The Slate meeting was supposed to take place inside the event center’s main room. Walking through the building gave Harley a lot of time to think. He had just been recently assigned to Columbus, to Ashling, and the stress was building already. The woman was smart, smarter than Obsidian had given her credit for. He was going to have to play his cards right if he was going to keep up with her. At least he wasn’t lying to her about anything she would have reason to question him about. At least, not yet.
Harley couldn’t deny that the beginnings of guilt had started deep inside him. It didn’t take much to get him feeling guilty, though. Not really. He had a lot to feel guilty about, and this was just one more thing on the teetering tower of self-loathing. He smiled mirthlessly as he walked, looking down at the floor. A few people walked past him on his way down the hall, but by the time he arrived at the right door, the hall was all but clear. It gave him plenty of space to be alone with his thoughts.
He yanked on the handle of the door and stepped in– and immediately stopped. Bright fluorescent lights hit him, and he winced, pushing the sunglasses up higher. He could practically hear the whine of the lights. The door swung shut behind him before he could register what he was looking at.
He was in some kind of gymnasium. Like the kind at high schools, complete with lines on the floor to denote the basketball court. He looked around him with narrowed eyes and a furrowed brow. That was…. Not right. He turned around to walk back out, sure that he had taken a wrong turn, but the door behind him had changed into one of those push bar doors you’d see in schools, and it was locked. He jiggled it. It didn’t move.
He turned back toward the room, licking his lower lip in a quick motion. His head twitched to the side as he looked around the large room. In the very middle was a small circle of chairs. Four of them in total. Nearby were two fold-out tables. He could see some kind of sign on one, facing the circle. He slowly moved through the room, as though the floors might disintegrate at any time and send him plummeting to a well-deserved death. Instead, it stayed firm beneath his feet. Circling around the tables made the front of the sign visible, and he immediately sucked in a deep breath.
Sitting on the table was a plastic sign, painted with the words “Welcome to Group Therapy!”. Sitting in front of it were several pamphlets, all in different languages, most of which he had no idea how to read. One didn’t even look real. He picked up one of the two in English and began skimming it as he stepped away from the table.
It was full of “helpful” advice about discussing trauma with your family and friends, as well as instructions for how group therapy was supposed to go. It declared in a soft font on light blue laminated paper that they were to talk about their issues, find resolutions with the group, and then come back “weekly” for the best results.
He set the brochure down on a chair– one of the shitty all-plastic ones– and moved to the next table. There were three boxes of donuts, each proudly declaring they were from the Walmart Bakery. A box of powdered, a box of chocolate, and a box of sugared. There was a coffee pot, no machine in sight, full to the brim next to a small cylinder of what looked to be creamer. A small pot sat next to it with sugar. There was a kettle as well, and several boxes of shitty-looking tea. There were four water bottles next to it, and four mugs were lined up on the table, each a different color.
Harley turned and looked back around the gymnasium. There were doors at all four corners, and he knew his was already locked. It was safe to assume the others were locked as well. Was this some kind of fever dream? Maybe a hallucination? Was he being used as an example for a meta with illusionary powers? Everything seemed very real, and when he ran his fingers over things, they were the right texture and touch. Strange.
He moved back over to the chairs and picked the brochure back up, sitting down. He tapped the pamphlet on his thigh and sighed, running a hand through his messy curls, pushing them back from his face. Alright. Alright. This might as well happen. Surely something was going to happen that would show him what was going on. Surely.
