Super: Origins (29 page)

“So, how are you feeling today?” Casey asked.

“Like I'm recovering from getting run over by a truck yesterday, and hungry, too.”

Casey pulled a little rolling table over and spread Lex's breakfast on it, then began arranging her own. “They'll probably want to look at you down here for another couple of days, I’d guess,” Casey finally said.

“A couple of days? I'm fine now, but the doctor was talking about wanting to run some tests. What will they want to do that would keep me here for days?” Lex appreciated the sweet cinnamon smell of the cereal Casey had brought, but suspicion made her stomach turn sour.

Casey shrugged. “It seems like if one of us gets sick they like to do mountains of tests to find out what happened, whether it’ll happen again, whether they should give us some drugs, and probably whether they should fire us, all that sort of thing.”

“But I feel fine. I want to talk to Mr. Chen and apologize for yesterday, though. He must think I'm crazy or something.” Lex picked up her spoon, trying to focus on eating, but her fingers kept worrying the silverware pattern instead.

Casey shook her head. “I doubt it. I think he’s had a pretty long life and seen all kinds of things, so he seems to understand a lot. I wouldn't worry about it, but I can go talk to him, if you like.”

Lex shook her head, eyes closed in humiliation as she thought of what she’d done. “I should talk to him myself. I want to explain. Maybe they'll let me out of here for a few minutes so I can see him.”

The two ate in silence for a little while after that, Lex devouring the granola and drinking the tea Casey had brought without really tasting it, lost in worry. After a while, although Lex hadn't known Casey had noticed, she finally realized her friend had brought the kinds of foods that Lex usually chose for herself, and she couldn’t help but smile as it came to her.

“So, what are you up to today?” Lex finally asked Casey, still grinning.

“I'm going to be in the gym for a while, but I thought I'd find out what your schedule is and come down here to have lunch with you at noon if I can. Then they have some tests they want to run on me this afternoon. They have some they run every few weeks on me, so I guess it's time.”

Lex found the idea that her friend needed regular medical tests strange because she always seemed to be in the best of health. Since her friend didn’t seem to find it odd, however, Lex nodded in reply as she sipped her blueberry green tea. Once they’d both finished eating, Casey gathered the empty dishes up on the tray. When she picked it up to leave, she looked down at Lex for a moment.

“Are you OK here?” she asked, her expression serious.

“Yeah, I'll be fine. And thanks, Casey. Breakfast was really good.”

Casey smiled in return and left. When the medical people returned a few minutes later, Lex reviewed the schedule they’d planned for her and negotiated with them. Instead of two full days of tests, she managed to change it to four half-days staggered in the mornings and afternoons on weekdays. She also got them to agree that she didn't have to sleep on the medical floor and that she could have her IV removed that afternoon, as long she could hold down food until then. Before the tests started for the morning, however, Lex also made them agree to give her a short time to go to the martial arts studio to talk to Mr. Chen.

She made her way down the stairs, clutching the cold metal pole and cursing the IV the whole way down, annoyed that she hadn’t been able to argue the doctors out of any of the tests they’d proposed. Fortunately, the IV pole rolled, so she’d at least been able to walk normally when she got to the right floor. Lex found her pace slowing as she approached the studio, her stomach flopping over, but she shook herself and forced her feet to walk in. She felt glad to see that he’d shown up that day, standing barefoot in the middle of the wooden floor, and she nodded to him.

“Mr. Chen,” she said nervously, trying not to stumble over her words, “I wanted to apologize for running off on you yesterday-”

“There is no need,” he replied quickly, shaking his head, “I think I understand. You were having an off day, and I pushed you too hard. It seems it reminded you of your father.”

“What?” Lex asked, her mouth falling open.
Maybe he actually does understand,
she thought to herself.

He sighed. “Many years ago, when I was a young and foolish man still living in China, I fought in a war. I got captured several months after I became a soldier and was put into a prison camp. Fortunately for me, the whole conflict had gotten caught up with World War II, and it was right around the time the war ended, so I only stayed in prison a couple of months. Some of the men with me had not been so lucky and had been there for years.

