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The next morning came a little too fast for Roman. After getting dressed, without the assistance of Celia and Coma, he would have normally gone to the hospital before work. Since this was no longer a possibility, he got to work earlier than usual.
A definite bad start to a shitty next couple of hours.
Rather than go to the next floor up to help set up today’s administrative retreat, because Roman knew better than to put himself in that position, he took a seat at the bench on the side of the building, which offered a nice view of a small pond that had been constructed the year before he’d started there.
He needed to get some paper money. He normally just transferred money out of his bank account via a telepath, like he’d done at the sex-doll shop last night, but that wouldn’t work for the plan he was cooking up.
Roman wanted Celia and Coma to find some new clothing, which meant he needed to go to a clothing market, and most only accepted cash. With his ability to modify documents, Roman’s plan was self-evident: get low denomination notes and convert them to high.
Easy.
As he sat on the bench watching a pair of ducks land in the pond near his office, their wings slapping against the surface of the pond, the smell of morning dew tinging the air, Roman thought of Celia, the real Celia, whom he hoped to see later today after his Heroes Anonymous meeting.
Maybe he shouldn’t have trusted Nadine, but he’d been desperate last night, and the hospital had already had a plan to put her in the hospice.
He’d just sped up the process.
And what would he say if it worked? If he was actually able to meet her, what could he possibly say? Would he ask for forgiveness? What would Celia say? How would this play out?
Memories of their time together flashed across his mind’s eye. He recalled her soft features, her reddish hair, how she affected any room she walked into, her kindness, her soft voice.
How she’d tamed him.
He had put a lot of these ideas into Celia the doll, and he was keenly aware that it would never be the same—but there was something there. Something that reminded him of her. And he assumed it was the part of himself he’d put in the doll when he’d animated her.
With a glance down at his power dial, he saw the red bar had retreated just a little bit. Roman was calmer now, used to this type of energy expenditure.
“You ready for today?”
Roman looked up to see Phil Pott, the twenty-two-year-old senior advisor that had gotten the position through contacts. He wore a light-gray suit, a white shirt, and a lime-green cravat—cool, expensive clothing that would only be available to someone who had deep pockets.
Now that he had the ability to manipulate paper money, Roman would probably also get some new clothing, stuff that would rival Phil’s.
“I’m as ready as I’ll ever be,” Roman finally told him. “The retreat we had six months ago was brutal as fuck.”
“Yeah, I hate these damn things too.”
“If it weren’t being run by Selena and her lackeys, I wouldn’t worry.”
“Agreed. But what can we do?” The young advisor shrugged.
“I guess we can just suck it up and wait for five o’clock to roll around.”
“We actually get out a little early today.”
“Even better.
“Shall we get in there?”
Roman sighed audibly. “Five more minutes. Let me pass on to you something I learned long ago: The early bird gets the worm, sure, but he’s usually exhausted by the time the party starts.”
“I want to remind everybody that the importance of our data is paramount. You should be tracking everything you do, from meetings to processing times. If you sneeze, I want you to note it. If you take a bite from a candy bar while sitting at your desk, I want you to note the time. If you meet with a client randomly in the hallway, I want you to note it down to the minute.”
Selena stood at the front of the conference room, her administrative assistant behind her, arms crossed over her chest. Everyone in their division was there, including Coco, the lead security for their floor. The shorthaired Type I Class D stood by the door, her hands on her hips as she pivoted from foot to foot.
“Today will be about our development as a team, and your development as individual team players. We will meet with the Immigration Inspection for Fast Travel Powers Department for a group activity, lunch, and then move into breakout spaces so we can practice our collaboration. A few of you lack the performance of your peers. You lack the speed, attention to detail, and one might even argue you lack the ability to do this job. Today, you will be joined by people you can learn from, peer mentors who can help you improve upon yourself. Without further ado, let’s begin.”
“We’re going to start with an icebreaker,” Selena’s administrative assistant said as she came forward. Her assistant, either named Sally or Sammy (Roman could never get it right), handed out slips of paper. “I want you to write three things about yourself on the sheet of paper. Once you’ve written these three things, I want you to write a fourth thing that is a lie.”
A few of the employees to Roman’s right chuckled, fake laughter if he’d ever heard it. The smarter ones groaned, but they did so in a way that was masked by the chuckles.
