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Chapter 2:
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Day 142 - 1/18/11
On 4/28/11, it's the ABB, not the Empire. Do not approach; they fire on sight. A note to that effect has been made.
It may not matter; I don't know if the cycle will continue, given that I didn't fight her. I'll try to live normally from here on out; if I die and come back, then I know that the cycle continues, and if the cycle doesn't continue, I don't want to find out.
Gage rises slowly from bed, sewing the notebook into the inside of his shirt. He begins to walk toward the door.
Just before he reaches the door, he hears a piercing buzz, and his window explodes. The shard of glass fly all throughout the room; one goes through his heart.
Oh. Shatterbird.
A few moments later, Gage is dead.
A few moments later, Gage wakes up in bed with a relieved smile.
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There's nobody here.
It's 6:42 and the road is empty. There is no sound of footsteps; that consistent sound is gone. Gage can hear its rhythm in his head; two repeated beats, essentially uniform, getting louder as the distance decreases. But when his ears strain, it is not there.
Gage waits for the footsteps, the heavy clop-clop-clop of feet hitting the ground. He waits for shallow breaths, for the soft scratching of cotton on itself. They do not come.
It's 6:52 and road is empty. Gage's arms are resting at his sides; his nervousness has long melted into boredom, and that boredom is giving way to something else. Not quite longing, not quite disappointment. It is a quiet, muted sadness with nowhere to go.
There is a sound, now. Not the sound of jogging, or, indeed, the sound of movement at all. Gage swivels his head suddenly, unprepared for this sound.
It is the sound of sobbing.
He comes out slowly from behind the wall, keeping his body low. If she is there, she will notice; if it's not her, he would prefer to stay secretive.
A black-haired girl is walking slowly toward the corner where Gage is standing. Her shoulders are shaking up and down, tremors on top of deep, heavy breaths. Her head is tilted down; she can't even see twenty feet in front of her, to the corner where Gage is emerging. She pushes her glasses back up her face, and they rest there for a few minutes before starting to come down again.
"Hello?"
The girl's head jerks up, and she steps back. Her tears stop, and are drying against her face. Her hands come up.
"Who's there?" Her voice shakes.
"I . . . uhh . . . " Gage cannot answer. Of course he cannot answer. The truth is too cruel to say, and any lie would be too far removed from the truth to believe.
"I was just passing through" (in the loosest sense) "and I heard something. Are you doing alright?" He is almost sympathetic. The feeling floats gently up his body, toward his mind, but somewhere along the way it encounters a wall and dissipates.
"I'm fine, thanks." The girl starts walking, a bit more quickly than before. Gage does not move.
"You can . . . wherever you were going before. I don't need help or anything."
Gage waits for a fraction of a second more, and then something is wrong. Something about the way she talks, or the way she stands. Something. Gage starts walking toward the girl, and as he approaches her the feeling intensifies. Suddenly he breaks into a frantic run. Until she is five meters behind him, then ten, then twenty. Within five seconds she's disappeared behind the wall and Gage is breathing hard.
Empath, probably, he thinks. Got to take her out from a distance.
Gage jogs slowly back to the corner, and sees the girl turning another corner ahead. He pursues her as quickly as possible without her noticing, hoping that she'll end up on a long, straight stretch and he can finish it. He stalks her for a minute, getting more irritable all the while. He walks along the boardwalk, and he feels a thump on his chest. A man in a suit bounces off of his shoulder, repositioning himself to Gage's left, and turns around indignantly.
"Hey, watch where you're going, asshole!" An invitation to respond in kind. A response that will be met, and fought over. An exchange of aggressive words that will become insults, that will become a fight. A fight Gage can win.
But all a waste of time.
Gage stays silent and turns right. She must have heard the outburst, and he doesn't want to be recognized. His anger sits.
Another minute. Gage is still angry, but not at the man who ran into him. It's a latent, undirected anger that simmers under his skin and makes his whole body stand on edge. His lips are curled up into a subconscious snarl; the people he passes move out of his way with looks of indignation.
Gage never gets the chance to line up his shot. The girl arrives at her home and enters, presumably hoping to take a shower. Gage finds a bench in a nearby park, with a line-of-sight to the girl's door, and tries to cool down. Slow breaths, in and out. He has practiced meditation in his martial arts, and in a sense it is working.
