Robert Crane - Family

“She said there was a traitor in the Directorate.” I wasn’t even able to look at him. “That was it.”

“That was all?” He cocked an eyebrow. “Nothing else?”

“Some other stuff about…looking to her in the dark.” I shook my head, so desperately ready to be done. “I don’t know. I didn’t understand what she was saying. It made no sense.”

“It made no sense?” He looked at me, impassive. “Or it made no sense to you ?”

“To me, I guess. To Scott, either. He was there when she said it.” I tried to take the sting out of his words by tossing Scott in the mix, but the truth was that I felt numb, and fully to blame for things I hadn’t even considered. The good news, if there was any, was that I wasn’t responsible for the horrific numbers of Directorate agents that had died thanks to Omega. The bad news was that I was probably responsible for Andromeda’s death. Everything I touch turns to death.

He stood, abandoning the pad, and circled around his chair. I thought about standing myself, but I felt a compelling lack of energy. “What do you think of her death?” I blinked at him, uncomprehending. “She’d just saved your life from James Fries, helped you escape the Omega compound, had promised to give you information that would give the Directorate a complete picture of Omega’s operations.” His hands clutched the back of his chair, and I saw his knuckles become more pronounced as he held on tighter to the scuffed wood. “What do you think of that, now that she’s dead?”

“Obviously I’m disappointed,” I said, not quite sure what he was looking for.

“Disappointed,” he said with a nod. “Yes, I can imagine. You, who admitted you’ve been recruited by an Omega operative, whose mother kidnapped one of her teammates. Leaving aside any petty jealousies you might have had for Katrina—” his eyes sparkled as he said it – “all these coincidences seem…a little much, wouldn’t you say?”

I stared back at him in raw disbelief. “My aunt’s a psycho. My mother’s a rogue. And I’ve got bad taste in men, apparently. You throwing in the idea that I’m a traitor to the Directorate into the mix?”

He slid his hand along the back of the wood chair. “Only a fool wouldn’t suspect you at this point.”

I should have brushed it off. If all the things that had happened the last few days hadn’t happened, I probably would have. I’m Teflon. Nothing sticks to me; not emotions, not…nothing. I’m tough. My reputation at the Directorate is unsentimental, brutal, hard-working, unfeeling. I blinked back the emotion again. “Did Ariadne tell you to ask me this?” I blinked again. “Does she suspect me?”

He was cool when he answered, slick, and it came out easy. “Does she look like a fool?”

I bit back the obvious, stupid, fashion-oriented reply and also the one where I told him what he looked like. “You’re not gonna ask me if I’m a traitor point blank and get it out of the way?” I felt my lip quiver and I hated myself almost as much as I hated him.

“If you’re really spying on the Directorate,” he said with the same smirk, “you’d just lie.”

“Do I look like I’m in a fit state to lie right now?” I let the doubt slip into it, and my words came out hushed, bursting with all the emotion I was trying to cram down, the burning in my eyes and my throat.

“You look like someone in far, far over her head, Ms. Nealon,” he answered. “I don’t know if that makes you someone who would betray your employer or not.” He didn’t smile now. “But I will tell you this: you are being watched. Every hour of every day. If you are, in fact, working with Omega, or with your mother, I will find out. It’s what I do.” He believed every word he said. He leaned over again, grasping the chair in front of him, and the smile came back. “And I’m very, very good at what I do.”

The silence was pervasive as I left headquarters. I had been in the room with Mormont for longer than I thought; the sun, which had been overhead when I left the training facility, was now dipping lower in the sky. In Minnesota, in the middle of summer, it would not set until near nine o’clock tonight, but the shadows were growing long, though it was still hot.

My feet carried me out the front door and I realized not for the first time that I was covered in sweat; some dried, more fresh than should have been possible in an air-conditioned space like I had been in. My legs seemed to work only mechanically, each step sending mild shocks through my body as I slouched my way out the door. I was a mess, I knew it.

A hot breath of wind blew past that felt as though it had been warmed over the heat element of an oven. Even still, it was not enough to drag me out of my fearful, lethargic shuffle. I looked left and right, feeling more like a broken person than I could ever have wanted to admit to.

I didn’t go back toward the dormitory, which surprised me. My feet carried me, taking a concrete path that went in the other direction, toward the woods that ringed the campus. I left the path as I neared the trees, not wanting to go back to my little room, with the little bed and little space provided by the people who now suspected me of betraying them. I felt a flash of anger – a HOW DARE THEY sort of indignation that fizzled a moment later. Of course they thought I was betraying them. My mother kidnapped one of their agents. I came within a few inches of sleeping with a man who works with an organization killing their people – our people. I’d think I was a traitor, too.

My steps carried me into the woods, past the start of the treeline. The sun cast shadows of the tree trunks in angled parallel lines on the pine needle-covered floor of the woods. Small green shrubs sprouted every few feet, but unpaved paths were cut through the woods for the Directorate staff to walk if they so desired, worn down by the tread of countless feet. Some of the meta kids, the teenagers who sheltered here, would sneak out on these trails for something they weren’t allowed to do in the dorms. I wondered why I’d never been warned against it, and realized that they’d always treated me with kid gloves compared to the other metas, even the kids. Was that just because I was so powerful they were desperate to keep me, or was there something else in play?

I went on, into the woods, deeper as the space around the path grew more unkempt and less trod. Trampled brown-orange pine needles were everywhere, the dull gray dirt and sands beneath it holding me up to keep me from falling through the earth – which is how I felt. Like I would collapse and be swallowed up by the earth, and that the sky would fall down upon me and drive me through it. I’d failed, completely, in everything. I had been ridiculously irresponsible on the mission, had compromised us to Omega. Even if I hadn’t gotten our agents killed in the field I had almost certainly been responsible for James allowing Omega to be positioned to kill Andromeda after her escape.

Andromeda. I felt my knees give out when I thought of her. There was something so different about her, and not just because she had been imprisoned in some bizarre containment cylinder that wasn’t unlike the box I was intimately familiar with. There was something in her manner, so different, so alien, that reminded me of someone that didn’t have a lot of social experiences. I could relate. Her powers may have made her different; her odd ability to read others would have made them nervous. She might have been an outcast. Like me.

My gloved hand was on the ground, holding me up as I lay there on my knees. I could feel the emotions racking my body, threatening to escape with violent force, and I tried to suppress them. I wanted to be strong, but I felt my limit, and it was miles back. I had screwed everything up. I imagined Zack’s face, the only man I knew who had ever really cared about me, and remembered the look I’d seen on him in the medical unit – the hurt, the betrayal. Zollers had nailed it: I was the center, whether I wanted to be or not, and I had failed to hold, and everything was falling apart around me. The Directorate had entrusted me with a great responsibility and I had screwed it up completely.