“We will then read these details aloud, and we will all guess which detail is the lie! Sound like fun? So make your details interesting, don’t just write ‘I’m a woman, I live in a house, I can play piano, I ate a snorkel for breakfast,’ because we’ll all know which one is the lie.”
A snorkel? Roman gave the administrative assistant a funny look as she handed him his piece of paper. He glanced down at it for a moment, trying to swallow the bitterness he felt as an adult male who had to do these types of things and somehow call it “work.”
“Remember,” Sally or Sammy said, “three things need to be true, and one thing needs to be a lie. Please don’t make it too obvious.”
A grin stretched across Roman’s face as his pen hit the paper. Once he’d finished, he turned the paper over and waited for the others.
Phil, who sat next to Roman, was the first to go. “As you all know, my name is Phil Pott, and I am a senior immigration advisor. Okay, so here are my four sentences. I like to go hiking on weekends. I was in the Southern Alliance last weekend skiing. I have relatives that live in the Southern Alliance. I once killed a snow tiger that was twice my size with my bare hands.”
“Snow tiger,” Roman said to the murmur of the others in the room.
“Really? You guys got it that quickly?”
“Thank you, Phil,” Sally or Sammy said as Phil sat down. “Remember to make your lie difficult, and don’t make your lie the last sentence of your four sentences. Hint: that makes it easier to decipher.”
Roman heard a few pens scribbling on paper as people made adjustments and renumbered their sentences.
“Are you ready?”
“Yeah,” said Roman, avoiding eye contact with the woman. “Here goes. I am an exemplar, and I have the ability to animate inanimate objects. I can swim. I usually don’t eat breakfast. I was born and raised in Centralia.”
“What part about ‘make this difficult’ do you not understand?” Selena asked him. She had the power position at the front of the room, which only made the fact that she was calling him out more uncomfortable.
“I beg your pardon?”
Phil snorted. “It’s clearly the first one! You aren’t an exemplar.”
Even Coco, who was standing in front of the door looking like hired muscle, cracked a grin. The others in the room started to snicker.
“You got me,” Roman told them as he quickly sat down. One day, when they all found out the truth, they would remember this moment. “Guilty as charged.”
Roman tuned out the rest of the icebreaker, focusing instead on thoughts centering around Celia, and how tragic she’d looked in that hospital bed. He suddenly felt like shit, and rightly so. He’d been a terrible husband; there was no doubt about it.
It was when Selena said there would be another icebreaker that his ears perked up.
Why they needed to have an icebreaker in a room full of people who already knew each other was beyond him, and the second one seemed like it had the potential to actually do some damage.
As she had done before, Selena started with Phil. “Okay, Phil, before I ask you the next icebreaker question, I want to remind everyone this exercise is supposed to bring us closer together. Sometimes sharing in each other’s sorrows is one way that we can feel closer. Now, this is a little bit experimental, and something I came up with on the trolley ride over here this morning, so bear with me. That said, I think it will help us all grow closer. And we need to be close, because the closer we are, the better our metrics will be.”
“Great,” said Phil. “I’m ready.”
“What was the worst day of your life thus far?”
Roman looked at her incredulously. Was there really any point in sharing tragic experiences?
“The worst day of my life, hmmm, that’s one I really need to think deeply about. Okay, I got it,” Phil said, and the fact that it had only taken him a second to “think deeply” worried Roman to no end. “The worst day of my life had to be, um, one of my last days in northern Centralia.”
“Did something tragic happen?”
Phil snorted. “Yeah, at the time it was tragic. I had my thesis due, and then my buddy told me there was this big sorority party going on, and they were even going to have some exemplars there, if you guys know what I mean, and well, like an idiot, I went. Long story short, I ended up pretty intoxicated and had somehow hooked up with a Type F and ended up in the Western Province—can you imagine that?”
A few in the room exchanged furtive glances.
“How did you get back?” a woman named Tara asked at the back.
“By sheer luck! I sent a mental message to my uncle, who arranged a military pickup. It took about twenty minutes before they came to get me, and let me tell you, I was pretty scared during that time. It’s a different world over there.”
Roman started to comment on the fact that “sheer luck” and “the benefits of nepotism” weren’t quite the same, but he kept his thoughts to himself.
