The cafeteria table was a quiet oasis in the middle of a bustling cacophony of teenagers and young adults. It was not calm, however.
In fact, the silence hung over the table like a heavy black shadow—even Walter, who was notorious for being able to stammer his way through even the densest of atmospheres, was dead silent. He was looking anywhere but the blonde-haired woman sitting opposite from the Greek giant.
Walter had become relatively good friends with Ajax, mostly bonding over his willingness to at least try some of the thing that Walter loved—unlike a plethora of friends who had turned up their noses at the man. Walter’s relationship with Aaliyah was more… strained. She was nice to him and humoured him most of the time. They had eaten together in her room a number of times, just hanging out and watching whatever was on the television at the time. Walter wasn’t even going to pretend that he wasn’t attracted to her, but he also wasn’t a fool.
Aaliyah was playing a game.
It had taken Walter a little longer to figure it out than Ajax, and only then with the man’s help, dropping some hints here and there—but Walter had finally managed to get his mind around the prospect that someone wasn’t being entirely truthful with him. In reality, him realising that Aaliyah was playing a social game of intrigue didn’t change much of anything. They still hung out, and it seemed like Walter was the only one that Aaliyah was even remotely comfortable around.
But it was when the entire group was together that her ‘true’ colours showed themselves. Walter looked nervously between the two teammates, one pointedly staying passive and the other boring holes into the other’s forehead with their eyes. It looked like, at any moment, Aaliyah was going to snatch at the man’s throat and tear open his neck. The smouldering anger between them was palpable, though none of the busy tables around them seemed to notice or care one whit. Walter, though, was afraid that he’d see a murder occur today.
“Uh,” he stammered out, knowing full well that if he didn’t speak, the silence would remain, “what’s, uh, going on?” The heated eyes of the blonde woman turned on him for a moment, before returning to their intended target. Walter swore that he could feel the trail of fire across the skin of his face where the blazing orbs had travelled. Ajax sighed with a helping of exasperation, about to speak when the waiter came over and placed down two plates and four sachets. There was a momentary silence as the entire team downed their energy jelly simultaneously, then Walter and Mirah turned to their plates.
Walter always wondered why Mirah received food when she never ordered—but when he’d ask, he would only get the customary shrug along with Mirah’s stoic visage. As Mirah picked up her warm and gooey cookie, Ajax continued his thought—voice just as exasperated.
“I may have picked a fight with someone, and Aaliyah is unhappy about it.” He intoned, his voice containing only a little accusation. Walter had never heard the man be so peeved, even when Walter knew he was annoying the man while they were playing games—letting his competitiveness get the best of him. Walter shuddered as Aaliyah’s eyes went from burning to deathly cold as she stared at Ajax, something past a simple fury.
“Ajax. We will talk about this in an entirely normal tone, with no raising of voices or straining. Is that understood?” The whole table turned to stare at Aaliyah who, despite the cold fury in her eyes, held a calm and gentle voice—starkly contrasting the commanding words.
The whole table, even Mirah, nodded their heads. The group’s collective attention focused on the usually flippant and snark-filled woman. Walter could see the spots of dark, almost black, crimson dance on her skin, but being quashed as soon as the discolouration appeared.
“The reason I am angry,” she began, holding back more crimson splotches, “is not that you picked a fight, or even that you went to help that girl—but who you picked a fight with. You have no idea what you just did to all of us.” Walter was thoroughly confused, looking to Mirah who was also out of the loop. The normally stoic girl was now showing a hit of concern in her brow, sharing an uneasy glance with Walter.
“Who?” Mirah spoke first, cutting straight to the bone. Ajax furrowed his thick brow, finding a hint of nervousness within himself, influenced by his team’s sudden deathly seriousness.
“Jeremy Baxter.” Ajax said quietly. Immediately, Walter felt a boulder drop inside of him, falling deep down into the pit of his stomach, finding just the right spot to create one of the greatest rushes of fear he’d ever experienced.
