Chương 115: Beyond the Obvious

"I'll meet you outside the engineering center," I said, then immediately ended the call before she had a chance to ask any unnecessary questions. I unlocked my smartphone and opened the taxi app with a familiar tap. My hotel was exactly two and a half miles from the engineering center. The distance was laughably short, but the navigation app optimistically estimated a twenty-minute trip with traffic, and the car itself would take at least another ten minutes to arrive.

I closed the app, stood up, and walked over to the closet, where the tracksuit I had recently bought was waiting. A taxi was convenient, but I had no intention of wasting time waiting on someone else's leisurely service. Besides, Selina had never been known for her patience. For every extra three minutes I kept her waiting, she would happily drive a mental spike into my brain, generously coated in sarcasm.

I quickly memorized the shortest route through small parks and side streets, left the hotel, and ran out into the cool Washington night. I had chosen a route that minimized any encounters with traffic and random pedestrians. [The Trainer's presence is adjusting your movements for maximum efficiency.] My muscle memory recalibrated instantly. It felt as though invisible steel cables had been sewn into my thighs, lifting my legs at precisely calculated angles to generate maximum propulsion.

My heels struck and pushed off the asphalt with flawless precision, eliminating every unnecessary expenditure of energy. I reached top speed within seconds, covering ten yards with every stride. The headwind hit my face, but instead of throwing off my breathing, it only sharpened my focus. The few pedestrians coming toward me jumped toward the curbs and lawns, instinctively recoiling from the streaking shadow like people suddenly confronted by a large dog. A perfectly reasonable response.

Halfway there, the navigation led me astray. A shortcut through a quiet neighborhood ended at a tall fence that had not been there on the latest maps. No panic. One powerful, precisely controlled push-off, and the obstacle was behind me. A landing roll I had learned in parkour training absorbed the impact without putting so much as a microscopic tear in my ligaments. I was back on my feet and running again, having lost no more than a second to the maneuver.

There was an unfamiliar, concentrated lightness throughout my entire body. Just yesterday, I had looked down on people who preferred athletic wear to city clothes, dismissing it as simple laziness and a lack of taste. But now, moving at the speed of an elite runner, I found myself wanting to purge my wardrobe of jeans and dress shoes. There was no way to reach this kind of speed from a standing start in either of them, let alone achieve this kind of pure kinetic efficiency.

I stopped directly in front of the engineering center's massive glass doors and glanced at my watch. Two and a half miles in three minutes and two seconds. My breathing was still perfectly steady, and the cotton fabric of my T-shirt was completely dry. Apparently, evolution had removed another vestigial feature from my body along the way: excessive sweating. I remembered my days working in an accounting office, when a single cup of hot coffee in a stuffy room could be enough to make me change my shirt.

Now, forcing my body to produce even a drop of sweat would probably require extreme exertion on the verge of death. Maybe Leon had been right about one thing. Wasting a resource like this while sitting behind a desk really would have been absurd. I called Selina, noting that my pulse remained perfectly calm.

"I'm at the main entrance," I said into the phone.

"Already?" There was open suspicion in her voice.

"We just hung up. Did you call me from the parking lot?"

"You could say that," I replied, having no desire to explain the details of my run.

"Either way, I'm here. Come down." I ended the call and sat down on a dry wooden bench beneath the bright pool of light cast by a streetlamp. Selina made me wait exactly ten minutes. If I'd known her timing in advance, I could have asked her to come out first and then left the hotel. Still, when the heavy glass door finally opened, I understood where those ten minutes had gone. She was wearing a strict yet striking black dress with a straight cut that perfectly emphasized her elegant figure.

Simple hair clips glimmered in her neatly styled blond hair. Even looking slightly tired, with her glasses slipping down the bridge of her nose and a lab coat thrown over her dress, marked with faint traces of chemicals, Selina still had that particular grace that made everyone around her feel like an unkempt bunch of amateurs.

"You came to a meeting in a tracksuit?" She lifted her chin slightly and wrinkled her nose like a restaurant critic who had just found a cockroach in his soup.

"What, are we robbing the nearest gas station?" Stolen from its original source, this story is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

"It's an informal meeting," I said, calmly meeting her sharp, appraising stare.

"It's not a business dinner or a formal event. Athletic wear is perfectly practical for a quick exchange of information."

"What's next? Are you going to ask me to sit on the curb and offer me a bag of cheap chips?" She deliberately folded her arms across her chest, pulling the white lab coat slightly taut across her shoulders.

"In case you've forgotten, Ross, I'm a lady, not some street urchin. And where, exactly, is my coffee? You showed up empty-handed for someone who's been working her ass off on your projects without even taking a lunch break?" Selina looked at me with such profound, carefully measured disappointment that I might as well have been an adult who had shattered a child's faith in Santa Claus. For a fraction of a second, my pragmatic reasoning faltered, registering as a strange, unfamiliar ache somewhere in my chest.

