Lena Tarrow's Arc

Chapter 1 of 1

Lena Tarrow crossed out the last name on the list, then slid the whole clipboard under her patched grey coat. The names on it were not the dead. They were the marked — men and women the office meant to erase. She had copied them for weeks. Tonight she meant to carry them out to the rebels hiding in the swamp. But the records office had one door, one guard, and a rule: a clerk who left her desk got hunted. She pressed a hand to the clipboard under her coat. Her heart knocked against it. Down the hall, the night guard scraped his chair back and yawned. He kept a tally of every clerk. An empty stool meant a search, and a search meant her name on the next crossed-out list. A small brown dog trotted from beneath her desk. Louie. She had smuggled him in as a pup, hidden in a supply crate. He pressed his lean body against her boot and stared up, ears sharp. "Not now," she whispered. But the sight of him gave her the idea. She reached into the desk drawer and drew out the pass she had been forging for a month. It was a superior's signed pass, the letters copied stroke by stroke from a discarded order. The gold seal she had lifted from a torn envelope. It looked real. It only had to fool one tired guard. She tucked the clipboard tighter, then clipped a length of twine to Louie's collar. If a clerk left alone, the guard would question it. But a clerk sent on an errand, with papers and a reason, was ordinary. Lena walked to the door. The guard rose, hand on his baton. "Desk's empty," he said. "You know the rule." She held out the pass. "Superior's orders. The animal got into the record vault. I'm to remove it before it fouls the files." The guard squinted at the signature. His thumb rubbed the seal. Louie growled low, then snapped at the man's boot. The guard stepped back and cursed. "Get it out, then," he muttered. He waved the pass away and unhooked the door. "Log the time when you're back." Lena nodded and stepped through. Cold air hit her face. The swamp lay dark and wet beyond the yard fence. She did not look back. But the guard's words followed her. Log the time when you're back. He expected her return within the hour. When she failed to come, he would report the pass. Someone would check the superior's real signature. The forgery would name her. She was outside. She was also, now, a clerk they would soon know had run. The swamp was her only road left, and she had until dawn before the hunt began. Lena tightened her grip on the twine and started toward the fence.