“No… you didn’t right?” Walter said shakily, his voice rising slightly, earning him a warning glance from Aaliyah. Walter closed his eyes, trying to push away the fear before failing and letting loose a sorrowful expletive. Aaliyah didn’t bother with a warning.
Ajax looked around the table to take account of his group’s state; Aaliyah sat in her chair, as naturally as could be, but with a pair of angry eyes. Her long blond hair had been pulled into an unkempt bun, lending to the casual mask she wore. Mirah and Walter were not so subtle. Mirah, for her part, looked more worried than he had ever seen her in a face-to-face interaction—unless you counted the screaming a few nights ago. Her posture, however, never swayed from the slumped and small ‘don’t look at me’ special. Walter on the other hand—just looked beaten, anxious and sad. Ajax was almost worried that the younger man would start crying then and there.
“So,” Ajax said, doing his best to assume the same nonchalant attitude as Aaliyah, “obviously I’ve screwed up and I have no idea what I’ve done. I’ve brought this down on us and I’m truly sorry, but now we need to think as a team.” In that moment Ajax felt something he’d been waiting to experience ever since they began training proper. At his words, Aaliyah’s furious eyes dimmed slightly, though only to be replaced with a slight sneer. Walter lifted himself from his sunken state and assumed a little bit of steel in his eyes.
“Jeremy Baxter is the son of Ernest Baxter. A member of the High Order.” Aaliyah answered, her voice never faltering from its casual tone.
“The High Order?” Ajax asked quietly, voicing Mirah’s own question. This time Walter stammered forwards to answer the question.
“The high-ranking members of Rightful Order…” Walter trailed off as he shuddered, clearly remembering something, “they are brutal and powerful. They are terrifying, Ajax.” The Greek man looked between Walter and Aaliyah, finding their opinions to be the same. Mirah, however, seemed just as in the dark as he was. With a sigh, he realised that this was likely to be the case for almost anything.
“What kind of brutal. Let me know what flavour of evil I’m working with.” He let his eyes scan across the two of the group who were in the know, “Are we talking the drug kingpin sort of evil?” There was silence for a moment before, again, Walter spoke up.
“My parents…” he sighed heavily before continuing, clearly uncomfortable, “my parents were forced to defend a husband and wife who were part of the High Order in court. The wife’s sister testified that her sister and her husband had a total of three secret children who they tortured through childhood and…” the boy’s voice hitched, and Ajax felt the shock of cold run down his spine, “and when they didn’t develop links by fifteen…”
“They ‘culled’ them.” Aaliyah finished for the Walter, her voice neutral—the lack of significant emotion making it far more disturbing. Ajax closed his eyes, taking in a deep breath as he desperately tried to push back the cold sweat that covered his body.
“I knew that your parents were lawyers Walter, but Jesus Christ.” Ajax said bitterly. Walter matched it with his own sour expression, his voice leaking a bitter offense.
“Why do you think I’m here? It’s not like my parents want to work for these horrendous monsters. But when every witness against turns up dead, missing or amongst a grand pile of minced human remains, you start to get the idea that you don’t have a choice.” Walter had never talked about exactly what his parents did, apart from being a really good lawyer team. Even still, this was a wild turn of events that well and truly shook Ajax’s understanding of why the man was here at all. Ajax had thought him to be a hero wannabe, maybe not in such an unflattering image, but the sentiment was the same. Now, though, he saw a young man who family—despite their clear wealth—lived under the thumb of the most dangerous people in Melbourne. No wonder why he was here, jumping at the chance to gain any agency over his life as he could.
