Zachary Rawlins - The Academy

“I’m in the kitchen,” Emily called out to her, “and we have a guest, Therese.”

“Who’s that?”

The woman who emerged from the entryway stairwell was a bit older than he expected, probably somewhere in her late twenties. She had the same blonde hair as Emily, but she cut it short and had it tied back in a rather severe pony tail. She wore glasses and a well-tailored pant suit, and looked very much as if she might have just come from working in an office somewhere. Alex couldn’t help but find her appearance incongruous with their surroundings.

“This is Alex Warner, from my class. I told you about him. Alex, this is my sister, Therese,” Emily said, standing beside Alex and drying her hands with a kitchen towel. “Who, I might add, has abandoned all pretenses of housekeeping.”

“Nice to meet you,” Alex said, offering his hand and getting a polite handshake and a terse smile in return.

“And you too. You haven’t been at the Academy long, right? How do you like it?” Therese wandered into the kitchen, ignoring Emily’s work, and started digging through the refrigerator.

“I’m sorry,” Alex said reluctantly, “but do you know who I am already?”

“Sure,” Therese said, “didn’t Emily tell you? I’m the cartel liaison. I work in Operations. We’ve all heard about it, that incident with Aoki. Must have been a rough introduction. I’ve heard stories. People say she’s nuts.”

Therese emerged from the refrigerator with a can of coffee.

“What’s for dinner?”

“You can starve for all I care,” Emily said cheerfully, gathering the papers that covered much of the open space in the living room into one giant pile. “I’m definitely not making you dinner.”

“Don’t let her attitude fool you. She’s really an excellent cook,” Therese said to Alex conversationally. “You should try and get her to make us dinner.”

“I am making him dinner, Therese, not you,” Emily said huffily. “You’re on your own.”

“That’s mean,” Therese complained. “You’ve always been a mean sister.”

Finding no sympathy, she turned to Alex.

“Hey, Alex, you smoke?”

Alex shook his head.

“Well, I do,” Therese said, looking around for the purse she had dropped on her way in, “but when Emily is here, I have to go out on the balcony. So, come keep me company.”

Therese found her purse and started up the stairs, with Alex following, a bit reluctantly.

“Therese…”

Emily trailed off questioningly, the papers she had collected held bunched to her chest. She looked to Alex like she expected to be disappointed.

The look Therese shot Emily was disapproving.

“Don’t you worry about your big sister.” Therese’s tone was curt, dismissive. “I’m just going to have a quick smoke and a little chat with your friend here, and then I’ll get out of your hair.”

Alex was sure Emily would protest. He was certain that the fight that he’d felt coming since Therese had arrived was about to start. But Emily just watched, looking more frightened than anything, and then hurried back into the kitchen. Therese headed up the stairs, totally nonplussed. Alex looked after Emily, wondering about the fear he’d seen in her eyes, and then shrugged and followed Therese. He hadn’t known her very long, but she didn’t seem like the kind of person it was a good idea to argue with.

There were four rooms upstairs, but only Therese’s had the door open — or Alex guessed that it was hers, by the pile of clothes that covered the floor and spilled out into the hall. Alex followed the hall between the rooms, surprised at how small it all was, though the ceilings were abnormally tall. Despite the size of the buildings in Central, he was coming to realize, livable space was still at something of a premium.

He found Therese at the end of the hall, through a set of ornate glass doors and out on a wrought iron balcony that overhung the street below. She had shed her jacket, purse, watch and belt, all left in small piles that marked the route she had taken through the hall. Alex stepped around them carefully, but Therese didn’t seem concerned, seemingly enthralled by the view below her, her unlit cigarette dangling from one hand.

“Come on out here,” Therese ordered, her face composed and serious. Alex decided that heading out to the balcony was the diplomatic thing to do. “Let me get a good look at you, Mr. Alexander Warner.”

The way she lowered her glasses to look at him made him wonder if she needed them in the first place. Another thing that he’d noticed during the handshake — Therese was strong. Oddly strong for someone who dressed like they worked a desk. Unless, of course, they didn’t always work at one.

“Do you work for that Alistair guy? Is that how you know about me?”

Therese’s jaw dropped, and then she laughed, hard, but not exactly unkind.

“That’s actually not too bad of a guess,” she said, patting him on the shoulder as she ushered him out next to her, leaning on the balcony railing. There wasn’t much view to speak of — the Easter egg colored street stretched out before them, and beyond it, just the tip of the Ring and then the monotonous bulk of Central beyond. “But you’re exaggerating your own importance, and you’re mixed up on who my boss is.”

“Yeah?”

Alex did his best to sound nonchalant.

“Yeah,” Therese said, smirking. “Everything I told you was true. I heard about you as an anecdote to the Mitsuru Aoki situation.”

“There’s a Mitsuru situation?”

“Mind your own business,” Therese said, staring out at Central moodily. “I don’t work for Central, Alex; I work for the Raleigh Cartel. I most definitely do not work for the Chief Auditor, thank you very much.”

Alex shrugged and then nodded.

“Okay, I got it, you work for the cartel. Can you please tell me why we are having this conversation?”

Therese glanced over at him, her expression unreadable, and then went back to staring off at the city.

“Do you like her?”

“What?”

Alex was puzzled by her timing, not the subject. He was pretty sure he knew who she was talking about.

“They brought my sister back home for coaching, because the precognitives said that you would probably like her.” Therese’s tone was dull, and she spoke so quietly Alex had to lean forward to hear her over the wind that whistled through the channel between the great stone buildings. “They gave her a sixty-six percent chance, depending on circumstances. So, do you?”

Alex tried to formulate a response, while she finally remembered her cigarette and lit it.

“She seems cool,” he managed, after several moments of thinking. “We met pretty recently, and everything, so it’s not like I know her that well…”

“It took you a very long time to come up with ‘she seems cool’.”

“Sure, okay,” Alex said, running his hands through his hair. “So, are we all done here? Because I don’t really need to have one of these weird conversations right now.”

“What weird conversations? Who are you having weird conversations with?”

Therese looked at him sincerely. He couldn’t make heads or tails of it.

“Did you have something you wanted to talk to me about?”

Alex wasn’t sure whether he was demanding or begging. Therese tilted her head to look at him over the top of her glasses again, and then smiled, and she didn’t seem all that different from Emily after all, for a moment, and Alex wondered why in the world she kept her golden hair tied back that way.

“It probably seems like I give her a pretty hard time, right? And I do,” Therese said, her elbows resting on the iron railing, her smile a little sad. “I do give her a hard time, because the world is always going to be hard on my poor little sister. She got a bad hand, right from the start, and there’s never been anything I could do about that. I’ve tried to make her as tough as possible, because I can’t make her life any easier.”