by B D Grant
“It’s all good,” the guy says sweeping the pieces up. He dumps the pieces in the trashcan flipping the dustpan too early sending some of the first of the pieces flying before it’s made it into the trashcan. The pieces skid across the floor and right under the refrigerator closest to the door.
The girl looks at Gradney. “Did you need us?” she asks hesitantly. The guy moves over to the refrigerator sweeping around it and then dumping it in the trashcan one more time before returning the broom and dustpan against the wall.
“No,” he says with a growl, eyeing the dirty dishes suspiciously. “You two need to leave,” he says with the flick of the finger toward the door by them.
“But we haven’t finished the plates,” she says seeming to catch what Gradney’s looking at. The guy fiddles with the side of the black bag inside of the trashcan making him look guilty by how he’s not wanting to look at Gradney.
“I’ll let the chef know I made you leave. My guest,” he nods in my direction, “is owed a peaceful meal.”
Gradney turns his back to them, going over to the first refrigerator. The guy looks me over skeptically letting go of the trash bag. The girl takes him by the shirt sleeve as she walks past him, tugging him toward the door.
“Oh, and Jessica,” Gradney says from the fridge.
The girl stops. “Yes sir?” she asks, plastering a grin on her face as she looks over at him. She probably has no idea how nervous it makes her look.
“Make sure your mother knows we’re back with Miss Jameson.”
She pushes the guy out of the door. “Yes sir,” she says, hurrying out of the kitchen.
Gradney pulls out two pans from the refrigerator, both with aluminum foil covering the tops. He lifts the foil on both. “Jambalaya it is.” He returns one of the pans to the refrigerator.
He puts a heaping pile of jambalaya on two plates and then sticks them in the closest microwave, it being large enough to easily accommodate both dishes at once.
“So tell me,” he says, turning the microwave on, “Why’s the boss want to bring you in? What makes you important?”
I’m immediately suspicious. He’s not getting a thing out of me; I don’t care if he is actually going to let me eat or not. “I can run fast,” I tell him. “Maybe he wants me to join your track team.”
He lets out a long sigh. “I’m being serious.”
Though he doesn’t have Dex’s size, Gradney’s physique is that of a Dynamar. Still, in case there is a Veritatis listening in over his ear bug, I need to be careful with what I tell him. As long as I answer with truths, he won’t be able to call me out on a lie.
“I am too,” I say coolly. “I broke records at my old high school.”
“Public school,” he says under his breath to the microwave as he watches the plates turn.
Jerk. I fold my arms. “Not a fan of public schools?”
The microwave beeps. He takes the plates out setting them on the counter to cool. It smells heavenly.
“Not a fan of mediocrity,” he says, taking two forks from out of a drawer. He hands me one with an eyebrow raised as if daring me to contradict him.
I take it. He gives me the more full of the two plates. I stuff a forkful of it in my mouth before he can take it back and tell me the food was all a tease. “My track team was awesome,” I say between bites.
“Your track team wasn’t ‘awesome,’” he says matter-of-factly. “You broke records because you are a Seraphim, and they weren’t.” He gives me a calculating look. “There are only a few reasons why Seraphim are brought in to this location. Recently we stopped letting anyone in at all.” He spreads his food out over his plate, steam rising. I watch it twist and coil before evaporating. “And you were still brought in.”
I think about pointing out that it wasn’t my choice to come here. “The chick with the yoga mat seemed to get in just fine.”
He takes a bite of jambalaya and smiles, more at the food than at me. “That was ground floor entry. She wouldn’t have been able to get to the second floor if he life depended on it.”
“So, why did you stop letting Seraphim in?”
He leans over me to reach into the open cabinets, pulling out a glass He fills it with water from the tap. “Why would I know that? I was the one sent to collect you. I didn’t ask any questions.”
He could just say, “I don’t know,” but that would means being a Veritatis that I’d know if he were telling the truth or not. I can’t tell if he’s being honest or if he’s playing the same game I am.
