“At least nobody here will lock you in a metal box for days at a time,” he replied, a touch defensive.
“My entire life is boxes.” I twirled the fork before setting it down on my discarded plate. “First I was trapped in my house or in the box; now I’m trapped on your campus. Most people are trapped in their towns, or their jobs, or their way of life. We go through life in our little boxes until we find ourselves in the last one, buried in the ground.”
My tone was rueful, and I didn’t care how general I was being. I was in a foul, depressive mood. I suspected that this guy, the only one in my life to ever show an interest in me (other than Reed, I guess), was doing it to spy on me for his boss, and I found myself longing for the simplicity of my house, where at least I knew where I stood. Act out, Mom gets pissed and I get stuck in the box. Simple.
He pushed back from the table. “That’s a bit—”
“‘A bit’ what? Accurate? Morbid?” I laughed. “It’s a bit irrelevant. I’ll stay here, milking the security of your Directorate for all it’s worth, because I’ve got nowhere else to go and there’s no way I can beat Wolfe. So I’ll wait, and bide my time, and hope that when your much vaunted M-Squad comes back they can find a way to kill him so I can at least have the luxury of deciding where I want to go and what I want to do with the rest of my life.”
“It doesn’t have to be this way.” His voice was soft, almost lost in the din of the cafeteria conversations. “You could work with us here, build a life at the Directorate.”
“And what? Join M-Squad? Be a test subject? Hang out like all these other metas, waiting for – what? I don’t even know what they do here!” My hand gesticulated toward the table of metas that had accosted me earlier. “Part of me just wants to go home. And the rest of me…” My voice cracked.
“What?” He leaned forward but kept his hands far from mine. I could see the intensity in his eyes, the concern, and it just pissed me off all the more because I was so sure it was fake and I wanted it to be real, more than anything. “What do you want?”
I froze, and I knew in that moment I was on the brink of tears. Suck it up , I told myself. I took a moment to compose my emotions, shoving them into the back of my mind. I’m tough. I made the decision not to let even an ounce of feeling into my voice. “I don’t know.” It came out more brittle than I would have hoped, but it still sounded strong. “And it doesn’t matter right now, because my only priority is survival.” He nodded almost sadly as I stood up. “Everything else comes later.”
I left the cafeteria, head in a spin. I waited around my room for a while, not really sure what to do. There was a flatscreen TV hanging from the wall, but I didn’t see a point in watching anything. I didn’t really miss it that much after not watching for a few days.
I settled on going to the gym, which I did in spite of the fact that Dr. Sessions had paired me with the treadmill from hell earlier. I stuck with a recumbent bike for my self-directed cardio, and whaled on a heavybag that a trainer assured me was made especially for metas (she told me this with a very friendly attitude until someone came up and whispered to her, at which point her disposition matched the weather outside). So I hit the heavybag even harder, punishing it for every bad decision I’d made lately, imagining the face of that guy in the cafeteria as I belted it another one, then wished I could pound Wolfe like I was pounding it. Unfortunately, Wolfe hit back.
After I finished I went back to my room and showered. I checked the time and found that it was mid-afternoon. I hung around a little longer. Someone had left me an e-reader. After reading for an hour or so I realized it was basically the same as a book but more convenient, and the novelty wore off. I’ve read lots of books.
At four thirty I decided I could get dinner and that it’d be early enough to dodge most of the crowd at the cafeteria. Besides, the sun would be down by 5:30, so I might as well be ready to sleep when it got dark. I decided I’d try and dream of Mom or Reed again. Probably Mom, since I wanted to prove I could contact others in their dreams and I’d talked to Reed twice already.
The cafeteria was near empty, and I snaked as much food as I could, keeping a careful watch on what went on my plate. It’s not that I thought the workers would do something evil; it’s just I’ve seen enough on TV detailing what wait staff do to the food of people they don’t like to make me paranoid. It adds another dimension to being hated.
The dinner was chicken, and it was good. I managed to creep out of the dining hall just as it started to get busy. A few poisonous looks and some stage-whispered comments that lacked originality were my reward for lingering too long. A hall clock told me it was 5:45. The sun, which I still hadn’t seen, was either down or the cloud cover it was hiding behind was thick, because it was dark outside.
I paused by a window in the corridor outside my room and stared across the grounds. What would Mom think of all this? I wondered. Where was she? Why did she leave? I swallowed hard. What caused her to flee? Was she in trouble?
Was it me?
The smells of dinner filled my nose as the volume of the crowd in the cafeteria was on a steady rise, so loud now I could hear them from where I was on the other side of the building. Most of the professionals had gone home for the day, but the casually dressed metas passed me in the hall, on their way to evening meal. Their conversations were excited, those of people among friends, and they dropped off when they saw me.
I realized I had been staring out the window at a lamp for the last five minutes. Going to the gym to work out again didn’t appeal to me, and I had a feeling Dr. Sessions wouldn’t be getting back with my results this evening. I thought of Mom again and knew that what I wanted was to go to sleep and try to dream of her.
I walked down the hall to my door and opened the handle. It wasn’t locked, because I didn’t have a key for it. Since everyone hated me, I supposed I should get a key, so that no one could sneak into my room while I was away.
I closed the door and flipped the light switch and realized that I was, by far, too late, because not only had someone snuck in while I was at dinner, but they had stayed to wait for me.
“Hello, little doll,” came the whispered, throaty voice of Wolfe, towering above me. His hand came down and grabbed me around the neck while I was still too stunned to react. “Wolfe has been waiting for you.” He pulled me close to him and I felt his hot, stinking breath on my face, then felt the warm wetness of his tongue licking my cheek. “It’s time to play.”
Fifteen
However I might have responded, speech was not possible with his hand squeezing my larynx. His black eyes were bulging out and his smile was a grin that revealed his spiked teeth. I felt them brush against the side of my head as he pulled me close and took a long breath through his nose, inhaling on my hair.
“Wolfe has missed you twice, little doll, but now we can be together and play the way we’re supposed to. Then, whatever’s left of you when Wolfe is done…” I felt his breath drift down to my neck as he embraced me and his teeth slightly bit into my shoulder – enough to puncture the cloth of my turtleneck and the skin but not enough to cause a deep wound – and a little sucking sound followed for about a second. “… they can have. That will make them happy. And you…will make Wolfe happy first.” A half-insane titter of glee came from him and I heard the smacking of his lips.
I made a guttural sound of choking and he loosened his grip as he moved me in front of him, enough so I could take a breath but not much more. I could already feel the pins and needles in my feet and I tried not to jerk too much for fear of breaking my own neck. I must not have been the first person he’d placed in a chokehold because he’d learned to grip low enough on the neck that he didn’t cut off all circulation.