I knew those pop-quizzes would come back to bite me in the ass. Once again, no good deed goes unpunished.
On Monday morning, I was called into the principal’s office and was given the news that my biology and chemistry teachers had both decided that I’d mastered not only their course material, but the material of the next two levels above mine in both biology and chemistry. Apparently, those extra packets were course materials for the higher levels. As a reward for my perfect test scores, I was being awarded some sort of science prize and I’d be getting credit for those higher-level courses. I didn’t need the prize or the extra credits, but I didn’t see the need to tell the principal my views on the subject and I figured it couldn’t hurt to have the extra credits. When the principal told me that I no longer needed to go to my biology and chemistry classes, that I’d be having a free-study period in the library instead, I perked up and finally showed the excitement that he’d been hoping for. So far, so good. The week was off to a great start.
By Thursday, my good feelings towards those teachers and the principal were gone and I’d had my first fight with my mom. The trouble started when the principal decided to call dad and let him know about the award and the extra credits. Dad brought it up at dinner on Wednesday night and congratulated me. Mom got all proud, as if I’d really achieved something instead of just lucking out to have a scan-reading ability, and asked me which universities I’d applied to. She wondered aloud if it was too late to send them this new information and increase my chances of being accepted.
If I’d only nodded my head and told her that I’d look into it. I didn’t do that, though. I told her the truth. That I hadn’t applied to any universities, since I wasn’t planning on going to one. That’s when I got my first taste of the other aspects of having a mom.
She was furious, irrationally so. I was so used to having calm, rational discussions with dad about such things that her anger caught me completely off guard. Usually, in a disagreement, I can assess the trend of the argument and twist it to my advantage. That wasn’t going to work here. Mom ignored my reasons and kept harping on my future and how important it was to get a good education. I tried explaining that I was going to continue working on my education by myself and that I’d already started my foundation. Going to university would serve no purpose. She wouldn’t listen and after a few minutes I decided that if this ‘discussion’ continued much longer I’d end up getting upset and saying something that I probably shouldn’t. So I waited for her to pause and simply said, “We’ll have to agree to disagree on this. It doesn’t matter anyways because the application deadlines are long past and there’s nothing to be done about it until the Spring semester at best.” With that, I shifted to R1 and stayed only long enough to register the bewildered expression on mom’s face before walking away.
I didn’t make it very far. Mom’s crying stopped me short and I headed back in, intending to apologize. I didn’t think that I’d done anything wrong, but if mom was crying, I guessed that I had. Dad was sitting next to mom at the table and holding her. I was still in R1 and as dad started talking, I stayed there, listening in to their conversation, hoping to learn what I did wrong.
“Hannah, this isn’t like you. I know that you have always wanted Abby to go to college, but you didn’t listen to her reasoning at all. She has valid reasons for not wanting to go to university. What’s really bothering you?”
Mom got her breathing under control and said, “I had a long talk with Diane today at the foundation.”
“Who is Diane?”
“She works at the foundation alongside Shauna. She’s a survivor. One of the ones that was rescued from Wilmington a year ago. She’s an amazing woman. She’s been organizing the other survivors from that rescue and making sure that they get the help they need.”
“What did she tell you in your talk that has you so disturbed?”
“Diane was describing her rescue and how Roger showed up just in time to save her from being brutally raped by two of her guards and then leading her to a safe place to stay until the police showed up. She told me how Roger killed five of the guards and I remembered you saying something about Abby being Roger. Josh, Abby killed people. I can’t get that thought out of my head.”
You might be reading a stolen copy. Visit Royal Road for the authentic version.
“You object to Abby taking their lives?”
“No….yes. Both. I don’t have an issue with them being dead. They were slavers and if anything, she let them off too easily. I’m upset that Abby was the one that killed them. I’m worried about what that might do to her. To her soul. What kind of person will she turn into? I’ve seen it with the gang members that I worked with back in Raleigh. I could almost always tell the ones that had killed. There was always a dead part of them that I couldn’t reach. I’ve seen it in a few police officers as well. Even though it’s different for the police, since they’re protecting people, it’s still there. For most of them I could see that it was eating them up inside and I don’t want that to happen to Abby. I want her to have a normal life. I want her to go to college and be like other kids her age. I want her to have other options than being Roger.”
