being suggested right now. He can't accept it—he just can't. He knows Lark. He knows the person she is. She fought the Revolution with him. She told the President good things about him to get him on his good side. She was his first real friend on the upper floors. He can't accept it, because if it is true, it means she lied about everything. It means she used him to get the information she needed. It means she was never his friend. He was only that one idiot she tricked over and over again into doing whatever she needed him to.

"I found it just now," Jackson says, "I'll see if we can access the President's rooms with it later."

"There's a reason for all this," Jayden murmurs. "There has to be." Because no other option makes sense.

"I understand you used to be close with her," Jackson tells him as he walks past him and out of the room, "but you should start entertaining the possibility that she wasn't that close to you at all."

"How can you say something like that?!" Jayden only realises he's shouting when some people in the corridor turn to look at them. "You worked next to her for months," he continues in a lower tone. "How can you turn on her so quickly?"

Jackson looks at him over his shoulder. "My only allegiance is to the President. I care about no one else." He walks back to their meeting room, but Jayden stalks after him.

"Maybe someone took them."

"Maybe she took him. Maybe she's burying him as we're here talking."

"That's nonsense! They liked each other, they—"