"If you follow me, we'll get you set up. You can start doing proper work!" Luke knew there was an exclamation mark at the end of the sentence. He could hear it in David's voice. He had the feeling that there were a lot of exclamation marks in David's world, especially where work was concerned. He followed him through an impressive set of doors, and promptly stopped, stunned by what he saw. Stretching across the entire expanse of the building were desks, crammed into every conceivable configuration, nooks, crannies, pods. There must have been hundreds of people at work, just on this floor, in this building. David noticed his charge was no longer hot on his heels.
"Oh, it's a little daunting at first, I know, but you'll soon get used to it, find your way around. We need to keep moving, though, son. We're not on this floor." He turned without checking that Luke was following him, and was threading his way between desks. Luke noticed a wave of sudden activity preceded him. Nobody seemed to want to make eye contact with either of them. He suddenly grew more suspicious of Hannah's avoidance techniques when he was questioning her.
They reached a staircase on the far side of the building through a narrow door, partly hidden behind a pair of columns. It wasn't so much that the stair was deliberately concealed, more that the door was added as an after thought. David had to swipe a card across a reader to get into it.
"You'll get one of those once you've been here for a while. Until then, you'll need to make sure someone is with you when you want to come and go." David barely drew breath as he bounded up the stairs. Luke, not used to climbing, was a little slower. He wasn't expected to talk, however, just to listen as David continued.
"Now, for your first day, you'll just be observing things, for the most part. Finding your feet, so to speak. There's no reason for you to feel obliged to actually contribute anything just yet. We'll tell you exactly what to do. Just follow instructions, and you'll be just fine. Hannah tells me you're smart enough, so I'm sure you'll pick up the drill in no time. And here we are, our own little corner of the world."
The stairs opened onto a small landing with five desks, all except one of them occupied. A glass wall surrounded the desks. As Luke moved closer, he could see that there was a view over the floor below. None of the other people on the landing looked up when he entered. They were all busy at their desks, although he couldn't tell what they were doing. David had stopped at the empty desk.
"Now, Luke, this is where you'll sit." It was a brown desk, the laminate peeling from the surface below. An ink stain marked the top with a red smear; cup rings could be seen elsewhere. The chair was ripped and torn, the padding of the seat all but gone; one of the five wheels was missing. Obviously, it was all that was left when his fellow employees had scavenged their share. "If you look in the drawers, you should find pens and paper. Kent! You can find something for Mr Turner to do for you, I'm sure."
With that, David turned and left. A mousy middle aged woman scooted over, still in her chair. She was clearly Kent.
"Here," she muttered, throwing some folders on his desk. "Sort these. Ask if you have any questions."
Luke had all sorts of questions, but he didn't think the woman would be able to answer them for him. Or rather, he didn't think that she would answer them, regardless of her ability. Instead, he put his lunch bag in a drawer of the desk and carefully sat on his chair. The constant sensation of falling was something he would have to get used to until he could scavenge a better seat.
Opening the first folder, he noticed the heading: 'Department of Deportations'. He blanched. Was that where he was working now? A little reading clarified the matter for him. The short answer was no, he wasn't working for Deportations; he was working for the office that oversaw them. This little sample of humanity was responsible for making sure that Deportations followed the rule book. The files in front of him were the justifications for actions. He suppressed a shudder at the implications of the number of them, and got down to sorting, trying desperately not to read too much into what he couldn't avoid seeing. No wonder Hannah hadn't wanted to tell him what he would be doing.
Each file was a sad testament to a life interrupted, Luke thought. He didn't know the outcomes, or the causes, but somewhere, there was probably a record for each of the Li family, for old Mr Hussein, for anyone he'd ever known who had disappeared. Somewhere, a pencil pusher had justified their removal from society. And someone like Luke had sorted the paperwork for filing. He tried to suppress the feeling of something oily coating his hands as he sifted through the paperwork. He didn't want to feel that he was any part of that machine. You need the money, he told himself. Without this, you'll all go hungry. Becca. Hannah. But he couldn't help adding Pete, Georgie in his own mind. The black vans. The Vanished.
Somehow, he managed to finish the day. He didn't take a break for lunch; he couldn't face food. At the end of the day, without having spoken to anyone, he got up and took his lunch bag from the drawer. He joined the tide of humanity flowing from the building, determined that he would never set foot there again.
"You're what?" demanded Hannah after dinner that night. Luke had just declared his resolution. "You can't quit. You don't know how hard it was to get you in there this time."
Luke looked down at the table, his standard reaction to any confrontation.
"I'm not doing anything to do with deportation, Han." He glanced up at her. "I can't."
She blazed up, angrily. Her coppery hair seemed to crackle around her and she swelled to far more than her usual petite size.
"You can't? You can't work with deportations?" Words failed her for a moment and when she found them again, her voice was a hiss. "What do you think I had to do to get you then job, Luke? You don't think it was my pull that got you in there? Or Dad's? What do you think I've had to do, to keep a roof over you and Becca, and food in your mouths?"
She struggled to control herself. Luke didn't intervene. He knew her temper enough to know that any reaction would fuel the fires. When she spoke again, it was through clenched teeth, the battle for reason showing in her tone.
"You'll go back there, tomorrow, Luke, or you'll move out. If I'm marrying bloody David James to keep Becca in school, you can go to work in that office. I'll be damned if you throw it back in my face. You take what I can offer you, or you leave. It's as simple as that."
Luke was stunned. Hannah was marrying David? It was not what he had expected. Not that he'd thought it fully through. But suddenly the muffled conversation he'd overheard made sense.
"Congratulations," he spat, pushing away from the kitchen table. "I'll be gone in the morning."
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