They’re whispering, so Leona can’t hear very well, but she can make out most
of what they’re saying on the other side of the door. It’s good, because she
works better when people are rattled. She has had it up to here with people
threatening her family, and that ends today, whether he heeds her warning,
or ignores it, and suffers.
“I told you not to disturb me, Sheila,” or whatever her name is.
“I’m sorry, sir, but she has an SD6 badge.”
“SD6?” he questions. “Is it Agent Matic?”
“I couldn’t see, sir. I saw that symbol, and froze. She looks...”
“She looks what?”
“She looks...menacing.”
“Let her in, and go to lunch.”
“Sir, it’s only—”
“Go to lunch!”
The secretary comes back out to the waiting area, and immediately realizes
that she’s no longer smiling, which is probably in her job description. She
remedies it, and says, “he’s ready to see you now.”
Leona walks in and closes the door.
“Agent Matic, I apologize for failing to explain to you that our business
relationship will be relegated to the laboratory. You are not to come to my
office. I can’t be seen in your company.”
She stares at him stoically. “I failed as well. I failed my family. I
thought, if I took up the mantle of the badge, you would leave them alone. I
was wrong about that, and I promise that I will not let it happen again.”
“Leona, we all have a job to do—”
“And your job is to serve your country, but here’s the thing, I don’t give a
shit about this country. It’s not my home, and it never will be. Those
people are my home, and you’re threatening them. Where I come from, we react
in kind.” She removes a little berry from her pocket, and sets it on his
desk.
He’s actually scared of it, because he doesn’t know what it is. “Is that
a...tiny little bomb, or something? Is that a fusion bomb?”
She rolls her eyes. “It’s a hungerberry. It grows seemingly naturally on a
single island in the middle of the ocean, which just so happens to be named
after me, on a planet called Dardius.”
“So you are aliens?”
“We’re castaways, stop losing focus. It’s called a hungerberry, because it
makes you hungry. There’s no cure, certainly not on your world. I’ve been
saving it for a very long time, but I haven’t kept it refrigerated, so
honestly, I don’t know how potent it is. Perhaps it ferments, and grows
stronger with age. It’s not shriveled and dead yet, which is weird when you
consider it’s been years since I picked it. I have more than one, and like I
said, we react in kind, so right now, while you’re at zero berries, you’re
treading dangerously close to one berry. Now, it won’t cause you to feel
starved, but you will be slightly uncomfortable for the rest of your life.
You’ll never feel satiated, no matter how much you eat, but you’ll have to
regulate your intake intellectually, or you could overeat, and die. Are you
following me so far?”
“Poisonous berries, I got it,” he responds.
She lives up to her recent reputation of being menacing with an evil grin,
and an uncomfortably jovial timbre. “Keep in mind that when I was using the
word you, I wasn’t talking about you specifically. It’s more
in the general sense, because I wouldn’t be force feeding you the
hungerberry, I would be giving it to your daughter.” Upon the last few
words, she drops the grin, and goes straight to genuine wrath.
If he wasn’t paying attention before, he is now.
“I understand that life is a give and take, so I’m not severing ties with
your family, nor the lab. I will continue to work on fusion, and I will
continue to execute missions to both your discretion, and my own. But you
will not reach out to my husband, and you will not threaten or harm anyone
else that I care about. Because if you only learn one lesson today, let it
be this. The hungerberry...is my least powerful weapon. If you fucking push
me, I will ruin you. You and your daughter will suffer so hard, you will
wish I had instead given you all the berries in my possession. Do you have
any questions?” She overenunciates the last sentence.
He’s frightened and humbled. “No, sir. We’ll leave them alone.”
“Good. And be nicer to your assistant. Don’t be a cliché.” She takes the
berry, so he can’t use it to start a war, or something, and starts to leave
his office.
“One thing,” he says, still scared of her. “Is the berry real, or just a
prop?”
“Oh, it’s very real. It contributed to the death of an immortal. Have a nice
day.” That’ll only entice him to learn more about time travel, and find out
what else is out there, but it was a pretty cool way to end the so-called
conversation, so she just couldn’t help herself. She walks out of the
building, and goes home to her family.
