The night is another long one, and Chloe keeps me company through most of it. Rarely do I let anyone into my workroom, but I’m so unsettled by my afternoon with Alex that I crave Chloe’s calming, optimistic presence.
“So, who’s the new kid in your grade?” she asks from her perch on the stool in the corner. “He’s kind of cute. All the girls in school are talking about him.”
“His name’s Alex Martin. He’s in my English and calculus classes. He’s decent,” I say as I snip the lines of the Dubai hotel fire victims.
“Wow. That’s high praise from you.”
Shrugging, I think about telling her about our trip up the mountain, but I refrain. The fact that I willingly spent time with a human will set her antennae quivering, and she won’t leave me alone until she hears every detail. Since I’m not even sure what I’m feeling, I don’t want to talk about it.
“Do you think he has a girlfriend?” Chloe asks.
I shrug again. “I don’t know. He didn’t say. But since he’s from the area, it’s possible I guess.”
“Rats,” she says. “Everyone’s hoping he’s single so they can make a play for him. Prom’s coming up soon, you know.”
I cringe when I think about that. Alex’s social life certainly isn’t my business, but I find I don’t like the idea of every girl in school panting after him, hoping for an invite to prom. And that makes me nervous. I shouldn’t care. He’s a human, after all. An intolerable one who can shack up with however many girls he wants.
I shake my head and tune into Chloe’s chatter about school and softball practice. Anything to distract me from thoughts of Alex and a hundred girls.
Chloe stays with me until the last line is boxed and on its way to Thanatos. She opens the door and steps out, walking quickly across the room. I don’t follow her. Instead, I stop at my desk. Halfway to the stairs, she looks back at me.
“Aren’t you coming up to bed?” she calls.
“In a minute. I’ve got a few things to take care of to get ready for tomorrow. You go on,” I tell her as I sit down in my chair and pull it up to my computer.
“I can stay,” she offers, but I can see the fatigue in her eyes. Her job isn’t nearly as tiring as mine, and she isn’t used to the lack of sleep I deal with every day.
“No. You’re about to fall over as it is. Go on up.”
“Okay. Goodnight,” she calls as she heads upstairs.
I lean back in my chair and let the quiet envelop me. It’s three-thirty in the morning. Everyone else is asleep. Down here, I can’t even hear any noise from the street above. I inhale and exhale consciously, letting the stress of the day dissolve.
I turn to my computer and double-check tomorrow’s schedule. It’s blessedly light. No major disasters and not that many people dying in general. Maybe I’ll have a chance to do some much-needed cleaning down here. Or, I think guiltily, catch up on my homework.
I hate the ruse of going to school, but it’s necessary for us. My sisters and I will always look like teenagers, and school helps us blend in. It wasn’t a problem until the middle of the twentieth century. Girls didn’t always receive formal education, so three girls staying home with their mother all day wasn’t considered odd. I miss those days. Now that school is mandatory in much of the world, my sisters and I have to go when we live in a civilized country.
Well, we don’t have to go… We experimented with homeschool exactly once. It lasted until Mom found out she would have to keep records and adhere to government rules. In other words, she had to put forth consistent effort and didn’t like it. We were back in traditional school within a month.
Besides, Mom thinks it’s good for us to get out of the house. That’s mostly my fault. My sisters enjoy going out, but I won’t leave the house unless forced. Over the centuries, Mom begged me to get out more, but since I don’t find anything fun about hanging out with people I’m going to kill, I refused. When governments started mandating education for everyone, she seized the opportunity to throw us—meaning mostly me—into school. Looking back, I should have gone out more. I just never believed Mom would go so far to make me socialize. Her heart is in the right place, but I’m not sure where her head is.
I’ve pleaded with her to stop the torture and promised to go out more, but she knows I wouldn’t. Her only concession has been to alternately move us to third-world countries where school isn’t required. She also let me try college, but the loose schedule didn’t meet her requirements for social interaction. I can’t live in the dorms or sorority houses, after all, so I pretty much showed up for class and went straight home. I thought it was great, but Mom wanted more. The prison-like confinement of high school forces me to be around people for several hours each day. Mom hopes I’ll eventually learn to play well with others. Not likely.
