The supposed meat quivered at the poke of my fork before reverting to its original form. I knew I'd eaten worse... I was having trouble remembering it, but I knew I had.

Ah, well I suppose that's the hazard of repressed memories.

I sat alone in the mess hall at the end of my first day in Project Freelancer. The other recruits sat huddled at a table across the hall, talking and laughing; they made it clear I wasn't welcome. I couldn't say I either cared or was surprised. It was something I was used to, and something I'd grown to encourage. How pitiful, I was, to be worrying over them.

Mired in thought as I was, I didn't hear the footsteps of heavy combat boots until they were only a few feet away. I kept my eyes on my food; I was in no mood to talk to anyone.

Go away, go away, go away, I chanted in my head.

The footsteps stopped at the edge of my table. Today it seemed, they weren't answering prayers.

"Can I sit?" My head snapped and my eyes automatically narrowed at his voice. New York.

"How's your nose?" I asked. Fatigue and irritability at this situation added a layer of sarcasm and venom that usually wasn't there.

He smiled. That ass had the gall to smile. So help me if he laughed...

"Look, Carolina, right? We got off to a bad start. Let's start fresh."

I looked at New York again. He wasn't wearing his armor anymore, which made him a few inches shorter and a bit slighter. He had one of those wiry builds, much like myself, almost. The bandage on his eye looked fresh...odd, the one from this morning hadn't looked in need of changing...for a bandage to be changed so frequent, the wound must be new.

"Hmpf. You might as well sit. Unless I can somehow stop you?" The ass smiled wider.

"Hey now," he said, seeing my darkening expression, "that was a smile. Not a laugh. Never said I couldn't smile."

I raised an eyebrow. He was insufferable. Unphaseable. "Next time, I'll be sure to be more thorough." I turned my attention back to my tray of food. I wasn't going to spend more time on him than I had to.

New York spoke before I could lift my fork to my mouth, "You don't want to eat that."

"Excuse me?" The idiot was not only going to pester me to universe's end, but was now going to keep me from my dinner? This wasn't happening.

"Well, maybe you do, I don't know, you're a strange girl. Perhaps you like eating garbage." He smiled again(did he do anything else?), only this time only one corner of his mouth rose. How cute, he thought he was clever.

"Well then, if I don't eat this, what do you propose I do eat? Or perhaps it is your plan to weaken me through malnutrition and allow training to kill me, leaving you without the new 'child freak' of the Project," I spat this out, turning his jest into something more serious and dark. Let him handle that. He stared at me then, his smile faded, something dark in his eye. I stared back, neither of us moving.

Finally New York pushed his chair back from the table. Now at least, I could get some peace. At least I thought so until I was yanked out of my chair.

A hand gripped my upper arm, and pulled me up, causing me to nearly trip myself in the legs of mt chair, knocking it to the ground,

"What the hell?" I shouted as I was spun around face to face with New York. I knew the clatter of my chair, and then my shout had attracted the attention of everyone in the hall. I was beyond caring. What the fuck was his problem?

New York loomed over me, staring me down. If he expected me to be intimidated by his height or glare, he was sorely mistaken. I was 5'3"; I expected people to loom over me. And I just stared right back, waiting for an answer to my question.

"Come with me," his voice was barely a whisper, tightened by...anger? He clutched my wrist and pulled me along behind him.

In all honesty, I could've stopped him. I could've never moved a foot. But...

But what had possessed him so? What was he so insistent on showing me? So I followed, allowing him to lead me by the wrist, easily keeping pace with his long strides.

At the end of the corridor he dragged me through, I saw a glimmer of an evening sky. The reds and oranges and pinks of an ending day. Where was he taking me? Outside? He stopped us in a balcony that extended out from the corridor, and pulled me forward.

"Look," he said, pointing out over the balcony's edge. We stood over the yard, looking down at Freelancers training in the fading light, the dying sun glinting off their armor.

I sighed. What was the point of this?

"What am I looking at, New York?"

"That's Oakley. Right there," he said pointing to an agent in blue and yellow armor. "She could shoot an apple off your palm from a 100m away with a battle riffle.

"That, over there, is West." He pointed to a man running laps in gray and violet armor. "West could tell you the force, angle, and trajectory needed to land a grenade in a mouse hole, and then do it, inside of 30 seconds.

"Over there, going through the course is Iowa," this time in brown and red armor. "Iowa can fade into a shadow and disappear in front of your face as easy as tell you the time."

He stopped then and just watched them, staring out with a touch of sorrow in his gaze, surprisingly somber.

"That's all very well and good, but what's your point, New York?"

"My point is... we're all freaks. Every single one of us. And if you weren't you wouldn't be here. And if you are a child, congratulations because you're here and everyone else can go fuck themselves if they think you shouldn't be."

I watched him as he gripped the banister in front of him, still looking out over the yard. Slowly, he turned his face to mine.

"Do you get it, Carolina?"

"Yeah, I think I do, New York," I whispered, oddly comforted by this enigma, this contradiction of a man - a man who acted ridiculous and arrogant, and then did this...

"Oh, and Carolina? It's York."