Inhibition

Chapter 31

Cat was actually thankful that Aidan was there.

“How did you even find me?” Before Aidan could answer, Cat added, “Did you use your mystical stalker abilities?”

Aidan paused, mouth open. Then he shook his head and started over.

“After you didn’t come back from your bathroom break, I became a little concerned. When we switched classes, I went looking for you. As I walked past the girls’ restroom, I looked through the doorway of a passing classroom and saw Midge outside. I wondered why she wasn’t in class.”

“See! I’m not the only one.” Cat turned around to look pointedly at Midge, who was still trying to fix her computer. She gave an absent wave, not even turning around, before she went back to work.

“I went outside and talked to Midge, and then she explained what was going on. I knew you’d want someone there, even if it was to make fun of or harass that person.”

“What do you mean? I don’t harass you.”

“Really?” Aidan asked. He gave her a deadpan look. He’d like to see how she got out of this one.

“It’s not harassment if you like it.” Cat moved her head from side to side as she spoke, adding some attitude.

“That’s so inappropriate; I don’t even have a response for it.” Aidan gave up, and let loose a chuckle.

See, it would’ve been a giggle. But men don’t giggle. They chuckle or snicker, depending on the connotation of the situation. This time, it was more of a chuckle.

Cat gave a sigh, her humor worn out by the situation. She was sitting on one of the coaches near the computers in Midge’s headquarters. Aidan sat to her left, one arm of the arm rest, the other along the back of the chair. Midge was still working on her computer, the clicking of computer keys oddly reassuring to Cat. With the magical community’s lack of tech, Midge’s computer was even more homely to Cat than sweet tea. Then again, she could get sweat tea pretty easy here. Which reminded her.

“I’m hun-gry.” She drew out the “hun” as long as she could.

“More Chinese?” Aidan asked, knowing that someone would have to get it.

“That could be our theme food!”

“Theme food?”

“Yes! You know the food that the main character always eats, no matter what?”

“Ok. Do you want the Chinese or not?”

“Nah, I’m good.”

“But you just said you were hungry.”

“I am. Just not for Chinese. I’m feeling . . .”

“PIZZA!” Both Cat and Midge shouted at the same time.

“Oh, and I know one of the people that works there. So we don’t have to go get it.” Midge went up to her communication box. She typed in some button and held it up to her ear. After a minute, she put it back down, frustrated.

“I forgot. They not only fried the connection for my computer, but looks like they fried the entire device for communicating.” She got up and walked to the corner. She placed her hand on the wall, and a door opened. Through the doorway was a room filled to the brim with technology. It was in piles, scattered across the floor, and hanging from the ceiling. As Cat and Aidan gaped, Midge reached in and plucked another box, nearly identical to the now fried one, from a pile. “Good thing I have extras!”

She swept her arm across the table, carelessly knocking the broken equipment off, before placing the new one where it had been sitting. She pressed in the symbols that she needed, before putting the device to her ear.

Cat and Aidan only heard Midge’s mumbled half of the conversation, but that seemed to be working just fine. Midge put the device down with a satisfied thud. She then turned to Aidan and Cat.

“Food will be here in like 20 minutes. Do what you want while we wait.” She turned, presumably to do what she wanted, and then paused. She turned back around. “Well, not you Cat. You sit somewhere safe. Away from my electronics. In the corner.”

Cat moved to do what she said. But when she sat the chair down, she tilted it before sitting. Now, the chair was fancy, so it wasn’t made to endure . . . well, Cat. One of the back legs snapped, and the chair went tumbling down with Cat still on it. With a groan, Cat pushed herself back into a standing position. She blew her hair out of her face and looked up at Midge and Aidan.

“And on the floor.” Midge finished.

As they waited, Midge tinkered with her tech stuff (Cat had no idea what she was doing). Cat stared into space, something she was very good at. Aidan just paced the length of the room. Again. And again. And again.

“Really dude?” Midge complained, finally giving up on her work.

Aidan looked up questioningly.

“Can you not pace?”

“Look! A double neutron star!”

Aidan and Midge ignored her.

“Sorry.” Aidan said, shrugging. Which was most definitely not an answer.

The sound of the elevator doors sliding open stopped the debate before it even started. Cat raced to the doors to get the food, her body remembering just how hungry she was. When she got there, she saw an empty elevator. She looked down into the elevator and saw their pizza, as well as a note. She picked both up, the confused furrow still between her brows as she turned to Aidan and Midge.

“The person didn’t come down with the delivery.”

Midge shrugged, already taking a bite of the pizza from the box she had snatched from Cat’s hands. “Most people don’t.”

“Why?”

“For the same reason I do come down here.”

“I don’t get it.”

“You don’t know a lot do you?” Cat gave one of her signature blank stares. “I’m way down here because I can’t have magic interfering with all my technology. Magic comes with life, and way down here there isn’t a lot of life. After a while down here, people start to feel the itch. Like Aidan.” She pointed at him, not accusingly, but as if citing a semi-important example. “It’s not his fault. His body is just too used to having magic flowing through its network.”

“How come I’m not feeling it?”

Midge looked at her. Now she was confused. “But you do. Even more so than Aidan, I bet. Haven’t you noticed?”

“Noticed what?”

“You’re sweating.”

Cat looked down at her arms. Then she raised her hand and wiped her forehead. Sure enough, she was sweating. She hadn’t even noticed.

“You probably just wrote it off as claustrophobia. Most people do.”

Cat was still staring at her hand. Midge’s explanation made sense to the part of her that was still paying attention, so she nodded. Really she was concentrating on the air around her. Cat realized that she had written it off as claustrophobia. She had thought the air stale, but looking now, she could see the currents proving that the air was mobile. What she was feeling was the lack of life in the air, the lack of energy that seemed to permeate the atmosphere topside.

It was a bit off putting to realize that she was having this much of a reaction to being underground, but she supposed that was the bad side of her power. Her body was such of a good conductor (she had been told), that it was used to having tons of magic flow through her. Without it, her cells were starving. It wouldn’t kill her, because she wasn’t that dependent on magic, but it was incredibly uncomfortable as her body tried to adjust.

Cat took a deep breath, tried to relax, and resolved to be back on the surface as soon as possible.