DEAR DIARY,
It's been two days since our first "operation." Which is what they called it in our briefing and debriefing. Doesn't operation sound nice? So very clean and antiseptic. And they seemed pleased enough by how it went, so I guess from their point of view, that's probably how it looks. They sent us in, we did what we were told, we came back more or less intact.
Yay, us.
I'm writing this at four in the morning, because I woke up again and I don't want to go back to sleep just yet. Part of me doesn't want to talk about why, but the rest of me figures that I should, and since there's nothing good on TV right now that's the part that's winning.
So I guess this is where I talk about exactly why I can't just go back to sleep. There's a story that goes with this, and that story is one of those top-secret, national-security, eyes-only kind of things. But anyone who's supposed to be reading you, dear diary, should already know to not spread these stories around. And it's not like any of it could really be proven, right?
I'm stalling, I know. So, the story:
The CIA knew the Sudombian Irregular Forces had been putting together a little encampment in the middle of the rapidly-diminishing rain forest where all the mosquitoes and the snakes live, but they didn't know exactly what was going on in there. So they figured they'd send us, their newest recruits, in with orders to raid the base's files and wreck the place on the way out.
What the CIA didn't know was that the base was about twice as big as they thought it was, thanks to some clever tree architecture courtesy of some guy from Brazil, and that the Sudombians had some recruits of their own.
I guess things went pretty much the way they were supposed to anyway. Ariel and Samantha were taking care of the files, Tristin was covering them, and they had me and Jim--well, I guess it was Jim's alter ego, Shellshock--"make a distraction" to get the guards over to one side of the base. Which we did, and it was big and noisy and definitely got their attention. The Sudombians only had maybe a half-dozen ordinary mercenary soldiers there, but they also had four of their "specialists" there, which is what they call mutants when they're sending deniable messages back and forth.
So we made a good distraction, namely a big, noisy fight with the guards that basically went our way. Shellshock can be, like, forty feet tall and he has to weigh a couple of tons when he grows that big, and when he punches someone really hard it feels like an earthquake. I helped by keeping some of the guards occupied doing other stuff or making them fight each other instead of us, which wasn't too different from the things I'd done after I ran away from home. And according to the debriefing, Ariel's team didn't have too much trouble getting the files.
Really, it was a very successful operation and we should feel good about that. That's what they told us and what they were thinking when we came back, anyway, and that should be good enough.
We even rescued some people, relatives of wealthy Venezuelan families who had been kidnapped and were being held as hostages. That's a good thing. I should be happy that we helped. After all, everyone else was happy about it. Even Tristin, and she can be kind of mean to people when she wants to be.
But I'm not happy. Not really. I don't know what that says about me, but I'm sure it's not good.
See, the hostages (six people, including one elderly man and one nine-year-old girl) were being watched by the last "specialist," a mutant with electrical powers. His name was Heriberto Dauria. I know this because just after Tristin had found these hostages, she came out and told me that they couldn't leave because they were being watched by a mutant who would electrocute them if they tried escaping, and that was just before Ariel and Samantha finished with the files and the hostages started screaming.
Everyone basically went all-out to try and stop that. Tristin and Sam and Ariel started shooting right away at the part of the building where he was supposed to be, and I did the only thing I could really do, which was close my eyes and try to find the mind that was trying to kill those people and make it stop.
Which I've never done before, by the way. It's not easy to do, especially fast and with lots of gunfire and screaming going on. But I did it, and I stopped him, and that's when I started getting acquainted with the late and thoroughly unlamented Heriberto Dauria. I could keep him in one place easily enough, but I figured I should make sure they didn't have some kind of failsafe or backup plan in case he couldn't successfully murder the hostages, so I had to spend a few minutes getting those answers from him.
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"Really, it was a very successful operation..." |
So that's the first reason why I'm not happy about having been there to help the hostages. Every time I think about it I have to think about Heriberto Dauria, and that makes me feel worse.
But I suppose I could say that this isn't necessarily a poor reflection on me as a person, because those really are HIS thoughts and not mine, and given a little time I'll be able to stop remembering them so clearly. No, what I think probably makes me a bad person is that after we saved those people, I ended up feeling sorry for myself instead of being happy for them.
They figured out that we were Americans and that we'd just rescued them from the Sudombians, and they thought Tristin was just the greatest thing ever since she'd found them and even healed their worst injuries. They thought Samantha was totally cool, too, because she was the one who teleported them out of the base and made sure they were safe. They saw that Ariel was basically in charge, so they felt really grateful to her. And Jim, of course, is the perfect model of a handsome young American soldier, plus he's really nice and cheerful and knows how to put people at ease, so naturally they liked him, too.
And then they saw me.
I actually hadn't seen the people we'd saved at all until we were regrouping outside the base and figuring out where we needed to go to get them back to their families, and they hadn't seen me until then, either, and I make about as bad a first impression as you can imagine I would. Before I showed up, the little girl was saying little prayers of thanks and asking lots of questions and she was full of shy excitement...but just one look at me and she started crying and tried to run away. The rest of the people we rescued all kind of pulled together in a little knot to protect themselves from me, and everything in their heads was fear and revulsion.
So I did the polite thing, like I talked about with Dr. Preston last week. I stayed out of their way, I stayed out of their sight, I didn't impose on them. And the whole time I was thinking mean, selfish thoughts, like about how I just waded through a total sewer of a mind to save their lives, a few seconds later and maybe they would have died, and that didn't really mean anything because they look at me and think "monster." I make little girls cry and want to run away. Even when the others explained to them that I was on the team and I'd helped stop Heriberto, they still couldn't manage anything more than a tiny hint of gratitude and they were still afraid of me and wished I wasn't there. And I resented it, and I still resent it, and it's poisoning whatever happiness I could feel about saving their lives.
I mean, shouldn't I be a better person than that? Why should it even matter to me what they think about me? The CIA didn't tell us to rescue any hostages, we did that because it was the right thing to do, so why should I need any gratitude or recognition for that? Isn't this supposed to be its own reward? Why should I feel entitled to their thanks or upset because they didn't like me?
And I don't know the answers to those questions, but besides the fact that I can still remember Heriberto Dauria in more lurid detail than anyone should ever have to, the real reason why I can't get back to sleep is because I just can't stop thinking about this. I don't want to be this horrible bitter girl who sulks because she knows other people are thinking about how much they don't like her. I wish I didn't feel like that. I wish I could feel like it didn't matter to me at all, that I could just politely go off and only worry about myself and not care at all what anyone else thought and just be happy with that.
I know that'd be easier on everyone who isn't me, and I know it's the kind of terribly polite, low-profile, don't-make-waves policy that I'm supposed to follow if I want to stay out of the Castle, and I'm trying really hard to stick to that. It's not so bad when the sun is up and I have other things I can do to keep myself busy, but when I can't sleep and I don't have anything else to do, it all just eats away at me. I should be happy for them, I should be happy about what I did for them, but I'm still sitting here alone waiting for the sun to come up and wallowing in frustration and anger over the whole thing instead. And then I get upset because I'm sure that this means that I'm really not a good person, that I'm just selfish and petty and making all of this harder than it needs to be.
Maybe that's just too little sleep and too much Heriberto Dauria making me feel miserable and on edge. But I still want to feel like I did something right, and it bugs me that I didn't get to feel like that.