Robert Crane - Family

Scott turned back to me, his face twisted, breathing heavy, as though he had exerted everything. Without saying anything else, he walked to the stairs and left. I looked back to the range, where a thin trail of water stretched from the counter to the where the destroyed target lay and threaded off into the distance behind it.

I left the range shortly thereafter, leaving Parks with nothing but a friendly nod and a wave. I crossed the hall to the training room, an open space with a wall holding every imaginable kind of weapon, from the eskrima sticks that had brought me so much joy over the years, to sickles, scythes, bo staffs, and a full range of swords. There were a half-dozen excellent katanas, and I chose one that I had practiced with before, and began a kata – a series of regimented martial arts moves rendered in sequence – that utilized the sword.

I was graceful, I was elegant, I was lethal. I watched myself in the long wall of mirrors opposite the door and the glass windows that allowed people walking down the hallway to look in and see what I was doing. I suppose I would have cared if the building got more traffic. M-Squad would pop in and out infrequently, maybe once a week, doing their own thing, but most of the time they stuck to their own floor in the dorms, which was on the other side of the campus. Except Parks. He was here constantly. A way of life.

Otherwise, it was Scott, Kat and myself. Sometimes agents or other Directorate employees would come to the gun range to practice their firearms skills. I think the agents had to do a certain amount of practice per week as a part of their jobs, because I always tended to see them on the range on Monday morning. After that, it was pretty quiet.

Though after the last week, and the slaughter of so many of those agents by Omega, I guessed it was going to be quiet around here for a while, until they restaffed. If they restaffed.

I went through a kata I had done about a million and a half times before. Mom taught me dozens of them, in the basement, and most of them were interchangeable in terms of the weapon you could use – or no weapon at all. The katana was light and well-balanced enough for me to use it one-handed. I still struck with my other hand as a fist, practicing as if to pretend my primary hand, the one without the sword, were striking to stun, to distract, and then the blade followed up. You didn’t use a blade unless you were ready to kill. Although you could wound with one, it was uncertain, and better not to take a chance with anything you didn’t want dead. Mom taught me that. A blade raised in anger is for killing, nothing else.

I moved gracefully through the kata to the end and stopped, the blade poised. I stood there, sword at full extension, holding my position, and looked to the mirror to check my technique, which was flawless. It should be. I’d practiced it twenty times a week since I was twelve, with and without weapons. Even now, outside of my mother’s influence, I found it to be the habit I couldn’t break, the remnant of the past that kept coming back, even though she had disappeared. It stayed with me, and after Scott, Kat and Parks had all called it a day, I kept coming back here, to this place, and practicing, as though it were something that was so ingrained that it was in my core and couldn’t be shed, like a second skin hiding beneath my first.

“Very nice,” came the voice from the door. I hadn’t heard it open, which was unusual, but then the man standing there with his arms folded was the disarming sort anyway, the type that I wouldn’t have felt threatened by even if I’d seen him coming. He’d earned enough of my trust that I wouldn’t have jumped like a scared cat; anyone else catching me in the middle of a form unexpectedly might have (would have) gotten a much different reaction.

“I didn’t hear you come in,” I said, and wiped my forehead, my long sleeve catching the sweat that had begun to bead there. The practice room was actually quite comfortable, but my practice was exerting – every strike, block and attack was practiced at full tilt, nothing held back, but with all discipline and control. When I strung several katas together in sequence it became very good exercise, if I didn’t take a break in between. I looked at the clock hanging over the door and realized I had been practicing for over an hour. “And it’s not that easy to sneak up on me, so my congratulations.”

“I don’t think I can claim much credit for that,” Dr. Zollers said, the irony bleeding through into his words. “The building could have been burning down around you and I doubt you would have noticed.”

“Those are the things I tend to perceive,” I said, finding my way back to the far wall and replacing the katana on the pegs that waited for it. The curved blade fitted perfectly into the scabbard and I hung it back where it belonged after wiping the sweat off the handle. “You know, black smoke billowing around the ceiling, heat spiking to uncomfortable levels, flames all around.” I turned to find him unmoved, still standing by the door, relaxed. “Unthreatening psychiatrists in sweater vests don’t tend to set off my smoke detectors.”

“Ah,” he said with a subtle nod. “Next time I’ll set the room ablaze to get your attention. Or would that be too subtle?”

“There’s not too much subtlety to burning down a room, no,” I said, and wiped my face again. I craved water now that I had stopped moving. The dryness in my mouth caused my lips to smack together as though they were chapped. The cool air of the AC had also started to chill me now that I was done, the sheen of sweat around my skin getting cold as the air conditioner fought against the hot summer temperatures outside. “There’s probably an easier way to get my attention if you’re after it.”

“Something like saying, ‘Come to my office the minute you get out of the medical unit’? Something gentle, but that communicates the urgency of the situation – which is that you, young lady, are required by your employers to go through post-stress debriefing to talk through your recent mission.” He shook his head, almost like a tic, and went on. “Something that conveys that there’s worry about the fact that you got pummeled, shot, beaten, lost a teammate, watched a girl die, and had an Omega lackey pull a fast one on you.” His features tightened. “Maybe I really should have lit the room on fire, because that stuff all sounds kind of dire and in need of being discussed.”

“It will be discussed,” I said, biting my lower lip. “You heard Ariadne. It’ll be discussed, sifted, pulled apart, probed – you get the picture,” I said, restraining emotion again. “I’ll be talking about it with their investigator.”

“Sure,” he said, halting a few steps away from me. If it had been anyone else, I might have flinched internally at their approach. I wouldn’t show weakness by doing it physically, but it’d be there in my reaction. “You’ll discuss the cold, dry details of the whole thing, over and over,” he said, “poring over all the insignificancies you’ve probably forgotten, all the questions asked that need to be answered – all that,” he said. “But you know what you won’t talk about? How you feel.”

“Feelings?” I asked with the hint of a smile. “I think you might be talking to the wrong girl. After all, I know they have some uncharitable names for me out there,” I said, waving my hand in the direction of the outside, Directorate world. “Most don’t think I have any of those.”

“Who?” he asked, serious. “Who do you think talks about you that way?”

“The agents,” I said. “The ones still alive, anyways. The metas, the ones who aren’t in training. The rank and file. The administrators at HQ.” I shrugged. “Eve Kappler. Everybody, just about.”