To my right, the corridor outside the physician’s office led toward the common areas, such as the conference room where Fraser was no doubt waiting for me. If I followed the one to my left, I’d end up in the dormitory, and thus delay any debriefing that was to take place.
I opted for the left.
My temporary quarters in this complex looked like my temporary quarters in any other complex I’d been in. I swore they built all these places to look exactly the same. I had a small room with a single bed and a ridiculously small closet. You know, just in case I ever had any personal items to store in it; most of my clothes were for “work” and were kept in a locker elsewhere. I also had my very own toilet and sink, which were two feet away from the bed. Classy. For a shower, though, I had to trek to a common room at the end of the hall. Come to think of it, the whole set up kind of resembled a prison.
Except we didn’t get TV.
I kept my tank top on, but stripped off my pants in favour of a clean pair of charcoal gray workout ones, and tossed my scuffed up clothes down the laundry chute. I’d have to drop the vest, holster, and goodies in Rufus’s office before he came looking for them.
After splashing water over my face and through my hair, I tugged a brush through my black locks and smoothed them back. Though technically ready now to face Fraser and the crew head-on, I paused at the foot of my bed and knelt at my kamidana. The setup was simple: a short bench which was supposed to sit at the end of my bed but I’d shoved against a wall; tiny dishes of white ceramic with the requisite offerings when I could get my hands on them; rice straw rope with shide sectioning it off. Not a single person in Bravo Division ever dared touch it except for the guy who tried when I first joined. The only time his name had been uttered since was when making a point about Not Pissing Peri Off.
A cushion conformed around my knees, making kneeling there for lengths of time much easier, and I tucked my feet under me. It was there I lit a candle and closed my eyes and prayed, all the while avoiding looking at the faces in the torn family portrait that stared at me from their vantage point. But they were always there in my head, watching me.
Hating me.
Blaming me.
And I apologized to them again, like I did every time. I prayed for their souls to rest, to find peace, to be cleansed and without torment. But I never prayed for forgiveness. I knew better than to ask for that.
Ready to leave again, I grabbed the vest to give to Rufus and went to the door. I sent one final glance back at the picture sitting on my kamidana, then blocked it all from my head and went to debrief.
****
Fraser never did tell me what I went to the docks to steal. I got used to not asking. Sometimes finding out the truth was unavoidable, like when I’d have to steal something not sealed in a box. Or sometimes it wasn’t stealing, either, but any other number of things. Sabotaging something. Kidnapping someone. Killing someone. I worked without complaint—it was none of my business anyway.
What did piss me off was that Fraser ended the debriefing with a “suggested” “therapy” session.
By “suggested” he meant “required” and by “therapy” he meant I was to speak to one of their supposed shrinks, who were little more than spies that reported back to Bravo Division. This was why I liked at least Drew; he didn’t bullshit me and pretend that anything was in confidence. But these people did. I knew enough others like me who broke down and confessed something to a company psychologist, then up and disappeared the next day.
Therapy sessions were supposed to be mandatory when somebody had to be killed while working in the field. Not one somebody, though. That would be expensive and time consuming. No, it was when multiple people had to be killed. I’m not sure why. When you kill several people, they all become kind of faceless. When you kill just one, usually their face sticks in your head for a while.
Like, maybe an hour or so.
That wasn’t the reason for the “therapy” session this time, though. Like everything else, it came back to me and what I could do. If my mother still lived, she and I might have to have a chat about that sex-with-the-son-of-a-big-evil-kami-thing she did that resulted in conceiving me.
I went straight for the gym, however, and advised Fraser that if he wanted someone to speak to me, they could meet me on the treadmill.
Sure enough, someone did. A someone I already knew: Lilah Mui. I worked in the field with her brother, Tim. You’d think someone would call “conflict of interest” on their asses, what with being related and all, but no one had yet.
I meant it when I told Fraser that I’d only talk when on the treadmill, however. While I ran a steady eight-minute mile, sweat dripping down my forehead and muscles aching, Lilah neared. Dressed in a fine, camel-coloured suit with high heels to match, she approached me with a cautious smile. A folder with notes on our sessions was clutched in her arms.
“Hi Peri,” she said brightly. It was around five o’clock in the morning and I had no idea how that woman could sound so chipper for that hour considering she couldn’t have had much sleep, but I didn’t question her. “As Mr. Lake probably told you, we should have a chat.”
I kept my gaze fixed straight ahead on the dark gray wall across the room, but gestured to the machine next to me. “Get jogging.”
