by P. S. Power
It meant something. More than he was seeing he didn't doubt. Still, his job of the moment was following, so he did it, not being able to do more than that really.
When they stopped it was at a building, but not the kind of place he would have figured. Instead of a training facility looking thing, or a school, it was a small log cabin. Like from a virt about settling North America. It was sealed with something shiny on the outside, and had a cute door on it that was in the same color. On the front was a single number. Four. That was done in black paint, and had a stenciled look to it.
"Here you go. For now, this place is yours. It isn't big, or nice, but there are lights and the sound proofing is nearly nonexistent. Most people can't stand being in the room you were in for too long. The silence is a killer."
He could understand that. Even though he'd kind of gotten used to it, eventually. What she was saying was that this place wasn't like that. It was probably watched as well. Not that the last room he'd had wasn't. He didn't have anything to put in it, but when she opened the door, Ben saw that there was a little bed. Raised and looking like it was made of logs as well. That had blankets and pillows on it, and was already made up. Along the back wall there was a small shower stall, a toilet that was closed off from the rest of the room, he was willing to bet, and off to one side what was probably a wardrobe. That or the secret entrance to the underground lair.
Nodding, he hoped it was that last one.
Things were opened for him, showing that he had toiletries, and several matching gray outfits to wear. Shoes too. Foam slippers really, with durra-soles on them. Like people wore to run in. More to the point, what wealthy people that ran professionally wore.
Glenda waved into the plain wooden wardrobe, indicating it was for him.
"I'll give you some time to clean up and change? I'll run and get some food for you to eat while you do that. Do you like melon?" She waited, probably for him to ask what kind, but he just nodded.
A hamburger would have been better, along with a big milkshake, but the idea that fat little him wasn't getting that kind of thing just made sense.
"That sounds good." Before he could ask about varieties, if it made any difference, she turned and left, walking away with the kind of energy only fit people that ate regularly could hold.
That meant he hurried, not knowing what he was supposed to really be doing. He showered, used the clippers and electric razor to shave, and did all of it without looking up into the mirror. When he finally did the view was a bit shocking. He'd figured that his face would be leaner, which it was. What Ben hadn't counted on were the huge deep purple and green shadows under his eyes. The orbs above them were brown, but also vacant looking. Like he'd been traumatized.
Shaking his head, he tried to smile, but that almost didn't work. It felt right, inside, but his face very nearly didn't move.
Even after he changed into what he supposed was Cymed daily wear, which was plain, gray and comfortable enough while still seeming sturdy, he looked out of it. Tired and weak. A lot thinner than he would have expected, so there was that part of things, but it wasn't enough to let him feel comfortable.
When he went out onto the porch he found his new buddy, Glenda, sitting there with a small plate that had what seemed to be a few ounces of cut watermelon on it. Walking out she looked at him closely, but didn't explain why he got so little to eat. Not at first.
In fact, when he settled on the steps next to her, she wrinkled her nose at him a bit.
"Not going to whine about the little portions?"
That got him to think for a bit, then shake his head.
"No? There has to be a reason for it. Being a little bitch about it won't make me look any better." It could be anything from a desire of these people to see him thin as soon as possible, to Glenda just hating him, as far as he knew.
For some reason the woman smiled at that, as if hearing it made her happy. This one felt more real than some of the other smiles, though that could have simply been him acclimating to the world again.
"There is. If you eat too much, too soon, after a very long fast, it can hurt. Even kill you, though that's pretty rare. So we reintroduce food slowly, over the course of a week or so. During that time, we'll slowly increase your activity level. Making it harder, not having you do more. That way you can keep losing weight for a while, until you find where you're comfortable. Don't eat this fast. Savor it. You get more in two hours."
It was still only six mouthfuls of food, and didn't take months to get down. After that, she nodded at him, and stood up.
"You should get a walk? It will take a while for your mind to come back to normal. Really, it probably never will, after that, but your mental skills will mainly kick back in. It will be hard to focus after that, but you managed to do at least a bit of meditation which helps. There's a path, behind your cabin here? Just remember that you're in number four, and to go slow. Stay to the right hand side, in case anyone is running." She patted his arm, leaning in, and took the plate. "Wake up is at six in the morning, so try to get in early enough to catch at least a few hours. I'll be back here in two hours with more food. It's about six in the evening right now."
That was a funny way of saying it, but Ben understood, fuzzy in the head or not. He was still really out of it, so not knowing what time it was probably just made sense. As he stumbled on to the dirt path behind his new little home, he found that there were bushes in the way. At first it seemed like he wasn't going to find anything, but there was, past the six-foot-high bit of green in the way, that had some berries on it, an open space that led off in both directions. Ben moved off to the left, not knowing why he chose that direction.
Then he got on the left hand side, figuring that he could jump, or at least slowly hobble, out of the way if anyone was coming at him. The wall framed the far side of the thing, to the right. There was a fifty percent chance that he was on the wrong side, after all. That would change depending on what direction anyone else was going. Moving off at a slow, but even pace, Ben didn't have a long wait before someone came at him. From behind, on the right hand side of the path. Meaning he was likely correct as to the direction that everyone used the thing in.
