6. Phoebe

6

PHOEBE

T he next day she dreaded facing her mentor. She'd spent a sleepless night, tossing and turning and wondering what Sirex must think of her now. Her steps were dragging as she did her morning routine, gathering her long curls in a ponytail and putting on a little make-up to hide the dark circles under her eyes.

Finally she glanced at the chronometer on the wall and realized that if she didn't hurry, she was going to be late. That was something she had promised herself would never happen again. Though she dreaded seeing the contempt in her mentor's eyes, she dreaded seeing his disappointment as he ordered her to "drop and give me fifty" even more.

She rushed out the door and down the long metal corridor to the tram station. She caught the right tram and barely made it to their usual meeting place in the parklands around the Sacred Grove in time.

Sirex was already there, waiting for her. To Phoebe's surprise, he looked like he had spent a sleepless night too—at least if the circles under his eyes were to be believed. Her mentor was standing in the green and purple grass with his arms crossed over his chest and a frown on his face.

Seeing that expression, Phoebe was sure she was in for a lecture—probably about how disappointed he was in her for her emotional breakdown the day before.

"Hello, Sir." She lifted her chin, prepared to take her medicine. It was going to take some time to win back his trust in her, she knew, but she was fully prepared for that. She would just have to work harder than ever.

"Cadet Jenkins…Phoebe." To her surprise, his eyes softened when he saw her. "How are you? Come here and let me see you," he added, before she could answer.

Feeling uncertain all over again at his strange greeting, Phoebe came up to him.

"Yes, Sir?" she asked, using his name as a question.

"Let me see…" Sirex took her by the shoulders and looked her up and down. Phoebe hoped desperately that her clothing was straight and none of her makeup looked funny. She'd been in such a hurry to get ready once she realized what time it was getting to be…

Her mind was in such a whirl, she almost missed his next question.

"How do you feel?" he asked.

"Er, fine. I feel fine ," Phoebe said earnestly. "And I'd like to assure you, Sir, that there will not be a repeat of yesterday's events. I know there is no excuse for the way I acted and I cannot begin to express the shame I feel?—"

"Why should you be ashamed?" he cut in, interrupting her prepared speech, which she'd been rehearsing all night.

"Why should I…" She trailed off and tried again. "What do you mean? Of course I should be ashamed of myself! I let that damn training cave simulation get to me. I knew none of it was real but I still couldn't control myself."

She expected him to agree with her or at least acknowledge what she was saying. Instead, Sirex shook his head and said,

"Sit down and have First Meal with me."

"First Meal? You mean breakfast?"

"Exactly." He was already settling on the grass, under a tree with spreading purple branches.

Feeling like she was in some kind of weird dream, Phoebe sat beside him. There was a green cube on the grass at his feet that she hadn't noticed before. Sirex opened it and produced two covered cups and two covered plates.

"Be careful," he said, handing a cup and a plate to Phoebe. "Once you break the seals, these are both going to get very hot."

"Oh, uh, okay." She put the plate down on the grass beside her—she couldn't eat right now. But she went ahead and broke the red seal running across the top of the cup. With a hiss of steam, the white paper covering it disintegrated and the aroma of rich, freshly brewed coffee met her nose.

Phoebe inhaled deeply— mmm , as worried and upset as she was, she couldn't help feeling soothed by the warm cup in her hand and the wonderful scent rising from it.

"Here."

Looking up, she realized Sirex was handing her something. When she put out a hand to take it, she saw that he was giving her three sugars and two of the tiny creamer pods that dissolved completely in hot liquid and left no trace or taste behind—they were made of some kind of bio-food substitute the Kindred scientists had developed.

"Oh, thank you. But this is too much cream and sugar for me!" she protested, looking down at her hand.

"It's exactly what you put in your First Meal brew every day—though you always try to hide it for some reason," he rumbled, giving her a slightly amused look. "Why should you be embarrassed for wanting cream and sweetener in your morning beverage?"

"Well, because I'm trying to lose weight," Phoebe said. "And adding all this cream and sugar to my coffee certainly doesn't help. These thighs aren't going to shrink themselves, you know." She laughed self-deprecatingly and patted her hip with the hand holding the cream and sugar.

"Why do you want to lose your curves?" He gave her a mystified look. "They're one of the things that make you beautiful."

"Oh, uh, thank you."

Phoebe looked down at her coffee, feeling her cheeks get hot with a blush. She had heard from a few other women on the Mother Ship that the Kindred loved plus-sized and curvy women. Jillian, who was also a big girl, had mentioned several times how her Twin Kindred mentors liked her curvy figure.