I do try to look on the bright side. Living on Earth, even with school, is better than being under Zeus’ direct control. Most of the time, that makes it tolerable. But there are days like today where it’s all too much.
I turn off my desk lamp and computer, starting to get up, but then sit back down. My curiosity about Alex has been building all day. I’ve tried to tamp it down, to forget him, but I can’t. Even Chloe’s chatter couldn’t take him out of my thoughts. I boot the computer back up and give in to temptation.
I search for Alex’s record in our database. What I’m doing isn’t forbidden, but I rarely bother to check on the humans once I assign their manner of death. I forget them until I see them again on their date of death. However, tonight, I want to see what kind of fate Lacey devised for him and refresh my memory about how and when he’ll die.
I find his file but just as I’m about to double click and open it, I pull back. Do I really want to know what Lacey has planned for him? He’s already faced grief and loss. What if his fate gets worse than that? Do I want that knowledge?
I think for a few moments and decide it doesn’t really matter either way. He and I aren’t going to become friends. I enjoyed our afternoon together, but that has to be the end of it. If his fate is bad, I can live with it. He is, after all, just another human. Easy come, easy go.
I double click on the file. His entire past and future lies before me. I scroll down to the end of the document, looking for the relevant part, the date of death. I don’t have to scroll far.
May fifteenth of this year.
I read the page again. The date doesn’t change. May fifteenth is a little less than two months from now. I quickly scroll back up, looking for the details on how he will die. I’m furious when I find them.
Lacey has given him a brain tumor. It wasn’t enough to give his mother cancer; she had to give it to him, too. Reading quickly, I see he received some treatment and the tumor receded, but it returned a couple of months ago. Now, it is spreading rapidly, and there are no more treatments to be tried.
I read my notes in the file. The tumor will kill him. I didn’t assign him a merciful, quick death from an accident or anything like that. Oh, no. I, in my infinite wisdom, decided he should die from complications brought on by the tumor. I could have shown him mercy and killed him in some less painful way, but I did not. He was just another human who came to me from Lacey with a short expiration date and a handy cause of death built in. Just like his mother. I wish I could have a do over on his file.
The return of the tumor must have been the bad news that prompted him to drive his car through St. Luke’s. I can see why. The death of his mother, the diagnosis of his own cancer, the treatment, the elation at thinking he beat the disease, and then the reality that it was back and deadly would be enough to drive anyone over the edge. Or through the wall. The tumor also explains his panting and paleness up on the mountain today. He shouldn’t have been up there at all in his condition.
I scroll through his file, looking for any bright spots. There are none. I go back to the root directory. There is another file with Alex’s name on it but when I click it, the computer informs me that
it’s password protected.
That’s not unusual. Lacey often restricts access to files that contain controversial plans or ideas that she knows Chloe and I won’t approve of. Nothing she does is ever against Zeus’ master plan, but there are some decisions and judgments that she keeps private. Normally, I don’t mind, but today, I do. What about Alex prompted her to protect this document?
I try a few likely password combinations, hoping to get lucky, but the file remains locked. With no way to crack the password, I’ll have to confront her and risk pissing her off.
Whatever. Alex has less than two months to live and, from what I can tell, he knows it. No wonder he spends so much time thinking about death. His own is approaching fast, and he’s trying to make sense of it. I feel pity for him, which is something I’ve never felt for a human.
I lean back in the chair. Well, crap. I silently curse my mother for goading me into spending time with Alex. If it wasn’t for her little pep talk today and her relentless insistence that I socialize, I wouldn’t have gone to meet him and I wouldn’t be feeling bad about having to kill him. Now, I’m feeling protective of him and I don’t like it.
Well, I can fix that. I’ll go back to my original plan and freeze him out. I’ll be the biggest bitch in the world to him until he gives up, decides I really am crazy, and leaves me alone. I’ll forget about our afternoon on the mountain and how much I liked spending time with him. I can and will end this before it goes any further. Turning out my desk lamp again, I head upstairs for bed. I have a feeling that sleep isn’t going to come easily.
Broken Fate Page 6