Family

by Robert J. Crane

  He slid his hand along the back of the wood chair. “Only a fool wouldn’t suspect you at this point.”

  I should have brushed it off. If all the things that had happened the last few days hadn’t happened, I probably would have. I’m Teflon. Nothing sticks to me; not emotions, not…nothing. I’m tough. My reputation at the Directorate is unsentimental, brutal, hard-working, unfeeling. I blinked back the emotion again. “Did Ariadne tell you to ask me this?” I blinked again. “Does she suspect me?”

  He was cool when he answered, slick, and it came out easy. “Does she look like a fool?”

  I bit back the obvious, stupid, fashion-oriented reply and also the one where I told him what he looked like. “You’re not gonna ask me if I’m a traitor point blank and get it out of the way?” I felt my lip quiver and I hated myself almost as much as I hated him.

  “If you’re really spying on the Directorate,” he said with the same smirk, “you’d just lie.”

  “Do I look like I’m in a fit state to lie right now?” I let the doubt slip into it, and my words came out hushed, bursting with all the emotion I was trying to cram down, the burning in my eyes and my throat.

  “You look like someone in far, far over her head, Ms. Nealon,” he answered. “I don’t know if that makes you someone who would betray your employer or not.” He didn’t smile now. “But I will tell you this: you are being watched. Every hour of every day. If you are, in fact, working with Omega, or with your mother, I will find out. It’s what I do.” He believed every word he said. He leaned over again, grasping the chair in front of him, and the smile came back. “And I’m very, very good at what I do.”

  Chapter 10

  The silence was pervasive as I left headquarters. I had been in the room with Mormont for longer than I thought; the sun, which had been overhead when I left the training facility, was now dipping lower in the sky. In Minnesota, in the middle of summer, it would not set until near nine o’clock tonight, but the shadows were growing long, though it was still hot.

  My feet carried me out the front door and I realized not for the first time that I was covered in sweat; some dried, more fresh than should have been possible in an air-conditioned space like I had been in. My legs seemed to work only mechanically, each step sending mild shocks through my body as I slouched my way out the door. I was a mess, I knew it.

  A hot breath of wind blew past that felt as though it had been warmed over the heat element of an oven. Even still, it was not enough to drag me out of my fearful, lethargic shuffle. I looked left and right, feeling more like a broken person than I could ever have wanted to admit to.

  I didn’t go back toward the dormitory, which surprised me. My feet carried me, taking a concrete path that went in the other direction, toward the woods that ringed the campus. I left the path as I neared the trees, not wanting to go back to my little room, with the little bed and little space provided by the people who now suspected me of betraying them. I felt a flash of anger – a HOW DARE THEY sort of indignation that fizzled a moment later. Of course they thought I was betraying them. My mother kidnapped one of their agents. I came within a few inches of sleeping with a man who works with an organization killing their people – our people. I’d think I was a traitor, too.

  My steps carried me into the woods, past the start of the treeline. The sun cast shadows of the tree trunks in angled parallel lines on the pine needle-covered floor of the woods. Small green shrubs sprouted every few feet, but unpaved paths were cut through the woods for the Directorate staff to walk if they so desired, worn down by the tread of countless feet. Some of the meta kids, the teenagers who sheltered here, would sneak out on these trails for something they weren’t allowed to do in the dorms. I wondered why I’d never been warned against it, and realized that they’d always treated me with kid gloves compared to the other metas, even the kids. Was that just because I was so powerful they were desperate to keep me, or was there something else in play?

  I went on, into the woods, deeper as the space around the path grew more unkempt and less trod. Trampled brown-orange pine needles were everywhere, the dull gray dirt and sands beneath it holding me up to keep me from falling through the earth – which is how I felt. Like I would collapse and be swallowed up by the earth, and that the sky would fall down upon me and drive me through it. I’d failed, completely, in everything. I had been ridiculously irresponsible on the mission, had compromised us to Omega. Even if I hadn’t gotten our agents killed in the field I had almost certainly been responsible for James allowing Omega to be positioned to kill Andromeda after her escape.

