Chapter 28: Chapter twenty-seven

Thirteen years ago

 

When the test results came down, Eleven was in lifting weights in the gym alone. There was a time when finding more than a few minutes alone would have been a luxury at the Program, but those days were over. The candidates had more time to themselves as they got older, and not just because many of their peers had died in training accidents or been ‘exited’ from the Program over the years.

Oliver delivered Eleven’s results personally. Eleven took the folder from the older man and sat down at the weight bench to read through it. Oliver nodded and left without a word. Eleven thought that Oliver had a soft-spot for him, as he was his recruit, though he was under no illusions that it would stop Oliver from shooting him in the head if he failed the Program. But he didn’t fail, Eleven had passed and he was going to be a superhero. He hadn’t been that worried. Or, rather, he had been worried, but it had been a small and quiet feeling like all the others.

He didn’t get a breakdown of his scores in the different tests, but he could make an educated guess. He had let himself cut loose in the hand-to-hand combat test, and the instructor had been so impressed that he was confident he got full marks for that one. By contrast, his hacking skills were below what many of the other candidates were capable of and he had never really gotten the hang of infiltration in the way that Five had.

Five, as if drawn by thoughts of her, entered the gym where Eleven was still looking down at the file.

“Did you pass?” she asked, indicating the file in Eleven’s hands.

He nodded. “You?”

A visible tension seemed to go out of her and she nodded back. They had both known what it meant to fail the Program, and that their lives were on the line in the tests that they took. Eleven felt some small worry he hadn’t realized he felt drain away at the thought that Five was safe. He did love her after all, in his way.

He got up and moved to hug her. It seemed the thing to do.

Before he got to her, he noticed a tension seem to settle on Five’s shoulders again, and her posture changed in a way that would be almost imperceptible to those not specifically trained to look for it.

Eleven had seen that posture before, when Five had been called before Kessington Smythe, who unnerved even Eleven by his presence. Whatever had entered her mind, it made her uncomfortable in the same way that Smythe did.

Five set her jaw as if she were about to do something unpleasant.

Eleven had seen that before too. When the candidates had been building up their tolerance to venom, they had been made to allow a variety of snakes to bite them, and Five had set her jaw in the same way then. Whatever she was thinking about, it appealed to her as much as letting a black mamba sink its fangs into her arm.

“What is it?” Eleven asked.

“We need to talk,” Five said. “It’s about us.”

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“What about us?”

“We have to stop seeing each other.”

Eleven hadn’t been expecting that, and he wasn’t sure how to respond. All he could think to say was, “Why?”

“Now that we are going into the field it could get too dangerous.”

“More dangerous than taking on terrorists, warlords and cartels?” Eleven asked. “More dangerous than living at the discretion of Kessington Smythe?”

 Five shook her head, tears beginning to form in her eyes. “Not for us, for others. If I had to choose between saving you and saving the world, I don’t know that I could make the right choice. I can’t be thinking like that and be effective. The needs of the many have to come first and they won’t, not really, if I’m with you.”

She turned to leave but Eleven put a hand on her shoulder. He didn’t apply any force—Five had received the same training he had and if he tried to grab her, her instinct would be to respond with violence—he just placed a hand on her shoulder and spoke.

“I know you well enough to know when you’re lying, and if this is going to be the end, then I’d like to at least end it with the truth rather than a line you think will appeal to my psychology.”

Five let out a bitter little laugh. “For a man without emotions, you don’t have any trouble recognizing them in others.”

“I have emotions­—” Eleven began.

“I know,” Five said, speaking over him. “But not enough. What I said wasn’t exactly a lie, but it wasn’t the whole truth either. I am in love with you Eleven, but I’ve realized that you can never love me back. Not the way I love you. I know it’s not your fault, it’s just what you are, but I can’t be with someone who doesn’t feel what I do.”

“Oh,” Eleven said. He hadn’t considered that. He had told Five he loved her before, and she had said the same, but he hadn’t stopped to think about the vast difference between what those words meant to each of them. He tried to imagine what it would feel like to love as others did, in the all-consuming way that he had heard written of, but he had no real frame of reference. His emotions were simply different from other people’s, less important and immediate, and for all his mental training and prowess, he could no sooner change that about himself than he could flap his wings and fly.

Five walked away with nothing more to say. She seemed to hesitate for a moment at the door, but it was only for a moment and then she was gone.

Eleven could feel a horrible wound within him and, though it was distant and easy enough to ignore, he was confident that this was the worst emotion he would ever feel. The worst emotion that he could feel.

He was wrong.

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