“It wouldn’t have anything to do with the Rogue school that was raided,” I say, weighing my words.
He sets the cup down by his plate, dropping a hip to lean into the counter. “Don’t know what you’re talking about,” He says as he takes another bite.
Lie. Big, fat, lie. I push. Jake had known Gradney from the school; he was a coach. I get flashes from his lie of that day. The morning of the raid, when word got out that unauthorized vehicles were converging on the school, Gradney armed himself with his fellow Rogues getting weapons and bulletproof vests from some sort of armory, and then fought his way out.
I push deeper into the lie wanting to see more. The flashes stop as I push, beginning to unfold like a fan. He’s in the basement, running. He’s not alone. There are others ahead of him shouting which way to head in the labyrinth of painted cement walls that make up the basement. They turn, and forty feet down from them is a barricade being installed on the left side of the corridor that the Rogues used to shield those of us in the basement from getting any decent shots off at them. The man leading the small pack of Rogues has what I mistake to be a brick at first, but then when I see as he turns to check on those behind me that it’s larger than a brick and wrapped tightly in a dark plastic. It has a wires running out of the bottom of it that curl up to the front of it connecting to the insides of what appears to be a digital clock.
As the group slows before making it to the barricade shield Gradney turns around and looks straight into the face of Cassidy Sipe. He’s telling her that they’re going to setoff C-4 so that they won’t be followed. Her mouth is pinched shut looking tense, but she doesn’t flinch away from him as he reaches for her. I’ve never seen Cassidy scared. Seeing her from Gradney’s perspective confirms two things: that what I saw the man carrying is an explosive and that even in situations of imminent danger, Cassidy plays it cool.
I pull back from reading into the lie when Gradney looks off to his right in his memory and I unexpectedly see myself through his eyes. He had seen me in the basement, but only for a split second. He didn’t even really seem to notice me in all of the chaos going on around him, so I doubt he’s made the connection. Cassidy was even brave enough to try to warn me before Gradney took her away.
I lower my hand, the fork still full. That split second I had seen him in the basement replays in my mind, but I was more focused on Cassidy and not him.
“Is she still alive?”
He looks thoroughly confused, “Is who still alive?”
Just like I thought. He doesn’t know that I was the one Cassidy was yelling at that day in the basement when he had to pull her behind the shield. He must not have noticed me as he ran past to the other side of the barricaded shield his people had setup to protect them as they ran from us. He had pulled Cassidy behind it as they were rigging the barricade with explosives. I dump the jambalaya on the fork and flip the fork in my hand, pointing it at him threateningly.
“Cassidy Sipe,” I say, pronouncing every syllable with care. “What’d you do to her?”
His confusion turns into a look of annoyance. “I haven’t done anything to Cass. She’s perfectly fine.”
He isn’t lying. “Where is she?”
Still holding the fork in his right hand, he lifts both hands in the air, gesturing around the room with a sweeping motion. “Where do you think?”
My grip on my fork relaxes. “She’s here?”
“Where else would she be?” he asks, a
s if there were no other reasonable explanation to Cassidy’s whereabouts.
“I want to see her.”
Dramatically he opens his hand that a couple inches from his plate releasing his fork. The handle clinks loudly as it hits the side of the plate, the rest of it landing on his food. He purses his lips at me as he presses behind his ear. “Miss Jameson is requesting a meeting with Cassidy. Yes, Sipe, who else?” He flinches, and for the first time I can hear a baritone voice coming from deep within his ear. He looks down at the ground until the voice is finished. “Yeah, yeah, yeah,” he says, once he’s taken his hand off of the back of his ear acting nonchalant even though I know whoever it was on the other side of that earpiece was just yelling at him. He picks his fork back up, taking a couple of quick bites from his plate before looking at me as if he’d forgotten I was standing there. “You’re new escort is on his way,” he says. “You better hurry up and finish that.”
Moments later, the same door we came in through opens. Gradney sets his fork down and pushes away from the counter with a smile greeting the monster of a man filling up the doorway.