"I'm practically crying from hunger over here. And it's your fault, by the way! And you couldn't even bring me a lousy pastry!" Her eyes instantly grew moist, and her voice took on a tragic note.

"You're absolutely heartless, Ross."

"I know you well enough to predict your behavior," I replied with an impassive expression, not even flinching at the performance.

"Every decent restaurant around here is closed at this hour. If I'd bought you something at an all-night grocery store, that bag would've gone straight into the nearest trash can the second I handed it to you. You're not going to eat just anything."

"I know my worth," she shot back without hesitation, instantly switching from anger to forgiveness.

"Fine, you're forgiven for the lack of cheap fast food. But what's the plan now? Are you taking me to a decent restaurant? Of course not. No respectable establishment is going to let you through the door dressed in those sweatpants."

"On the other hand, not wearing a tie makes it easier to work over a stove." I shifted my gaze from her face to the dark windows of the engineering wing.

"If I understand correctly, the kitchen in the staff cafeteria should be completely empty right now. No lines, no unnecessary personnel, and no restrictions on the menu."

"Forgiven again." Selina gracefully pivoted on her heels toward the entrance. There was not a trace of her fake tears left.

"But don't even think about making me wait. I really am hungry." The engineering center was silent inside. The workday was over, and the long corridors were no longer filled with the chatter of young specialists in white lab coats. At the security checkpoint, the soldiers on duty merely nodded to Selina and cleared me to enter. The staff kitchen in the cafeteria was empty and cool. No heat from the stoves, no personnel. I went straight to the refrigerators to inspect the available ingredients.

Containers of tomorrow's lunches for the staff were lined up inside, but I left them untouched. Standard tuna pasta was far too mundane for the local queen. I took inventory of the available vegetables, meat, and spices in a matter of seconds and fed the data into the analytical center of my brain. Cross-referencing the ingredients with my recipe database, I worked out the optimal sequence. The stove was on. While the oil heated in the pan, my fingers sliced the leeks with mechanical precision and speed.

"I love watching a man who knows his way around a knife," Selina purred from a high stool at the serving counter.

"So, how'd you manage to get an audience with Crowley? The old man's usually insanely busy, and he doesn't invite yesterday's cadets over for tea."

"I received a Bronze Star with a V for the portal operation." I tossed the leeks into the sizzling oil and started trimming the beef tenderloin.

"Crowley personally presents awards at that level."

"You already have medals? That's not fair." She tapped her nails irritably against the stainless-steel countertop.

"I've been in the Corps longer than you, and I still don't have a single piece of hardware."

"You don't work in the red zone," I said, laying evenly cut strips of meat onto the hot surface.

"Besides, what do you need military decorations for? You're making a much bigger name for yourself as a researcher."

"Fine, you've got a point. So what does that little medal get you besides a line in your personnel file?"

"Higher pay, priority when choosing assignments, free medical care, and an education allowance."

"Not exactly a great deal," she said dismissively.

"You can treat yourself. Outside surgeons would only make a mess of your anatomy. And education? You already have a degree in economics. As for your next assignment, I've already pulled some strings to get you transferred to my department." I silently added the spices, carefully balancing the flavors. Telling Selina that I had no desire to become her personal assistant was not part of my plans right now.

Every conversation with her burned through my mental reserves, and I had no intention of signing up for that every day.

"So what did you find?" Selina asked, leaning forward slightly.

"Arthur pinned the medal on you, you shook hands... What did you see in him?" I told her about the parameters my [Analysis] had revealed when I examined the general, all while bringing the beef to the perfect level of doneness. Selina fell silent. She pressed a finger to her lips and stared at a fixed point. She always looked completely at home in that focused, analytical state. Without making a fuss, I plated the food and set one plate in front of her.

To my satisfaction, she was so absorbed in her calculations that she did not even remember to complain about the lack of an official presentation from the chef.

"So our general doesn't just keep himself in shape." She speared a slice of meat with her fork without taking her eyes off the wall.

"His muscles are strong enough to move a train."

"And yet, on the outside, he looks like an ordinary, well-built veteran," I added, sitting across from her.

"No excessive muscle mass or the physical distortions you'd expect from Omega Plus steroid injections. The old man has surpassed your genius."

"Wait... Is that what's been bothering you?" A devilish, triumphant smile spread across her lips.

"You want to figure out how he did it and replicate it."

"I don't see any reason to deny it. I want to know why his biomechanical performance exceeds mine despite the smaller visible changes. Do you know why?"

"Maybe." She drew the word out mysteriously and leisurely put the meat into her mouth.

"Do you really think I'm going to hand over top-secret information for one plate of juicy steak? You cook pretty well for a former accountant, Ross, but that information is worth far more than a good dinner. Much more."