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- #151
Hal slept off the path, but out of any exhibits, of course. She hadn't bothered to leave the zoo. Where else would she go, anyway? She had nightmares. She usually did. Usually about that night. Sometimes it was exactly as it happened. Sometimes she would mow down the intruders with her fire. Sometimes she would join them and mow down her family. Sometimes she was a fly on the wall, watching her family get killed. Once, she had joined the Order and was standing in a cemetery at her family's graves, and then she knocked them down.
They kept her afraid. They kept her running. They kept her wanting to come home. They kept her hating herself. They kept her loving her family – even Katie, except for Katie. They kept her vengeful. They kept her guilty.
She couldn't sleep without them.
Tobias closed his eyes again, standing in the middle of the sidewalk, a mental image of the path to his target slowly swimming into view, like ribbon of light stretching in front of him in the dark. He started walking, opening his eyes a moment after so that he wouldn't run into anything, though he could track better with his eyes closed.
Earlier that day, Todias had been heading down the street to board a bus on Eastlake Avenue when he neared stop, and halted abruptly in slight disbelief at what he'd just seen. Did that girl just breath fire? He had thought, but he wasn't really surprised, there where lots of people with abilities in the area, in the world, so running into them, when you were aware, wasn't extremely uncommon. The girl boarded the bus just as Tobias had started forward again, but the doors closed just before he got there, and the bus pulled away, living him to find her. Well, because that's what he did, find people with abilities, nothing personal.
Tobias sighed, it had taken him hours, but he was now nearing the girl, in the zoo, which was closed, which is why he had to jump-well, climb, slip, and tumble over the fence. He rubbed the bruise on his elbow, rounding the corner of the path and looking around. He could sense that she was close, very close, so he started looking around.
"Oh,"' Tobias paused as he spotted her a little ways off the path, then slowly approached, "Hello, ah, miss?"