Family

Chapter 14

I let Dr. Zollers lead me off to the medical unit without protest, let him gesture me over to a bed where I sat, staring ahead, trying not to think about everything going on but failing miserably. He came back in a moment with three layers of latex gloves on, some bandages in hand, and disinfectant. “This will probably sting some,” he cautioned as he rolled a stool up to sit in front of me.

“Worse than when my arms got raked apart to begin with?” I asked with a dull smile.

“Probably not,” he conceded as he started to examine them. “I doubt this is enough of a layer of protection from your powers—” he held up a gloved hand – “so I’m going to minimize flesh contact.” He extended a swab after dabbing it in the disinfectant. “This is more of a precaution. I know you’ll heal on your own.”

“Then why are you doing this?” I held my hand out and he ran the swab down one of the gouges in my flesh. “Why bother?”

He seemed to think about it for a moment as he worked, staring intently at what he was doing. “Because it feels better than doing nothing.”

“But it’s pointless,” I said. “Won’t change a thing.”

“Wrong,” he said. “I told you, it feels better than doing nothing; ergo, it changes how I feel. That’s not nothing.”

“It’s not important how we feel,” I said. “It’s important what we do.”

He raised an eyebrow at me and stopped his work on my arm. “That is possibly the most incorrect thing I’ve ever heard, and dangerous to boot. Ever tried to ignore overwhelming feelings for too long? How do you think it turns out? Well?”

“I don’t know. Probably not.”

“Yeah,” he said, looking back down with the swab in motion, stinging me. “Probably not. Human emotions are like the most fearsome lions when aroused, and yet as easily torn through as a paper tiger at times. Ignore them at your peril.”

“My feelings lead me in stupid directions,” I said, staring at the metal wall, trying not to look at Kurt a few beds away or the body in the distance of the unnamed agent who was covered by a white sheet that had started to tint red with blood. “I don’t like going in stupid directions. The heart betrays you.”

Zollers didn’t answer for a minute and I wondered if he had heard me but decided not to argue. “Sometimes.”

I chuckled, but it wasn’t with any real feeling. “That’s what you’ve got to make me feel better? I thought you’d try and talk me out of it.”

“Try and talk you out of thinking that the human heart is capable of making some dumb decisions?” Zollers looked up at me. “Far be it from me to try and convince you of that. It absolutely is capable of making stupid decisions. But they’re not always wrong ones, even if they are inconvenient.” He took a bandage and ran medical tape along the sides before wrapping it over my arm and running a finger along the tape. “Take you, for instance – you might be a little conflicted right now—”

“I might be,” I said coolly, interrupting him.

“But I think your heart is in the right place,” he said. “For example, your mother is in direct conflict with the organization you work for. Now, your mother and you have a history, to put it in mildest terms. Still, there’s a connection, and someone who didn’t know better might think you could feel guilty for not helping her.”

“That’d be a stupid way to feel,” I said, the crimson burning my cheeks. “Especially since she hasn’t asked for my help and seems to want to be around anyone but me, if possible.”

“Oh my,” he said and stopped again, this time looking me in the eye. “You’re jealous of Kat?” He raised an eyebrow again. “What? You didn’t get enough of being locked up by her the first time around? You feeling a little homesick?”

“Oh shut up,” I said mildly, even though I was annoyed. “No, I’m not…homesick or eager to get locked away again. I just…I don’t know.”

“You wish your mother had cared enough to want to take you with her.” He said it certain, and that certainty pissed me off. “You don’t know, she might—”

“She might have a lot of things,” I snapped at him. “She might have wanted to, she might not have been able to, she might have been playing a dangerous game that she didn’t want me involved in – I’ve thought of all of them. But you know the conclusion I’ve come to after all that? She didn’t want me with her for the same reason she disappeared for months and months. She came here, to the campus, and didn’t want me to go with her when she left. She ran into me beaten, bloodied, near dead and she didn’t want me with her then, either. I think it’s time to face facts,” I said with a cold smile. “She’s finished being my mother. Nothing left to do, nothing left to be said between us.” I felt a cold satisfaction at the words. “She cast me out, said, ‘best of luck,’ and that’s it. She’s done with me.” I held my head up. “And me? I’m done with her, too.” I brought my hands down and felt a lump in my pocket – the watch, the one that came with the note that said my father had wanted me to have it. I moved my hand away.

