Did he think about me? Had he ever even seen me? Did he care?
I let the tears slip down my cheeks, but I muffled the sobs as best I could with my pillow. They were soft, quiet as I could make them, afraid that the thin walls were working against me in this regard. I felt the cool lines that each tear made, from the blurriness around my eyes down the sides of my face and temples to the bed where I lay. After a few minutes I moved my head and realized that the bedspread was soaked on either side of my cheeks.
I fell asleep for a little while, feeling sorry for myself, and I only knew that because I awoke with a start to knocking on my door. I sat up, breathing heavy, dazed, having come out of a deep, dreamless sleep. I sprang to my feet and went to the door, opening it in a rush. It was night, black outside the windows, and I knew that knocks on the door at this hour, whatever it was, could be nothing good.
Zack stood outside my door, grim, dark circles under his eyes, his suit completely askew. He looked mussed, way worse than usual, and I’d seen him after just waking up. This was not like him at all. “Ariadne needs us now,” he said, all business, and started to turn away.
“What?” I asked, still trying to fully awaken.
“Reed’s helicopter went down near Prescott, Wisconsin,” Zack said, turning back.
“Oh,” I breathed, a pain in my midsection like someone had kicked me in the gut. “That jackass just had to tempt fate.”
I followed Zack, who was already walking back toward the entrance. We met Scott and Kurt coming from the opposite hallway, the dorms on the other side of the building. Scott looked a little dazed, and his curly hair was flattened on one side from what I assumed was him sleeping on it. Kurt had a slight limp, and still bore bandages on his face from the car wreck.
“You look like hell,” Scott said to me as we met up in the lobby, all four of us striding purposefully out of the front doors and onto the warm night air that blanketed the campus.
“You should talk, Flock of Seagulls,” I replied with a little zing that sent him reaching for his hair and finding it plastered in place.
“You’re both too young to even know what Flock of Seagulls is,” Kurt said with a shake of his head. “Were you even alive in the 80s?”
“Wait, were they an 80s band?” I asked. “I just thought he looked like that guy in Pulp Fiction.”
There was already a Black Hawk helicopter waiting for us on the landing pad outside headquarters. The rotors started to spin the moment we got into sight, and Ariadne was there, along with a couple other agents. The noise from the rotors was far too loud for conversation, but I saw them loading things into the side doors, and I suspected that we wouldn’t be going unarmed.
Ariadne nodded to me as I ducked (I was so short I probably could have walked full upright without worrying about being decapitated, but when a helicopter rotor is swinging overhead, you don’t think about these things logically) and climbed up into the chopper. I adjusted the five-point harness restraints and pulled a headset from under my seat. I put it on to muffle the rotor noise as I watched the agents that had been waiting with Ariadne shut the doors. The minute they were closed I felt the pilot throttle up and we were airborne, lifting into the sky and in motion, heading east.
“The helicopter went down about twenty minutes or so from here.” I could hear Zack talk through the speakers in the headset. “We got a call from the pilot that said they were attacked.”
“Where’s M-Squad?” I asked, the first question popping into my mind.
“Parks was on the chopper,” Zack replied. “Clary and Bastian were sent out on a quick mission to North Dakota to provide escort for a couple of our agents near Fargo, trying to get them home safely after they got bushwhacked by Omega. And Eve is remaining at the Directorate to keep an eye on things in case Omega is trying to draw us out.”
“Faulty logic,” Scott said, shaking his head. The plastered hair still didn’t move, even with his vehement action. “If they’re trying to draw us out, we should bring everything we’ve got and hit them hard.”
“I think he means that Eve’s going to provide defense for the campus in case they’re trying to draw us out to hit it,” I said, and a look of, “Oh, yeah,” went across Scott’s face.
“Makes sense, doesn’t it?” Zack said with a tight smile. “After all, there are more metas at our campus than anywhere else in North America.”
“Wait, what?” Scott looked up in surprise. “I thought the Directorate had six campuses in the U.S.”
“They do,” Kurt responded, sounding like he was educating this snot-nosed punk, “but ours is the training center. All the young metas we’re harboring, M-Squad, you kids – there are almost a hundred on the campus. You oughta know that. The other campuses act as feeders and locations for mostly human agents and retrievers to work out of. Once they identify a prospect, they get sent here. Unless they’re a threat,” he said. “Then it’s off to—”
“Arizona,” I finished for him. “How many metas are there in North America?”
“More than you’d think,” Kurt answered, looking at me across the darkened compartment. “We estimate no less than five hundred.”
“Is that…a lot?” Scott asked.
“Considering there were probably only five hundred or so in India and China, yes,” Kurt said with calm uncaring.
“Why is that?” Scott asked as my mind hummed along, wondering what we were about to walk into.
“If you’ve got abilities that unbalance the scales of life,” Zack said, “wouldn’t you use your advantage to put you in the most prosperous place you could? Metas come to America and western Europe in higher numbers from everywhere else in the world. Plus, with longer lifespans, they have a higher likelihood of making it here eventually.”
One of the two agents who had stood with Ariadne was rummaging in a duffel bag. He came out with an HK MP5 submachine gun and handed it to me with a smile. I nodded at him in thanks, and realized it was Jackson, the guy we’d found when my mother kidnapped Kat. He was dark haired, and had a tactical vest over a white dress shirt. He handed me a tactical vest of my own and I unstrapped myself to put it on while he gave the same to Scott, then Kurt and Zack. I checked my submachine gun to make sure a round was chambered and then made sure the safety was on. I kept it pointed down and right, toward the door, the way Parks had drilled it into my head.
“What are we looking at here?” I asked.
“Chopper went down near Prescott after a tightband mayday that went direct to us,” Zack said. “It was thin on specifics, but it could have been a conventional weapon attack or a meta,” he finished, brusque.
“So we have no idea what we’re dealing with,” I said. I slid a palm along the stock of my weapon, taking a deep breath and smelling the gun oil and the other confined scents of the helicopter; Scott’s cologne was overpowering as always, as though he had an Abercrombie and Fitch store hidden under his clothes. Zack had toned his down since we had started dating months ago, for which I was still thankful. Kurt, as always, could have stood to go the opposite direction, but I suspected that they had gotten him released from the Medical unit solely for this action. The Directorate’s cupboard of resources for a rescue was near-empty if they were sending two newly recovered agents and a suspected traitor on this mission.
The helicopter flew smoothly through the night, the tension inside giving way to an uneasy silence. I looked over at Zack, caught him looking back at me over Jackson, who had taken the seat to my left, and we broke eye contact. Well, I broke eye contact. I wasn’t sure what I could say to him other than that I was sorry, and that seemed inadequate given what I had done.