She Will Persist

3

It was the next morning.

I was standing in front of the girl's cell door once again. The Director's instructions thundered in my head, and with them the sting on my cheek his hand had delivered. I'd be even more of a liar if I said that I hadn't spent all of last night brainstorming all the eccentric ways I could kill him.

I took a breath, rolled my shoulders, and unbolted the door. When I stepped inside, the girl scrambled away to the back wall like a spooked wild animal.

This was going to take a lot of work.

I raised my hands as I sat down with my back to the door which had been shut behind me. She sat about three meters across from me and had her back to the opposite wall. I folded my legs and set my hands on my knees gently.

"I'm sorry," I started off by saying. "I know you don't want me here."

"Then why are you here?"

"I was sent," I said, uncrossing my legs and spreading them out on front of me. The girl eyed the soles of my feet suspiciously. "The Director of this agency wants me to try and recruit you."

There was no point in lying to her. I may as well make this as simple as possible so the Director, who was probably listening in through the cameras, could actually hear it from her mouth: there was no damn way she was gonna agree to be an agent.

The girl's eyes hardened. "So that's what the smell you dragged in is. Desperation."

I swallowed, taken back by her quick change of tone. "Why do you do that? Why do you try and come off like you're mad at me? Are you trying to scare me off?"

"Are you scared of me?" She murmured. 

I rolled my shoulders again and kept her gaze. "No. I'm intrigued."

There was a small window above her head, and with the morning sun a small patch of light lay on the floor between us. She was shielded by the dark, being under where the light was coming through, and she still had blood dripping down her face from a cut across her nose. She was running a thin line of intriguing and terrifying, which the very idea of continued to spark my interest.

"I see the way you look at me," she said in a quiet tone, voice whispy. "With pity. Like you're sorry for me."

"There you go again," I said. I leaned forward. "Are you bipolar? We can get that looked at."

She rolled her eyes. "I'm unstable. Erratic. Unpredictable." She held my gaze. "Dicey. Temperamental. Volatile," she listed. She ran the tip of her tongue over her lips slowly. "Capricious."

"Well, at least you're good with synonyms," I said. "Like a walking, talking thesaurus, shit."

"Look, I'll save you the trouble," she said, flicking her eyes to the wall on her right. "I'm not joining your agency... whatever kind of agency this is."

"That's nice," I said, shrugging, "but the Director of this place doesn't give a shit. He'll probably cut my hand off if I don't get you on board." I managed to suppress the memory of him slapping me with only mildly trembling fists. "And I consider my hand to be one of my most useful features."

"Gross."

"I was referring to basic functions such as eating and drinking," I said, "but if your mind goes there." I winked.

"Sure you were," she said flatly.

Well she wasn't wrong.

She folded her arms tightly around herself. "I guess we're at an impasse."