I moved gracefully through the kata to the end and stopped, the blade poised. I stood there, sword at full extension, holding my position, and looked to the mirror to check my technique, which was flawless. It should be. I’d practiced it twenty times a week since I was twelve, with and without weapons. Even now, outside of my mother’s influence, I found it to be the habit I couldn’t break, the remnant of the past that kept coming back, even though she had disappeared. It stayed with me, and after Scott, Kat and Parks had all called it a day, I kept coming back here, to this place, and practicing, as though it were something that was so ingrained that it was in my core and couldn’t be shed, like a second skin hiding beneath my first.
“Very nice,” came the voice from the door. I hadn’t heard it open, which was unusual, but then the man standing there with his arms folded was the disarming sort anyway, the type that I wouldn’t have felt threatened by even if I’d seen him coming. He’d earned enough of my trust that I wouldn’t have jumped like a scared cat; anyone else catching me in the middle of a form unexpectedly might have (would have) gotten a much different reaction.
“I didn’t hear you come in,” I said, and wiped my forehead, my long sleeve catching the sweat that had begun to bead there. The practice room was actually quite comfortable, but my practice was exerting – every strike, block and attack was practiced at full tilt, nothing held back, but with all discipline and control. When I strung several katas together in sequence it became very good exercise, if I didn’t take a break in between. I looked at the clock hanging over the door and realized I had been practicing for over an hour. “And it’s not that easy to sneak up on me, so my congratulations.”
“I don’t think I can claim much credit for that,” Dr. Zollers said, the irony bleeding through into his words. “The building could have been burning down around you and I doubt you would have noticed.”
“Those are the things I tend to perceive,” I said, finding my way back to the far wall and replacing the katana on the pegs that waited for it. The curved blade fitted perfectly into the scabbard and I hung it back where it belonged after wiping the sweat off the handle. “You know, black smoke billowing around the ceiling, heat spiking to uncomfortable levels, flames all around.” I turned to find him unmoved, still standing by the door, relaxed. “Unthreatening psychiatrists in sweater vests don’t tend to set off my smoke detectors.”
“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?”