“Moving on,” Selena said, a hint of annoyance in her voice. “Roman, you’re next.” She cocked her head to the side a little, causing her jowls to jiggle. “What was the worst day of your life?”
“Pass.”
“There is no passing. You need to take part in this activity so we can strengthen ourselves as a team.”
“Pass,” Roman said, louder this time.
“Everyone’s taking part in this, including you, Coco. Will it help if she goes before you, so you can see that even exemplars have to take part in this as well?”
Coco looked to Selena. “You want me to answer that?”
“Yes, if it will motivate Roman, please answer my question: Coco, what was the worst day of your life?”
Coco stood there for a moment in silence, her fists clenched shut. “I... My family is from the Western Province,” she said, her eyes narrowing on Phil. “When I was a girl, we went to visit my grandfather and grandmother, who lived near the border. My sister and I were playing outside when the field around us ignited. A battle had begun not too far from us, a team of Centralian exemplars tasked with bringing Centralian democracy to the Western Province.”
“Great story, let’s move...”
“I’m not finished yet,” Coco told Selena. “My sister has water mimicry abilities, so putting out the fire wasn’t very difficult for her. But what we saw next was our grandparents’ home had been partially destroyed. The supers had been fighting there, and there was collateral damage.” She sniffed, a single tear falling down her cheek. “I saw my grandparents’ dead bodies, and that was the worst day of my life.”
“Great, um, thank you for sharing, Coco. I feel closer to you now. Okay now, Roman, your turn.”
“Pass.” Roman said, and for once, Selena paid attention to the stone-cold look on his face. It was a good thing too, because had she pressed them, he may have done something drastic. Luckily, she moved on.
“Maybe we can circle back to Roman.” Selena offered the woman sitting next to Roman, Tara, a tight smile. “Tara, what was the worst day of your life?”
The retreat dragged on. A small part of Roman thought about playing with some of the people’s note-taking papers, turning them into little military soldiers and having them charge at each other across the tables and fight. But he didn’t want to create an issue, especially considering the fact that he wasn’t an approved exemplar, which still meant they could take his power away if he did something they deemed a risk or inappropriate.
The retreat continued on, with Selena leading everyone in discussions about their hopes and dreams, and how they related to one another. Of all people to be leading this, Selena seemed like the worst choice, especially since she commented on everything everyone said, from nice little comments such as “That’s nice” to mean and unnecessary comments like “Bonnie, you’re not going to win the super lottery and get the power to create money out of thin air. That’s just stupid.”
Lunch was catered, by a Centralian restaurant in the district that had pretty good fare. Their focus was on ingredients that were in season and didn’t have to be stored.
Roman placed a piece of the baked squash onto his plate next to a stir fry made of lamb and carrots, which was garnished in scallions. Hoping no one would join him, he took the seat at the back of the room, only to be joined by Phil.
The youthful senior advisor rambled on and on about his family in the Southern Alliance—how they had castles down there, and how Roman should come skiing sometime, but he would have to get his own ticket and visa to visit.
Roman commented occasionally, and rather than engage in conversation, he simply stuffed more food into his mouth.
In the afternoon, it was time for the collaboration with the Immigration Inspection for Fast Travel Department.
It was odd seeing Nadine in this setting, especially after last night, and while everyone was being introduced, Roman couldn’t help but give her a sidelong glance, waiting for her to make eye contact with him, to share that sense of recognition.
It never happened. Nadine remained completely neutral.
After Selena rambled off some details about their next teambuilding bullshit exercise and quickly chastised one of the employees for being late back from lunch, they were sectioned off into groups.
As fate had it, Roman was paired with Nadine.
“Hi, how are you?” Nadine asked, as they waited for their other group members to join them. They’d been placed in groups of four and told to go to the smaller breakout rooms.
“Doing better. Is everything still on?” he whispered.
“Is what still on?” Selena asked as she entered the room. “Sorry, Bonnie got sick to her stomach, so I’ll be joining your group. Phil should be here any moment; he had to use the restroom.”
It took a lot of willpower to smile at Selena. So much that Roman dropped his eyes to his power dial to see if the red bar had gone up any.
It hadn’t.
“Who’s going to be our writer?” Selena asked on the tail end of a burp. The slightly obese woman had eaten three plates of stir-fried lamb, and there was still a small stain on the front of her blouse.
