Robert Crane - Alone

“The intelligence test?”

“Two more things. First—” He reached onto the table and picked up a needle along with a strip of rubber. “I need blood.”

My eyes narrowed. “I would suggest trying your local blood bank, because you’ll get none from me.”

He didn’t smile. “In order to analyze—”

“Test what you have, Doc,” I said in a voice that I hoped didn’t allow for argument, “if none of that pans out, we’ll talk about a blood draw in the future.”

He stood there for a moment, looking like he was a broken robot, his head shaking in a twitchy fashion while he tried to come up with a response. He must have failed, because he never said anything, just tossed the I.Q. test on the table and shuffled away.

I attacked the test with a certain frustration. It was easy, and I used the pen provided to violently circle my answers on the multiple choice form. As I did, thoughts of the agents I had gotten killed kept running through my head. Zack had worked with all of them. He didn’t seem that bent out of shape by the fact they were dead.

Kurt did. That was an honest reaction. Hannegan had already disliked me; now he hated me. I circled answer D, responding to a question about square roots, bringing the pen around to give it an extra loop, and nearly tore through the paper. Whoops. Gotta be careful with super strength, I guess.

But Zack? He was more concerned about things that happened to me (an almost total stranger) instead of worrying about his co-workers being dead because of me. I came to the conclusion that he had to be planted. Like Ariadne, he was restraining his emotions, putting them in the backseat to focus on the job at hand. Had to be.

Which meant Ariadne and Old Man Winter probably told him to get close to me, because he was the nearest to my age of all their people. And hot. H-O-T. Ariadne may be dumb, but I doubted she was blind enough to miss that little fact. And Old Man Winter himself said I was more important than a hundred of their agents.

That was a harrowing boost to the ego, let me tell you. There wasn’t much on the I.Q. test about history, which was a shame because it was one of my best subjects. It wasn’t the first time in history someone’s life had been prioritized over another’s. Not even close. But when I heard him say it, it started to worry me about the Directorate.

It got me wondering if they were some sort of racial superiority group, focused on putting meta-humans into a power position. Or maybe Old Man Winter was just that screwed up in his priorities, that he could cast a hundred human lives aside without losing any sleep over it.

Or maybe he was losing sleep over it. It wasn’t like I knew him well enough to tell.

I finished the last question and looked around for the doc, but he was gone. He must have walked out while I was focused on the test. I left it on the table and walked out of the lab, heading out into the cold air thinking I might finally get that meal I had been craving since last night. A blast of windblown snow hit me in the face as I left the lab and hiked across the campus. I marveled at how smooth it looked.

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.”