Family (8 page)

“Ah,” he said with a subtle nod. “Next time I’ll set the room ablaze to get your attention. Or would that be too subtle?”

“There’s not too much subtlety to burning down a room, no,” I said, and wiped my face again. I craved water now that I had stopped moving. The dryness in my mouth caused my lips to smack together as though they were chapped. The cool air of the AC had also started to chill me now that I was done, the sheen of sweat around my skin getting cold as the air conditioner fought against the hot summer temperatures outside. “There’s probably an easier way to get my attention if you’re after it.”

“Something like saying, ‘Come to my office the minute you get out of the medical unit’? Something gentle, but that communicates the urgency of the situation – which is that you, young lady, are required by your employers to go through post-stress debriefing to talk through your recent mission.” He shook his head, almost like a tic, and went on. “Something that conveys that there’s worry about the fact that you got pummeled, shot, beaten, lost a teammate, watched a girl die, and had an Omega lackey pull a fast one on you.” His features tightened. “Maybe I really should have lit the room on fire, because that stuff all sounds kind of dire and in need of being discussed.”

“It will be discussed,” I said, biting my lower lip. “You heard Ariadne. It’ll be discussed, sifted, pulled apart, probed – you get the picture,” I said, restraining emotion again. “I’ll be talking about it with their investigator.”

“Sure,” he said, halting a few steps away from me. If it had been anyone else, I might have flinched internally at their approach. I wouldn’t show weakness by doing it physically, but it’d be there in my reaction. “You’ll discuss the cold, dry details of the whole thing, over and over,” he said, “poring over all the insignificancies you’ve probably forgotten, all the questions asked that need to be answered – all that,” he said. “But you know what you won’t talk about? How you feel.”

“Feelings?” I asked with the hint of a smile. “I think you might be talking to the wrong girl. After all, I know they have some uncharitable names for me out there,” I said, waving my hand in the direction of the outside, Directorate world. “Most don’t think I have any of those.”

“Who?” he asked, serious. “Who do you think talks about you that way?”

“The agents,” I said. “The ones still alive, anyways. The metas, the ones who aren’t in training. The rank and file. The administrators at HQ.” I shrugged. “Eve Kappler. Everybody, just about.”

“You think so?” He didn’t deny it. “Got a persecution complex?”

“No,” I said. “Just good hearing. I’m sure it’ll be worse now.”

Zollers frowned. “Why now?”

“Because it was my mom,” I said, wearing a plastered, Cheshire cat-like smile. “Kat was like…the popular cheerleader on campus. Everybody liked her. My mother kidnapped her, and the rumor mill will go wild with speculation that I was involved, or that somehow it’s my fault—”

“You may be leaping a bit far, there,” he said. “The news that Kat’s been taken by your mother hasn’t even spread yet. And the people that do know – Ariadne, Director Winter, Scott – none of them believe that you’re involved in any way.”

“Oh?” I asked, still wearing that stupid smile. “How do you know for sure?”

He gave me a look, something between deep thought and rolling his eyes. “I just know. I’m supposed to not only know the people of the Directorate through little chat sessions like we’re having here,” he flicked his finger to point at me, then him, “but to get a pulse for the morale of the whole organization. So I’ve got the pulse, and here’s where it is: those who know Kat’s gone are worried about her. They don’t think you were involved in your mom’s plans in any way. Hasn’t crossed their minds.”

“And the rumors?” I asked, blood still cold. “Because when they find out the ‘who’ of it, they’re going to make assumptions.” I smiled again, but it was still fake. “And that’ll be fun. It’s been months since I’ve been truly hated around here.”

“You may be overthinking it,” he said with a steely calm that I didn’t quite believe.

“Maybe,” I conceded. “So, you want to talk feelings? Can we do it some other time, or does it have to be now?”

“We don’t have to do it all now,” he said, and I thought maybe I’d get off the hook easy. “But I have a few questions for you. Doesn’t make sense to walk all the way back to my office, though, so we can do it here, if you’d like.”

“Sure,” I said with excessive pep. “Let’s get it done.”

“Your aunt?” He stared at me with those shrewd eyes, and I wondered if Scott had told him, or if he’d found out secondhand through Ariadne. “Charlie, I believe her name was? She betrayed you?”