“The day the Allies came to break the prison camp up and send us home there was a lot of shouting and shoving. I remember the man I shared a cell with freezing up at one point, and I had to drag him to the trucks they drove us out on. He came back to himself some time later and eventually told me that all the yelling and pushing had taken his mind back to one of the experiences he'd had in the prison camp, and it got stuck there. The look you had on your face the other day reminded me a lot of his expression that day, and also the way you both froze and couldn’t seem to hear or see me.”

Lex looked down at her feet and felt her eyes start to prickle. “I'm really sorry.”

“Please don't apologize,” Mr. Chen said in a gentle tone. “You have nothing to be sorry for. I notice you have an IV, however. Did you fall ill?”

Lex glared at her IV pole, then looked back at Mr. Chen. “Yes, I had a huge migraine that came on very quickly after I left here. It was so painful that I passed out, which is odd, because that’s never happened to me before.”

Mr. Chen made a thoughtful noise then, looking at her with concern.

Lex shrugged. “I've talked to the doctors, though, and they want to run a whole bunch of tests, so I asked them to cut it into half days. So, can we work together this afternoon? Tomorrow it would be in the morning, and it would alternate for the rest of the week. Is that OK for you?”

Mr. Chen looked at her with a raised eyebrow. “Are you actually ready for this, or are you rushing?”

“I feel just like I always have after any other migraine,” she replied with a sigh. “I slept a lot yesterday, and I was hungry when I woke up, but I feel fine now. Actually, they say keeping up with the same level of physical activity you're used to is a good way to prevent migraines.” She smiled at him hopefully as he gazed at her with serious eyes.

“And the doctors agreed with you about all of this?” Mr. Chen asked, looking dubious.

“Yes, but it took a little argument on my part. I'll have the IV off by this afternoon, so don't worry about that, either.”

He sighed then, glancing at her sternly and shaking his head. “All right, Lex, but please relax and rest when we're not working together for at least the next few weeks. You also must promise me that in the future if you're not feeling well you'll tell me.”

“Thank you, Mr. Chen. I promise I will.” She grinned and nodded at him as she rolled out of the room, then slowly made her way up to the medical floor, staring at the IV pole while carrying it up each step. Lex couldn't decide whether going up or down had been worse.

When she got back the tests commenced in earnest. She spent part of the morning in a CAT scan tube, but didn't remember most of it, aside from the vague sound of banging on pipes somewhere in the distance, since she'd fallen asleep partway through the test. The rest of the time had been spent with a large number of electrodes pasted to her scalp as they looked at the electrical activity in her brain. Lex had tried to cooperate, but she had gotten bored partway through and had mostly spent the time trying to watch the needles move on the sheets of paper as they measured her brainwaves and trying not to itch her gluey scalp. She felt almost giddy once lunchtime rolled around and they took the electrodes off and the IV out as promised.

Lex was feeling much more human after a shower and lunch with Casey, and she walked quickly through the door to the martial arts studio, greeting Mr. Chen with a smile. They worked through some new forms that afternoon, and Lex had started to get a feel for them. When she realized after a couple of hours that she was tired, she told Mr. Chen as promised, even though she could hear her father’s voice somewhere in her mind calling her a slacker.

Mr. Chen, however, nodded to her with a smile on his face. “Please take the rest of the afternoon and relax, Lex. You did a good job today, especially considering everything that happened yesterday.”

Lex smiled and nodded gratefully at him. “Thanks, Mr. Chen. I think I'll take a bath and then maybe a nap.”

As she eased herself into the hot tub sometime later, Lex sighed. She closed her eyes and tried to let the bubbles and hot water lift away all of the leftover tension from the events of the previous day. After twenty minutes or so, Lex felt relaxed to the point of near bonelessness and had begun to think about getting out when she heard crackling from a speaker she noticed overhead.

“Lex, I'm sorry to catch you in the hot tub, but I wanted to talk to you about something. Do you have some time?”

Lex stared at the speaker for a moment, processing the slightly computer-flattened voice, and then frowned a little. “Riss? Is that you?”

