“Okay,” Hannah said, but she looked unconvinced.
Asa picked up the backpack again. If I’m going, it had better be now, he thought.
He leaned down and kissed Hannah on the cheek, passed through the kitchen and hugged his parents quickly, not giving them time to respond, and hurried out the door, heading for the road.
CHAPTER THREE
IT WAS NOT UNTIL THE PIERCING WHISTLE OF the tea kettle had reached its highest pitch that Gabriel heard it. He glared at it for a moment, letting the sound go on; maybe the noise could drown out his thoughts. Get it together, he told himself and turned off the stove, letting the sound fade away. He started to pour the water into his cup, stopping when he realized he had forgotten the tea bag. Gabriel closed his eyes and took a deep breath, then set the kettle aside and sat down at the table. He knotted his hands together, dread swelling in the pit of his stomach.
I can’t do this.
He clenched his jaw, staring down at the pale, worn tablecloth. He had never liked it; now, he could not bear to move it. His phone beeped on the counter behind him, and he ignored it.
Joan. Bright, shiny, newly minted stalker with her wide-eyed excitement. Of all the partners to replace—
He shoved his chair back from the table and went to get his phone. Nobody’s replacing anyone.
“You just have to adjust, get reacclimated to your role as an Authority Figure,” the doctor had told him. Gabriel had nodded and said thank you, thinking, Reacclimate? I was raised to this since I was three years old. A month’s leave can’t make me less a stalker. You’d as well make me less a human being.
He looked at the phone. Joan had called twice. He sighed. Have to start sometime. Gabriel turned on the water in the kitchen sink as cold as it would go and splashed some on his face, shocking himself back to a kind of calmness.
He dried his hands and face on a dish towel. As he was replacing it, the phone rang again. He glared at it for a moment, then sighed and answered.
“Gabriel.”
“Gabriel?” a young, female voice repeated.
“Yes.”
“It’s Joan. Your new partner? We met last week?”
“I know who you are,” he said shortly, irritated at her questioning tone. Going into the field, she should have more confidence. “What do you want?”
“It’s almost three. You’re late. You’re supposed to be meeting me at Municipal 7 right now.”
“I know,” he said, then, belatedly, “Sorry. I’ll be there in a minute.”
He looked around the kitchen. There was nothing else left to do, but it seemed strange to leave like this, just walk out of the house without a word to anyone about it. He hesitated at the door; by now it had become a habit, almost, to pause before he touched the knob, to look down before opening the door, not wanting to disturb the now undetectable spot on the floor where she had lain.
Gabriel set his jaw, opened the door, and went out into the too-bright sun.
Joan was waiting for him outside Municipal 7. He saw her across the plaza as he got off the train, standing perfectly still as people streamed in and out of the building. Despite himself, Gabriel smiled.
Her expression was almost completely neutral, neither hard nor inviting. Her posture was straight without being stiff. Her eyes flickered over each person who walked by her, and he knew she was sifting, filing away details or letting the information pass through her mind, making split-second judgement calls about every piece of data. She was dressed in dark, close-fitting pants and a matching shirt. Authority Figures didn’t have uniforms, but there were guidelines for every division, and for stalkers—Contract Enforcers, to use the official term—it was simple: wear anything you like, as long as you can run, jump, hide, and take down hostile threats.
“You look like you stepped out of a textbook,” Gabriel said, voice dry, as he reached her.
She nodded. “See everything, notice everything, forget everything except what matters,” Joan said with a faint smile. “You can’t remember everything you see. Your job is to notice patterns—to notice breaks in the patterns. Raw data collection is for drones.”
“So, you did step out of a textbook.”
“I’m not that new,” Joan said lightly, but there was something steely in her brown eyes.
Gabriel looked her over quickly. They’d met a week before, at Municipal 5, where he had undergone testing for his reentry approval, but he’d scarcely been paying attention. She was not as young as he had thought, he realized now, in the bright light of afternoon. She was just small, and pretty in a delicate way that probably made people like him misjudge her all the time.
She looked Panasian—the word didn’t mean much; at this point no one was quite sure whether any of Panasia was still above water, but people kept descriptions like that—and she had long, thick, dark hair. The last time he saw her, it was loose around her face, but now it was pulled back tightly, adding to her more sophisticated impression.
“What are you looking at?” Joan asked without a challenge in her tone.
Gabriel shrugged and told the truth. “You seemed younger last time.”
“Gee, thanks,” Joan said sarcastically, then grinned. “They told me you were coming back after—I wanted to make it easier for you,” she finished disjointedly.
Gabriel laughed. “You wanted to appear nonthreatening, so you wore your hair down?”
“It’s a basic technique.” She lifted her chin.
“You’re right out of training.”
“Did you even read my file?”
“Yes. You’re right out of training.”
“Everyone starts that way,” Joan said.
She was looking at him thoughtfully, probably trying to read his face—whatever nonsense might be scribbled there. Gabriel headed for the front door without another word. He heard her hurrying behind him but didn’t slow his pace.
So now I’m stuck with her for how long? he thought, and then, Naomi would have liked her.
They entered the building, a large concrete structure saved from ugliness by the enormous windows on every wall. Gabriel signed himself in, which meant stepping into a small box of a room while a robotic voice gave him instructions. Because of his long absence, it was a multistep process, examinations and questions both to confirm his identity and determine his fitness for duty. Thankfully, it was all automated—all he had to do was say “Yes” and “No” to the computer-generated voice while his body was scanned, mapped, and approved for duty.
When he emerged, Joan was waiting again.
“You’re starting to feel like my guardian,” he remarked, and she laughed, though he had not meant it as a joke.
“They were everywhere, weren’t they? Sometimes I thought there were more guardians than kids! I grew up in Sumac Ward Home. How about you?”
“Acacia,” Gabriel said. “We should go. If we catch the train down the block, it’s faster.”
“Oh—it’s a new sector, actually. We can walk,” Joan said awkwardly, and Gabriel shook his head.
“I forgot. Come on.”
He strode out in front of her, feeling the need to prove that he remembered where they were going. He had expected other people to wonder about his fitness for duty, but he had not expected to question himself. They were five city blocks from the municipal building when Joan called his name.