Rebecca shrugged and gave him a goofy grin, her eyes bloodshot and glazed.
“By the time I’d completed all the preparations, Gaul said I was glowing.”
“What? What does that mean?”
“Just that. We’d formed a closed loop, Alex. I was using my power to improve your access to your own. You were providing me with power to do so. Every step I took accelerated this process.” Rebecca turned to face him, putting one hand on his shoulder, her expression serious, maybe even concerned. “Alex, can you feel the Black Door?”
Alex intended to tell her no, that he didn’t know what she was talking about. He had even opened his mouth to do so. But then, it was like his perspective changed somehow, as if he was observing himself as a third-party, from a discrete distance but with greater clarity than he had ever imagined possible. He could see the boy propped up against the pillows on the bed, still half underneath the blankets, his long hair hanging down in his eyes. He could see his vague, almost dull-witted expression. On the face of the woman sitting beside him in the bed, he could see concern mixed with resignation, and knew that she was afraid that something bad might happen. Inside of her, pulsating out from underneath her t-shirt and flannel pajama bottoms, from inside of her lithe body, he saw a multifaceted light, burning like sunlight refracted in the heart of a gemstone. But when he looked inside of himself, all he could see was darkness; a darkness he knew was absolutely frigid. And within it, encompassed by it, he could see a great Black Door, heavy lacquered wood and tarnished silver hinges and door handle, the whole thing coated with a generous layer of white frost.
When Alex became aware of himself again, he was lying on his back. His eyes were open, and he wondered how long he’d been staring at the ceiling. Rebecca’s hand rested on his forehead, cool and soft. He sat up gingerly, wanting to ask what happened, and then noticed that the show was back on TV. Wisely, he decided to wait for commercial.
“Sorry ‘bout that,” Rebecca said, punching mute and turning to face him again, “but you kinda lost your shit there for a minute. I don’t need you destroying my bed and my couch in the same day. You disintegrated that thing on a molecular level, you little bastard.”
“Sorry,” Alex muttered, obscurely embarrassed. “Guess I’ve been kind of a headache today, huh?”
“Don’t worry about it. It’s my job.” Rebecca smirked at him. “Though I guess I should warn you that if you make a habit of destroying girl’s beds, then you’re going to have trouble scoring invites in the future.”
Alex rolled his eyes.
“So, what’s that,” Alex paused, shuddering slightly at the memory, “that thing inside me, Rebecca? The Black Door, or whatever you called it?”
“Not whatever. That’s what it is, Alex. It’s a big fucking Black Door in your head. I suggest that you try not to think about it too much. Sometime when I’m feeling better, I can do a better job of explaining your situation.”
She looked at Alex with something that looked suspiciously like pity, and for some reason, it bothered him.
“Okay, so, what does that — ?”
Rebecca put one finger up to his lips without even looking, her eyes already glued to the television, her other hand hunting for the mute button on the remote.
“Shh. Survivor.”
Alex tried to watch in resentful silence, but he was too comfortable, Rebecca was too easy to be around, or maybe he was a little stoned, after all. He found himself raptly watching a bunch of strangers plot, scheme and preen for the cameras, and wondered how long it had been since he’d last watched television.
“Alex,” Rebecca said quietly, still staring at the TV, “it’s probably going to be hard on you, you know? Up until now people have treated you like you didn’t exist, or like they wished you didn’t. Now everyone will know who you are before they meet you, and they’ll probably be extra nice to you, but you’ll always have to wonder about their intentions. How does that make you feel?”
“As long as I can get a date out of it,” Alex said with a sheepish smile, “I’m cool.”
Rebecca gave him an amused looked, and then rolled her eyes.
“Boys. Hush,” she said. “TV show.”
Ten
“Director, I must object. An Inquiry? Is all of this truly necessary? As I recall, my only crime was rescuing a boy who is now a student here, along with one of your Operators.”
“The Inquiry was deemed necessary because your answers, on the face of it, appear evasive, Mr. North. You must understand that though your motivations may be pure, the explanation you’ve provided for your proximity to the incident strains credulity.”
Mr. North crossed his legs and looked thoughtfully at Gaul.
“And yet here we are. Director, you should know by my reputation that if I wanted to deceive you, I would have at least concocted a believable story,” North offered reasonably. Gaul had only met him a few times before, at various Hegemony events where his attendance was expected; he’d thought him to be reserved and observant, but Rebecca told him that if you actually got him to talk that he was a bore. After an hour talking in circles with the somberly dressed man, he was inclined to agree. “That I simply happened to be in the area on personal business may be a wildly unlikely coincidence, but it is a coincidence that saved one of your people’s lives. What more can I offer you?”
“And the nature of the business?” Gaul asked doggedly.
“Personal, and private, and, as judged by the Committee-at-Large, nothing that I must disclose to you, having already done so to a panel of my peers.”
“You are putting me in a position, Mr. North,” Gaul said carefully, “where my only option to compel your cooperation would be to expand the scope of a potential Audit of the matter to include your private business.”
“If you feel that you must do so, then by all means Director, by all means. That I refuse to disclose private matters does not mean that I have something to hide. If you instigate an Audit into this matter, then I will be forced to lodge a complaint, and you will be called before the Committee to explain your rationale. Tell me, sir,” North said pointedly, “which part of my actions in this affair do you feel jeopardized the safety of Central, or violated a tenant of the Agreement?”
Gaul tried a cold, long silence, but Mr. North seemed unperturbed. Eventually, Gaul sighed, shuffled his papers, and moved on. Even the mention of the Committee-at-Large, Central’s own representative body and the theoretical counterweight to his own authority as Director, irked him to no end. Gaul approved of democracy, at least in theory, but only when it cooperated with him, something the Committee had never been willing to do.
“Tell me about the Weir, then.”
“Had no idea they would be there,” Mr. North said, brushing his dark brown hair back from his forehead and looking huffy. “Never would have suspected such a thing, and in such a pitiful backwater, no less.”
“And the silver Weir, Mr. North?”
“Terrifying creature,” North said sincerely, leaning forward as he spoke, “absolutely terrifying. I had thought it dead, of course, after your Operator, Aoki wasn’t it? After she shot the thing in the head, I assumed that it had been killed. I had dealt with most of the rest of the pack when the thing pulled itself up out of the mud, howled and then ran off to who-knows-where, before I could stop it.” North paused and looked contemplative. “Pity,” he said, after a brief hesitation, “the beast had a magnificent pelt. It would have made quite the trophy.”
Gaul fixed the man with his best unsettling stare. He’d actually practiced it, after reading a book on human psychology that discussed conversational gambits, and had found it quite effective on the Academy staff. It failed, however, to invoke a reaction of any kind in Mr. North’s regular, placid face.