Mr Holt led me to an interview room. One of his favourite ones with recording equipment and the water dispenser outside the door.
"Sit, Kim," Mr Holt gestured to the chair opposite me in a heavy voice.
He fiddled with the voice recorder and transcription machine for a bit and then looked at me. His gaze was an intense examination of my face and body posture. I couldn't hold or return the gaze. Looking down, I fidgeted with my fingers in my lap. I felt hot and irritated, yet cold and alone. I wanted to run away and hide.
I had a feeling I knew what he was going to ask and why. He had even turned on the voice recorder, because he knew it was a topic that was going to require an internal investigation and possibly result in the disbanding of our team. And also a possible reprimand for me leaving an important detail out of my official report.
He, as the team leader and our mentor, in my case, my teacher as well, was going to have to bear the brunt of the investigation. In short. He was going to be in bigger trouble than all the rest of us team members. Probably. He had a responsibility and his responsibility hadn't been fulfilled. That nobody had reported any of the overt or covert bullying in the team to him would indicate that none of us trusted him. His failure to notice such important stuff was a failure as our mentor. That would bring his effectiveness, professionalism and efficiency as a team leader and trainer into question.
"You're an overthinker, Kim," Mr Holt said at last. "We both know it."
"Yes," I agreed in a soft voice, not daring to look up.
"I'm not sure where I've gone wrong in teaching and training you to this point. I wasn't sure before but now I'm certain. You don't trust me. I've tried and tried to reach out to you but you always seem to throw up a wall and block me out. You won't even call me by my first name like everyone else when I have requested you to do so over and over again."
"Calling you by your first name would be disrespectful, sir," I said to my twisting fingers. "My culture doesn't allow me to show a superior such disrespect. The best I can do is call you Mr Holt or by your title, but you didn't like me calling you by your title."
"Oh yes," Mr Holt ran his fingers through his hair when I glanced up at him through my eyelashes. "I forgot. You're from the tribes. But your family brought you up in the city?"
"My mother was lost from the family and brought up in an institution in the city, sir," I replied. "She and my father only managed to reconnect with their family when I was born and I was sent back to the tribe until I was of schooling age."
"I'm sorry," Mr Holt said. "Your papers don't say you're of indigenous descent and you don't look like it either. I've been insensitive. It hasn't been easy for you, has it?"
I shook my head.
"Does the rest of the team know you're of indigenous descent?"
"No, sir. I never told them," I told him.
"Ok. But that doesn't detract from the fact that our relationship here, Kim, is lacking in trust. A lot of trust. I've been trusting and waiting for you to come to your senses and tell me what the heck is going on in our team. The others refuse to tell me. Sarden doesn't dare to open his mouth. He hinted that you would be hurt if he dared to say anything. But you… I was the one who recruited and trained you. I thought we were close enough that you'd feel comfortable enough to come to me. I've given you private tutoring and special training, just so that you could get to this point. But your grades remain erratic. Our team is not united except to hide things from me. I'm not blind. I need one of you to open your mouth and tell me what is wrong."
I pressed my lips together into a thin line and felt the reluctance to share anything.
"If I get investigators involved, will you share it with them? Have I done something wrong, Kim? Tell me. What have I done wrong? Look at me."
Mr Holt's eyes were moist and pleading. And yet, I couldn't open my mouth. I didn't know where to start.
"I don't think I'm cut out for this line of work, sir," I told Mr Holt. "I want to resign."
Mr Holt rubbed his face and covered it for a long moment. When he uncovered his face, I could see he was clenching his jaw.
"And where will you go, Kim? What job will you do?"
"I can go back to the factory or return to the tribe and live off the land," I said, averting my eyes from his heated gaze. He was angry. Very upset and angry. His barely concealed anger made me shiver beneath its pressure.
"Back to that factory I saved you from where they were grooming you for you-know-what, where they treated you like a slave or a toy they could vent their frustrations on?" he seethed.
I hesitated. I'd forgotten about that.
"Back to the tribe where your elders think you're a contaminated product of your parents' marriage? Where they beat and abused you daily to try and iron out what they believed to be undesirable traits in a girl? To the point you almost died? You had malnutrition and and were covered in wounds when I found you, remember? You forget that I know everything, Kim."
His reminders of the reality of my life made me freeze. My head hurt thinking about it. I had no where to go and no where to turn. Mr Holt had indeed saved me but if I left his protection, I had no where I would call home to return to. My tribe barely accepted me as one of them. My family in the city were too busy juggling their identities and trying to find themselves. They were struggling to survive in this time of an inflated cost of living. They had no time for me.