"Thank you for breakfast, too," she added, not sure what else to say. "But I'm not sure what I did to deserve it. After the way I acted yesterday?—"

"Let's talk about that." Sirex looked at her intently. "Let's talk about what the training tunnel showed you and why it was so upsetting."

Phoebe bristled in a mixture of embarrassment and defensiveness. She glared up at him.

"Do we have to go over this again? I already told you, it was a big-ass spider—bigger than you!"

"Watch your tone, Cadet." Her mentor's voice was a low, menacing growl and she was instantly reminded that she needed to be respectful.

"I'm sorry, Sir. I just…it's hard to talk about."

"Try," he said simply. "And know that I will be listening without any kind of prejudice or judgment. Now—a spider is a type of insect from Earth, correct?"

"It's an arachnid, actually." Phoebe shivered. "They have eight legs and they spin webs and catch insects and wrap them in cocoons so they can suck them dry."

"They don't sound like the most pleasant life forms," Sirex said dryly.

"No—they're not." Phoebe took a sip of her coffee and nearly burned her tongue—it really was hot!

"Now tell me why you fear them," her mentor said softly.

"What?" She looked up from her coffee, frowning. "Why would you need to know that?"

"Just tell me," Sirex urged. "Please," he added.

"Well…" Phoebe looked down at her coffee again. "It has to do with a prank my step sister, Kylie, played on me when I was younger."

Sirex raised an eyebrow.

"This is the same sister who stole your prom date and then kissed him in front of you?"

Phoebe sighed.

"Yeah…that's Kylie all right. My dad died when I was nine, you know, and my mom was already remarried by the time I turned ten. My stepfather had a daughter too, just one year older than me—that was Kylie. I think my mom was hoping that we would hit it off and become like real sisters. We were both only children up until then and my mom was raised with a lot of sisters herself, so she saw it as a beautiful bond that would carry through to adulthood."

"I'm guessing it wasn't a ‘beautiful bond' for you and your new sibling," Sirex remarked.

Phoebe shook her head.

"No, not at all. I wanted to be friends—I looked up to Kylie. She was everything I'm not—blonde and skinny and popular. But she just hated me right from the start."

"So what did she do to you that made you fear spiders?" Sirex asked softly.

Phoebe took another sip of hot coffee—this time she welcomed the burning. The physical pain was so much easier to deal with than the mental anguish that came with this particular memory.

"I went to bed one night when I was around ten or eleven," she said, looking down at her hands. "Kylie and I hadn't been sisters for long—our parents hadn't even been married a whole year—and I remember I was still hoping that the two of us might get to be friends. Anyway, I went to sleep but in the middle of the night I woke up with this feeling like…" She cleared her throat—God it was hard to say this. "Like something was crawling on me—on my face, I mean."

"Go on," Sirex said softly, because Phoebe had stopped for a long moment. Finally she forced herself to keep talking.

"I reached up my hand to brush it off…but then I realized something was…was crawling on my hand too. Then I came a little more awake and I felt things crawling…crawling up my legs."

A whole-body shiver racked her and she nearly spilled her coffee as she remembered that horrible night and all the nightmares that had followed.

"Your sister put spiders in your bed," Sirex guessed.

"So many of them! It seemed like hundreds ." Phoebe couldn't keep the horror out of her voice. "I sat up in bed and started screaming and my mom ran into the room. When she turned on the light, they were all over the place—all over me …all over my bed . It was really easy to see them because I had white sheets and a pale pink comforter."

Just the memory made her want to throw up and she was glad that she hadn't touched the breakfast he'd brought her.

"That must have been horrifying—especially since you were just a young child," Sirex remarked.

"Horrifying isn't the word—it traumatized me! I had to sleep with a pillow over my head for years afterwards because I was so afraid of anything crawling on my face." She shook her head. "I found out later that Kylie had gotten all the boys in her class to collect spiders for her for weeks—she'd been saving them up until she had enough to really do it right."

"This sister of yours sounds like a sociopath!" Sirex growled.

"That's what my mom said." Phoebe took another sip of coffee. "It was the first big fight she and my stepfather had. I remember hearing her tell him that something wasn't right with Kylie."

She could still hear her mother's voice in her memory…

"What if one of those spiders had been a black widow or a brown recluse? Phoebe could be dead or in the hospital right now! What kind of child does something so cruel? Kylie needs help!"

"Give me a break—you're blowing this all out of proportion!" her stepfather had growled back. "Kylie never meant to hurt anyone—she thought it would be funny prank, that's all."

"What's ‘funny' about pouring live spiders over a sleeping child?" her mother had demanded. "Why can't you see there's a serious problem here?"