I generally did what I was told to, though I wasn’t above making life difficult for everyone.
She hesitated, of course. Anyone else would probably leave and complain to my boss rather than engage me, but eventually she did slide off her shoes, and left them next to the machine. She slipped off her blazer, folded it with care, and set it and the folder with her shoes. After changing the treadmill to one of the lower settings, she stepped on and walked beside me.
Lilah brought a digital recorder out, turned it on, and set it on the machine near me.
“This is Dr. Lilah Mui,” she said loudly, “speaking with field agent Persephone Takata. Records show this is our fifth session together.”
Wow, five. You’d think she would have guessed already my personality wouldn’t be turning to roses and sunshine with a few therapy sessions, but Lilah seemed to seek the best in people and was trying her damnedest to see the best in me.
“Mr. Lake explained to me you had an episode today.”
That’s what they like to call it when I bring out the demonic big-guns passed to me by my biological father. Episodes.
“Not talking about it.” I bumped my speed up. The treadmill hummed, my feet pounded, but none of it drowned out her voice.
“And I understand you told Dr. Singer it was no different than what you experienced other times.”
“Still not talking about it.” I reached over and set the speed on her machine even higher as well.
Lilah stumbled. Trying to speed walk in a skinny skirt does that to a girl.
“What shall we talk about, then? Ken or the twins?”
Bitch was trying to bait me, probably. I say I don’t want to talk about one thing, so she brings up something she knows I definitely don’t want to talk about. I’d play that game if she wanted me to, however.
“Sure. Last night I dreamed I was in the flat with them when the bomb went off and I saw them blown up. Little arms and legs were flying everywhere. Perhaps I could draw you a picture later in art therapy.”
“Would you like to do that, Peri?”
Damn, she was good. Usually bringing up my dismembered children so coldly was enough to freak people out. I could probably escalate and go for graphic descriptions of intestines and bits of bones and things from my dreams—see if that got to her. I once made one of the company’s therapists vomit in the trashcan by his desk. That was satisfying, and though it got me a lecture, I had to wait until they hired another psychologist to deal with me before having another session.
“I’m not sure my stick figures would really do them justice,” I replied. “So I think I’ll have to pass on the art thing.”
“We haven’t talked much about the twins in the past,” she said.
I loved how these fucking therapists use a “No shit, Sherlock” sentence to start a conversation.
“They were six when they died?”
“Murdered.”
“I’m sorry?”
“They were murdered. Don’t say bullshit stuff like ‘they died.’ Someone loaded the building with explosives and detonated them. That’s murder.” I turned up my speed again. Sometimes it felt like if I ran fast enough, I could actually escape things. Unfortunately, even I realized the irony of that considering I ran in place. “And their birthday was that weekend—they would have been seven.” And had they lived today, they would have been twelve and a half.
“And where were you at the time?”
Her question stung. Where was I? Obviously not where I was supposed to be.
My feet pounded a steady beat on the treadmill belt below me, never faltering. Body on autopilot. In the back of my mind, it flashed—the feeling of the ground shaking, the shrill of sirens, the moment I stepped out of the restaurant in Chuo-ku and something dropped in the pit of my stomach as I saw the smoke in the distance. My cell phone slipped from my grip—
I blinked. Gave my head a mental shake. “I was running an errand,” I said to Lilah at last. “I’m pretty sure if you actually read that file of mine you carry around, you’d know. So I ran an errand, they were killed when it should have been me, end of story.”
“But it doesn’t quite end there, now does it?”
“No. Your people picked me up. Ran a lot of tests. Trained me and handed me over to Bravo Division. Gave me work. You have over five years of information on me right there—videos, too. Why are we going over this again?”
“Because you’ve made a lot of...assertions regarding what you’re going to do when they’ve told you everything you want to know, and I’m not sure it’s...healthy.”
“What, the part about me killing everyone involved in the bomb?”
“No.” She turned off her machine, then reached over and switched off mine.
The treadmill came to a halt, and I stopped dead and turned to her, rage prickling under my skin. Sweat was in my eyes and she was damn lucky I couldn’t see straight or I’d take a punch at her immediately.
“Granted,” she continued in that very official, therapist-like voice, “I don’t think revenge is terribly healthy, but that’s not specifically what I’m referring to. Peri, we’ve never talked about your...plans for afterward.”
Oh. The suicide thing. “I don’t think it’s really anything for you to worry about.”
“How’s that?”
“Because it means until I’ve met my objective, I’m focused on staying very much alive, and your bosses should be happy about that.”