My father was being bullied and oppressed in his workplace for being an indigenous person. He didn't want me to return home if at all possible. He had told me that I needed to take this chance to grow my own wings, spread them and fly from the toxic wasteland that family life had become. He told me to run away and save myself. My mother and siblings had said much the same.
My parents had never sent my younger siblings to the tribe to suffer like I had. I assumed it showed that my parents loved them. Without me, the family worked well as survival partners. With me around, I had thrown a cog in the works, interrupting their daily life. I wasn't wanted. I was too different.
"I'm sorry, Kim," Mr Holt passed me a tissue. "It's the reality of things. You need to take more control of your own life and think things through properly. Please, don't waste everything the two of us have worked so hard together to obtain for you. Don't waste this chance to make a new life and forge a new path for yourself. Don't resign. Please."
"I'll think about it again," I said, feeling my lips twist.
"Why do you want to resign?" Mr Holt asked.
"I barely scrape through the assessments every year," I said. "I'm of no use to the team. Everyone always has to protect me and everyone besides Sarden and Big Brother seems to resent it. I'm not as fast or as smart. My special ability isn't reliable or useful. They think I get too much 'special attention' or something. They say I'm too weak. The team would probably function better without me."
"You may be a slow learner, Kim, but you've finally started to get the hang of things. Your grades have been going up gradually with every reassessment, as long as we let you focus and nobody bothers you. You're getting there. One day, you're going to be amazing."
"I'll have to take your word for it, Mr Holt," I hunched my shoulders. "I certainly can't see it happening."
"Kim," Mr Holt leaned back in his chair after a short moment of silence, playing with a pen that he had picked up from the table, "what did Chad mean when he said that you flew across the gulf?"
I rubbed my face in frustration at this. He had given me away. I had hoped to keep this a secret a bit longer.
"Kim? Did you leave something out of your report? There are surveillance cameras facing the Gulf, you know. I can always go and check them."
I'd forgotten about the surveillance cameras that were always watching the Gulf and the other side in case of a new sudden attack or invasion again.
"Mr Holt," I said in a weak voice, "when I said I jumped to escape from him. I literally did that. I leapt off the cliff and across the gulf. I didn't know if I would make it but I was panicked and desperate to escape. There was no other way I would have been able to get away from him. I can't run fast or fight well enough. He's way more skilled than me. If I hadn't jumped, I might as well be dead. He'd be doing horrible things to me right now."
"Kim, are you crazy?" Mr Holt reached across the table to take me by the shoulders and give me a little shake. Then he came around the table to give me a hug. "Were you trying to kill yourself? The furthest distance you have ever been able to jump was ten metres with a maximum height of one metre eighty. And you decided to jump off the cliff? What if you didn't make it?"
"Then I wouldn't be here and you'd have found my dead body on a beach somewhere in a few days or not at all," I shrugged, still looking down. "Like I said. I was desperate. I've been training during my spare time, so I thought I'd be able to make it. I didn't want to tell anyone until I was sure I could make such big leaps consistently. Not just as a once off thing."
"You've worked hard," Mr Holt smiled at me, "and it looks like your hard work is starting to pay off. Well done, Kim."
I bobbed my head, feeling a bit shy at finally receiving a bit of praise. It felt like it had been a long time since I had last received a genuine compliment or word of praise. Finally hearing something positive made me feel all warm and fluffy inside.
"However, your little explosion of temper during the phone call wasn't you. You don't normally lose your temper during a critical moment. It's a good thing that it didn't make him upset. What's going on?"
I squirmed in my seat - or rather I felt like I was squirming inside. In reality, I was sitting stiffly in a hunched posture. Without realising, I had hugged myself and was holding each of my arms tight. Mr Holt's observing eyes landing on my arms brought it to my notice and my fingers felt stiff when I tried to pry them off my arms.
Not being able to hug myself made me feel more exposed. After clasping my hands, wiping sweaty palms on my trousers and then scrunching up the bottom of my shirt in my fists, I peered nervously through my eyelashes at Mr Holt again. Hopefully he would let me off. Maybe I'd be able to ride his patience out?
"Kim," Mr Holt said into the silence, making me jump at the sudden jolt that brought me out of my headspace and back into the present. "Kim, it's obvious that something important has been bothering you. We aren't leaving this room until you tell me what the problem is."