MARY
“You’re having a hard time, aren’t you.”
It’s not a question. It’s a statement of fact. And it’s coming from a woman who is in a position to know.
I now have regular meetings with the Head. She seems to think I need some kind of personal care, or maybe it’s just that I got her attention when I broke out of her facility and stole her car. I kind of get the impression she likes me, though I don’t know why.
“A harder time than most people?”
“You’re yet to pass your first assessment,” she says. “Usually that happens in the first couple of days.”
“Well, I guess I suck.”
I am sitting on the window sill of her office. It looks out over the forest which surrounds the facility. These meetings are one of the few times in the week I get to see natural sunlight.
She is wearing a gray pantsuit. Her hair is tied back and rolled into a tight bun. In contrast to her formal attire and appearance, I am wearing a dark tracksuit and sneakers. My hair is getting longer now, so I tie it back in a ponytail.
“You don’t ‘suck’,” she says. “You don’t understand the lesson being taught.”
“Well why don’t you tell me what it is?”
“Ares is your handler,” she says, telling me what I already know. “And he has been more than that to you in the past.”
“Uh huh.”
“There is a bond between handler and agent,” the Head says. “A bond of trust and obedience.”
“Okay, well I’ll do what he says.”
“And the first part?” She raises a brow and sips at her coffee.
“Trust him? I mean I have to.”
“That’s not trust.”
I look over at her and sigh. “Well, what is trust then?”
“It’s a skill you need to learn.”
“That’s not an answer.”
“It is an answer. It’s just not one you wanted to hear,” she replies.
“So how much longer are you going to put up with me being the slowest kid on campus?” I change the subject.
“This takes as long as it needs to take,” she replies calmly.
I know most people in her position aren’t this patient. It costs money to keep me here. It costs money to pay Ken too. And getting him reassigned would have had a cost too, even if it wasn’t monetary. This woman wants me here.
“What are you thinking?”
“I’m just wondering why you’re being patient with me.”
“You saw the reason,” she says. “You’re not the first person to find herself unexpectedly hospitalized. You’re one of the very few to have survived it.”
So that’s what we have in common. Survival.
“It changes you, Mary. I know it does. And the circumstances around being raised as a spy, they change you too. Ares understands that.”
“I don’t think he understands anything about me,” I mumble.
“No?”
“He’s so distant now. And angry. I broke his trust. I don’t think he can trust me again. Forget about me trusting him.”
“Let me tell you how much he trusts you, Brown,” she says, putting her cup to the side. “He trusts you enough that instead of handing you directly over to the authorities, he brought you to my attention. He put his professional and personal life on the line to bring you here. That’s trust.”
“And I repaid him by breaking out and failing every assessment since I got here…” I shake my head and put my face in my hands. “You’re all wasting your time. You should put a bullet in me.”
“If I thought that was necessary, it would already have been done.”
I look over at her and see that she’s serious. This woman truly has the power of life and death over me. I should be way more afraid of her than I am.
I wonder why I’m not.
And then it occurs to me. It’s because I know Ken’s here. Even if he’s not in the room with me, I know he won’t let me be hurt again.
Maybe I do trust him. Even if I do, I don’t know how to act that trust out in a way these people can understand. I know they’re waiting for me to do something, I just don’t know what.
There is something else on my mind too. A question which has been with me since she showed me her scar. It’s not polite to ask people too many questions about their life changing injuries, but I just have to know.
“Ma’am?”
“Yes?”
“The scar you showed me the other day…”
“Yes…”
“Did you ever get revenge on the people who did that to you?”
She takes another sip of coffee and I sit there, hoping I haven’t offended her too badly.
“You’ve heard the saying the best revenge is living well?”
“Yeah.”
Her silver eyes sparkle. “In our case, my dear, the best revenge is living at all.”