I licked my chapped lips and smiled, a little manic at the thought, probably a defense against the real emotion underneath. “Yep, she did. Big surprise, huh?”

“I’m guessing it was for you,” Zollers said, and there was warmth in it. “Am I wrong?”

“Nope,” I said, keeping it succinct and overly zesty. “You’re not wrong. It was a big honking surprise. She saved my life from James – the Omega operative – and then she turned on me in about three shakes, when I started to put together some things.”

“Some things?” he asked. “You mean about who she really was?”

I nodded and unbound my hair from the tight ponytail I had it in, stuck the hair tie in my mouth and bit down on it while I redid my ponytail. “That’s right. About how she was a crazy psycho who would drain men for the fun of it, for the rush, or to get money or information. Sounded like she must have killed quite a few people. Just like James, actually,” I said with a little thought, and that allowed me to skirt the edge of a really big emotion that burned inside – betrayal.

“Tell me about James,” he said. “What happened?”

“He tried to kill me,” I said, with a great, exaggerated shrug of my shoulders. “Not much else to tell.”

“Before that,” he said, not letting it go, but doing so gently. “You broke up with Zack?”

“That a matter of public record?” I turned away.

“Not really,” he said. “But I got the gist of it from him when I talked to him in the medical unit. What happened?”

“What always happens,” I said, walking back to the wall of weapons and admiring my distorted reflection in the blade of a curved sickle. “Things fall apart.”

“What a classical answer,” he said, and I caught snark. “But when that happens, it’s because the center cannot hold, right?”

“You an English major or a psychiatrist?” I flashed him a sharp smile, like the reaper I had just turned away from.

“Maybe I’m both,” he said. “Don’t change the subject. You broke up with him. Why?”

“Because it was going nowhere.” I took a deep breath, tried to use it to give myself a chance to think for a second. “Because there is no next level of relationship for Zack and me,” I said. “And that matters.”

“To whom?” he asked, polite. His hands were tucked behind him, his weight on one leg, totally casual.

“To the guy who stocks the vending machines around the campus,” I said with snark of my own. “Do I really have to answer obvious questions?”

“You don’t have to answer any questions you don’t want to,” he said without expression. “But you should maybe try, because I don’t think the answer is as obvious as you think.”

“It matters to me,” I said coolly. “It matters to Zack.”

“How much does it matter to you?”

“A lot,” I said. “I’m not a nun, okay? I’m not super excited about spending my life close to a man and never being able to sleep with him. It…is desperately unsatisfying.”

“So you pushed him away?” Relentless. Driving.

“Sure,” I said, and went back to inspecting a pair of sais hung next to the sickle. I saw him in the reflection this time, not me.

“Because if you can’t be wholly satisfied, why be with someone?”

“Because maybe I’d keep him from being happy with someone else,” I answered, and ran my finger down the blade. It was deceptive, and I cut myself, a little line in the flesh of my index finger that filled with blood, pooling at the end of the cut, turning into a droplet. I turned to look at him again. “Because maybe I’m sick of this false closeness, this feeling of everything-but-intimacy.”

“Is sex your definition of giving your all?” There was genuine curiosity in his returned gaze.

I looked back to the blood on my finger, as it traced a line to my palm and began to gather there. “No.”

“You were going to have sex with James, weren’t you?” He held his distance, about twenty feet between us, and I stared at the blood gathering in my palm. “Would you have considered that giving him your all?”

“No,” I said. “I would have considered it…” I felt a sting. “I don’t know. I don’t know what I would have considered it. Expedient, maybe.”

“It would be expedient to sleep with a man you didn’t really know, just because you could?”

I didn’t hear any judgment from him, but there was worlds of it in my head. “Right after I broke up with my boyfriend, you mean?” I didn’t whirl at him; I kept composed. “Not even twenty-four hours later? What you must think of me.”

“I don’t think anything bad of you,” he said, soothing.

