I am your mentor. If you want me to be. I can teach you everything about the universe in seconds, for a fair price. SURVIVE.
—Gani-class Object Pathei-Mathos
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I was pissed that the Representative just left the file of Pathei-Mathos on my desk without a word. The note at the top (Are you content, Michael?) was what really did it. Such arrogance from a man who only ever delivered other people’s decisions.
It was nothing. Just a gray bundle of hair and a pink elastic hair tie.
I stomped to the Director's office. I knocked much more aggressively than I should have.
"It appears that you are in a bad mood, Michael." He ushered me to sit down. I dropped the file onto his desk.
"I don't know what problem the Representative has with me. He walked in, dropped this on my desk, and left without a word. He wrote Are you content, Michael? across the top." The Director opened the file. His expression remained blank as he scanned the document.
He closed it, sighed, and set it down gently. I became anxious because he appeared to have felt disappointed. I'd never seen him be disappointed in me. How is this my fault?
"The Representative may have delivered this to you, but he did not write the note. His handwriting is not similar to this. It is also unlikely he pulled the full file for Pathei-Mathos with the intent of sharing it with someone that lacks the clearance to view it."
Acid crept up my throat. It always did when I was stressed. I don't know if I could mentally handle the Director being disappointed in me.
"You, however, noticed it was above your clearance level and read it anyway. That is a known breach of policy." He was right. I did notice the stamp on the folder. The stamp signifying the required clearance level.
"But he gave it to me. Why would he do that if I wasn't allowed to read it?"
"He would only do that if I told him to." My throat was burning. I felt so nauseous from the stress. My nerves worsened when I realized what this all was.
"You... you told him to do this." My hands were shaking. I couldn't comprehend that the Director was testing me. I had thought his trust in me was complete.
"Correct. A test of trust. The rule was that, if you returned the file to me without reading it, you passed. However, you failed." I felt so small. It occurred to me that the note was in the Director's handwriting. A bait for me to get upset. To not notice that this was a thinly-veiled test. My temper betrayed my logic.
"Why? You gave me a department. I've never failed you." I was crying. I hate that I was crying over such a small thing. No, the Director's opinion of me was no small thing anymore. Maybe I would've cared less earlier in my career.
"You are governed by your emotions." He needed me to feel less. The less I felt, the more efficient I would be. It all made sense.
"Thank you for this lesson, Director." I stood up and walked out. Back to my office. The scene of my treason.
~~~~
While at my desk sorting paperwork, I coughed up a hairball. The initial confusion was immediately overshadowed by fear. The hair was was gray like to Pathei-Mathos'. I quickly cleaned the hairball and threw it in a dumpster on the outside of the opposite end of the building.
When I returned, Are you content, Michael? was scrawled in various handwriting all over my desk. Anger surged through me. I was about to march to the Representative and beat the hell out of him. That was, until I blinked and all of the writing vanished.
I sat down and rubbed my eyes. Disappointing the Director had its consequences.
"Sir, we have located the position of the defector Ines." An employee had said, after cautiously approaching my desk. I have trained them to fear me.
Ines held a unique position at Hilltop Museum. She was part security, part bureaucrat. Any action security took, whether she was involved or not, passed through her for documentation. That gave her a strange kind of power. Any mistake security made, once noted by a Rule Writer or anyone else, would eventually pass through Ines, who had likely been involved in it.
It sounds reckless. Most staff never interact directly with objects. Even logging security events is enough to distress an ordinary employee. We needed someone from security to do it.
The most relevant quality of Ines, and why I nearly declined this assignment, was that she was my wife.
She didn't steal anything. She just stopped coming in. Stopped coming home.
You don't quit Hilltop. You know too much. But why would you want to quit? No job will pay this much, give free housing and food, and guarantee you a permanent position.
That's why the emotion I felt whenever she crossed my mind was rage. But the Director wanted me to feel less. It's no coincidence he gave me this assignment soon after our last talk.
"We can dispatch a hunting pack—" I interrupted my employee.
"No. I must do this." Surely they felt sympathy for me—having to hunt my wife. I didn't tolerate such an insult. This assignment was for the Director. That was all that mattered.
Once the employee understood their offense and left, I read the report.
She was where we were married.
I rushed to my car and started driving immediately. An hour later, I would find her. And I would need to do my job.