Twenty minutes later the girl steps out of the door, and Gage's body shoots upright. He forces himself to look away; there's still a chance that she'll recognize him. She walks down her front steps and onto the sidewalk, her pace brisk but not too rapid. Gage follows her, keeping again to the shadows. Once she is three blocks from her house, Gage starts to jog, quiet but intent, staring at the small of the girl's back. He's covered half the distance when the girl increases her pace to something slightly faster than Gage's. He speeds up again, and again, she matches his pace, this time giving no delay. Gage breaks into a sprint; he's been honing his body and technique for over four months now, and the girl can no longer keep pace.
She takes a wild right turn and Gage plants hard on his left foot, springing off in her direction. She turns again, and Gage keeps pace. She turns twice more, and finds her self in a dead-end. Gage stops running when he sees her. She has her back to the wall, and her body is shaking all over. Gage reaches for his knife, but he has difficulty grabbing it. He is shaking too.
"Why are you following me?" The girl speaks first, although her voice is quivering.
"I . . . " Gage stops himself. His voice quivers too. He puts his knife-hand forward, the blade angling toward Taylor.
She understands; her eyes widen in shock. She brings her arms slowly to the level of her chest, and before Gage can react, she pushes, her arms moving forcefully toward Gage. The tension in her face relaxes by a fraction, and Gage freezes. Panic invades his face. A few seconds later and he is running again, running as fast as he can, because something is wrong with that girl.
A few seconds later, his run becomes a jog, and then he turns back abruptly. Empath, dammit. He breaks back into a run, trying frantically to find the closed alley where he had confronted her. By the time he gets there, she is, of course, gone.
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The bell rings at Winslow High School. 9:15. First period has just ended.
Gage walks through through the front door, which squeaks as he pushes it back. Perhaps a security guard should stop him; with his head shaved and muscles toned, he looks an awful lot like an E88 enforcer come to stir up trouble. But there is no guard today, and if there were, he would not be stopped.
He does not know where to find her, but he suspects that she will be there somewhere. Perhaps she won't be in school at all; given the path she was taking from her house, it seems most likely that she will be. Unless he scared her off, in which case . . .
He doesn't know what happens in that case.
She's probably here. The issue is finding her without getting picked up by her power. Gage walks forward, his eyes scanning the main hall, and he gets lucky; she's standing there, leaning against a wall.
No, not leaning. Pressing against a wall, as if she wants to be swallowed up. Gage panics for a moment; if this is a secondary power, if she can travel through walls, then there's no way he'll be able to get away. Of course, there's never been a chance that he'll be able to get away, but the instinct to panic hasn't left him yet.
But Gage looks for a second longer, and he understands. She is flanked by two other girls; one dark and athletic, the other small. Another stands in front of her; tall, pale, redheaded. Behind those three stands a fourth girl, looking almost forgotten, a brunette. The four other girls are smirking slightly. Gage walks slowly toward them.
"What an ugly bitch, don't you think, Emma?" The short girl's voice is piercing, but not painfully so. The tall girl nods, smirking wider for a moment.
Bullying. That must be why she's an empath. Gage's mind works as he listens.
"Yeah, just like her mom." The girl on the wall flinches slightly, but she doesn't try to move. No effort to fight back.
Gage has heard enough to understand the situation; he's all too familiar with this sort of thing. Even the best armor has a chink. Even his. The taunts continue, and Gage hovers at the periphery, careful not to come too close. He knows that they'll disperse eventually, and when they do, he'll have his chance.
But then the girl's head shoots up and she points. Directly at Gage. She steps forward, off of the wall for just a moment.
Three of the other girls look annoyed; the fourth is just curious.
"You." Her voice trembles for a moment, and then it is far too confident. The other people in the hall back away, and the girl takes another step.
"You were the one I ran into on my run today. You were the one who attacked me on the way to school. You wanted to kill me."
Gage stood silent. None of it was false, but he couldn't exactly confirm that; besides, his limbs didn't quite seem to be responding.
"My name is Taylor, and - "
One of the other girls takes action; the black one. She pulls a crossbow out of nowhere whatsoever and levels it at Gage.
"Don't shoot!" His yell is muffled by the number of people in the hall, but she hears. Gage puts his hands up.
Taylor turns around and sees the crossbow. She starts to put a hand up, and immediately retracts it, looking horrified. The girl with the crossbow fires; the bolt is flying toward Gage and he cannot move, cannot react. That feeling of panic comes for another moment. The bolt strikes right between his ribs, and his shirt is instantly stained with blood. The blood begins to spray from the wound; it coats his hands, and the leather cover of the journal sewn into his shirt.
A few moments later, Gage is dead.
A few moments later, Gage wakes up in bed, his hands above his head.
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