“Yes.”

Lex considered the request for a second before responding. “Yes, I have some time right now, but I can't talk for too long because I need to get some other things done this afternoon. Will that work for you?”

“Sure, that's fine. I'll be in my room when you're ready.”

Lex sighed deeply as she pulled herself out of the warm water and worried as she dressed that maybe she was being a little silly, but finally just shrugged. She knew it was important for her to keep her word to Mr. Chen, plus she’d started to feel like she wanted a nap anyway, so maybe it made sense to keep her talk with Riss short.

When she got to the head of the stairs, she paused to consider the brief orientation Casey had given her when she'd arrived. She thought she remembered that Riss' room stood across the hall from the conference room where she’d been interviewed, so Lex walked up to that door and knocked.

“Come in,” Lex heard, the sound muffled due to barriers and distance.

She went inside and took a moment to adjust from the afternoon light that had been pouring in through the window at the end of the hall to the dim lighting of the room. She saw no lamps; all the light came from a number of computer monitors throughout the room, several of them displaying windows with information or pure computer code, and a few with moving screen savers.

“Can you close the door?” asked a low, confident female voice. Lex noted no accent that she could pick out (unlike Casey’s slight Midwestern twang) and smiled, realizing that made it likely that Riss also came from the area.

“Sorry,” Lex said, moving to shut it, “My eyes are used to more light right now. It'll take another few minutes before I can see everything in here.”

She stayed in place, since she'd noticed with the door open that power, computer, and network cables snaked all over the floor. As Lex's eyes became accustomed to the low light, she could see that the layout of the room was similar to hers, with a closed bathroom door to the left, but beyond that, she could see two large tables set up parallel to one another with a number of laptops, desktops, and maybe some servers piled closely on and underneath them. The narrow space between the tables looked just wide enough for one or two people to sit, and Lex finally spotted a woman sitting near the end of one table on a rolling office chair, one foot hooked under the opposite knee. The computer screen in front of her lit her face with a bluish glow, showing off her midnight-dark skin and dark eyes. Lex thought Riss looked to be about her height, but the other woman seemed much slighter, if the slim, graceful arm reaching for the coffee cup on her desk was any indication. As Riss turned to look at her visitor, she fixed Lex with an intelligent, somewhat skeptical gaze and ran a hand over her curly, close-cropped hair.

“Thanks for coming up,” Riss said.

Lex nodded. “No problem. And, I'm sorry if I disturbed you yesterday,” she quickly added, looking down at her hands. “It’s not anything that ever happened before, so hopefully it won’t happen again.”

She looked up to find Riss gazing back at her. “Did something happen?” Riss asked, her face impassive except for one quirked eyebrow.

Lex sighed, tired of talking about it, but finally sure it wasn’t why Riss had called in the first place. “Unfortunately, I had a massive migraine and passed out. Casey found me on the floor of my room and took me downstairs.”

“So, you never usually get migraines that severe?” Riss’ expression hadn’t changed, but somehow Lex felt the woman’s gaze had become more intense.

Lex shook her head. “No, that was the first time. I hope it’s the last.”

Riss nodded. “Sorry to hear about it. Are you feeling better?”

“I should be 100% by tomorrow, but I’m a little tired today. So, what’s up?”

This time, Riss sighed. “I've been trying to put together a plan to secure the computers in the building here. I know how it should be done, but our keepers want something in writing to show how it’ll work. Plus, they keep adding things to the network and taking things out, and there are things here that aren't connected to other things…” she trailed off, one hand on her forehead as if she had a headache.

Lex nodded, feeling more at ease now that she had an idea of why she’d been summoned. “So, you need help with the documentation and with creating a catalog of the computer resources here? Also maybe with putting together a plan to register new resources?”

Riss gave her an almost nonexistent smile. “Exactly. Have you done this sort of thing before?”

“Not really, but I've done things that were similar enough so that I can probably figure something out pretty quickly. Did anyone tell you when they want this done?”

“They wanted it a few weeks ago but they didn't like what I gave them. I'm not sure when they want it, now.”