"All I can see is you overreacting because somebody scared your ‘precious princess,'" her stepfather shot back. "Get over it—Phoebe is fine and I had a talk with Kylie. She won't do it again. Case closed."

"Only the case wasn't closed," Phoebe murmured.

"What?" Sirex asked, frowning.

"Oh, sorry. I was just thinking about the fight I heard my mom and stepfather having." She shook her head. "The spider thing was just one of the ‘pranks' Kylie pulled on me. She always thought it was funny to make me afraid."

"She must have hurt you very deeply," Sirex murmured.

"Why do you say that?" Phoebe looked up at him.

"Because of these." He cupped her cheek in one hand and swiped at her cheek. "You're crying."

"I'm sorry!" Phoebe pulled away and swiped hastily at her eyes. "I didn't mean to!"

"Why does crying make you so upset?" Sirex sounded honestly confused.

"It's not just crying—it's crying in front of you." Phoebe sniffed. "You're my mentor—I'm supposed to be proving how strong and brave I am. And now I'm crying for the second time in two days! It makes me weak."

"Crying doesn't make you weak in my eyes," Sirex told her. "It lets me know that you're feeling something deeply, which is good—I need to know your mental and emotional state." Reaching out, he stroked a strand of hair out of her eyes. "It's all right to show me your feelings, Phoebe. I prefer it if you do."

For a moment, Phoebe felt lost in his red-on-black eyes. His soft words and gentle tone made her want to submit to him all over again. She wished she could lay down and put her head in his lap and just let him stroke her hair and call her "baby" like he had when she was so upset.

But the practical part of her knew that couldn't be. He was just being a kind, good mentor—nothing else. Right?

"Thank you, Sir," she mumbled at last, looking down. "I just…don't feel like I've displayed very much courage in the past few days."

"Everyone has a breaking point, Phoebe." His voice was soft. "It's better to find yours in a training simulation than out in the field. Besides, what happened wasn't your fault—it was the training tunnel."

"What? What do you mean?"

"I mean the training tunnel was trying to break you. It's not actually a real simulation, you know—we call it that because that's the most accurate way we can describe it, but the training tunnel is actually a living entity."

"What? The whole tunnel is alive?" Phoebe demanded. The idea made her feel creeped-out in a whole new way.

"It's a semi-sentient entity the Kindred found on one of the worlds we explored," he explained. "It has psychic powers, which allows it limited access to your thoughts. In this way it's able to find your fears and present them to you for the greatest possible challenge. Only the tunnel went too far yesterday."

"I had no idea it was getting into my head!" Phoebe exclaimed. "So that's how it knew I'm claustrophobic and afraid of spiders."

"Exactly. And you'd been doing so well for the past few weeks it decided to take your excellence as a challenge." He shook his head. "I've asked the warriors who deal specifically with the tunnel to recalibrate it—don't ask how, there's apparently a process for it—and to keep everyone out of it until it's fixed."

"So what it did to me yesterday wasn't normal," Phoebe said.

"Not at all. I've never seen it go after anyone like it went after you." He shook his head. "Even when it's fixed, I don't think it will be any more use to me in training you—we need to move on."

"Move on to doing what?" Phoebe asked, frowning.

"To other scenarios you might encounter in the field. The tunnel teaches you stealth and physical coordination but we also need to work on combat skills. I know you've had a bit of hand-to-hand combat and weapons training, correct?"

Phoebe nodded.

"We did hand-to-hand at the PD academy and I'm a fairly accurate shot."

"With a projectile weapon, but how are you with a blaster?" He patted his hip where his blaster was clipped. "Or a knife?" He pulled out the long, curving blade that was clipped to his other hip and handed it—hilt first—to Phoebe.

She took it and weighed it in her hand. It was heavy and perfectly balanced—obviously made just for her mentor.

"I have to admit, I've never been in a knife fight," she said. "I didn't know that was something I'd have to worry about."

"There are some areas out in the field where blasters aren't allowed—which means everyone carries knives," Sirex told her. "You need to learn to fight with a blade—and with your body. We're going to be working on that exclusively for a while."

"All right." Phoebe nodded. "Er, thank you," she added awkwardly.

He arched an eyebrow.

"For what?"

"For understanding about the training tunnel. For not treating me like I'm girly or weak because I lost it in there yesterday."

"You are not ‘girly' or ‘weak,' Cadet Jenkins." His eyes blazed at her. "You have courage and a strong sense of purpose. I admire that. It's going to take a lot more work on both out parts, but you're going to make a fine agent."

Phoebe's heart swelled.

"Thank you, Sir," she managed to get out, looking up at him. "I'll try to make you proud."

His eyes softened.

"You already have. Now eat your First Meal—we can't have you losing your curves."