  Andromeda. I felt my knees give out when I thought of her. There was something so different about her, and not just because she had been imprisoned in some bizarre containment cylinder that wasn’t unlike the box I was intimately familiar with. There was something in her manner, so different, so alien, that reminded me of someone that didn’t have a lot of social experiences. I could relate. Her powers may have made her different; her odd ability to read others would have made them nervous. She might have been an outcast. Like me.

  My gloved hand was on the ground, holding me up as I lay there on my knees. I could feel the emotions racking my body, threatening to escape with violent force, and I tried to suppress them. I wanted to be strong, but I felt my limit, and it was miles back. I had screwed everything up. I imagined Zack’s face, the only man I knew who had ever really cared about me, and remembered the look I’d seen on him in the medical unit – the hurt, the betrayal. Zollers had nailed it: I was the center, whether I wanted to be or not, and I had failed to hold, and everything was falling apart around me. The Directorate had entrusted me with a great responsibility and I had screwed it up completely.

  I dragged myself to a nearby tree and put my back against it. I felt weak, barely holding back the raging tide of emotion that was threatening to wreck me. There were other things weighing on my mind, obviously – I didn’t need Zollers to tell me that I had deep, unresolved mommy issues. I blinked my eyes tightly, squinted them shut. I leaned my head against the rough bark, felt the knots and grooves of it bite into the back of my skull. Part of me wanted to push back harder, like I did with everything else except my interrogation, apparently. “Why?” I whispered.

  “Why what?” came a sharp voice that caused my eyes to shoot open in surprise. I blinked, twice, to be sure I was seeing what I thought I saw, and not some stress-based delusion. My mother stood before me, her hair back in a ponytail like my own, her face frozen in utter disdain. She stood only feet from me, no gloves, but a business suit and makeup giving her a drastically different look than when I had last seen her. “You’re sitting out here, exposed, with your eyes closed.” She looked at me with a narrowed gaze of her own. “You’re oblivious to the world around you – you didn’t even hear me approach you from behind. If I’d been an enemy, you’d be dead.” She maintained her distance.

  “What…” I looked around, as though hoping someone else was seeing what I saw. “Are you…really here?”

  She rolled her eyes so hard her entire head bobbed as she looked up and over, as though she were following the path of an imaginary fly ball going over her. “Please tell me it’s the drugs they have you on that are making you this dumb. I never trained you to be this undisciplined, this STUPID about your personal safety.” She squinted at me. “Where’s Andromeda?”

  I blinked at her, again. “Wh…Andromeda? You’re…not here for me?”

  This time she bowed her head in deep annoyance. “I realize I can’t punish you the way I used to, but could you at least…do me the courtesy…of answering my question.” She strained at the last, the final part of her sentence coming out in a low, growling bark.

  “She’s dead,” I said, whispering again. “They killed her. Omega killed her.”

  “What?” My mother’s staid expression, perpetually ready to display annoyance as her sole emotion, broke and her eyes widened in shock. “They couldn’t have killed her – they wouldn�
�t have—”

  “They did,” I said, soft, the emotion drying me out, taking away my sarcasm. “One of their soldiers shot her, and would have shot me if not for—”

  “No.” She shook her head. “That’s not Omega’s style. They would have wanted her back, after what they did to—” She shook her head again, and I could see the emotions rushing over her face, as she snapped back to masking them, calm indifference returning. “I’m sorry, that can’t be right.”

  “I saw her die,” I said. I looked at her, and cocked my head. “Where’s Kat?”

  My mother’s arms tightened, folded in front of her on the arms of her suit, which was a perfect match for something Ariadne would have worn. “Not here,” she said. “Why do you ask?”

  “Because she’s my friend—”

  “Don’t lie to me, Sienna,” she said, with a frank air of unconcern. “I’ve been watching you since you were a child; I can tell when you do it. She’s no friend of yours. You don’t even like her.”

  “I…I like her fine.” I reeled slightly. “She…tries to be my friend. If she’s not, it’s not her fault, it’s mine. And she’s…my colleague.”

