established life built around her work – and none of them that we questioned knew she had a daughter.” Ariadne hesitated. “She’s had a reasonably active social life, dinners with friends, though not much indication that she’s done any dating—”
“Did she ever mention any men? Your father, for instance?” Old Man Winter spoke up, his voice at a low timbre, smooth and accented.
“No.” I shrugged, indifferent. Mom didn’t talk about men. It wasn’t in the rules; it just never happened. “Why, are you my father?”
Amusement crossed his weathered features, but only for a moment. “Hardly.”
I shrugged again. “Just curious. I heard you worked with my mom back in the old days and I have no idea who my dad is.”
His head inclined in a nod. “I did not know her well. The agency was large and I was not in a position of influence.”
“What did you do?”
His reply was a slight shrug, his large shoulders moving only a few centimeters, as if he were trying to conserve energy by making as little movement as possible.
“I think what’s important,” Ariadne reinserted herself into the conversation, “is that we help you find her. And if we can assist you along the way by answering questions about what kind of powers you have, that would be of interest to you, wouldn’t it?”
I chuckled, more to myself than anyone. “I’ll figure it out.”
Ariadne’s expression hardened. “Assuming you have the time. There’s a pretty dangerous monster hunting you.”
I looked back at Old Man Winter, and he was watching me, gauging my reaction to the threat of Wolfe. “He’s a real bastard,” I replied, “but I’m not going to spend the rest of my life hiding out here on your campus, even if I did consent to your tests – which I haven’t, yet.”
Ariadne and Old Man Winter exchanged a look. Concern from her; obvious, easy to read. From him, harder to tell, but I thought I saw amusement again.
She turned back to me. “Let me be honest—”
“First time ever?” I cracked. “Give it a shot.”
She ignored my jibe. “Your mother was powerful, but the records of her capabilities were lost in the destruction of the Agency. We have no idea who your father was, if he was a meta, what capabilities he might have had, but given your mother’s likely exposure to metas in her work, we’d expect he probably was. Based on our observations of your healing abilities, your strength – yes, we saw you lift the bench, well done – we suspect you’re quite powerful. We want to know—” she focused on me—“what you’re capable of, and frankly, we’d like you to join us.”
This time I let loose more than a chuckle. “Join you? Why?”
“We do important work here,” she said, undeterred by my laugh. “Keeping the meta-human population from running amok while helping them to fully understand and control their abilities is a noble task.”
“I’m not going to argue that you need to police these metas,” I said. “But I haven’t even come to a decision on the testing, so I doubt you’re going to be getting much consideration on your offer until I have that one figured out.”
She looked back at Old Man Winter one more time and he nodded again, one of those subtle blink-and-you-miss-it head motions. She turned back to me. “What do you want?”
I smiled, wide, with a joviality I really didn’t feel. “I want to go home.”
Nine
“Excuse me?” Ariadne stared back at me open-mouthed. “Did getting strangled cause you brain damage? Don’t you think that your house would be the first place Wolfe would try to re-acquire you?”
“Re-acquire?” I scoffed. “He didn’t acquire me in the first place.”
She looked at me with something short of astonishment. “He damned near did – if it hadn’t been for our agents showing up when they did—”
“No,” I said with a vehement shake of my head. Old Man Winter hadn’t shown the slightest reaction to our entire exchange. “By the time your boys showed up I had pumped Wolfe so full of tranquilizer darts he’d have had a hell of a time fighting off a grasshopper, let alone carry me away.”
“Wolfe jumped a ten foot tall fence to escape from Kurt and Zack,” she said, her jaw clenching. “Maybe you missed that too, since you were unconscious in a pool of your own blood when it happened.”
I rolled my eyes. I am a teenager; might as well fight like a one. “I want to go home – not permanently, but I