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“I’m sorry man, I really screwed the pooch on this one but…” Ajax hung his head low with a host of negative emotions, but lacking one significant emotion he should be feeling, “but I don’t know that I wouldn’t have done it. Even knowing this information. They were beating on that poor girl and I just couldn’t–” There was the harsh sound of a chair scraping backwards, against the hard flooring of the cafeteria, as someone suddenly stood. As Ajax looked up, his eyes met with a gaze more intense than any other he had experienced—one that even Aaliyah’s death-glare barely held a candle to. The green eyes were filled with a wild maelstrom of emotions that Ajax couldn’t even hope to pick apart, but captured him with an exactness, a complete rapture that he could swear was its own link.
“Be careful, Ajax. You are beginning to sound like a hero.” Mirah said, each word a solemn warning. The whole table, and even those at the tables nearby, felt a sudden chill of fear. It was something that could hardly be called a threat—at some point in history it might’ve even been considered a compliment. Yet now, as Mirah’s short form towered over the table in presence, Ajax felt the weight in his stomach triple with the gravity of the statement.
Ajax had barely realised it. He had known of his own idealism, even if he wasn’t as vocal as Walter was—but now he stared the scarred girl in the face, the very picture of what the naïve belief in heroism had created, over and over again. How many young girls just like Mirah had been created by that irresponsible heroism? How many had watched as the last of the heroes let the veneer crack and fall away to reveal the writhing mass of insects underneath, the ravenous corruption within making itself know.
And even as the girl walked away with more than just three eyes tracking to her eventual disappearance into the elevator, Ajax still couldn’t make himself regret what he’d done. He knew that—even if he had known all about the High Order—he still would have stared Jeremy Baxter in the eye and treated him like the evil worm he was.
He watched the floor indication lights of the elevator blink down a floor and disappear as the linktech machine reached the unlisted floors below—taking Mirah far from the conversation she had ended with such brutality.
The table stayed silent after Mirah’s departure, losing themselves to their own contemplation. But Ajax could still feel it, that tiny connection that he had made the moment he addressed the problem head on. That spark in the dark excited Ajax, along with the realisation of himself that Mirah had shoved so indelicately down his throat.
He couldn’t deny it anymore, or even so much as ignore it. From the first moment he had Awakened, holding that old, red fire axe in his hands—desperately trying to protect those that he loved against the three monsters that tore apart the sky and the earth.
He knew now that he could only ever be one thing, and that if he didn’t accept it now, he would forever hate himself for it.
---
Mirah’s steps were even and measured, not unlike Tracker’s own strides, or the mimicry that Aaliyah had created for herself. Though, Mirah’s weren’t driven by a need to exude importance or surety. Mirah was simply angry, only in the flameless manner that she could be anyway.
Her steps took her down the excessively clean hallways, passing door after door, each likely leading into their own specialised rooms or classrooms. Mirah had no doubt that Aaliyah would be able to walk down the hallway and rattle off each and every classroom and their individual purpose. The woman was hellbent on her research and—though she tried to hide it—she had clearly researched Walter’s parents.
Mirah could only assume that if you understood how to use a computer—unlike herself—finding more information about a lawyer couldn’t be much more difficult than how she’d found that horrifying video on Whiz. Aaliyah knew these things—she knew more about the training facility they were in than all the rest of the team combined. She probably knew everything there was to officially know about Walter, Ajax, and Mirah too—maybe even more than what was strictly ‘public’.
She knew about those gang teams, and she had mentioned it in passing. She knew that they were bad news, linked directly with the High Order—something Mirah herself didn’t know about till minutes prior—and she practically let the man antagonise them.
Mirah was hardly a master of anything social, the only thing protecting her from being worse than Walter was her stoic silence. Yet even she could see that there was something up. The team was split right down the middle—on one side you had Walter and Ajax, on the other herself and Aaliyah.
The divide in the middle had become clear. It was ideology, though Mirah didn’t think using those exact words. It was a divide of birth, of living situation, of childhood—or a lack of one—and maybe just a whole different look at the world. And although the crevasse ran deep into the earth—the distance of separation was deceptively small, even to Mirah’s untrained eye.
