Chapter 9 #2
I should have listened to my heart the first time. Why did I ever think Harper could be anything but callous? My foolishness chokes me too much to say anything but a quiet, ‘Right.’
Harper pivots around and heads to the lab, kicking the door open and earning us a glare from Niko.
As I watch, she slips to the front of the lab and converses quietly with Niko. Fifteen minutes later, they relieve me from lab work and send me to the Sentinels’ Training Hall, and it’s clear that Harper asked for time apart.
The training hall was constructed as a place where we can explore and expand our powers, which means the walls are bulletproof glass, part of the floor is padded and each side is lined with training dolls and specially programmed droids.
Training has always been two to three hours a day, after lab sessions – an hour of physical, another hour of technique and combat training, with ALFRED analysing my moves by camera and correcting my technique.
A confusing melee of hurt, frustration and vulnerability fuels me through today’s training session. I imagine Harper’s face on every target.
‘What’s wrong with you?’ I demand from a training droid, and I’m met with a punch.
I push myself to six hours of training before I collapse on the floor, soaked in sweat, my fingers shaking as I unlatch every component of my suit and let it clatter to the floor.
The cavernous space of the hall looms over me, white LED lights hazing through my spinning vision.
‘Go to hell, Harper,’ I whisper to the void. ‘To hell with your annoying jokes and the way you can’t sort recycling and how you think you’re always better than us.’
No one’s around to listen, but somehow verbalizing it is therapeutic.
‘I hate that you’re –’ I remove my helmet to drop my head against the plywood floor, settling in with a sigh – ‘mean to everyone and can’t ask for help.
Aren’t you nineteen? Don’t you have an ounce of maturity in you?
Is it so difficult to kindly communicate what you need instead of –’ I kick my blasters off my feet – ‘lashing out at me?’
The question wisps into the air and lingers.
The next time I try to open my mouth, exhaustion claims me. I can complain about Harper in my head, I think as I close my eyes, but the world is very dark, and very quiet.
When I wake up, I find the type of rasp in my throat that only festers after a several-hour nap.
My phone says it’s nine p.m. Crap, I’ve missed dinner.
My legs jelly under me as I stand, but I steel my knees and diligently steer my broken body into a lift for the penthouse. There’ll be leftovers I can heat up, and then I can crash straight into bed.
The lift dings open.
A familiar figure stands in the kitchen, up to their elbows in dirty plates, pink rubber gloves working furiously through the bubble bath in the sink.
I have to avoid her. It’s the only sensible thing to do.
I stroll into the kitchen, my heart hammering in my ears, and reach over Harper to grab a bowl from the cupboard.
‘What the—’ She flinches and whips round, turning an accusatory glare on me. ‘What are you doing here?’
‘Sorry, I forgot it was a crime to be in my own house,’ I reply dryly.
I step back to lean against the kitchen table behind me.
‘You’re not slick. I know you practically got Niko to ban me from the labs today.
So, what, I say one emotionally vulnerable thing about myself and you’re allergic to that? ’
Harper lathers a plate and scoffs. ‘If you know I don’t want you around, why are you here? I’m sure the feeling is mutual.’
I set the bowl aside and fold my arms. ‘This is okay for you? Going back to square one like we hate each other and pretending we haven’t told each other private, personal things? You’re okay with that?’
‘I haven’t told you anything I wouldn’t tell a stranger on a street. So, if you’ll excuse me, it’s –’ Harper makes a show of checking her phone – ‘a lab day tomorrow, and I need to get some sleep.’
Then she freezes. Her eyes stay locked on her screen, and she scrabbles to yank her rubber gloves off. A strangled whine escapes her.
What—? ‘What’s going on?’
‘I have something tonight.’ She finally gets the gloves off, and tosses them on the kitchen table.
The sudden urgency sends my warning bells screeching. I push off the kitchen table. We might have been arguing, but there’s a discomfiting quality to Harper’s movements, like a gazelle that’s picked up abruptly on a predator.
‘Is everything okay?’
Harper’s gaze flicks to mine, and time fissures under its weight. I feel like I’m witnessing lightning foreshadow a storm, and I’m left standing alone in the kitchen as she retreats to her room before the thunder breaks.
‘You do not care,’ I whisper to myself, but my eyes linger on her locked room, my heart suddenly haunted with the burden of knowing a tempest lies past that door.
I stalk to Harper’s door and raise a hand to knock.
My fist doesn’t want to move. What if she gets even angrier at me? We’re not even on good terms. I shouldn’t be bothering.
‘I hope you’re okay,’ I say to the door. I’m sure the words don’t pass through.
It feels pathetic caring for Harper right now, especially after she’s explicitly highlighted that she doesn’t want to be close. So I leave, my chest aching with a twisted guilt.