“I will,” Nadine volunteered.
Sheets of paper hung on the wall, each labeled with an empowering word like “engage” or “collaborate” or “together.” The hotbody of the group stepped up to the sheet of paper, in her perfect skirt and her blond hair in a bun, looking once over her shoulder at Roman.
“Are you planning to contribute to the group any today, Roman?” Selena asked. “Or are you going to just sit in the back and pretend to participate?”
“I’ll be here.”
“That’s not what I asked you.”
“I’ll be here,” he said again, gritting his teeth.
Phil entered and lightened the mood almost instantly. He was jovial as always, and Roman could sense that he was overcompensating for the fact that Roman despised Selena.
This was why Roman liked Phil—he was a good guy at heart.
“What’s a way we can engage?” Selena asked as she walked to the white sheet of paper with a pen in her hand. “Come on, people, think.”
“With each other or with exemplars?” asked Roman.
“Exemplars,” Nadine whispered.
“Wrong, both of you. You know, I thought the people in the teleportation department had a little more sense. Hmph. I guess not. Phil? Any ideas?”
“One thing we can do to engage is know each other’s names and each of our roles in the office. Going to the right person with the right question is better than asking around indefinitely and then later giving up. Also, sending an exemplar to the right person to answer their specific question, to help them engage with the correct coworker, is another aspect of this.”
“I’m so glad to have you on our team,” Selena said as she wrote this information down. “What about you two? Any answers?”
“We can all go out on dates with each other and get to know each other better,” Roman said, casting a grin at Nadine. “Which saves us time to work when we’re here at the office.”
“Wow, and here I thought you had finally figured out that this isn’t some big joke, that this actually serves a purpose. But, like I have been every time I’ve made an assumption about you in terms of your work ethic and ability, I was wrong. Dead wrong.” Selena glared at the piece of paper in front of her as if it were Roman’s face.
“We can plan meetings with similar roles in other departments?” Nadine asked, coming to Roman’s defense and likely preventing him from cursing under his breath at Selena.
“Good! Write it!”
Nadine wrote down an abbreviated version of what she’d just said.
Roman’s fingers twitched. He imagined ripping the paneling from the wall and using it as a projectile to impale Selena. He even noticed one of the panels start to quiver, which reminded him that he really needed to bring his hatred down a notch.
“One way we can collaborate is by asking questions,” Roman finally said, practically forcing the words out at knifepoint.
“Great answer, except that we are still working on engagement. Please do not get ahead of the process.”
“Okay, one way we can engagement is by asking questions.”
Roman glanced up to see Nadine giving him a comical grin, and for a moment, he thought of her as a coworker, rather than a spy who was going to be manipulating him at some point. It was so clear to him. She was standing right there, at the same retreat, trying to “personally develop” herself.
Only it was all a guise, a ruse. Underneath all the bullshit, she was a woman from the Eastern Province, and he hadn’t started working with her yet, but Roman was already actively engaged in treason considering his relationship with Paris. Now he was in a similar boat with Nadine.
And this forced an odd, ill-timed grin on Roman’s face. He was working with the Eastern and Western Province. How long until the North or the South contacted him?
“What’s so funny?” Selena looked from Phil to Nadine, hoping they were supporting her continued belittlement of Roman.
Had she been Class A, she would have seen that Nadine had a great distaste for her, and that the Eastern Province spy had, in that very moment, been contemplating a way to poison her, only discarding the thought once she realized it wasn’t worth the risk.
If Selena had somehow been able to skim the surface of Phil’s mind, she would have found the young benefactor of nepotism trying to get a peek at her breasts, as he had a thing for bigger girls and had jerked off to Selena’s mental image a couple times now.
But she didn’t have any special abilities, aside from a little extra stamina, and all she could do was look for support. “One way we can collaborate is by respecting supervisors and being modest,” Selena finally said. “Write it, please, Nadine.”
Respect supervisors and be modest? Roman didn’t shake his head this time, but he wanted to. Damn, did he hate that woman. He thought about rearranging the ink to say something vulgar, but caught himself just in time.
And not a moment too soon. One of the letters Nadine had written started trembling ever so slightly.
Luckily for Roman, no one saw it; they were too busy focusing on ways to engage.
