A different language

I walked from the washroom in a daze: no bruising, no blood - not a mark on me. How could it be?

The man who'd introduced himself as Mr Smith read my expression. "Ah. Yes, remarkable, isn't it. When they brought you in, we'd never seen so strong a quirk before - and certainly not in an individual who had never had any development."

"Quirk?" I managed to ask, struggling to make sense of what he was saying.

"Forgive me, we tend to talk in a kind of shorthand here. And with a field that is - one could hardly deny - in its infancy, many of the terms we use are of my own devising, I'm afraid. We are, after all, giving name to phenomena that are thus far undocumented."

"I, er..."

"What the professor...what Mr Smith is saying, is that we're making this stuff up as we go along," Kate said.

"And I don't know about you," she continued, looking from one of us to the other, "but I'll be a lot less nervous when we're in your office, Mr Smith. I know there's no camera coverage here, but anyone could come down those stairs and find us here."

Mr Smith seemed to realise she was talking sense.

"Yes, of course, we should go there as quickly as possible. Alan, would you be so good as to talk further with myself and Miss Wilson? I'm afraid I'm out of lapsang souchong, but I can offer you a perfectly decent orange pekoe."

I felt is was unkind of Kate to add, "he means a cup of tea."

Something in their nervousness seemed to confirm that they had at least as much to lose as me - which made up my mind about going with them.

The route to Mr - or should that be professor? - Smith's office seemed meandering, presumably to avoid being seen. When we got to the door, I got the impression everyone was as relieved as I was.

Irrationally, the thought going through my mind was this: are you meant to put milk in orange pekoe?



Story begins here.