Zachary Rawlins - The Academy

Alexander looked at Michael’s open, honest face for a long moment, and then nodded.

“Alright,” he said firmly.

“Just like that? No more questions?”

“Oh, I have lots of questions,” Alex replied, yawning. “I have questions about pretty much everything. But I’m tired, and my arm hurts, and I don’t want to deal with the cops, or the bills.”

“Alright, then, excellent…”

Michael stood up, and began to push the chair to the side of the room.

“But so we understand each other,” Alex said, carefully lowering himself back down on the bed. “I don’t really want to go to your school, whatever it is. I can’t really think of anything I want to do right now.”

Alex laid his head back on his pillow and closed his eyes, the pain in his arm beginning to bother him.

“But, no one has ever said I’ve got potential for anything but trouble. And I don’t have anything else going on, Mr. Lacroix,” Alex said moodily. “So, I’ve got questions, and reservations. And if I don’t like what happens from here on out, I’ll walk away. If you want an answer, then that’s mine. Whatever it is you’ve got in mind, it’s probably better than my other options.”

“I understand you, Alexander,” Michael said, nodding. “I’m okay with that.”

“Like I give a shit,” Alex said, rolling onto his side, facing away from Michael. “Do you have nurses around this place? Could you please tell them that I am in a whole lot of pain? Is that possible?”

Michael nodded seriously. He liked the kid already, and anyway, he had something he really needed to look at in the boy’s charts, rather urgently, before anyone else got the same idea.

“How are you feeling, Mitsuru?”

Gaul kept his voice mild, looking over the battered Operator on the other side of the desk. She had refused to be treated for any of the injuries she’d sustained during the operation — something that worried Gaul, even if it was mostly minor cuts and bruising. She’d changed into a loose t-shirt and black yoga pants, but she had dried blood caked on her wounded hands, and the faint remnants of her nosebleed stained her nostrils. Mitsuru’s relationship with injury disturbed Gaul.

Mitsuru met Gaul’s stare, her crimson-tinted irises almost identical to his own. He was surprised to see tears forming in the corners of her eyes.

“If it’s all the same with you, Director, I would prefer to discuss this with the Chief Auditor first,” she began, sounding as tired as she looked.

“I’m sorry,” Gaul said, shaking his head curtly, “but that isn’t how it works. Alistair works for me, and so do you. I decide who does what and when. Right now, the Chief Auditor is coordinating the mop-up for today’s operations, and we are debriefing. You understand?”

“Yes, sir,” Mitsuru said quietly, eyes on the floor. Gaul felt the frustration he’d been suppressing since the morning well up inside him.

“I’m certain that when his tasks are completed, your mentor will come to collect you,” he said, with more venom then he’d intended.

Mitsuru’s sob was immediate, and he looked away, guilty and confused. He didn’t care much for Alistair, or for his pet Operator, for that matter. Even Gaul had to admit that Mitsuru was a brilliant field operative — but defective, unfit. He understood the need for tame monsters; after all, he had spearheaded Alice Gallow’s ascension to Audits decades ago himself. However, he didn’t feel that Mitsuru was tame, just monstrous.

Which made him totally unprepared for her to start crying.

Gaul had taught Mitsuru years ago, and in his own limited way he liked her. Moreover, he respected her abilities and her potential. But if it had been up to him, he would have had her put down years ago, when it became clear that her liabilities outweighed her assets. And he resented Alistair and Rebecca for stopping him. But impoliteness was not Gaul’s style, and it irked him to have spoken so harshly to a crying woman. Clearly, he thought, the events of the day were weighing on him.

“Operator Aoki,” he said formally, standing up and looking away from her tears, out the window, towards the grounds and the yellow moon, “let’s return to the matter at hand, shall we? Were you injured during the operation?”

“Not in any meaningful way,” Mitsuru sniffled.

“Excellent. Then you can explain to me,” Gaul continued, folding his hands behind his back, “how it is that you managed to activate a protocol that was only partially downloaded, yes?”

She shook her head morosely, and Gaul felt annoyed again. Mitsuru was almost mute, she was normally so detached — this was the first significant emotion he’d seen her show in years. And she was moping? Ridiculous.

“Come now,” Gaul scolded, “you must remember something. What made you think to try it in the first place?”

“I’ve never been able to raise Central like that, sir,” Mitsuru said, raising her blood-red eyes to look at the Director’s back. “I don’t know how I did it, and I don’t know why I did what I did after that. I just felt…”

She hesitated. Gaul watched her reflection in the window, as Mitsuru struggled to find the words, her hands making vague, abortive gestures. He saw tears well up in her red eyes again, and wondered what had happened.

“I’m not certain, sir. I felt strong. I felt assurance — as if I had done it before, many times, as if I’d threaded all the probabilities and arrived at an operational certainty.”

“It didn’t occur to you that you might fail?”

“No.” Mitsuru said definitively, and shook her head.

“Or that the consequences of that failure could have been catastrophic for you, personally?”

“Central requested intervention, Director,” Mitsuru responded, in her usual flat voice. “Clearly, the analysts felt the risk was merited. I do not question my orders, sir.”

Gaul winced at the knock on the door. Firm, insistent. Could only be Alistair.

“Come in,” he said, sitting down behind the desk and taking off his glasses so he could rub the bridge of his nose.

Alistair opened the door, shot Mitsuru a sympathetic look, and then took the chair next to her.

Alistair was young-looking, in his low thirties, with blond hair and a uniform tan. He was still dressed in his worn fatigues, obviously having come directly from Central once the cleanup had been completed. He was a bit short, with a broad chest and a narrow waist, and he moved with a compact grace that reminded Gaul more of a dancer than a soldier. While Alistair had been on duty since the night before, he showed no particular sign of being tired, which annoyed Gaul all over again.

“Hey Gaul. What’s going on?”

Alistair had grown up some place outside of D.C., in Virginia, and there was something lazy and drawling in his speech that recalled it, though it wasn’t exactly a southern accent. Something about this also got underneath Gaul’s skin, a gift that Alistair had in abundance.

Gaul shrugged and gestured at the file folders on the desk in front of him. He’d been trapped at the desk for hours now, and could feel it in his sore back. And unlike some other people, he was very tired.

“I am trying to make sense of what happened tonight.”

It came out more defensive than he would have liked. Gaul had never been clear whether his personal dislike of Alistair was reciprocated. Alistair had always treated Gaul as if he were a close friend — but, he seemed to treat everyone that way.

“Trying to make the pieces fit a pattern.”

“You can’t force it — you’ll start seeing patterns everywhere. Well, then,” Alistair said innocently, “why don’t I debrief Mitzi, and give you and the analytical pool something to chew on, eh?”