Gillian made her way through the cafeteria with slow, uncertain steps. The other children were talking and laughing; a wall of overwhelming, terrifying, nonsensical sound she did her best to ignore.
She held her lunch tray out in front of her, carefully balancing it with each trembling step as she advanced cautiously to the empty table in the back of the room. She sat there every day, alone, as far away from the sound and fury of the other kids as possible. Occasionally a particularly loud noise — a shrill laugh, the clatter of a lunch tray falling to the floor — would cause her head to twitch abruptly, as if she had been slapped. Yet she was always careful not to drop her tray when this happened.
When she was younger she had stayed behind in the classroom when the lunch bell rang while the others ran off to the cafeteria. Hendel or Miss Sanders would bring lunch to her and she would eat at her desk in the blessed silence of solitude. But she didn't do that anymore. She was trying to fit in.
Gillian was painfully aware that she was different, and more than anything, she wanted to be normal. But the other kids scared her. They were so quick. So loud. They were always touching. The boys slapped one another on the back or traded punches in the shoulder; sometimes they pushed and shoved each other, laughing loudly at jokes she didn't understand. The girls would lean in close together, cupping a hand to their lips then pressing it against a friend's ear to whisper secrets. They would squeal and giggle, clutching one another's wrist or forearm, or clasping a friend's hand between their own. Other times she saw them braiding each other's hair. She couldn't imagine what that was like; to live in a world where physical contact didn't cause the flesh to erupt with burning fire, or sting with freezing cold.
At least nobody teased her or made fun of her — not to her face, anyway. They mostly avoided her, keeping their distance. Yet Gillian couldn't help but notice their expressions when they looked in her direction— confusion, mistrust, bewilderment. She was some kind of freak, best left alone. But she was trying. Every day she suffered the ordeal of walking across the cafeteria, carrying her tray slowly and carefully to her table in the corner. She hoped it would get easier over time, become more bearable through repetition and routine. So far it hadn't.
Reaching her destination, she sat down in the same chair she sat in every day, with her back against the wall so she could look out over the cafeteria. Then she began to eat with slow, deliberate bites, staring out at the other children with terror and yearning, unable to comprehend their world, yet hoping she could one day be like them.
Nick watched Gillian as she made her way down the central aisle of the cafeteria. As she passed by their table, he let out a sharp, yelping bark, like a dog that had been stepped on. The girl flinched, but otherwise didn't acknowledge him. And, much to his dismay, she didn't drop her tray.
"Ha! Told you!" Seshaun gleefully cackled.
Glumly, Nick handed over his chocolate cake, the forfeiture for losing the bet.
"What's her problem, anyway?" he asked, a general question thrown out to the half-dozen boys assembled at the table.
"She's got like a mental condition or something," one offered. "I heard Hendel talking about it once."
Nick grimaced at the name. He was still mad at Hendel for putting him into lockdown.
"Why is she in our class if she's retarded?" he wanted to know.
"She's not retarded, jack-wad," Seshaun answered. "She's just weird."
"I bet she's not even biotic," Nick continued, staring at her.
She was staring back, though he couldn't actually tell if she was looking at him or someone else in the room.
"She comes to all the training sessions," one of the boys countered.
"Yeah, but she just sits there. She never does any of the exercises."
"That's because she's weirdV Seshaun repeated.
He was pretty sure she was staring at him now. He waved his arm wildly above his head, but it elicited no reaction.
"Waving to your girlfriend?"
Nick replied by flipping Seshaun off, a gesture he had only recently learned.
"Why don't you go over and give her a kiss?" Seshaun taunted him.
"Why don't you lick my nut-sack?"
"Just go sit down and talk to her. See what she does."
"Hendel said nobody's allowed to bother her," one of the others chimed in.
"Screw Hendel," Nick replied automatically, though he did glance back over his shoulder to the front of the cafeteria, where the security chief was sitting with some of the teachers.
"Okay, then," Seshaun pressed him. "Go over there. Talk to her."
Nick looked around the table at the faces of the other boys, grinning eagerly as they waited to see if he'd accept the dare.
"Do it and I'll give your cake back," Seshaun offered, literally sweetening the deal.
Nick hesitated, uncertain. Then his stomach grumbled, making the decision for him. He pushed himself away from the table and jumped to his feet before he could change his mind. He glanced back quickly to make sure Hendel was still busy talking with the other teachers, then ran down the aisle to Gillian's table.
Skidding to a stop, he plopped himself down in the chair across from her. She looked straight at him but didn't say anything. Suddenly he felt awkward and embarrassed.
"Hey," he said.
She didn't reply, but merely kept chewing the food in her mouth. He noticed her plate was still mostly full: a bowl of soup, two sandwiches, an apple, a banana, a piece of vanilla cake, and half a quart of milk.
The amount of food on her plate wasn't unusual— one of the first things the kids learned was that biotics needed to eat more than other people. But Nick couldn't believe the manner in which she was consuming her meal. Every item on her plate had a bite taken out of it, even the cake.
