-Kate Andersen-
Lunch was brief, a bright room filled with lab coats and business dressed agents, and officers in black tanks and khaki trousers. The food for most was some kind of bright yellow gruel, apparently rich with all the needs of those eating it. For Scientists and ranking agents, or myself apparently, we had things that resembled actual food. After taking a bite of the dry pork I'd been served, I realised maybe I'd have been better off with the slop everyone else was eating. Especially as I could taste the hormones in the meat, regardless of its long dead and over cooked stature.
Jake explained to me that he wanted me on his team, where he could keep an eye on me and prevent too much information slipping about who had really made me a Nocturnal or why. "I'm also doing some old friends a favour, as it seemed they liked you." He'd said absentmindedly as he pushed around the yellow porridge which he'd taken by choice. "It'll be a few months before you're officially a Unit Zero member, and maybe a little longer before you're approved for active duty. But, you'll slowly be introduced to some of the perks of being a ranking agent long before then. Effectively making you an unofficial member already."
He wanted me to learn how to defend myself. I had to be self sufficient here, I couldn't always rely on others. I had to agree. But I didn't want to learn to kill anyone. He said a good enough fighter didn't always have to. Which put me at a little more ease. But my stomach still churned to the thought of throwing punches at anyone when my fist could easily cause bone breakages now, or theirs could do much worse to me.
"You also need to learn rational ways of getting freedom without risking yourself or others, at least not quite so much." He had tuned into my desire to be without the restrictions I'd grown up with. But missed one thing,
"Right now, I'd rather just go home and give up. If staying means more restrictions and the adage of doing others bodily harm." I complained, pushing the limp spinach on my plate into the mash potato. It was a mistake, as a pool of gravy had gathered on top of the potato and ran down it, the consistency of blood. I shuddered, pushing the plate away from me as I felt my stomach turn over.
He nodded, "you can't go back. But you can go forward, and I'd suggest you learn to. You can turn this into a blessing if you're willing to suck up the consequences of your actions and then move past it." He assured, but it came with a weight I hadn't expected. "Who knows, there may be a way out of here someday that doesn't involve death."
I'd looked at him quizzically then. But apart from filling me in on who his Unit members were and who to watch myself around and a few other details, we sank into a silence the rest of our meal. This gave me a chance to stare out at the cafeteria. A large hall, walls a ghostly white with dark blue lights around their edges and larger florescent tube lights darted everywhere else. The blue lights made the headache I was harbouring buzz a little, but eased the feeling that my nose could bleed at any second. Those lights made me feel pale.
The people about the room didn't seem very happy. Maybe a few were entertained by something. But most of them looked worn or unaware. All simply performing tasks with mechanical movements designed to keep them performing those tasks. They were alive, but most of them were not living. Like my room stuck in time that served as a prison for me, some of them chose this prison and many of them could not see their chains.
* * *
After lunch, Jake took me back to his office. He kept it dimly lit, unlike the horrid halls, so I could feel the violet film pull back from around my pupils, natural brown left in its place. Finally a comfortable darkness, not alien like pitch black, or painful like the white of the glowing halls that enveloped the inside of this place in a false sense of superiority and purity.
Captain Aylesbury, as he'd told me I should call him when we're in a public setting, sat behind his desk and pulled open the bottom drawer, rifling through the papers rested at the top of it. His hair was not so in place as it had been at Bowbrick Hill woods three days ago, now it was messy and he didn't seem to care. His office held itself in some kind of organisation, but for someone who Griffin had mentioned liked to keep things 'just so,' things were starting to look oddly placed. Then again, maybe I'd misconstrued Griffin's words.
"Until your father gets some of your clothes together from your home, this'll have to do." He said, lifting from the very bottom of the drawer a zip-tie bag. Inside it a set of black clothes. He handed it forward to me with a melancholy look upon his face.
Sliding the zip open I was greeted with the clean scent of washing powder, locked into the fibres of the clothes within. I pulled them out, a pair of trousers, plain tank top and even some socks. "Whose were these?" I asked, holding them up against myself.
He paused from having the drawer halfway shut, then hesitantly pushed it the rest of the way to with a sigh. "My old Captains. They never cleared out her desk when I inherited it... The fact she'd left this stuff always suggested to me she was coming back." His lips had pulled up at the corners, a smile he couldn't keep from his face despite the fact it was pained.
"Rin?" I breathed in realisation. This had been her office first.
He nodded, "You should get into them quickly. Miss Swan doesn't like to be kept waiting."
"Turn round then," I waved my hand at him. He was a little taken aback, but nodded and swivelled his chair towards the wall.
I quickly slipped off the grey pyjama like scrubs in exchange for Rin's hand-me-downs. This would be the second time I ended up in her clothes. "I hope she's okay," I muttered aloud, zipping up the trousers which were a little tighter on me than they would be on her.
"Swan's a little rattled actually..." Jake tuned in to the words, but confirmed that he was no mind reader by his interpretation.
"I meant... your former captain." I stammered, his actions became deliberately stilled. There is quite a difference between muscles locking into a rigid still and them relaxing into a motionless pose. This was definitely the first of the two.
"I don't think she is, Miss Andersen." His peppery scent dampened, his heartache on the air.