Mirah’s body guided her towards room L006, despite the fact she had only walked the maze of corridors to this room a few times. She opened the door to find the room occupied by Tracker, sitting behind the supplied lecturer’s desk, writing something down in a notebook—not bothering to raise her head to the sudden intrusion.
“Hello Mirah,” Tracker said calmly as she closed the notepad and hooked the pen to its binding, “you have ten more minutes of break. Are you sure you don’t want to do something other than sit in here with me?” Mirah ignored the question and just settled down in a flip out chair closest to the desk. She looked up at Tracker, who took one look at the younger woman’s face and smiled sadly.
“This is about Ajax’s fight with the Baxter child isn’t it?” Mirah let a little bit of surprise leak onto her already unsettled expression, eliciting an eyebrow raise.
“We keep an eye on our trainees Mirah.” She explained gently, then let the conversation come to a pause. Tracker had quickly learned that Mirah was difficult to corral into a conversation. The girl was a timid animal and would only interact on her own terms.
“Ajax and Walter,” she began, the words having to be pulled from her mind in a grand display of internal might, “they both aspire to be heroes.” Tracker nodded easily. It was obvious, especially with those two. Inside them burned a little flame of hope and righteousness, of classic heroism. What of the flame that had survived growing up in a world like this, anyway.
“How can they still believe in that—in being a hero? After Suicide, after the Enforcers?” Tracker sighed, though deep down she felt guilty. She hadn’t realised that Mirah didn’t know about Suicide—because everyone knew about Suicide. If she had just realised it just a bit sooner, had acted on it, she wouldn’t have inadvertently let the poor girl scar herself with a knife she didn’t even know was sharp. She could have gently introduced the topic, let the girl acclimatize to the idea of mentally insane people with enough power to evaporate a football stadium.
“Would you rather they be like Jeremy Baxter instead?” Tracker asked wryly, giving Mirah some pause. “I understand, Mirah—I do. I have seen too many dead and destroyed lives to count on a hundred hands. I’ve participated in things I couldn’t ever be proud of. I’ve sold my soul to the devil so many times that it lost its value.” She looked at the young woman—the same emaciated collection of bones who had suddenly become physically beautiful, even belying her painful scarring. In her, Tracker saw a young woman not too dissimilar from herself—though Tracker had no claim to the torture Mirah had been through. Tracker knew that the world had lost its colour for Mirah years ago, becoming a mixture of pallid greys—and now that a little light and colour were leaking into the holding cell she’d imprisoned herself in, everything was beginning to change.
“Your friends are foolish, yes.” Tracker agreed, making Mirah relax a little before she continued, “But, are they so wrong? I’ve lived past the point where I could claim myself moral, and I am more pragmatic than is good for me. I was one of the first corporate Linked, after all. But let me ask you this, Mirah?” The Indian-Caucasian woman probed as she stood from her desk, sitting on the lip of its top—bringing herself closer to Mirah. As close as she could be without making her skitter out of the room like a wounded animal—running from its own shadow.
A few moments of stagnation passed before Mirah nodded with a grim expression—knowing full well that whatever Tracker said would twist her gut into knots, especially now that Tracker knew some of her past. Tracker smiled sadly down at the girl, letting the perfectly concocted words leak from her lips like sour medicine.
“If you were to walk the shadowed streets of Melbourne, amongst those trash piles you once hid yourself in—where you knew others hid themselves—and you saw a little girl being raped by a Linked…” Mirah’s face contorted, the memory was a brand in her mind—the searing sensation returning ever time it was remembered.
“Would you be able to stop yourself from saving her?”
Mirah was filled with such shock that, even when the lecture room’s door slid open wide with a loud bang against the stop at the end of its rail—she didn’t even flinch. Tracker looked down at her with a sad smile for a few seconds longer before turning to the rest of the team.
“Alright you lot! Into your seats please, and then we’ll begin our adventure into the world of limitations, Awakenings, and morphs.”