“Is anyone else on this wing?” I asked.
“Nope. Just you two. Mae, come with us, please.” The guard waved her forward.
“Wait,” Mary said. “Where are you taking her?”
The guard looked impatient, tapping his foot while keeping his face impassive. “She’ll stay with the other hybrids, like she always does when she’s here.”
“No, she can have this room. I want her to stay near us.” Mary stepped closer to Mae.
“Really, it’s okay, Mary.” Mae looked happy to see her friend stand up to the guards, but I wondered if it wouldn’t be better for her to be near her people for information. Seeing the determined look in Mary’s eyes, I didn’t dare suggest this at that moment.
“No, it’s not. You’ve proven yourself to us all. Stay near us. We still have to discuss a plan for tomorrow,” Mary said.
The guard deflated a bit and nodded. “Fine, you stay here tonight. The dean expects to see you for breakfast at eight in the morning. We’ll send someone for you.”
“Can you just tell us where to find him? I’d prefer not to feel like a prisoner here too,” I said. He opened my room door and pointed to a campus map on a small desk near the window.
“Right there,” he said, pointing to a building near the middle of the campus.
“Got it. Thanks, Roberts.” I smiled at him. He quickly turned without looking back, leaving all three of us in the small dorm room.
“That went well, I think,” Mary said, laugh lines crinkling around her eyes. I had the urge to boot Mae out and take Mary into my arms.
“It’s late. How about we sleep, then regroup early in the morning?” This from Mae. Maybe she saw the look in my eyes. “And thanks for treating me like one of you. I’ll never forget it.” The words were touching, but ominous at the same time. I could feel goosebumps rise on my arms, and I wasn’t sure why.
“Goodnight, Mae,” I said, and closed the door behind her. “Good thing the room is all the way across the hall,” I said, smirking at the woman I loved.
She sniffed the air and took her shirt off. “I agree. How about a shower first?”
Looking around, I realized dorm rooms didn’t have their own bathrooms. They had shared toilets and showers on each wing. At least that was how my old school was.
“I know, I saw the sign down the hall.” She opened the door, and I chased after her down the corridor. The hall was dim, and we soon found ourselves interlocked under a weak showerhead. We had plenty of time for saving the world later. That night we took for ourselves.
There was a tentative knock on the door, followed by a harder one seconds later. I rolled over and checked the time. Seven on the nose.
“I think it’s for you,” Mary said weakly.
“You always say that. Oddly, it never is.” I rolled out of the small twin bed, realizing I was naked.
“Good morning, sleepyheads,” Mae said from the hall.
After sliding into some pants, I opened the door. She held a tray with three coffees in it, each marked with our names. Here we were sleeping, and Mae was thinking of us. She truly was a great friend.
Smiling and saying thank you, I ushered her into the small room. Mary had pulled some clothes from the chair beside the bed, and magically got dressed in moments under the blanket.
“How about we take these to go? I have some news. Take a few to get ready. Leave through the entrance, and head left. About a hundred yards down is a park. I’ll be at a bench.” She looked at me and laughed, then took her coffee and left.
“What’s so funny?” I asked Mary.
She looked down, and I followed her gaze. My pants were on inside out. I burst out laughing, almost spilling my hot coffee.
A few minutes later, after we’d bird-bathed in the bathroom sink, we made our way over to Mae. The morning was beautiful, a single wispy white cloud slowly trailing through the otherwise clear blue sky. It was going to be a hot day.
Mae was sitting on the bench, legs extended and feet crossed. She held her coffee in her hand on her lap, and I was shocked to see how much she looked like Janine right then. That was exactly how she sat when she was in a contemplative mood. My heart suddenly ached, and surprisingly, I didn’t push it away, I embraced it. I felt the love I’d had for Janine fill me. The tender moments, the tough ones, the end of her life, the betrayal I’d felt at learning the truth; they all filled me, and for the first time in years, I felt true. True to myself, and true to Janine.
“Are you okay, Dean?” Mary asked.
“I am,” I answered, and I was. I felt her fingers slide through mine and squeeze my hand slightly.
“What did you find out, Mae?” Mary asked, letting go of my hand and sitting down on the bench beside her friend. We knew Mae would have gotten up early to poke around the other hybrids and hear the latest gossip and news.
“They were a little tight-lipped around me, at least the few I spoke with. Remember, to some of them, I’m the turncoat. Even to the ones that are happy to be here rather than dead, I still did something I wasn’t supposed to. But a lot of them are happy. It just goes against their indoctrination, which is weakening all the time. I do think there’s a larger group of dissidents than we originally guessed. I don’t have anything to back this up, but the averted eyes and nervous toe-tapping I got this morning told me enough.” Mae took a sip from her coffee and kept staring forward at the dew-covered grass in the park.
“Did you ask about Leslie and Terrance, the two names Clayton the shooter had for us?” I asked.
“I mentioned Leslie in passing to someone I didn’t know well. Asking after her like we were old friends or something. Jarvis paled and told me he hadn’t seen her in some time. That she must be busy with a project for the humans or something. A bunch of BS, if you ask me.”
It didn’t seem like we were going to be able to get far on Mae’s previous relationships. We were going to have to rely on the intel of the guards, and the so-called “dean.” What a presumptuous name to give the head of the camp. It was softer than calling him what he really was: a warden.
“I’m sorry, guys. I wish I could have done more,” Mae said.
“I have an idea.” Mary smiled widely and took a drink of her coffee.
SIX
The dean’s office was my kind of place. Mahogany wood desk, floor-to-ceiling bookcases, not just filled with pretentious unread textbooks and encyclopaedias. I saw some King and Child in there too, along with a few of my favorite sci-fi authors. I wouldn’t mind getting locked in there for a few weeks. He even had a connected washroom and a small wet bar, with what appeared to be Scotch in a decanter and one of those fancy digital single-serve coffee makers.
We sat crunched together in front of his large desk, our chairs nowhere near as comfortable and leather-clad as his. When we’d arrived, we were ushered in; I vaguely remembered the guard last night mentioning breakfast with the dean, and my stomach growled at the notion. Maybe he was too busy to eat with the likes of us.
After ten minutes of sitting there, I got up and started flipping through an old Clarke paperback, admiring the classic cover. I’d been lucky enough over the last year to have more free time than I’d had in years, since I hadn’t gone back to working as an accountant. One thing I had missed was reading. Somehow reading about alien civilizations, when I knew it was real, took some of the fun out of it.
The door opened, and a tall man stepped through. I’m not ashamed to say he was very handsome, his light hair neatly combed in a look I didn’t understand how to accomplish. I felt inadequate, with my sink-rinsed hair and wrinkled plaid shirt.