by Drew Hayes
96.
Vince was halfway out the gym door when he felt a soft grip on his arm. Before he even turned around, he knew who it was. How could he not? He’d spent so much time with her, grown so accustomed to her presence. Even now, as messed up as he was inside, the idea of letting go and telling her everything was almost impossible to resist.
Almost.
“Hey.” Camille released her grip on him, content that he’d stopped. “I wanted to check on you. Mary said you seemed conflicted when you left the bar on Saturday.”
“I . . . it’s just a weird situation. I’ll be okay.” He felt there was truth in that. He would be okay, one day, when he’d managed to work through the swirling miasma of uncertainty inside.
“An ex-girlfriend suddenly springing back into your life sounds like more than just weird.” Camille tried to add a laugh at the end of her sentence, but it came out dry and hard. “Look, you know if you need to talk, I’m always here.”
“I know. Thank you, Camille. I really do appreciate it, but right now, I need to go.” Vince resumed his brisk gait.
“Okay.” She knew his class wasn’t for a while; they often walked together after gym. But she said nothing as he hurried away, merely watching until he took a turn, and his silver hair vanished from sight. Only then did she let out the sigh she’d been holding, binding it down in case it turned into a sob on the way up.
“I’m jealous of you.”
The voice came from behind, causing Camille to jump in surprise. She spun around to find Clarissa standing there. The former Hero must move like a ninja-cat to have exited the gym so quietly. Only after her heart rate slowed down did Camille register what the older woman had actually said.
“I’m sorry, jealous?”
“Yeah, jealous. At least yours is willing to consider things like romance and what they want. Most of his type are so caught up in the job that they never actually stop to think about the world beyond it. Self-denial through self-imposed ignorance, and woe to the poor girl who has lost her heart to him.”
“Vince is just my friend. He’s going through a rough patch, and I want to help.”
Clarissa stepped forward a few steps and stared down at the shorter woman with an expression of knowing sorrow. “Darling girl, I’ve been where you’ve been, and I’ve said those same lies, to myself as well as others. Trust me, if it is at all possible to turn your heart away from him, then do so. Find a simple, decent man who doesn’t walk with the weight of the world on his shoulders. It might not be a happy life, but it will be a content one.”
For a moment, Camille shuddered, and she feared she was finally going to break and cry. But Camille was harder than her size and gentleness indicated; there was strength in her yet, and she pushed back the wave of emotion before it drowned her.
“And what if I can’t? What if it’s too late?”
“Then get your ass off the sidelines and fight,” Clarissa said, her voice suddenly forceful. “Break through that damned thick skull and make him see what you mean to him. Stop pretending this is enough, and go after the thing you really want. The lives of Heroes are measured in minutes, not years. Time is your enemy; do not give it more ground than is necessary.”
Camille stared up at the beautiful, dazzling, fierce woman, and wondered what man on earth could have possibly resisted her. Then she wondered how hopeless her cause was if a woman like this had been unable to capture her heart’s desire.
“Did he . . . did yours ever come around?”
“He was beginning to,” Clarissa said, an unexpectedly gentle smile on her face. It faded in less than a second. “But things went awry in the worst way possible. That’s why I’m telling you to run or act now. You don’t know how long you’ll get. Don’t let these years slip through your fingers.”
* * *
Dr. Moran was reading through a batch of files on the freshmen, flagging any high-risk cases for burnout, when the sharp rapping of a fist fell on her door. She affixed a sticky note to the file as an impromptu bookmark, then shut the manila folders and tossed them in a drawer.
“Come in.”
Vince Reynolds all but burst through the door. Immediately, she knew something was amiss. Vince usually held himself together quite well, but today, he was pale and fidgety. There were bags under his eyes, signifying that he’d gotten little sleep as of late. Even the way he’d entered was uncharacteristic; he often called his name before opening a door.
“Vince, what happened?”
“I need to schedule a session with you, if possible, please.” He was half-stumbling over his words, manners doing battle with desperation. “I know we usually do Fridays, but something happened this weekend that I’d like to talk about.”
Dr. Moran mentally reviewed her calendar for the day. She had plenty of menial tasks, but those could be shifted around. Later in the day, there were other counseling sessions, but that left a sizable window where she could cut out some time for Vince.
“While I do usually prefer to schedule these things with a bit more warning, today, I happen to have some free time. Why don’t you take a seat, and we can talk.”
Vince nodded, heading over to his usual chair and settling in. He already seemed to be calming down, the prospect of being able to talk permitting some sense of relief. After a few deep breaths, he was several steps closer to being normal Vince.
“Now then, why don’t you tell me about what happened,” Dr. Moran urged.
“It’s about the thing I was hiding from you before, trying not to talk about. I didn’t hide it because it was something I was ashamed of, it was just . . . too hard to talk about. It hurt too much.”
“And now?”
“And now, I’m scared that if I don’t talk about it, I’m going to lose my mind.”
97.
