{September 18}

I still wasn’t quite sure why Bell turned so suddenly antagonistic after Esther left. Maybe it was some kind of gaslighting trick, I don’t know. If anything Yoru said was true, and it likely was since he never struck me as much of a liar, a gaslighting trick was definitely possible.

But I didn’t think Bell would do that to me.

So I resigned myself to never understanding the machinations of people I only saw when they wanted me to see them. I thought that was reasonable, even for someone more functional than myself. Yoru could barely fathom why Bell did the things she did, so why should I bog myself down with the same?

I didn’t see Prochazka much for the rest of that day, but the weight of what I did dragged me down. I couldn’t enjoy the weather, couldn’t focus on the book I’d gotten a few days before. Every couple of seconds my attention would waver, or a brief cold chill would drip down my spine as I’d remember what I’d did—and the fact that nobody seemed to care all that much.

All I wanted to do was assert myself, and I’d somehow managed to do the exact opposite.

Sitting alone in my bed with the book, I stared at the wall across from me and tried to make sense of it all—but all I really ended up doing was hoping it would change on its own.

The realization of what I was supposed to do crept up on me over the better part of fifteen minutes. There was really only one thing I could do, myself, to rectify this situation. I didn’t even know if it needed rectifying, to be honest; from my perspective everything seemed to be going on okay, but I couldn’t shake the feeling that I’d done wrong and I had to apologize.

I had to go to Prochazka myself and explain what was done.

Slowly, I closed my book and shifted to get out of bed without really thinking about what I was doing. I left the room without putting my shoes on.

I came to Prochazka’s office and I knocked on his door, at around seven o’clock that night. As soon as I did, I was struck through with a cold spear: I was turning myself in! Prochazka was going to kick me out!

I turned—seriously considered walking away.

But when I turned back, the door was open and Prochazka was there.

He’d taken off the suave suit he was wearing before and was now in a simple white button-down shirt and slacks. He almost looked like he could be Cygnus’s dad, but that might’ve just been because of the fatherly outfit. As a distraction, I tried to recall the exact details of what Cygnus had told me about his ancestry and what he’d guessed was Prochazka’s, but standing in front of the man now it was all I could do to keep my planned words in a line and not quiver from fear.

This was the first time I’d ever come to Prochazka for something. I’d been called to his office many times for briefings and whatnot—but this was the first time I came to him because I needed something.

What if he was only nice to me when he needed me, and if it was the other way around, he’d be some horrible monster?

I couldn’t shake the thought, even with him standing in front of me, essentially expressionless.

“Hello,” he said. “Do you need something?”

His office smelled like fresh wood and coffee.

“Yeah,” I started, but my voice caught in my throat. It was all I could do to choke out the truth: “I--I wanted to apologize for, for um, for what I did earlier.”

I could not for the life of me tell if he was mad or happy to see me; but in fairness to myself, I could only meet his eyes for a second before the shame forced me to examine his office’s carpet instead.

I had done wrong and I knew it.

“I understand why you did it,” Prochazka said. “Why don’t we sit down?”

He gestured to one of the chairs in front of his desk, which I took while he settled into his chair.

Prochazka leaned back a little bit, crossed his arms. “What, exactly, did Bell tell you to do?” he asked me.

I swallowed. “She—she said that Esther was a spy, not just a representative, and that Esther was going to tell Loybol that we were too weak to do anything to stop them if they decided to invade us.”

“So she said it was scouting mission for an invasion,” he said.

I nodded.

“Well,” Prochazka said, “Let me tell you something about Bell. Bell’s plans tend to be good, but she has a hard time when her plans involve someone acting a certain way or being convinced to do a certain thing in the middle. She’s very good when she can actively control all the elements of a given situation, but when she has to rely on other people to just do the thing she needs them to do, it—it doesn’t really work out. Bell’s plan, if I had to, ah, offer my perspective, was equally likely to incentivize an invasion as it would be to dissuade one.”

I didn’t follow. Prochazka saw my confusion and said, “Let’s break this down and put ourselves in Loybol’s shoes. Loybol, originally, thinks we have five people. She assumes they’re all mid-road power as she probably hasn’t heard about any of their individual exploits. Now, with Bell’s plan, she sees that our fifth in Unit 6 is an extremely powerful flesh key, strong enough to—judging from the tapes—do a fair-approximation shapeshift of a person she’d only been looking at for less than five minutes in about fifteen seconds. Being able to shapeshift at all is something most flesh keys can’t do—Sophia is fairly strong in her own right, but she can’t do it, for example. She also sees that Unit 6 has a sixth, which Loybol wouldn’t have known about at all, and it turns out that they have a good case for being the most powerful water key currently alive. Because Esther is a telepath—that was a fairly obvious read, I think—she likely got to see that you have basically no defense against a telepath’s attacks. I would even go so far to say that pretty much any of the many telepaths on Loybol’s payroll could mind-control you for some limited amount of time. Esther could for, ah, maybe three minutes, if I had to guess. Three minutes is probably more than enough for a version of you who isn’t in control of herself to kill us all.”