He watched in fascinated disbelief as she took a bite from one of her sandwiches, set it down, chewed her food slowly and deliberately, swallowed, then picked up the second sandwich to repeat the process. After a single bite she moved on to the apple, then the banana, then the cake, then a drink of milk, then the soup, then back to the first sandwich again. She didn't say a word the entire time.
"Why are you eating like that?" he finally asked, bewildered.
"I'm hungry," she replied. Her voice was flat and toneless, leading Nick to believe she hadn't meant it as a joke.
"Nobody eats like that," he told her. When she didn't reply he added, "You're supposed to eat the soup and sandwiches first. Then the fruit. The cake comes last."
She stopped mid-bite, the apple poised halfway between her lips and the table. "When do I drink the milk?" she asked in the same monotone voice.
Nick just shook his head. "You cannot be for real."
The nonanswer seemed to satisfy her, because she resumed eating, holding to the familiar pattern of one bite from each item before moving on.
Turning around, Nick looked back at the table with Seshaun and the others. They were laughing and making obscene gestures at him. He turned back to Gillian; she hadn't seemed to notice.
"How come you never do anything in biotic class?" he asked her.
She looked uncomfortable, but didn't answer.
"Do you even know how? I'm pretty good at bi-otics. I can show you a trick, if you want."
"No," she said simply.
Nick scowled. He felt like there was something going on that he didn't quite understand, like she was making fun of him somehow. Then he got an idea.
"Careful with your milk," he said, a nasty grin spreading across his face. "Looks like it's going to spill."
As the words left his mouth, he reached out with his mind and pushed. The milk toppled over, drenching the sandwiches and slopping over the tray onto the table before running off the edge to spill on Gillian's lap.
And then Nick found himself flying backward.
Jacob Berg, the Academy's math professor, was in the middle of telling a joke about an asari and a volus who walked into a krogan's bar when, out of the corner of his eye, Hendel saw something that was simultaneously incredible and terrifying.
Near the back of the cafeteria, Nick was hurtling across the room. He flew twenty feet through the air before slamming down on one of the tables. The force of the landing launched lunch trays into the air and snapped the table's legs, sending it crashing to the floor. Several students seated at the table screamed in surprise, and then a stunned hush fell over the room as everyone looked to see who was responsible.
Hendel was as shocked as any of them to see Gillian standing in the back of the room, her hands raised to the sky and her face twisted into a mask of rage and fury. And then, to his horror, he realized that she wasn't done.
The table in front of her flipped over, the empty chairs surrounding it cartwheeling away like they had been kicked by some invisible giant. Lunch trays all around the cafeteria shot straight up to the ceiling, sending a shower of food and cutlery over the students as they came back down.
Panic set in. Screaming students leaped from their seats and raced to the exit at the far end of the cafeteria, knocking one another down in their scrambling haste to escape. Their now-empty chairs were swept up and tossed haphazardly about the room, adding to the chaos.
Hendel was on his feet, moving against the tide of the crowd in a desperate attempt to get closer to Gillian. As big as he was, it was still difficult to wade through the sea of bodies trying to flee the scene.
"Gillian!" he shouted, but his voice was drowned out by the screams of the mob.
Nick was still lying on the floor amid the ruins of the table on which he had landed. Hendel dropped to one knee to check on him: he was unconscious, but breathing.
Leaping back to his feet, he continued to press forward, shoving kids roughly aside in his desperation until he broke free of the crowd. Less than thirty feet now separated him from Gillian.
The space between them looked like a tornado had passed through: overturned tables and chairs were strewn about, the floor was slick with spilled food, milk and juice. Gillian still stood at the back wall, her hands still raised up. She was shrieking; a high-pitched, keening wail that sent a shiver down Hen-del's neck.
"Gillian!" he cried out, running toward her. "Stop this right now!"
He jumped over a downed table, his feet almost sliding out from under him when he landed on the slick remains of someone's lunch on the other side. He pinwheeled his arms for balance, only to be knocked down by a flying chair that struck him from his blind side.
The blow stung but it wasn't disabling. He scrambled back to his feet, his sleeve and knees covered in milk and bits of crushed, soggy bread.
"Gillian!" he shouted again. "You have to stop!"
She didn't respond, didn't even seem to know he was there. He started moving forward again, his hand dropping down to the stunner at his belt. But he hesitated, and instead of drawing it, he tried one last time to reach her.
"Please, Gillian! Don't make me—" his words were cut off as he was struck by an invisible wave of biotic force. It hit him in the chest like an anvil dropping from on high, knocking the breath from his lungs. He was lifted off his feet and shot straight back like he was on a rope being pulled from behind. He crashed through toppled tables and chairs, banging his head and slamming his elbow so hard it made his right hand go numb.
He came to rest twenty feet later, amid a pile of chairs and lunch trays. Groggy, he struggled to his feet. The effort made him cough, and he tasted blood in his mouth.
Hendel rook a moment to gather himself, then drew upon his own biotic abilities, releasing them a second later as he threw up a powerful high-gravity barrier to shield him from flying furniture and further biotic attacks from Gillian.
Crouching behind the shimmering wall of the barrier, Hendel fumbled with the stunner at his belt. His right hand was still numb from the blow to his elbow, and he had to reach across with his left to grab the weapon.
