I found the cafeteria crammed for breakfast. In fact, based on the size of the room there had to be at least a couple hundred people in there. I had only visited in off-peak times so to see it full was quite the surprise. There were men in suits scattered through the room, as well as other men and women dressed in work attire of various sorts, and a smattering of people I assumed were metas dressed in casual clothes, jeans, t-shirts, most of them younger than the folks dressed professionally.
As I walked to where the line formed to get food, my stomach rumbled. It coincided with a hush falling over the cafeteria – a slow, steady lowering of the volume level. I got a tray and began filling it. I was hungry, and not for broccoli. As I worked my way to the end of the line I started to overhear murmurings from both the workers behind the counter and people talking in the rest of the cafeteria.
“…that’s her…”
“…got all those agents killed…”
“…heard some crazed meta named Wolfe is hunting her…”
“…she did it on purpose…”
“…eight of them dead, almost got Kurt and Zack too…”
“…crazy bitch.”
The last one caught my attention, but I restrained myself before I whipped around to confront whoever had said it. I realized my hearing had not gotten sensitive, that most of the people were speaking loud enough for me to hear them. Which meant they were looking for a reaction. My eyes scanned the crowd as I left the line with my tray. The professionally dressed people looked away. About ninety percent of the folks in casual dress did likewise if they saw me look at them; a quick, furtive glance here and there if they got “caught.”
But a few of the men in suits – the agents – were speckled throughout the crowd, and their looks were hard, hiding behind furrowed brows and cold eyes. And a small contingent of the casually dressed – the metas – were glaring and not bothering to hide it. They were all concentrated around one table.
I stared back at them, defiant. Yeah, I screwed up. But good luck getting me to admit it in public. I didn’t bat an eye as their ringleader, a young guy probably only a few years older than me, gave me the stare-down right back. He had short dark hair and a nose that rounded a little at the end. The look of spite in his eyes overpowered his other features, turning what might otherwise have been a nice smile into something that looked more like a downward facing crescent moon.
I saw a small table empty in the far corner where the two windowed walls met each other – maybe the last unoccupied table in the place. Not a friendly face in sight, just a lot of people shunning me and a few more that were clearly pissed. Perfect. I pondered just carrying my tray out the door and back to my room where I could eat in comfortable solitude, but something in me resisted it.
I’d been alone for years. Locked away, trapped, whatever. It didn’t bother me if I had to eat by myself. In a lot of ways, especially right now, doing that would have been the easiest choice. But still, my brain resisted the notion, urging me to not let these people get to me, to not run away and hide.
So when I picked my path to the empty table I made sure it went right past the group of metas that were scowling me down.
I waited to see if they would speak as I approached. I even pondered being a real ass and inviting myself to sit down in one of the empty seats at their table, but decided against it. I may not have been looking to make friends, but I didn’t want to actively cultivate enemies if I didn’t have to.
I just wanted to…confront them. Just a bit.
I almost didn’t get my wish. They kept silent and a few even broke off their glares as I approached. I returned each hostile look in kind, until finally I rested my eyes once more on the young man: the ringleader, judging by the vibe I was getting off him. He didn’t look away. He was waiting to see if I’d flinch.
I didn’t. But neither did he. He stood up as I passed. Damn. Thought I was gonna make it by.
“Hey,” he called out. “Friends of mine got killed on your stupid errand.”
“I’m sorry about your friends,” I said with an astounding level of calm for the tension I was feeling inside. I think I meant it.
“‘Sorry’ doesn’t bring them back.” His glare was piercing.
“Neither does anything else I can do.” The acerbic edge to my statement was probably what pissed him off. “Unless I have some amazing powers of resurrection I have yet to discover.”
His look got angrier, thanks to narrowed eyes and a snarl on his lips. “They stuck their necks out for you.”
“Far be it from me to suggest otherwise. But they also died doing the jobs that they took on, that Old Man Winter sent them to do. They knew there was a risk Wolfe could be there.” I had stopped my forward motion and waited for Mr. Angry to reply. Might as well get this out of the way, and if I was lucky I could get the entire cafeteria off my back in one move.
“So you’re one of the self-superior metas that gives the rest of us a bad name.” His arms were folded across his body. “Don’t really care if a bunch of humans die, so long as you get what you want.”
I had a feeling that one was going to sting later but for now I pushed it aside and focused on my reply. “That’s not what I said.”
His chin jutted out. “But it’s what you meant.”
“Oh, is your power to read minds? No? Then don’t tell me what I meant.” I looked back at him with a gut full of defiance. I’d likely be blaming myself again later for the deaths, but I wasn’t going to let him burn me with it; not now. “If I could do it all over again, I wouldn’t have gone back. But I can’t and I have to live with what happened. And you can take your rage and fire it up your ass.”
He didn’t say anything, but his jaw hardened and his nostrils flared. I realized that the pretense of standing there if I wasn’t looking for a fight was pretty flimsy, so I made my way to the table. I sat down and looked out the window, trying to ignore all the stares from behind me.
A figure came up from behind a few minutes later and slid the chair out without asking. I was ready to gripe when I looked up. “Oh, it’s you.”
Zack sat down. “What are you doing here?” He cast an almost furtive look around. People were still staring. “It’s not the most comfortable environment to be eating your lunch in, is it?”
I took another forkful of beef and chewed it while I pondered my response. “You mean because everyone in the room hates me?”
“That’s not true,” he said. “I don’t hate you.”
“Kudos to you for being the only one.” I feigned applause for a couple beats before reaching down with my fork and spearing a bite of stray roast with unnecessary force. “So this is what being the school outcast would have felt like. I didn’t really miss much being locked away all these years.” My voice quavered and came out much lower. “Not that it matters.”
“It doesn’t matter if anybody likes you?” His voice carried a hint of skepticism.
“Nope. I’ve lived my entire life without the approval of any of these people. I suspect I can live the rest of it the same.” I stabbed another piece of beef. “Especially considering how short it’s likely to be.”
“We can protect you from Wolfe if you stay,” he said, his tone soothing.
“Oh boy,” I said with mock enthusiasm. “I can spend the rest of my life wandering the halls of this place, feeling useless and listless and trapped, just like when I was at home – except here I’m surrounded by people who hate me.” As if to punctuate my statement, I pushed my tray away. I was done.
“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.