“Today, we’re going to talk about the end of semester exam.” Professor Pendleton felt a strange glee in watching the confusion ripple across his student’s faces. It was only the first Monday in November; the test wouldn’t be for nearly two months, so they were understandably uncertain about what his announcement could signify.
“Let’s get a few things out of the way first. No, I’m not telling you what it is; not exactly. Yes, your coursework for it begins today. And no, there will not be an abundance to go on. That should take care of the immediate thoughts bouncing about in your little heads. Now, on to what I actually need you to know.”
Professor Pendleton slid around his desk with a thick manila envelope in hand. He could sense their darting glances resting on it, wondering what tidbits of information were contained inside.
“To start with, everyone will be taking the same exam. Each and every junior-year student will get the same task. Ah, but how can that be, when you each have two disciplines to be tested in, I can hear you wondering. That is because this exam will look at not only if you can complete the objective set before you, but how you do so. There isn’t technically a wrong way to succeed; the tactics you use will reflect which skills you trust most when shit hits the fan.”
He wondered how many would actually get points in Subtlety for this exam. He had high hopes for Will and Britney, though some, like Rich Weaver, could be surprising, and of course, Alice was annoyingly persistent about keeping above water in this subject. It would be quite entertaining, that much was certain.
“So, how can Subtlety be of help to you in the coming test? We know it’s going to be martial; the other disciplines would be lost without some fighting to do. That means Subtlety is right out the window, doesn’t it? Not entirely. In this exam, as in the field, sometimes victory goes not to he who has the most muscles, but to he who has the most knowledge.”
Professor Pendleton popped open the envelope in his hand and pulled out a sheet of paper that looked as though it had been thrown up on by a calculator. Numbers were scattered all over the page, appearing in random spots and sometimes right on top of one another.
“Congratulations. As Subtlety Heroes, you we
re able to intercept a coded transfer from a criminal syndicate. You know it relates to something they’ve got planned in about a month and a half, and you’ve got this.” Professor Pendleton set the page on Will’s desk, then produced another to give to Britney.
“This is your Subtlety exam, the first clue down a trail that will lead you to useful information. Crack it however you can, save for using the skills of someone other than yourself. You’d think that would be implied, but evidently, I have to spell it out for a few of you.”
If Alice felt any shame at his not-so-hidden barb, she kept it to herself as she accepted her piece of paper. At first glance, it was clear that she had no damn idea what this thing was. Oddly, this didn’t rattle her. Alice had long ago learned that the tasks in Subtlety didn’t come as easily to her as they did to Nick and Will, but she was still able to pass most of them through sheer concentrated effort. Even if it took all of November, she would crack this son of a bitch.
“And if anyone thinks it’s unfair of me to base your whole exam on a single cipher when we cover so much else in this class, trust that I meant it when I said this is the first step toward knowledge. There will be far more tasks ahead before you can claim your prize.”
Alice’s stomach sank a bit as she realized she might not have quite as much time as she’d hoped for.
“That takes care of the preamble,” Professor Pendleton said, laying the last sheet down. “Now then, let’s move on to the part where you ask me questions, and I have to decline to answer most of them.”
Will Murray’s hand went up, the only one in the room to do so.
“Mr. Murray, what question do you have?”
“I wanted to know the bounds, sir.”
“The bounds?” Professor Pendleton’s voice was neutral, but the beginnings of a smile tugged at his lips.
“What we can, and can’t do to accomplish our tasks. For example, I could build a machine that tapped into the FBI’s computers and used their resources to crack this message, but I feel like that might be frowned upon.”
“Are you asking for a professor of the HCP, a group overseen by the Department of Variant Human Affairs, to give you the blessing to hack secured government computers?”
“No, sir. I’m asking if, theoretically, I did something like that, it’s the kind of thing I should just keep to myself, or if I had to report it.” Will’s face was placid and unreadable, a stark contrast to the shocked looks most of the class was giving him. “You’ve emphasized countless times that Subtlety Heroes often have to use whatever resources they can to accomplish their goals, putting the importance of the mission first. I suppose I’m asking if we’re addressing this task as we would a real one in the Subtlety Hero world.”
“That is, surprisingly, a very fair question to ask,” Professor Pendleton replied. “Mr. Murray is correct; we frequently do things like hacking or breaking-and-entering. As often as possible, we try to go through proper channels and respect the law, but sometimes, there isn’t time to do so. In those cases, we have to file pain-in-the-ass after-action reports justifying what we did. So there’s your answer, Mr. Murray. If you break a law, I expect you to report it and fill out the proper documentation just like any other Subtlety Hero would.”
“Yes, sir.”
“That goes for the rest of you too. Don’t hurt anyone, obviously, but if it comes down to it, and you think you can make a case for why law-breaking was necessary, it’s your call.”
Several of the students shifted in their seats, clearly uncomfortable with the idea of deviating from the safety of the law. That was good; most Heroes shouldn’t be so willing to break the rules. They needed to be paragons, symbols of respect and virtue. It was heartening to see so many of his students ill-at-ease with the idea of ignoring laws for their own tasks.
It was somewhat less heartening when Professor Pendleton realized Alice Adair showed no discomfort toward the idea at all.