I couldn’t meet Prochazka’s eyes.

“Now, I understand why you did what you did. I get that you don’t want to be a bruiser forever. Believe me, I get it. I was just muscle for...God, how long? Forty years? Fifty? Maybe—no, close to sixty, before someone trusted me enough to make calls on behalf of others. Periodically I’d be promoted to a minor commanding position, but nothing more than that until Vietnam, and I only got that far in Vietnam because I stood up for myself.”

I paled. That was far longer than I ever thought I’d get. Not even in my wildest dreams.

Behind Prochazka was a small, narrow strip of cork. Pinned to that corkboard were all of his various war medals, most of which I did not recognize as American ones. I knew he fought against the US in Vietnam, and I figured he fought in World War II as well, probably as a Soviet.

Beyond that, I didn’t know.

“I fought for a lot of people that did not see me as a person,” Prochazka said, “In a lot of wars where the other side didn’t see me as a person, either. I got into those wars by showing that I could fight. I spent years being belittled and disrespected for things outside of my control, and every time I was given a chance to prove myself, I did. And every time I did, I made sure they knew it. And it took countless times of me proving myself and ensuring they knew it before I could be put into a position of power. And, well—let me just say that I have never once fought on the losing side of a war, even if I didn’t explicitly agree with what the side I was on did after they won.”

He chuckled. “If the regular folks of Canajoharie knew who was living in this factory, and the extent of the things I’ve done…”

I didn’t laugh.

Prochazka continued. “It is what it is. I know I’m an—we’ll say, unpopular figure locally, and I know I’m not winning any kudos from those who would rise up against me by adding you to the team. I know for a fact that the magical-state rulers in both Buffalo and New York City hate me personally, not necessarily because of my track record. Loybol does not. She might be the only one, honestly.”

“So she didn’t send a spy,” I said.

“Almost definitely not,” he replied. “We don’t talk much, but we actually get along fairly well, at least from my perspective.”

Which meant that Bell—

I shoved the thought away. If I didn’t think about it, it wasn’t true—and if it was only in my head and only ever meant anything to me, then its disappearance into some forlorn synapse meant it was gone forever. Permanently negated.

“Why?” was all I could squeak through my dry mouth.

Prochazka leaned in. “Because we both took systems we disliked and snapped them like twigs over our knees. We did not let ourselves get pushed around. We did not let ourselves be belittled. Here is the secret: when the people in charge are only tolerating you—if all you do is your best, that’s a win for them. It means they get twice as much out of you for no additional cost. You’ve got to stand up for yourself. You’ve got to show them that when you do twice as much, you expect something in return. Because you are more capable than your peers, and you’ve shown it.

“Erika, I understand why you did what you did, because if I were you and I was told to hide myself in a room upstairs while important things that concerned me were going on, I know I would’ve done the same thing. I will admit. I may have made a mistake. There is a chance Bell was right, and there is a chance Bell was wrong. I personally think she was wrong, but there is an extant possibility she caught something that I overlooked and was right to be suspicious. It wouldn’t be the first time. The bottom line is that I don’t know. What I can say is that Loybol and I have a professional relationship with terms I consider good, and I don’t think she would blow all of that away to invade us. And frankly, if Loybol decided to invade us, there wouldn’t be anything we could do about it short of praying that Loybol’s hive-mind thing happens to be flesh-magic based and that Bell can overcome it. Or that you can just drop a tsunami on the army.”

He shrugged. “It’s a complicated situation and there’s no right or wrong answer, really. Put yourself in my shoes, if you don’t mind me putting you on the spot. What would you have done, if you had a young prodigal air-key named Jan Prochazka in your fighting unit? Would you hide his existence to give yourself the element of surprise? Or would you show him off to the world as a deterrent? This is something I've been struggling with a while. It’s the kind of shot you have to call when you want to call shots.”

He smiled. “So—what do you think?”

I wasn’t prepared to answer. I was still caught up in the slowly-dawning realization that I wasn’t in trouble, and that everything was going to be okay. Slowly, I stammered out: “I—I would show them, I think.”

Prochazka’s face didn’t change. “Why?”

“Because—”

Because what? I didn’t have anything past that word. Why would I do that? Why wouldn’t I do that? The possibilities spiraled out of my sight and I could not possibly grasp it all with the tools I had.

I looked down at the floor and could not finish the sentence. Too afraid, or too ashamed, to even babble something.

