“You are not listening,” Eerie said, tears of frustration in the corners of her strange eyes. “I don’t mean it like that. She was touching Alex, Rebecca. When she did it. You know what I mean, right?”
Actually, Rebecca did know. The catalyst effect. Michael might have been scared of Alex’s Black Protocol, and with reason, but the part about the kid that kept her up at night, that gave her the heebie-jeebies, was his potential as a catalyst. Gaul worried about what would happen if Alex came into contact with Mitsuru, who was obviously still obsessed with operating her own restricted Black Protocol, and she saw the validity in that. Rebecca herself had worried about the effect it might have on Eerie’s unique body chemistry, and in turn, the effect that same body chemistry might have on Alex, and she stood by that worry. Maybe, she thought, they had gotten too cute, too clever this time; maybe they had overlooked the most obvious person, perhaps the most desperate person.
Emily was a Class B, so she had just a shred of empathic ability, limited largely to perceiving the emotional state of those around her, rather than manipulating it. She was clever, and persistent, so given time, she could make very small tweaks in other people — Rebecca was well aware that she’d done so in the past a couple of times, mostly to stop bullying or avoid unpleasant social scenes, so she’d let it slide. Nevertheless, a manipulation of the order Eerie was talking about, that wouldn’t be possible, would it? It was a Class F operation, a severe and lasting transformation, which would require ability, time and a huge reserve of strength to accomplish. There was a nine-year old boy in the Academy’s grade school, who Rebecca believed to be the most powerful empath currently at the Academy besides herself; potentially, she thought, he could even surpass her, and turn out to be a Class M. However, he would be sadly incapable of doing what Eerie alleged had been done to Alex until he was fully trained.
The problem was inexperience. Employing a protocol like that, repeatedly, so subtly that neither the subject nor the people around him were aware of it, was an amazing feat, and doing it required practice and instruction. Rebecca had been lucky enough to find a teacher, and callous enough when she was young to experiment on those around her. She was confident in her abilities, having tested and honed them. But there was simply no way for most empaths to attempt something like that, much less to do it regularly enough to get good at it. Even if Alex was somehow elevating Emily from a Class B to a Class F…
Was Alex really elevating Emily to Class F without even realizing it?
…even if he was, she still shouldn’t be capable of a complex and nuanced operation like this. She just didn’t have the technical knowledge to pull it off. Raw power alone, even a great deal of it, wouldn’t do it.
“I don’t see it, Eerie,” she said reluctantly.
“Just trust me…”
For a moment, her temper flared. Eerie had, more-or-less, gone out of her way to embarrass Rebecca, being something of a project of hers, and in front of her boss, no less. She had made her look stupid and shortsighted, and she had done it for the exact same reasons that had gotten Rebecca a reprimand back in her Academy days. The same incident, oddly enough, that had led to the badly misshapen clay ashtray. Even though Rebecca knew that the similarities were the source of her frustration, that didn’t make her any less frustrated.
“No, Eerie, I warned you about this — you don’t get to play the trust card with me, not right now. You abused that,” Rebecca snapped. “Don’t ask me to take this on faith. You’re lucky I’m even bothering to listen to you.”
Eerie looked briefly furious, then her expression turned stricken, her hands dropping to her sides as she cried in frustration. Rebecca was more than a little surprised. Eerie had cried easily, until a few years ago, when she’d stopped completely, for reasons that she’d never explained. Eerie had shut Rebecca out of what little contact she’d made between their minds at the same time, too, for equally nebulous reasons. Rebecca didn’t think she’d cried since.
“Then talk to him,” Eerie demanded, sniffling. “Bring him in here and see for yourself. Then you tell me whether I am lying.”
“Maybe,” Rebecca said, turning her attention reluctantly to the stack of paperwork that Gaul kept circulating the offices perpetually, like that Greek guy in Hell endlessly rolling a rock up a hill, whose name she couldn’t remember. “If I get the time, I’ll try and talk to him early this month, even though I just saw him two weeks ago. But don’t hold your breath, kiddo.”
“Why are you being like this?” Eerie asked, sounding genuinely puzzled. “You should just let me!”
“Let you what?” Rebecca asked quietly.
“Let me out of trouble!” Eerie pleaded. “Just let me talk to him. Please?”
Rebecca made a show of meticulously filling out the first page in front of her, appearing to study it thoroughly without reading a word while she considered her options. The truth was that, in her own opinion, Rebecca wasn’t nearly as nice as people thought she was. She was just very sensitive, as an empath, and hated the people around her being unhappy. It always made her feel bad, too. With the exception of Gaul’s unhappiness, which she had come to treasure.
Moreover, she loved Eerie, she couldn’t help it, and it would be stupid not to admit it privately. But Eerie had embarrassed her, and it didn’t really seem to bother her at all. That upset Rebecca a great deal.
Rebecca thought about it for a while. Her glance strayed back to the stupid ashtray.
“You don’t deserve a chance when you haven’t even finished your punishment,” Rebecca said tiredly. “But if you are very, very good, then I might try and arrange a little time for you to do whatever it is you have in mind, provided it’s not what I’m thinking it is. I’m serious about that.”
“It’s not that,” Eerie said reassuringly. “Not for sure.”
“Make certain that it isn’t,” Rebecca warned her. “I have to work in this office. Anyway, finish the files in the other room, and then we’ll talk about it. Tomorrow. Okay?”
But Eerie had already gone skipping off, confident of her eventual victory. Rebecca sat, smoked, and contemplated the ugly ceramic ashtray, thinking about how stupid it was to assume that being older made you less susceptible to a broken heart.
“Haven’t seen you in a while,” Alex offered.
It was impossible to tell what the look Margot gave him meant. Her expression was always the same, unless she was really angry — so all he could tell from her face was that she wasn’t really angry. She paused briefly in the process of wrapping his hands in white tape, gave him a look, and then shrugged and went back to it.
“Field study.”
“Oh. So, uh, how’s it going? You’re doing stuff with Audits, right?”
Margot gave him the barest of nods.
“Yeah,” she said reluctantly, as if she had admitted to something he might use against her later. “It seems like it’s going okay. How do you like Miss Gallow’s Program?”
Just the mention of the name brought the bleeding pig back to Alex’s mind, and he dispelled it with an effort. He wasn’t about to share anything about the pig incident, even if he was certain that Steve had already told everyone he could think of to tell about it. Steve never passed up the opportunity to take a shot at Alex — time didn’t seem to have diminished their dislike for each other at all.
“Well, I don’t think it’s any worse than Miss Aoki’s version. But it isn’t any better, either. Sometimes — well, most of the time, actually — I don’t think I’m cut out for this. You know, killing people and stuff. I didn’t think it would be like this. It’s weird, but sometimes I even feel bad about Mr. Blue-Tie.”
“Who?”
“A Weir,” Alex said, embarrassed. “Never mind. It doesn’t matter. I guess I don’t know if I have it in me. This whole thing, the Program or whatever, it’s a fucking nightmare as far as I’m concerned.”
“We all think that way at first, Alex,” Margot said softly, tapping the wrap on his right hand to see if it met her standards. “And then we adjust. It won’t bother you forever.”