It was tempting to stare, since this was the first person that he'd seen there who wasn't Glenda, but the woman that came by him wasn't her, and was wearing the same outfit that he was. He wondered for a moment if he should feel awkward, showing up in the same clothing like that, but even as a joke he couldn't get behind it. It was the uniform, apparently. If everyone wasn't wearing the same thing it would probably have meaning, eventually.
The lady wasn't old looking or anything, and seemed thin, but otherwise normal enough. Smaller than he was, in every way, being tiny enough for it to be an issue for her. Five feet tall, if that. At first it seemed that she was very youthful, but as she passed him, at a pretty good pace, he could see that she was at least in her early twenties, if not a bit older.
So, not a child. She wasn't wearing makeup that he could tell, and her black hair was pulled back, but she had sporty seeming good looks. Her chest was kind of flat, but if you were going to do things like run all the time, that was probably a great thing to have. Ben looked down at his own front, and realized that having big old things hanging off would have been kind of a pain.
The woman was out of sight after about a minute, which showed how long the path they were on was. Ben just kept trudging on. Placing one foot in front of the other. About half an hour later, the same woman came padding up behind him, as he walked on what had to be the bottom of the large loop. He hoped so anyway. Ben kind of feared that it wasn't really the case, feeling like he was probably about a third of the way around.
This time however, breathing kind of hard, the fast moving woman stopped, and moved in alongside of him.
"Hey." Her voice was high pitched, and her dark hair was short enough not to be flowing down her back, but long enough to be pulled back into a tail.
"Hello." His voice sound
ed a bit distant, even to his own ears, but he didn't explain. Part of that was about how out of it he was. The rest was due to her being halfway pretty, and him being a giant goofball, by nature.
She just walked for a while, her footfalls coming into time with his.
"I'm Micha. Like, 'pleased to meech'ya'? Not with a hard sound. You're new, right?"
That probably showed that she was incredibly intelligent, he understood. Realizing that the person that had never been around before might be new like that. Not that he was going to tease her about it. It was called small talk. Ben had learned a bit about that working with the public.
"Yep. That's me, the new guy. Ben. Epson, if it comes up. I... Just got out of an all black room? They didn't feed me for a month, and now I have to work off dinner. Two ounces of melon. That's normal, isn't it?"
The woman smiled at him, which was cute, even if she was a bit sweaty and breathing hard still.
"Not here. I've heard about you then. The man in the hole. You threw things off, didn't you? Forty-two days inside. I lasted two and that's thought of as kind of a big deal. So, what's your secret? Meditation? I might be able to pull that off now. Not when I first got here."
He didn't know, really. It wasn't that one however.
"I... Just really need to be here. I guess." That it was all down to his father being framed and killed wasn't said. She probably knew that. Glenda seemed to, and it wouldn't shock him to find out that his file had been handed around to everyone there already. So far no one had mentioned having anything fun to do, so gossip might be the order of the day.
Micha didn't tell him all of the secrets of the place, so they ended up just walking for a bit, before he smiled and glanced over at her. She had nice eyes that were probably brown. It was hard to tell since twilight was coming already. Regardless, she looked friendly.
"I'm not normally this out of it. Glenda said it might be a while before I get back to normal after that. Um... how long is this path, anyway? She'd just told me how to find it and suggested a saunter before bed."
"Only three miles. Which cabin are you in?"
Ben glanced at her, wanting to wonder if she were planning on a sexy visit in the night and knowing that even if she did, he wouldn't be up to anything fun. Not yet.
"Four. You? Or is that different if you've been around for a while? Barracks or a room in the secret underground compound?"
"I'm your neighbor. In six. Right next to you then. Great, we can have sleepovers and eat... Well, you're not eating much for a while, after a fast like that, are you? We can watch movies in our down time, and tell ghost stories." She sped up a bit, but not too much. It was, he guessed, her way of telling him that he was being slow, even for a half starving guy.
"Sounds fun. It didn't sound like there would be a lot of that. Down time." He smiled, not really caring at the moment. That might come up as an issue later, however.
The woman, snorted at him, and then shook her head.
"We get some. Really after the first six months or so, you can only train about half the time. You probably won't get any missions for the first few years either, so yeah, there are movies and talking. We don't have net access here, except in the head office, and that's only used for recruiting, which is done really carefully. Free Web stuff."
Which was how he'd found the place, himself, so that made sense.
The girl next to him stopped suddenly, and went very still, then seemed... Annoyed. Not with him however, since she rolled her eyes and took a deep breath.
"Ambush. Are you any good in a fight, new guy?"
"Nooooo. Not unless we're talking the VR kind? In that case I do about average." Maybe better than that, but it probably wasn't what she meant. At least no image of a gun appeared in his hand. He looked, but it stayed empty.
"Okay. Then you should run. I'll try to hold them off here. When in doubt, go off path and hide." She sounded serious, as if they were really under attack, which did seem to be the case. By a man and a woman in gray, who burst out of the underbrush, coming at them from both sides.