“Flea, this is Taylor Jameson. Taylor, Flea.”
I hesitate, not wanting to join them. The name Flea doesn’t fit the enormous man Gradney is now standing next to at the door. He’s a Dynamar, of course. He reminds me of John, but bigger.
Gradney chuckles at my hesitation as I cautiously move toward them. “It’s a nickname, from when he was a kid.” Gradney pats Flea’s shoulder proudly, reaching up to do so. Flea shrugs it off.
Gradney pauses, listening. “He’s on the way,” Gradney says, pressing behind his ear again. He isn’t that much bigger than John I realize, as I get closer to him. John’s neck is just thicker giving the illusion that Flea’s taller by comparison, but tilting my head to look up at him feels to be about the same.
When Gradney’s done, he turns to Flea. “What’re you two doing until then?” he asks, sounding like he might be planning on inviting himself along depending on what the answer is.
“West rooftop,” Flea mumbles, not bothering to look at Gradney. Besides looking at me momentarily when Gradney introduced us, Flea’s been glancing around the kitchen and out into the hallway
“Oh yeah,” Gradney says with a smirk. “That’s right up her alley.” Flea walks out of the kitchen.
“What are you waiting for?” Gradney asks when I don’t move.
“What about Cassidy?”
He motions after Flea at the door that’s gliding shut. “Ask him.” Gradney pushes past me. “I am officially on my lunch break,” he says, going back to his plate.
When Flea and I emerge on to the rooftop, I don’t see the woman waiting off to the side at first. It’s the sun that gets my attention. I had imagined that I’d be in a windowless room by now being interrogated by some of the same faces I’d seen back when Sidney was still in the basement. I would have even prepared myself to have my toes and fingers broken the longer I went without answering their questions, just as I imagine they did with my father. Staring up at the sun with food in my belly is just about as close to the opposite of what I had imagined as one could get.
When I catch sight of the woman and what she’s standing on, my chest tightens. Her dark hair dashes any hopes I had in that first instant of laying eyes on her that she was Cassidy. She’s doing lunges as she simultaneously pulls her shoulder length hair up into a ponytail that she then twists into a tight bun before fastening her hair band around it. She’s on the right side of the rooftop on top of the track that encircles the roof in a large oval. It’s smaller than the standard 400 meter tracks I’m used to running on. She continues with her lunges, turning to watch us as we walk over to her. Her shorts and sleeveless shirt ripple across her as a breeze whips across the rooftop. Her running shoes look brand new with no signs of wear like mine would get within the first week of owning from a consistent daily routine of running.
Flea hasn’t talked to me much since we left the kitchen. Compared to Gradney, Flea is a professional. It felt like it took us half the time to get through the locked doors and private elevators. He didn’t even have to look at the keypads as he entered in the codes. Instead he would watch me, or anyone else in our vicinity, as he pressed away. A couple times, when someone walked down the hallway behind us, he dropped his hand from the keypad. When I asked about Cassidy, he just said I wasn’t in the position to do so, and that was the last I heard about it.
Flashes of the woman’s white teeth draw my eyes to her mouth when she looks over at me grinning. “Ready for your afternoon run?” she asks as we join her, sounding as happy as her big grin would suggest. She runs both hands over her hair making sure every strand has pulled up.
Flea stops short of stepping on the track and I do the same. I look up at him, who is also staring at me. “Me?”
“Are you warmed up?” she says, beginning a deep sideways lunge to stretch her inner thighs. I stand frozen. “You’re the track star, aren’t you?”
“But I just ate,” I say, trying to figure out if this is for real or if Gradney has them pulling a prank on me. Flea doesn’t seem to be the type to joke around, but this whole thing feels to trippy to be real. I look around the roof at the well-kept track. In the middle of the track twenty feet from the only entrance and exit is shrubbery in tall, wooden boxes forming a semi-private square around some outdoor furniture. There is a stainless steel propane patio heater at each corner of the sitting area. It would look nice if the shrubs weren’t so overgrown that they need to be trimmed on all sides. All in all the rooftop would have a professional vibe if it weren’t for the guardrail outlining the roof. It’s made of a tightly knit mesh that looks about six feet high. It would be impossible to squeeze through and equally impossible to climb over with no place to put your feet.
