There were four pages in all. I filled in bubbles, taking my time about answering and giving each question some consideration except the one about wanting to end my life, where I colored in “Never” so hard it nearly tore the paper. Then I returned the clipboard to Owen, who said, “Thanks. Wait here, and Sydney will be out in a couple of minutes.”
I returned to my seat and watched Owen disappear through a door marked PRIVATE. I twined the strap of my purse around my fingers and let it roll from one side of my hand to the other and back again. Answering the questions had actually relaxed me, as if I’d already talked to someone about my problems. Not that I was going to leave—I knew this was just the beginning. But it surprised me how much looking at my fears and bad memories in a clinical sense had eased them.
The woman in maroon left the desk, giving me an absent smile as she passed, and I was alone in the room. I leaned back and closed my eyes. There was a hum in the air that sounded like distant machinery, or an air conditioner running on low. The room was comfortably cool, just like the entire Gunther Node, and I wasn’t sure air conditioning was necessary, but the hum was soothing.
“Helena Campbell?”
I opened my eyes. A plump older woman stood in front of me, smiling like meeting me was the best pleasure she’d had all day. Her silvering blond hair was pulled up in a twist at the back of her head, and she wore a flowing long-sleeved robe of some thin burgundy fabric embroidered abstractly in pale gold around the neck and cuffs. “Sydney Fallon,” she said, extending a hand. “Please call me Sydney.”
“Helena,” I said. I stood and shook her hand. A flash of memory, Jun Li shaking Lucia’s hand and Lucia falling unconscious, struck me just at that moment, and I suppressed a shudder. I didn’t suppress it well enough, because Sydney’s eyes narrowed briefly as if she’d noticed something off about me. But she said nothing, just indicated that I should follow her.
We went to a door, not the one marked PRIVATE, that led to a short hall so different from the main room it felt like stepping through a portal to an upscale office building. The floor was carpeted, just with a plain gray Berber, but it was the first carpet I’d ever seen in the node, even in Lucia’s office, so it looked exotic and out of place. Wooden molding stained dark brown divided the walls in half; the upper walls were a light tan color, and the lower walls were a rich plum. The doors were a brown that matched the molding, with brass handles rather than knobs. Each door bore a nameplate, but Sydney walked too fast for me to read them. She stopped at a door labeled SYDNEY FALLON, LCSW and opened it for me.
The room beyond matched the hall for comfortable upscale furnishings. A wooden desk with more drawers than I’d ever seen in anything that wasn’t a rolltop took up one corner, with a rolling black office chair pulled up in front of it and a computer monitor atop it. Two padded armchairs upholstered in mahogany colored leather, or maybe just a really good imitation, faced the desk, angled so they also faced each other. A colorful Persian rug lay atop the gray Berber, brightening the room, and a series of photo enlargements showing Middle Eastern market stalls hung on one wall. It was enough to make me forget we were probably deep underground.
Sydney gestured to me to have a seat in one of the armchairs, then took the other. “So how are you feeling?” she said. “I heard about the attack on Abernathy’s.”
“I’m fine—I mean, I wasn’t hurt, and the fear has mostly passed,” I said. “Is…this what we do? Talk?”
Sydney smiled again. I wondered if the smile was something she practiced, not to be deceptive but to make it the most pleasant, non-threatening expression she could produce. “Talk, yes,” she said. “It sounds from your initial paperwork that you’re dealing with post traumatic stress disorder, and we’ll see if we can help you with that.”
“PTSD. That sounds so serious. I don’t feel—I mean, I always thought that was something soldiers got from battles. I haven’t done anything nearly so dramatic.”
“I wonder,” Sydney said. “You were kidnapped last January, weren’t you? By the Mercy?”
“Yes. But they didn’t hurt me.”
“And before that, I remember the Mercy tried to burn down Abernathy’s with you inside.”
“That’s right. I fought back. And the oracle helped me put out the fire. So nothing really bad happened.”
Sydney propped her elbow on the arm of the chair and rested her chin on her hand. “I wonder,” she said again. “Why do you want to deny the pain and horror of your experiences?”
I blinked. “I don’t,” I began, and then fell silent. I had just dismissed what had happened to me as no big deal, but if those things had happened to, say, Viv, I’d have been horrified and frightened for her. “I don’t know,” I finally said. “Does that mean something?”
Sydney shrugged. “Why don’t you tell me? From what you’ve said, it sounds like you think pain is only pain when it does actual physical harm. Have you ever been injured when you were in danger?”
“Yes. The magus serial killer—my husband shot me to stop him killing me. It made more sense if you were there.” I hadn’t thought of that night in years, and to my surprise, tears welled up in my eyes. Malcolm’s face, so hard and furious without a trace of love for me, the agony of my shoulder being torn open by his impromptu weapon, the terror of having a gun pressed to my head—I’d cried over it afterward and thought that made everything okay. Clearly, I was wrong.
Sydney took a box of tissues off the desk and handed it to me without a word. I took one and blotted my eyes. “Sorry. I thought I was over that.”
“Don’t apologize for having feelings,” Sydney said. “When things happen to us, we have emotional reactions—happiness, fear, loneliness, pleasure. Love and hate. That’s a normal part of being human. Why do you think you started to cry just now?”
“I guess because the memories are powerful. It felt almost as if it were happening again.”
“That’s not uncommon, particularly when you haven’t fully processed what you felt.” Sydney sat back in her chair and clasped her hands in her lap. “Why don’t you tell me about the attack yesterday? I know invaders tried to destroy the oracle, but not how.”
I clasped my hands, mimicking her, and realized they were trembling. “Do you know who Victor Crowson is? The genetic sport who can see the future? He’s a good friend of mine. He came to the store yesterday because he saw himself there—it’s something that happens to him—and while he was there, he had a vision that the store would be attacked. I called for some teams to defend the store, sent Judy away, and Victor and I waited. He can see about fifteen minutes into the future, so we knew exactly when the attack would happen, and we had to sit there and wait because we didn’t know if the attack was a feint to get me out of the store.”
I drew in a deep breath and released it slowly. “The Wardens arrived just about a minute before the invaders came. They—the invaders—they were in human form, and they drove a Cadillac convertible into the front of the store, wrecking the door. And the car. Then the Wardens…they…they shot the invaders, killed them before they could enter Abernathy’s, and did a bunch of illusions to cover everything up.”