  “Deep concern for a co-worker?” She studied me with a frown. “I doubt it; not for the little cheerleader. No, it’s something else.” She stared at me, sifting into my soul as though she had her hands on me and was draining the answers out of me. She laughed, a short one that was mostly fake, and her arms uncrossed. “They think you betrayed them. Erich Winter thinks you’re working with me.”

  “No,” I said in a hoarse whisper. “He thinks I’m working with Omega.”

  My mother laughed, a real one this time, originating from deep inside. “Ohhh, that’s a good one. I doubt he really believes that, though you certainly kicked up some suspicions fraternizing with James Fries. I hope you learned your lesson about that particular glass of rotten milk without giving the cow away for free.”

  I blinked. “Was that…are you talking about me sleeping with him?”

  “I don’t care whether you did or not,” she said, voice cracking like a whip, telling me something else entirely different from her words. “I just hope you didn’t make a stupid mistake that you’ll regret for the next eighteen years.”

  I flinched at her words. “Are you…are you talking about…me?”

  Her look turned from raging to wary in an instant. “I have to go.”

  “Why are you here?” I said, and felt my back press against the tree again. “Did you stop by just to insult me? To add a few more logs on the fires of my insecurities?” I blinked back the tears that had been long suppressed.

  “No,” she snapped. “I saw you go into the woods, and I followed you.” She hesitated now, seeming as though she were torn. “I wanted to—”

  Something whistled through the air above us and I felt a tingle. I was moving even as Mom’s head was swiveling, looking around us for the threat. I knew, however, that it was coming from above, directly above, and without even thinking I acted, pushing her with both hands. The look on her face was pure shock, and she lanced out with a fist that hit me in the jaw even as she was falling. She hit the ground on her back and used her momentum to roll back to her feet.

  I, on the other hand, felt the blow from above, the one that had been meant for her, hit me square in the back and fling me facedown to the ground. My chin, fresh from being hit by her fist, was slammed into a root, followed by my chest, knocking the wind out of me. Stars filled my eyes, the metaphorical sort which were really colored flashes of light in my experience. I saw my mother looking at me for a half-second, her mouth a flat line, before she turned and ran, leaving her high heeled shoes behind in a sprint to get away from the place where I lay.

  I stared at her back until she receded from view, my head full of lightness, and my limbs trapped, immovable beneath a net of light that restrained me, hugging me to the earth. I decided not to fight the desire to go limp, preferring instead to just lay there, hoping that the earth really would swallow me, that the sky really would fall down – not a net from Eve Kappler, like what was keeping me down now. I waited, and I heard the footfalls of M-Squad a few seconds later. I felt strong hands reach down, hard like iron, and rip the netting away, and then twist my arm behind me.

  I cried out and was pulled to my feet, Clyde Clary standing in front of me, his skin turned a black, rubbery color. It felt like metal. He was leering at me with his stupid grin and had my hand twisted behind me, locking it into place behind my back as he did the same with my other hand, effectively handcuffing me without needing actual handcuffs. “Lookee here,” Clary said. “Caught her fraternizing with the enemy red-handed.”

  “If my hands are red, it’s because you’re cutting off the circulation to them.”

  “Loosen up, Clary,” I heard another voice say, and I was spun about to face the speaker. Roberto Bastian looked back at me, his black, short-cropped military flattop standing out in the late day shadows. His browned skin looked sallow in the fading light, and his lips were puckered like he was holding back whatever he wanted to say to me. “No need to hurt her.”

  “We got her,” Clary said, dumbstruck. “We got her talking to her mom, live and here. What, you want me to let her go?”

  “She ain’t going anywhere,” Bastian said, and turned to look back at Headquarters, “so loosen up your grip. It ain’t like you can’t run her down and catch her if she tries to rabbit.” He turned to face me. “And it’s not a crime to talk to your mother, though obviously it doesn’t look good. We’re gonna have to take you to Ariadne,” he said, speaking to me at last. “If you try to run…” He shook his head, almost sadly. “Just don’t. Let’s get this over with.”