"Please, Gillian, don't make me do this!" he called out one more time, but the girl couldn't hear him above the sound of her own screams.
There was a sudden burst of light and heat a few feet to his side. Snapping his head around, he saw an astonishing sight: a swirling vortex of concentrated dark energy was launching vertically in a pillar toward the ceiling, building to a critical threshold before collapsing in upon itself.
A biotic with advanced military training, Hendel instantly recognized what had happened: Gillian had created a singularity — a subatomic point of nearly infinite mass, with enough gravitational force at the center to warp the fabric of the space-time continuum. The nearby tables and chairs began to slide across the floor, drawn inexorably toward the epicenter of the cosmic phenomenon that had suddenly manifested in the middle of the space station's cafeteria.
Moving on instinct, Hendel popped up from behind the barrier, fighting to aim his weapon against the rapidly mounting gravitational pull emanating from the singularity. Locking on his target, he fired. The stunner found its mark and the singularity vanished with a loud clap and a sharp outrush of trapped air. The girl's screams cut off instantly as electrical impulses shot through her. She appeared to stand up on her toes, her head thrown back as her muscles went rigid. Then her body convulsed, sending her limbs into a brief spastic dance before she collapsed unconscious to the floor.
Hendel rushed to her side, calling on his radio for medical backup.
Gillian muttered something in her sleep. Kahlee, sitting on the edge of her hospital bed, instinctively reached out to place a comforting hand on her brow, only remembering at the last second to pull it back.
She wondered if the girl was waking up. Nearly ten hours had passed since she'd unleashed her biotic powers in the cafeteria, and the doctor said it would take six to twelve hours for her to regain consciousness after being hit with the stunner.
Kahlee leaned in and softly whispered, "Gillian? Can you hear me?"
The girl responded to her voice, rolling over from her side onto her back. Her eyes fluttered then snapped open wide, taking in the unfamiliar surroundings with confused terror.
"It's okay, Gillian," Kahlee assured her. "You're in the hospital."
The girl sat up slowly, looking around, her brow wrinkled in confusion.
"Do you know how you got here?" Kahlee asked her.
Gillian folded her hands in her lap and nodded, her eyes lowered so she wouldn't have to look at Kahlee.
"The cafeteria. I did something bad. I hurt people."
Kahlee hesitated, uncertain of how much detail the girl could handle. There had been a lot of property damage, and a number of twisted ankles and swollen fingers from people in the fleeing crowd who had fallen and been stepped on. The most serious injuries were to Nick, who had suffered a concussion and a bruised spine, though he was expected to make a full recovery.
"Everybody's okay now," Kahlee assured her. "I just want to know what happened. Did someone make you angry?"
"Nick spilled my milk," she answered, though Kahlee already knew this from talking to the boy.
"Why did that make you so angry?"
The girl didn't answer. Instead, she said, "Hendel was yelling at me." She frowned and crinkled up her brow. "He was mad at me."
"Not mad. Just scared. We were all scared."
Gillian was silent, then nodded, as if to say she understood.
"Do you remember anything else about what happened, Gillian?"
The girl's face went blank, like she was slipping deep inside herself, trying to dig up the answers.
"No," she finally answered. "I only remember Hendel yelling at me."
Kahlee figured as much. They'd taken readings from Gillian while she was unconscious, pulling the data from her smart chips to see if it could tell them anything. But what they'd seen didn't make any sense. There was a sudden spike in her alpha wave activity in the days leading up to her outburst, but no logical explanation for the increase. Personally, Kahlee thought it could have been some emotional trigger: her alpha levels had climbed the day after her father's visit.
"How come Hendel's not here?" Gillian asked, her voice guilty.
Kahlee answered with a half-truth. "He's very busy right now."
As the security chief, he was still dealing with the fallout of what had happened in the cafeteria. All attempts were being made to downplay the incident: a statement had been released to the media, staff and students were being debriefed, and parents were being notified. As a further precaution, Grissom Academy was still in full emergency lockdown. Yet as busy as he was, she knew there was something else keeping him away right now. It could have been anger, disappointment, or even guilt. . quite likely it was a mix of all three. However, she wasn't about to try and explain all that to a twelve-year-old.
"When will he come see me?"
"Soon," Kahlee promised. "I'll tell him you're waiting."
Gillian smiled. "You like Hendel."
"He's a good friend."
The girl's smile broadened even further. "Will you two get married some day?"
Kahlee laughed out loud in spite of herself. "I don't think Hendel wants to get married."
Gillian's smile slipped, but didn't disappear completely. "He should marry you," she insisted, matter-of-factly. "You're nice."
This wasn't the time to explain why that would never happen, so Kahlee decided to change the subject.
"You have to stay in this room for a few days, Gillian. Do you understand?"
This time the smile vanished completely and she nodded. "I want to sleep now."
"Okay," Kahlee told her. "I might not be here when you wake up, but if you need anything you push that red button over there. A nurse will come help you."
The girl glanced over at the call button dangling from the side of her bed and nodded again. Then she lay back down and closed her eyes.
Kahlee waited until Gillian was asleep before she stood up and left her alone in the room.