Not being able to do any better, he started to jog away, only to find that one of the people, the woman, who was thin and kind of plain looking, her face being pale and flat, had moved in right alongside of him. It was kind of clear from the sounds that Micha was fighting with someone. He wanted to look, but didn't want to fall more than that.
The new lady seemed a few years older than he was, probably being in her thirties and had a nice three or four-inch scar on her cheek. It was kind of silvery, and curled downward at the bottom edge.
"All right." The woman spoke firmly, her voice conversational. "You haven't eaten for over a month. You're weak, and you don't know how to fight. Not even as well as most kids on a playground. You're best current running speed seems to be about four miles per hour, and your partner is tied up, fighting one of the best combatants in the world. What do you do?"
Dropping dead came to mind, since he was already gasping as the woman next to him seemed to be barely working at all. That could have been for a lot of reasons, but none of them mattered at the moment. Worse, they could have all been correct, meaning that there was no way for him to live through this encounter. Oh, it was pretty clear that the academic sounding lady next to him wasn't trying to be mean, but even as an intellectual exercise, there wasn't much to be done at the moment.
"Not much. You might be superhuman, strength and speed wise. Endurance is better, regardless, probably the rest too, because..." He had to take a bit to breathe, then stopped dead, and pointed to the side of the path. The outside, as it turned out. "Look, what's that?" The woman was ahead of him by a few steps and turned that direction while he slowly shuffled off toward the center of the place. The instant he was past the first bushes, he moved back toward where Micha and her attacker for the evening were, and realizing he couldn't get away in time, rolled under a bush, about fifteen feet from the trail.
It felt clever to him, but after about half a minute, his new friend just walked up and laughed at him.
"Might as well come out. I can see your foot. Just a bit of it, but it's enough."
Sighing, he rolled out, hoping that there wasn't a mandatory beat down coming for his failure. That was pretty sloppy of him, no doubt, leaving a foot sticking out like that.
"Well. Darned. Um, I'm Ben, by the way. The new person?" Which she clearly knew all about.
"Ali. I work in physical training. This was supposed to just be for Micha, but she found a hero to take part of the heat off of her. Brilliant of her. Especially since she couldn't possibly know that we were coming. Then, she's one of the psychics, so that can happen. Normally we'd go over what you did wrong, but given your knowledge base right now, and current physical resources, I'll leave it at getting your foot in. That won't work twice, by the way. It only did this time because I didn't know you were that clever. I'll send M back around when she's finished with Carlos? Really, if you're making it back before dark, around the path, I should let you go now. See you soon."
Ben snickered a bit, and sighed, needing the air. Then he started walking again, since the woman was probably right. He had nearly a mile to cover and if that didn't take him half an hour right then, he was going to be surprised. He just held to the left hand side of the pathway, but when he heard someone coming this time, he hid. It wasn't Micha. At least she wasn't in the lead, following the other two that had been harassing them from about ten feet back. When she passed the girl waved at him, indicating that he should follow them. They weren't going that fast, but it still meant jogging for him, and was hard to do. He was just too tapped out to really keep it up for very long. Thankfully that wasn't needed, since they all stopped, at about the right place for him to get back to his tiny cabin, and hopefully more luscious melon.
The man, who was bigger than Glenda was, being six-six at least, and holding more muscle, now that Ben got a chance to look at him, stared blankly. At first, after a few moments, he just started to nod.
The man sounded a bit gruff, but as he moved back toward the way that they'd all come, he patted Ben on the shoulder a few times.
"Welcome. I think you'll fit in here pretty well. I look forward to working with you."
Then the man, Carlos he guessed, having limited naming options so far, and his partner, Ali, moved onto a path that wasn't the one that he knew about, while Micha, smiled and jogged at him.
"Hey, cool! I was hoping that would happen. Soon, I mean. I knew that I'll be working with you, but I hadn't figured that it would start on day one." She stopped, and looked at him pretty closely, then took his hand. "This way. I was augmented with better night vision than most. Telepathic, empathic and precognitive abilities too. I know, you don't think that stuff is real, but it is. So, yes, that does mean that I know both what you're thinking and what you're going to do." She grinned, and rolled her eyes at him.
Ben nodded, just taking her word for that part of things.
"Oh. Okay. So you know that I think you're cute and should have sex with me, but know that I'm just going to go and try to score a few bites of food? Then hit the hay?"
"Yep. I totally had all of that. Even the part where you weren't really thinking about that sex consciously. Which is more polite than most manage. We should go. Glenda is waiting for you. She has more watermelon. I think there was a sale in town, since it's out of season for it. Come on."
Pulling him by the hand, if gently, she led him to the front stoop of cabin number four, where Glenda sat, waiting for him rather peacefully.
"There you are. Picked up a stray, I see?" She winked at Micha, who did it back.
The smaller woman nodded.
"Yeah. Oh, he's at least working with better than average precognitive abilities and probably a few other psychic things. We should test him for that." Then she faked a yawn and stretched, which was followed by a head shake.