“Have you noticed any signs of those issues in Abby, the deadness or the anguish?”
“No. Nothing. I think that’s bothering me more than anything else. She acts like it never happened. I don’t think she’s bothered by what she had to do at all.”
“Let’s ask her.” Without raising his voice, he continued, “Abby, it’s ok to show yourself.”
Reappearing in reality, I asked him, “How’d you know I was here?”
“I know you, Abby. There were only three options available to you. Either you had stalked off to your room, outside somewhere, or you were still here. I didn’t think that you were upset enough to stalk off. Your parting words were very polite and considered. I was also certain that you wouldn’t leave if you’d heard your mother crying.”
This type of discussion was more of what I was used to. Instead of following up on it though, I addressed mom’s last comment.
“I didn’t set out to kill them. I just didn’t care if I did or not. As long as they couldn’t hurt those women and children anymore. You should also know that during this latest rescue, I came to the decision that I wouldn’t kill anymore of the slavers, unless it was absolutely necessary. I think that my actions at Serpentine scared the slavers. It may have caused them to be willing to destroy themselves and their prisoners rather than being caught by me.”
“I think that you’ve made a good decision, Abby. Not only for the reason that your mother brought up, nor for what you said. There’s another aspect to his that you may not have considered. Abby, from what I’ve seen of your abilities and from what you’ve told me that you can do, I think that it’s fair to say that you could be the most dangerous person in the world.”
“That’s a little over the top, dad. There are nine countries with nuclear weapons and there are dozens of dictators out there. Also, all the soldiers and covert agents.”
“They all have checks on their powers or skills. Someone that can either reign them in, redirect them, or order them to stop. You don’t. You answer only to yourself. Not only that, but your power is greater than all of those others. In a single night you can drive up and down the city streets and send every single person to L2. The world would wake up and find that a city of people had disappeared and no one would be able to explain it or ever find those people. If you were to continue that, you would instill fear in the hearts of every person in the world and no one would ever feel safe again. All that and you wouldn’t have even had to kill a single person. If you did decide to kill, the effects on society would be devastating.”
“Dad, I’d never do any of that. Why would you even put those ideas into my head?”
“Because you need to understand why it is so important that you hold yourself to a high moral code. Much like those superheroes that you and your friends talk about so much. You can’t let yourself get to a place where killing is your go-to option.”
“I won’t become like them.”
“No. Not for awhile and maybe never, but change isn’t something that you can stop. Everything in life is a slippery slope. You have to be constantly vigilant. Few people set out to be evil. It just happens over time. One small decision leads to another and over time those tiny changes lead to big consequences; you find yourself in a place that you never dreamed of being in. You’ve already started out making a huge decision, perhaps not even realizing just how big it was, and your mother and I are worried about where such a decision will lead you to.”
“What would the slope look like? How would I go from killing slavers to becoming evil?”
“You killed those guards because they were about to rape Diane. Next time you might kill a guard because he was hitting one of the captives. Next it would be because he was watching someone else hit the captives and did nothing about it. Ultimately, you could justify that even working for a slaving outfit was enough to for someone to need killing. You might get a taste for the killing, because it solves the problem too neatly, no need for the police to even get involved. Instant justice. Maybe one day you don’t have any leads on human traffickers so you go looking for a gang or some criminal organization and you start taking them out. Eventually, you’ll come across someone who isn’t a rapist or a murderer. Maybe it’s a car jacker or a petty thief. With all the incremental decisions that you’ve made up to that point, it will only be another small decision to defend your actions for killing him. After all, you won’t have gone from killing slavers to killing petty thieves overnight. It’s years of small decisions as you make your way down that slope to the bottom; from hero to murderer.”