“These things are hard for everyone, Erika,” Prochazka said, more softly than he was speaking before. “I’ve made a lot of calls that I regret. That didn’t turn out well for anyone, really. I’ve made decisions that got people I cared about killed for no reason at all. But all you can really do after that is move on and try to do better next time. You just have to pick yourself up and keep going. You don’t get to choose to just stop making decisions. Not when you have power like you have. Now, nothing even close to that severe happened today, but it’s something I think you should be aware of. I’m not expecting you to lead—you're thirteen, for God’s sake. That would be incredibly irresponsible of me. Don’t get too ahead of yourself, Erika. You’re young. You've got time.”

I wasn’t so sure about that, but all I said was “Okay.”

We talked about a few other things after that, but I can’t really recall what they were. I still felt like I’d gotten in trouble—Prochazka's office felt like the principal’s office, and I couldn’t shake the feeling that I was being chastised—very gently—for something that was assumed to be my fault.

Just before I left, I asked Prochazka my new burning question.

“Is this my fault?” I said to him.

“Is what your fault?” He’d started into something on his desk, some paper in front of him, and when he looked up, I just barely caught his expression shifting back to that perfectly neutral, inscrutable face he’d had before—but the transition as so quick that I couldn’t figure out what it was before.

“What—what I did,” I mumbled, and I realized how dumb I sounded as soon as I said it. Obviously, it was my fault. It was something I did. Of course I was to blame.

But I also didn’t realize how badly I needed it to not be true.

Prochazka answered, after a moment: “Yes and no. At this point in time, I wouldn’t have expected you to do anything other than what you did. Next year, if this happened again—maybe my answer would be different. But at the end of the day, it was something you did, even if I think Bell coerced you into it in one way or another.”

“Who is she?” I blurted. The question spawned in my head and leapt out my throat so fast I couldn’t even regulate it—not the volume or the speed or anything about it. It was too loud, too fast.

Prochazka did not blink. “Bell?”

I nodded, beet-red.

He frowned. “Erika, I’m going to be completely honest with you.”

I couldn’t draw out a word. The silence caught in my throat was enough of an invitation for him. “I don’t really know. Bell is whoever Bell says she is. Benji picked her for Unit 6 because of her powers and her track record. Every single person here has been told a different story about who Bell is. It’s to the point where, now, she could tell the truth to someone, the whole, complete story of her life, and they wouldn’t even believe it. Maybe the story I know is the truth. Maybe she only told Ava or something. Maybe one of the janitors asked her, on a whim, and she decided that that guy was the only person who’d get to know who she truly was because she knew, unequivocally, that nobody would ever believe them.”

After a second’s hesitation, he added: “I can tell you what I think is true, but that’s all I have.”

“Please,” I said. It was pleading. I hated it.

“Bell’s real name is Campbell. I would guess—just from her conduct—that she grew up somewhat wealthy. You know Senator Cunningham?”

The name sounded somewhat familiar. “Is he our senator?”

“One of them,” Prochazka replied. “His teenage daughter died in a car accident maybe a decade ago. Senator Cunningham is well known for keeping his private life extremely private—so much so that, when he said that his daughter was killed, it was news that he even had a daughter, let alone a teenage one. Her name and age were never formally released to the public, but I have it on decent authority that her name was Campbell. I think—possibly—that maybe a young Bell discovered she had flesh-magic, and faked her own death in a car crash to get out from under her father’s thumb. If that's true, well—Old Leonard has pushed a lot of automotive safety and child-care legislation on, ah, uncertain terms.”

He shrugged. “But that’s all I got. Maybe it’s true, maybe it’s not. Maybe she’s his daughter but the story is different. Maybe there’s more to it than that. Most of it is conjecture, anyway, and Bell continues to overperform, so I don’t really question it. She barely qualifies as human to me, but she’s a damn good spy.”

I guess so.

Maybe, then, that was why she cared so much about me.

We did the same thing, more or less. Found out we were inhuman and dropped everything for an uncertain future.

“Erika?” Prochazka asked.

I snapped back to attention. “Oh. Um—”

“I’ve got some meetings I have to go to now,” he said. “Is there anything else you wanted to talk about?”

I had one more question for him—one that I’d wanted to ask for so long. And in my heart I thought I’d bury it forever, but it spilled out of my mouth before I could stop it, just like the question about Bell.

“Why me?” I asked.

“Why you?”

“Why did you pick me when Benji said no?”

Prochazka, again, fell quiet. He looked down at his desk for a moment. Like Cygnus, I really, truly believe he thought over his next few words.

In the room was complete silence, save the low whirring of distant fans.

When he looked up, he said to me: “Can you imagine where you’d be if I didn’t?”