“We can do a 200 or a 400 meter run. It’s your call,” the woman offers.
Looking between the two Rogues, I ask, “Is this really what I was brought here for?”
The woman gives me a sly smirk. “If you’re scared just say so,” she says as she continues her warm up routine bringing one knee at a time up to her chest.
Realizing that she’s talking smack to me, I glare at her. Seeing my expression, her lips curl into a grin exposing her pretty white teeth for a second time. Flea is doing a good job ignoring us. He looks out over the city, but I know he could grab me in an instant if I make the wrong move.
“It’s cool,” I say, placing my legs shoulder length apart and twisting at the waist. “I’m not wearing a sports bra though.”
Her eyes flicker to my chest. “Noted,” she says, unimpressed.
“Why are we doing this again?”
She glances over at Flea. “Request by the higher ups,” she says, but it almost sounds like a question.
I jump from foot to foot on my toes, warming up my calves. “Do I get to meet these higher ups?”
Flea clears his throat. “Doubtful,” he mumbles.
“Do good,” the woman says enthusiastically over Flea, “and that’s a possibility.”
I opt for the 200 meter.
Flea gets a kick out of watching me get my butt whooped almost from the start. Only a few seconds into the race and she’s already managed to put a couple feet between us. I might have tried harder if I wouldn’t have caught sight of Flea standing next to the track at end of the 200 mete. He was already chuckling at my expense.
“That can’t be your best,” she says after it is over with.
Normally I feel good after a run even a short one like the 200 meter, but not this time. I feel more nauseated than anything. “I didn’t know we’d be racing. And I just ate,” I repeat.
“This isn’t a race,” she says earnestly. “I’m just running with you to put you more at ease.”
I make a show of looking over her chiseled legs and then looking down at mine. I check to see if Flea is still laughing, but he hasn’t moved from the invisible finish line a couple yards behind us. He isn’t
paying much attention to us. On this side of the track there’s a tall skyscraper that he’s eyeing more than either of us. It dwarfs our building. I turn back to the woman. Before this moment I had thought I had pretty decent legs, but thanks to her not anymore. “No offense, but I’m pretty sure that running next to you has put no one to ease, ever.”
She moves close to me as she pulls her right arm across herself, stretching her shoulder hard with the opposite hand. I’m about to take a step back from her when she gently says to me, “I haven’t been able to run outside in weeks. You and I both know that this beats a treadmill any day.” She switches arms glancing around me in Flea’s direction before saying quietly, “You’re doing me a favor dragging this out, but I can tell you that the chances you’ll get a nice shower decrease the longer it takes for me to see what you got.” She steps away, and her peppy, outside voice returns. “I’m going to enjoy this even if it takes all night for you to show me what you got. Let’s do a 400 meter next. I’ll just keep pace with you this time.”
“Can I have a minute?” I ask, still feeling like some of the jambalaya is trying to work its way back up. “It’s been a rough day.”
She checks her watch. “I’ll make a couple laps. Five minutes.”
“Thanks,” I say halfheartedly.
She jogs off the way we came, telling Flea loud enough that I hear as she passes him that she’s letting me warm up a little more before the next run. I turn my back to Flea, staying on the track as I casually head in the opposite direction. I take my time with some walking lunges. This place is big. The skyscraper next to us would make you think otherwise but I know we’ve got to be pretty high up. My lunges start to move me closer to the outer edge of the track than forward.
“Back to the inside lane,” Flea calls out as I make it to the outside lane by the guardrail. I follow his instruction moving back to the inside lane, but not before I’ve gotten a glimpse down the side of the skyscraper. The woman has already made it around the track and is jogging towards me.