"You loved her? Didn't you." I swallowed back the emotion in my throat as I tried to pull the t-shirt over my head. Being a Nocturnal didn't make me more graceful, so it was a little wrestle to get it over my head and straightened out.
I didn't get an answer. So I walked round his desk and peered behind his chair. His hands over his face, trying to get his head and heart together in a controllable clump. I frowned, "She's ok, I know it." I told him.
He sat up straight, trying to conceal his pain with a ridiculous smile as he turned his chair round again. "Yeah," He didn't sound like he believed it. Then shoving his hand into his pocket he said, "I think I have something you may want back." He pulled out a little red penknife and held it forward for me.
My heart lit a little, scooping it up into my fingers and holding it close to me. "Thank you, Jake."
"I'm surprised he parted with it for you..." He muttered, watching my fingers paw over it.
"Why? What did it mean to him? Was it his father's?" My mind exploded with an imaginary montage, the fact he'd never known his dad. It would make perfect sense if this had been his.
"It was all he had left of his mother." Not what I had expected, as Jake started to organise things on his desk out of habit. Sweeping away bits of broken plastic that used to be part of a phone. I scowled at the pieces as he dropped them into his paper waste bin under his desk. "She worked here when he was growing up, didn't have much time for him or his brother except for a camping trip every now and then, or hiking on the weekends. So they lived with their grandparents. She gave him that knife on one of their last trips together. Then William Mead showed up at his grandparents door when he was barely eighteen to inform him that his mother had died whilst on duty here."
I stared at the penknife, feeling a sharp pain run through my chest. I wasn't sure if it was my lungs complaining that I'd forgotten to take in air, or my heart aching. I hadn't imagined that at all.
"Preston, his brother, put his pain into the arts and travelled abroad when he was old enough. Griffin just got angry at the world and everyone in it. All he wanted to do was pick a fight with someone, anyone, become strong. Be more like his mother. That's how he ended up here. Mead took him under his wing, got him the right training for him to carry on as his mother's legacy. " There was an odd smirk curling Jake's face when I looked up. Something both satisfying and hurtful in retelling Griffin's story. "He was practically already dead to his family long before he became a Nocturnal." He muttered, more to himself I think.
Something started to click, memories of last night's hell came to mind. "Mead... he was the one at Ides Of March?" I realised, carefully tucking the penknife away into my pocket, but keeping my hand around it.
"Yeah, hard to believe everyone here used to trust and respect that guy like the sun shone out of his arsehole." Jake's hands had tightened, whitened and turned to rock like fists at his sides. His shoulders arching back, making him seem taller.
"You didn't though?" I observed, he sounded more bitter than betrayed.
"I hated his guts, not because I didn't trust or respect him." He admitted, "He was an arrogant arse who had little regard for others," Jake paused then, glancing towards the locker room doors. "Of course I could probably go on forever about the things I disliked about him."
"I think I could feel that way towards Natalia Swan." I grumbled, my eyes catching a photo frame on his desk and turning towards the picture of a happy family within it. A brother and sisters, and parents I think, laughing and smiling. I recognised the girl in it from somewhere. I knew her hazel eyes and pixie cut.
"I don't think you know Swan well enough to decide that." He sounded a little entertained, but my mind had raced on away from that subject.
"I know her..." I pointed, "she was with your team in the woods... She stopped someone from pulling a gun on us." I realised, fingers brushing the top of the frame.
Jake slumped forward, reaching for the frame and picking it up. He stared at it with hollow, sad eyes before resting it photo side down on his desk. "Amy Norton, she's whose spot you're going to be filling."
A lump formed in my throat. "She... oh... She died," I remembered Rin had mentioned it, everyone at the Sanctuary had been sad, too. Watching Jake's eyes close, locking back a wall of tears, he nodded. It was hard to believe I'd assumed Jake was the one who killed her, just by association. "I'm sorry."
He took a deep breath and blinked away the emotion. It wasn't an easy transition, but he made it seem so. "Kate, There are a lot of things here that I need answers to. Things that don't add up. This Unit is on thin ice, and it looks like I'm leading us out on to more of it. But, maybe, that thin ice will lead to a way out for you... or a way back for others. I don't know. We could all end up dead." He had started to babble a little, then again, it could just have been that I didn't know what he was getting at.
"What exactly are you talking about?"
"I helped Rin get you here for many reasons. Including to keep those in her protection where they should be, safe and alive. But our risks could be in vain if someone from Trinity were in league with those from Ides, which I believe is the case. I think there's a lot going on behind the scenes, and I'm not going to ignore it anymore. Especially as you could link the wrong people back to the sanctuary."
I nodded, "I think I don't fully understand, but, I want to help. I could still drop dead from decay, might as well go out helping the unwanted stay hidden and... whatever else it is you're eluding to." I think with those words, I had resigned myself to never leaving this place alive. Maybe I would, but it seemed so unlikely. Which explained why I wasn't asking a million questions to figure out what he was really getting at. If my life was in constant danger, it might as well be for a good reason.
Jake laughed a little, rubbing his temple as if not sure whether my reaction gave him a headache or pushed one away. "I'll do my best to fill you in on the details. Just not now. We've got an appointment with Swan to keep."