"If you're messing with me, I'm gonna kill you," Clarissa said.

"I'm not." As much as Alec didn't think that she deserved the punishment that Aldertree was giving her, he still wasn't sure if putting her out in the field so soon after Jonathan's betrayal was such a good idea. "Nothing might happen but he's still giving you a chance, so don't mess it up," Alec said.

After almost two months of complete boredom, Aldertree was finally going to let her be on-call. There was no guarantee that she'd be sent on a mission but, almost every team has been getting mission while they were on-call, so her odds of being able to go on a mission were pretty good.

She was nearly bouncing with excitement as she was preparing her weapons with her team.

"It's good to have you back, Clary," Aline said.

Clarissa stretched, making sure that the sheath wasn't too tight. "I really missed this feeling," she said. She had been forced to wear some of her more discrete knife sheaths, but those were scratchy, rubbed in all the wrong ways, and were overall just pretty uncomfortable. She couldn't believe that everyone thought that she had been completely unarmed for the last two weeks.

She and Aline wandered the near endless halls of the Institute well into the early hours of the morning to keep themselves awake.

They were just starting their third lap when their pagers went off.

"Yes!" Clarissa exclaimed.

They were the second ones at the main command centre, just after Helen, who was also fully dressed in Gear. It took less than a minute for the rest of the team to get there.

"Some mundanes have been calling the police to report some weird sounds coming from what's supposed to be an abandoned factory upstate," Helen explained. "Some of our contacts at the NYPD have been able to delay their response, so we have about two hours to figure out what it is."

Jonathan? She thought. You wouldn't happen to be in Father's warehouse upstate, would you?

Yes, Father's been doing some experiments here. Why?

Because the Mundanes have noticed that something's happening and my team's about to be sent on a mission there. We should be there in less than ten minutes. We're gonna do a quick perimeter check before we go in so you don't really have more than fifteen minutes to get out of there.

Clarissa could feel Jonathan's pause.

That isn't enough time to clear everything out, Father is pretty established here.

You just need to get Mom out of there with anything detailing any plans, we're getting ready to walk through the portal now and I can't delay my team.

Clarissa's excitement quickly turned into dread as her team split up to check the perimeter. She had hopped that they'd have a little more time before anyone found out about the warehouse. She didn't know if father and Jonathan would be able to get everything out of there.

"Clary, you good?" Aline nudged her arm, her grip on her sword was loose; Aline wasn't too worried, for obvious reasons. This was just supposed to be a scouting and recon mission with minimal risk.

Clarissa tightened her grip on her own sword, her other hand resting on the hilt of the combat knife that rested on her hip. "Yeah, I'm fine." She didn't hide her discomfort as well as she thought she did. "Something just feels off, but I don't know what it is."

They regrouped by the main entrance to briefly go over their strategy. They would stay in their recon groups and entre the building on the main level at different points

We're going in. At the most you have a couple minutes. He didn't answer but she knew that he had heard.

Her team cleared the bottom two floors with ease, they met no resistance, and nothing looked out of place.

The problems began when they got to the third floor. Clarissa knew that, on paper, the warehouse had been bought by a foreign company and was being left unused, but it had to be obvious to everyone that that wasn't the case. Clarissa has never been to Father's warehouse before, she'd never had a reason to, but it looked almost exactly like she thought it would.

There were bright LED lights that hung over large and evenly spaced stainless-steel tables. The entire floor was immaculate, unlike the previous two floors. The walls were lined with almost a hundred cages that were barely big enough to fit a large dog. The entire floor was devoid of any signs of life.

Thanks to the open floorplan, all the teams were able to converge in the middle of the third floor. Clarissa's and one other team were sent to check out the fourth floor.

Jonathan turned and punched through the nearest wall in frustration. Father was becoming overconfident and now the entire mission was at risk because of it.

He couldn't tell Father how he knew that the Institute's Shadowhunters were coming but Father trusted his judgment when he told him that they needed to leave. Father would eventually want to know exactly how he knew, but with their limited amount of time, now wasn't the time to be demanding answers.


Jonathan returned to clear out the last batch of Father's critical files just as he heard the Shadowhunters begin to search the third floor. The timing was perfect. Without Clarissa's warning, they wouldn't have been able to clear out nearly as much as they did before the Shadowhunters interfered.

As he brought the last set of files to the Manor, he remembered chastising Clarissa for her last impulsive decision, but now he understood. Being able to get so close to his sister and not even having to hide was enticing. As long as he kept Clarissa between himself and their weapons, the risk was as low as it could be when it came to this type of situation. He knew that the Clave had placed a 'kill on site' order on him, but Clarissa was technically innocent in all this. By the Clave's own rules, they wouldn't be able to risk killing him as long as Clarissa was also in their line of fire, especially not when there were so many witnesses. With his decision set, he drew his portal back to the fourth floor of the warehouse.

He navigated the dark halls with ease; his sword in one hand and the other hovering around his stele in case something went wrong and he needed to make a quick escape.

Clarissa's light footsteps very distinct and easy to tell apart from everyone else's.