“How can you not?” I asked, and laughed just a little, but again, manic. I felt the first stutter of emotion I’d been holding back since before I’d seen Andromeda bleeding, the red circle radiating out on her chest. “I am death. I get people killed, Doc. I couldn’t stand that I couldn’t be close to my boyfriend, so I pushed him away, broke up with him, then I went to a bar that very night, got drunk, and would have slept with a man who worked for the enemy, because I could.” I said it with gusto, almost relishing the buildup of torturous emotion, like I was enjoying thrusting a knife into my own midsection and savoring the twist. “If Kat hadn’t stopped me, I would have. And after that, my aunt betrayed me, my mother left me – again! And I got another person killed.” I pictured Andromeda’s youthful face, her wet and tangled hair, as she’d looked when I held her, as she died. She wasn’t any older than I was. I broke into a laugh that turned into a half-sob. “How can you not think awful things of me? My own mother…” I felt my face twist. “She didn’t take
me
with her.”

There was a certain growing alarm on his face. “You can’t think—”

“How can I not?” I held my hands apart, and felt the blood drip off my palm to the floor. “Not only am I good at getting people killed and driving others away, but my own mother—”

I stopped as I saw movement behind the windows. There was a man coming down the hall. Tall, balding, lean and wearing a suit with a white shirt and red tie. My eyes traced him as he came along, his demeanor straitlaced. He stopped at the glass door and it swung open.

“Time’s up, Doc,” he said with excessive casualness. “She’ll have plenty of time for a counseling session later, but I need to talk with her now. Ariadne’s orders.” He nodded to me. “Come on.”

Doc Zollers didn’t turn to look at him, just stood there still fixated on me. “Mormont, I need a few more minutes—”

“Now,” Michael Mormont said, not harsh, but without an ounce of give. “Come on, Nealon.”

Zollers wheeled, and walked his way to Mormont, who watched him with a wary eye, and I saw him whisper something into Mormont’s ear. I’m a meta, so I heard it too. “She’s vulnerable right now,” Zollers said, “and I need to help her through some trauma. I just need a few more minutes.”

Mormont leaned in and whispered back. “She’s vulnerable? Good. Then she’ll answer my questions without fighting me as hard as her reputation leads me to believe she normally would.” He slapped the doctor on the back and I saw a grin that was almost a sneer. “Don’t worry, Doc. You’re a master. You can pick up the pieces when I’m all done.” With a finger he beckoned to me, and I caught the look from Zollers, the uncertainty.

I walked, one foot after another, toward him, passing Zollers, shrugging off the arm he tried to put around me, and out the door that Michael Mormont held open for me, into the hallway, where the cold of the air conditioner seemed overwhelming for some reason.

Chapter 9

Still bleeding, I walked out of the building, at which point I let Mormont cross in front of me. He shot me a sidelong glance as he passed, and I caught a glimpse of his smooth skin, not even a hint of five o’clock shadow on his face. His eyebrows were heavier, and his face held a bit of a smirk that he flashed me as he passed. He turned his back to me as he led me across the campus, following the paths that cut through the grass.

If there was anything I appreciated about Michael Mormont thus far, it was that he didn’t try to make small talk on our walk to the headquarters building. He walked in front of me, self-assured enough that he didn’t once look back to make sure I was following him. For my part, I wondered if I could blame it on Wolfe if I clubbed him from behind and ran off.

The sun was hot overhead, but I barely noticed, as it felt good against my sweat-soaked skin. My hair was sticking together in strands, and I could feel it frizzing above my forehead, struggling against the ponytail. I could almost see to the other side of the campus from here, and I gazed longingly at my dorm and the shower I knew it contained, wondering when I’d be able to enjoy the warm recharge within it.

I desperately wanted a drink of water now, the sour taste of bad breath making me run my tongue over the interior of my mouth as if I could rub the bad flavor out. In the distance I could hear a lawnmower running as the ground crew went about the business of making the Directorate look fabulous. I wished I was one of them right now. It had to be less precarious, dangerous and insane than what I was currently doing for work.

When we reached the headquarters building, Mormont entered, triggering the handicapped automatic door without looking back. I suppose I should have felt honored or something that he was trusting me not to run, but instead I felt an almost creepy self-assurance from him, like I was some poor puppet in his thrall and subject to his will no matter what. Then I felt a rush of irritation that bled over the torrent of emotions that had been hammering at me only a few minutes earlier.