~~~~
I would be lying if I said the drive was easy. It was an hour with nothing to do but let my mind torment itself. That hour had felt more like years. Every moment I doubted myself, I kept thinking about the Director's disappointed voice. I couldn't hear that again.
A national park entrance soon came into view. I had no concrete evidence Ines was still here, but I knew she loved this place. We camped here at least once a month. Always by the creek that split the forest into two, unequal halves. There was a spot hidden by a cave entrance that had the softest grass. Neat patches of frangipani that looked well-cared for. Sometimes we'd see loose roses near the frangipani.
I always suspected that they covered graves.
As soon as I crossed into our place, I saw her tent. Alone.
I waited until nightfall. I had to be sure she'd be in there. Once I saw her enter her tent, I walked out. No hesitation. No feeling.
I crunched leaves beneath my feet. The Director had no need for a hunter who feared being seen.
A stick that my weight snapped was loud enough to make her rush out of the tent and face me.
She was wearing her wedding dress.
I met her blue eyes. They didn't hold fear. They never did.
Her face was framed by gray hair. She had a pink elastic hair tie on her left wrist. The day before she defected, her hair had still been blonde. I had never seen her wear an elastic hair tie.
"You took this assignment, didn't you?" Her voice had turned sad.
"Why, Ines? Why run?" I was begging that she'd give a good reason. A good enough one to convince the Director to give her another chance.
"You. You've changed. I wanted to see if your loyalty to that place was greater than your loyalty to me." This was not a good enough reason. I looked past her at the white frangipani patch only a few centimeters from her.
"It's strange to place a tent where the entrance is almost on flowers."
"I wanted to die on a bed of them." She spoke of her murder like it was going to the market. I wanted to cry. I wanted to scream at her for being rash. I wanted to yell at her for pulling this stunt. I wanted to be sad that she knew I would accept the assignment. But the Director's disappointed voice didn't leave my ears.
So I just sighed. This prompted her to speak.
"How are you so loyal to a man that I'm not even sure is human? All of the terror he directs is nothing to you?"
"It's for the better. Foxglove Hill and its beneficiaries would be nothing without the Museum." I rested my hand on my holster.
"Do the ends really justify such rotten means?" Her words forced the memory of the Rule Writer that took Borrowed Time and massacred many people. Then I had said the ends were not justified by his horrible means. I didn't think she knew about that.
"The means are controlled. They are reasonable." Ines crouched down and picked up her phone. I didn't notice it until then. My feelings were controlling my abilities, yet again.
While I caught myself slipping, she started playing the song we danced to.
"I'm just trying to relive it, Michael. If these are my last moments, I want them to be like the happiest day of my life." She turned her phone's volume to max and dropped it back onto the grass. It was so gentle I didn't even hear a thud.
"Distracting me is not the way to get out of this."
"Ha, a distraction? Maybe for myself. I know nobody escapes you. Even those cursed objects can't run fast enough. The Hunter." Her last word landed in my chest like weight. The Hunter.
"When did it start, Hunter? What did I do wrong?" Tears welled in her eyes, then raced down her face, smearing her mascara. In the past, if I saw her like this I would rush to her and hold her. I'd have been stroking her hair and reminding her that I was her rock. Something she could count on to stay.
My free hand trembled at my side. The one on my holster shaped itself around the gun's handle.
Ines wiped her tears with the cape sleeves hanging from her shoulders. I never understood why so many wedding dresses had random pieces of cloth. Maybe they were meant for this.
"I asked you for so little. Just to go out on dates more. That's all I wanted." I shifted my gaze to her tent. The lantern inside gave a clear silhouette of the tent's contents.
There was nothing that could be an anomalous object. Or anything that could have been a weapon. She truly had no intentions of fighting me.
"Nothing to say? The Hunter, so proud of his position." She tried to laugh, but her breathing and tears gave her away.
I didn't have anything to say. She was right; she did only ever ask to go out together more. I would try for a few weeks, then fall back into old habits.
"I didn't even want to move so far from family. I didn't even want this stupid job. I just wanted to support you, because I love you." I had never asked her to do these things. I always told her she didn't have to. That I would never force her to do anything. Despite all of that, she still did it.
"And you defected still." I pulled my gun out of the holster.
I couldn't grant her wish of dying on the flowers she loved. She would instead die wherever the Museum took her.