  “What about Eve and Parks?” Clary said with a nod in the direction my mother had run.

  A noise in the underbrush got us all looking, and a wolf slinked out, then stood up on its hind legs as it became a man. Its fur became clothing, the hair atop its head and face becoming a gray beard and a long, bushy mane. “Eve’s aloft,” Parks said, “but it’s pretty clear Sierra got away. Managed to leap the fence and make it to a car. I called Ariadne and the helo’s warming up, but it won’t be up in time to catch her.” He turned to look at me. “What’s your story?”

  I swallowed hard. “You wouldn’t believe me if I told you.”

  “Try me,” he said and gestured with a nod of his head to start walking toward the headquarters building.

  “I just got done with the interrogator,” I said as Clary put pressure on my arms and started me moving forward, “and I came out here by myself. My mom was apparently on campus to do something and said she saw me and followed me out here.”

  “Simple,” Parks said. “Undetailed. She was definitely here. Why would I doubt it?”

  “Because the coincidences are piling up,” I said as Clary tugged on my arm, causing me a surge of pain. I looked at him and he grinned. “And the circumstantial evidence of my guilt is gaining more and more circumstances with every passing day.”

  Parks chortled, and I heard Bastian clear his throat. “True enough,” Parks said, and lapsed into silence.

  I considered the only fortunate part of this being that headquarters would be close to abandoned when I arrived, just as it had been when I left a few minutes earlier, the people who worked there already gone for the evening. I especially didn’t want to face the thought of the people around the campus seeing me in such a state, looking like hell, my face and clothes dirty and even ripped in a couple places from my rough landing after being taken down by Eve’s net. I looked down and saw smudges of brown dotting my grey t-shirt. I couldn’t imagine what my face must look like, but I could feel some of the dusty grit on my forehead and cheek.

  The route back to the headquarters building carried us past the dorms, and as Clary led the procession off the path and across the grass, I realized too late what he was doing. Bastian and Parks said nothing until we rounded one of the glassy corners of the building and I saw the
boxy outline of the cafeteria and the shapes within. By then it was too late, and as I started to resist, Clary twisted my arm, urging me to go on.

  “You are such an ass, Clary,” Bastian said under his breath. Parks let out a hiss of breath to agree.

  We walked past the cafeteria’s massive, open glass walls, already committed to our path. Clary marched me on, my arms snugged behind my back in a prisoner-like state, my shoulders hunched and my frame bent so he could control my movement easier. I didn’t look to my right as we passed the cafeteria. I didn’t need to. It was dinnertime, and I had seen silhouettes behind the glass; people rising from their seats and coming to the window to look at me being led along by three members of M-Squad, like a felon, in front of pretty much everyone I knew.

  The heat burned in my cheeks and I pushed down the tears again, this time of humiliation and rage, and I tried to quicken my pace, but Clary held me back now, and I heard a little guffaw from him as he slackened his tread to draw out my perp walk. “You having fun with this?” I asked him under my breath.

  “Sienna girl, I am having as much fun as I could possibly be having. What’s the matter?” he asked with a laugh. “You not enjoying your fifteen minutes of shame?”

  “No,” I said hoarsely. “No, I’m not.”

  He chuckled, a sound like a wheezing heifer. “Don’t do the crime if you don’t wanna do the time.”

  “Stifle it, Clary,” Parks said.

  “What are you getting all up in my grill for, Parks?” Clary said with disdain. “We caught her with a woman who broke into our facility.”

  “Talking, Clary,” Parks said. “And nothing else that we could prove.”

  “Prove, schmove,” he said. “She’s guilty as hell.”

  They marched me through the heavy glass doors of the headquarters building, into the elevator, and we rode up, Clary still affecting his rubber form, keeping my arms locked in place. I felt it every few minutes as he would subtly increase the pressure on my arms. Not so much Parks or Bastian would notice, or enough to make me cry out, but enough to cause me pain. I wanted to hurt him, but even stomping as hard as I could on the instep of his foot (the preferred remedy for dealing with someone restraining you in such a way) would produce only more pain for me.