98.
“. . . and when I woke up, she was gone. I looked all over for her, searched as hard as a homeless Powered with no money or Internet could, but eventually, I had to leave that town too. I never knew if she was hurt, or killed, or just didn’t want to be there when I woke up. Seeing her at the club that night . . . I guess I should have been a little angrier, since it’s now obvious that she bailed on me. I was just too overjoyed to feel upset.”
Vince wiped his eyes with some tissues; they’d spilled over once or twice during his story, yet he had continued to push through and tell it. Now that it was done, he felt more settled. The wildfire that had been burning through his veins began to flicker out at last.
“That is quite an experience,” Dr. Moran said. “Sixteen, your first love, first sexual partner, and then to lose her so soon after your father left your life; it’s no surprise this left such an impression on you.”
“I sort of feel like Thie—Eliza has been haunting me. When I was with Sasha, I kept drifting off and thinking about her. I’ve avoided any new relationships until I could get that under control, but I never expected to actually see her again.”
“It is funny how people come back to us in the most unexpected ways.” Dr. Moran paused, considering how much she should say to Vince in his fragile state. Generally, it was best to let patients come to their own conclusions; however, Vince was far from emotionally actualized and would require at least some degree of prompting.
“Let me ask you, Vince, what are you going to do now?”
“I have no idea. I need to see her again, to make sure she’s real. Maybe I can get some answers out of her about why she left. After that, I’m totally clueless.” Vince crumpled the used tissues in his hand and dropped them into the wastebasket at his side.
“Then let’s explore the possible results of what you know you will do. You’re going to talk to her, assuming she keeps her word and contacts you. When that happens, you will try and get answers. The possible outcomes are that she refuses to give you any, she gives you ones that completely explain away her absence, or she tells you ones that still indicate she abandoned you,” Dr. Moran said. There were, of course, countless more scenarios than that, but for Vince, keeping things finite and simple worked best. “Walk me through each of those situations. How do you feel you’ll react?”
“Truthfully, I still don’t know. I’d like to say that if she has a perfect reason, I’ll be overjoyed and can just pick things up where they left off, but I’m not certain that’s what I want anymore.”
“Oh? You indicated Eliza had stayed on your mind ever since her disappearance.”
“She has, just not always in a good way. What I wanted, what I was working toward, was letting her go. I didn’t want to be haunted anymore. I was trying to . . . move on.”
“I see,” Dr. Moran noted. “Perhaps there was someone else working their way into your heart, someone you wanted to make room for?”
Vince stayed silent for a long moment, so long that Dr. Moran began to fear he had shut down and would refuse to talk anymore.
“Last year, when Rich put me under, I was supposed to protect the person I was in love with. That’s the suggestion Nick told him to give. My memories of that hallucination have always been muddy, but there is one part that sticks out perfectly clearly. I was talking to a girl, and she had dark, curly hair, like Eliza. Then, when a lock fell from her face, it was pale-blonde and straight. I still can’t remember her face, but the hair is unforgettable. It took me months to realize what that meant.”
“If you’re willing to share, I’d love to hear it.” Dr. Moran was already quite certain of the meaning; she just needed Vince to say it out loud.
“I think, I mean I’m pretty sure, it meant that I was in love with Eliza and . . . someone else.”
“Someone with pale-blonde hair, I assume.”
“Yeah.” Vince didn’t know why he couldn’t say her name. Dr. Moran ran the healing department; there was no way she didn’t understand who he was talking about. Yet, try as he might, it just w
asn’t something he was ready to hear pass his lips.
“That seems a very astute assessment,” Dr. Moran agreed. “Had Eliza remained a phantom of the past, you might very well have succeeded in letting her go. Unfortunately, we do not live in a world of might-have-been; we reside in one where she has resurfaced and must be dealt with, in one way or another.”
“You make it sound like I have to fight her.” Vince allowed himself a small laugh at that idea.
“If only it were that easy to deal with problems. You lot would put me out of a job.” Dr. Moran gave him a small, yet warm smile. “No, what I mean is that you have to deal with her reappearance. You can seek answers from her, try to rekindle your relationship, or opt to never see her again. Yes, cutting her out of your life is still a method of dealing with her, because it means you’ve committed to sticking her in the past. Like it or not, meeting her again happened, and now, only you can determine what the right path forward is.”
“At least the first step is easy,” Vince said. “I have to talk to her. Where I go from there will depend on what she says. But if I don’t go, then I don’t think I’ll ever be able to put her behind me. The wonder of what she might have said or what could have happened will stay with me forever.”
“There is one other possibility we haven’t discussed, Vince. Eliza abandoned you once before. It could happen again.”
“Then that’s the kind of person she is. Actually, that might be the easiest one to make peace with. If she’s the kind of girl who breaks promises and bails like this, I think I could finally be done with her.”
Dr. Moran didn’t say it, but she hoped that was exactly what happened. Vince was fragile in his own way; this girl could do serious harm if she wanted to. As his therapist, the last thing she wanted was to see him take drastic steps backward.