Jonathan stepped out of the room that Clarissa's team was about to clear it.

"Little Sister," he said.

She turned sharply and held her sword up, level with his neck. Jonathan was pressed against the wall and surround by her team, but he made no attempts to move his sister's sword. The second team joined the first to fully surround him. He watched a couple of them slide out of formation to get backup from the third floor.

"You're not going to hurt me, Clarissa."

She glanced discreetly to the side, remind him that her team was surrounding him. But they couldn't do anything as long as she was so close to him and in the line of fire.

She stood silently, and no one dared to even breathe too loudly.

"My birthday's coming up, and I think that I know exactly what I want," Jonathan said. He kept his body relaxed, like he didn't care that he had a sword at his throat. Now that he was sure that he wasn't in immediate danger, he slid his sword back in its sheath.

"What do you want Jonathan," she asked.

He shifted to hold his hand behind his back, and she watched as he lightly traced a rune on the wall. "You," he said just as a portal flared up behind his back. He stepped back into it and disappeared.

"Clary, what the hell was that?" Helen exclaimed.

Clarissa lowered her sword but didn't reply.

"The rest of you can you go back to help the rest of the team," Helen said. "Clary, you're coming back with me."

Victor Aldertree was eagerly awaiting the outcome of the mission in his office. Since he arrived at the Institute, mundanes have been reporting weird things in the industrial area of upstate New York. He's had people keeping an eye on it, just out of a mild curiosity, but once they reported seeing someone whose description bared a striking resemblance to Jonathan Morgenstern, even though they weren't sure, he knew what he had to do. It was the chance to potentially catch two traitors at once while having more witnesses than the obviously biased Lightwood children.

When Helen returned with only Clary, he was slightly disappointed to not have Valentine or Jonathan in his possession as well. Giving Clary little to no warning about the mission and the location, and then keeping her surrounded by people at all times should've meant that Valentine and Jonathan wouldn't have had to time get out of the building, let alone clear everything out of the building.

He left Clary unarmed, in his office, while Helen gave him a brief rundown of the mission's events. There was no useful information, almost nothing left behind. Just based off the size of the floors, it should've been impossible to get everything out. Once the team arrived at the warehouse, it didn't take them more than five minutes to entre the building, and even then, they had eyes on all the exits. A portal was the only way that made sense, but they would've needed a warlock to make on for them, and a warlock wouldn't have been able to see exactly where Jonathan to make the portal for him.

Someone else tipped Valentine off, and it couldn't have been Clary. They had a mole in the Institute.

Aldertree stood behind his desk while Clarissa sat opposite of him.

"Do you care to explain what happened, Miss Morgenstern."

"After we arrived at the warehouse, we split up into groups of four to do a quick perimeter check before entering the building –" Clarissa started.

"I don't want a mission report, I'll get enough of those once the rest of the team returns. I want to know exactly how your father and brother knew were going to be there."

Clarissa leaned back and crossed her arms. "I don't know. I thought they were back in Idris."

"I'm going to have to call you on your bullshit, Miss Morgenstern," Aldertree said. "And I thought that we agreed to not lie to each other," he said almost as an afterthought.

"And I thought you agreed to not call me that."

Aldertree completely ignored her. "You expect me to believe that somehow your brother and father cleared out an entire warehouse full of information with less than five minutes notice?"

"Well it's not like I could've told them," Clarissa leaned forward to rest her elbows on her knees, "and I haven't even been able to leave the Institute until today, which were your orders."

"What about the Lightwoods then, any one of them could have done it, and they weren't restricted to the Institute," Aldertree suggested.

"Oh please," Clarissa scoffed. "Alec didn't even like Jonathan. And the others just put up with him because he's my brother." She hadn't planned to get any of them dragged into this, especially when so much of this mission might still depend on them trusting her.

"The portal then," Aldertree changed subjects. "How was your brother able to make a portal?"

Clarissa bit her lip. She knew that they wouldn't be able to hide the portal rune from everyone forever. "It's a rune and Father taught Jonathan how to use it," she lied.

"So, Valentine just happened to know the rune for a portal and has never used it before today."

"Jonathan used it all the time, but father never showed me. He had a Warlock that would do my portals if I ever went on any solo missions."

"You and I both know that there is no rune for a portal in those books." Aldertree moved to stand behind her. "So, how did Jonathan create a portal."

"I told you; Father taught Jonathan how to use the rune and forbade him from showing me."

Aldertree closed his eyes and rubbed his temples in irritation. "Why?"

"Why what?"

"Why did Valentine forbid Jonathan from showing you."

Clarissa rolled her eyes. "Father always valued Jonathan more than me, we both knew it. And Father didn't think that I needed to know, so he never let Jonathan show me."

Aldertree leaned back. "You're dismissed, Ms Morgenstern." Aldertree looked down on her from her desk. "But if you leave this Institute with my permission, I'll have you executed for treason."

Clarissa nodded and shut the door behind him.

He'd need to call Magnus Bane to strengthen their wards against any unreported portals.

Someone had to have warned Valentine, and it couldn't have been Clarissa.

They had a mole in the Institute.