Zollers started to say something but I caught a flinch from him as though he’d been struck, a cringe that hinted at something bad. The door to the medical unit slid open a moment later and Michael Mormont appeared, a calm smile on his face, Eve Kappler a few steps behind him. He looked around the unit, past where Dr. Perugini was working on Kurt, and over to Zollers and me. Within a second of locking eyes with me he came my way and I felt the dread in my stomach rise unexplainably. Well, I might be able to explain it.

“Well, well,” Mormont said as Zollers rose from the stool after sliding his finger along the edge of a bandage, pressing it to my flesh. “Feeling any better?”

“Not much,” I said, holding up my unbandaged arm. “Why? Do you care?”

“Not really,” he said with a little shrug. “I need you to come with me, back to headquarters.”

“We’re in the middle of this right now,” Zollers said, pointing to my still-bloody right arm. “Can it wait just a few minutes?”

“Hardly.” He nodded at Eve, who looked at me in her usual inscrutable solemnity and walked behind the bed I was sitting on. I turned to track her, but Mormont spoke and drew my attention back to him. “Ariadne wants you at HQ.”

I exchanged a look with Zollers, whose eyes held something I couldn’t understand. “Fine,” I said, and stood up, letting my feet fall the half foot to the floor from the bed. “But I—” I stopped as I felt hands behind mine, and felt something hard and metal close onto my wrist, like when Clary had clamped his hands down on them. The pain seared on my open cuts and I swore. “What the f—”

“Handcuffs,” Mormont said with a smile. “They’re something new, designed to hold even a top-of-the-scale meta like you.”

“Is this really necessary?” Zollers asked with a tired look, as though he already knew the answer.

“Yeah, it’s necessary,” Mormont said, and his hand went into his pocket. “You know what this is?” His hand came out with something small between his thumb and forefinger, something small enough I couldn’t really see it from a few feet away.

“Yeah,” I said snottily, “it’s your d—” A hard blow to the back of the head dropped me to the ground as Eve drove an elbow into me that caused a flash in front of my eyes.

“I shouldn’t be surprised you’d go to the lowest common denominator when it comes to defiant answers,” Mormont said as I stared at his shoe, my cheek on the floor, blood in my mouth. I felt Eve’s hands seize me around my sleeve as she dragged me back to my feet.

“Manners,” Eve said in that stiff German accent of hers. I restrained myself from spitting blood in her face in response, instead let it drip, felt it go down my chin.

“This is ridiculous,” Zollers said, anger rising. “I’ll be reporting your conduct – both of you – to the Director.”

“He won’t do anything,” Mormont said, and his hand came up again. “As I was saying – this is a listening device. Found it in Ariadne’s office. Small scale, short range, so whoever was listening to it was right here on campus.”

“Congratulations,” Zollers said dryly. “There are hundreds of people on campus. Why are you harassing this one?”

“Very simple, Doc,” Mormont said with a smirk. “Because when I searched her room a few minutes ago – and yes, she was the first person I suspected, but for other reasons – what do you think I found?” The smirk grew wider but Zollers failed to react. “If you guessed the matching set for listening into this, you’d be right. Just turned it on—” he pulled a little black box from his suit’s other pocket, something that looked a little bigger than an MP3 player, complete with a headset – “and suddenly I hear the world’s worst case of screeching feedback.” He held them both up in front of him, the microphone and the bug. “Still want to defend her?”

“Absolutely,” Zollers said, clenching his teeth. “You’ve got not one speck of evidence that these belong to her.”

Mormont shrugged. “I found ‘em in her room, Doc.”

“I really oughta start locking my door,” I said through a rapidly swelling lip.

“I wouldn’t worry about that,” Mormont said, grinning at me. “You’re coming back to headquarters to answer some questions. And regardless of how that goes, Ariadne has declared you a person of suspicion.” He took a breath through his nose as though he were savoring the moment. “Couldn’t have said it better myself, because I’ve got some suspicions about you.” His smile broadened. “So you don’t have to worry about locking your door for a while, because where you’re going, it’ll be locked…pretty much all the time.”