I ran a world record in two hundred meters.

It was easy.

Usain Bolt's performance wasn't fueled by the sight of an otherwise unnaturally calm woman having a meltdown.

The way Gabriel looked at me after that shriek made me reach the kindergarten's yard in fifteen seconds.

Nobody died, though. The building wasn't in flames either. No alien races, invading the classrooms. Nothing I suspected based on the gravity of her gaze happened.

I collect the crying kid from under the jungle gym, and I examine him. His knee is a little bruised. By the time Gabriel arrives, accompanied by fucking Duke, I already explained to him that it was just a scratch, something such big boys don't cry about.

"What did you do to him?" Gabriel asks, with a mistrustful expression on her face.

"I threatened him to put three bullets in his head if he doesn't shut up," I answer morosely.

She probably believes it. She nods as if she was registering it for later use as an effective method.

"I left them unguarded," she says, still trembling slightly. "Because of you, idiots. I almost failed because of your selfish and irrational behavior."

"At guarding them?" Duke asks, sounding very gentle. "Are they your lambs, too?"

"Of course they are. And they're much smaller than you, so they need my undivided attention."

"Very well," Duke says. "That's what we wanted to hear, right, Mint? We are big enough to handle our shit."

"Right," I agree. "We release you from your duty. You don't have to watch over us anymore."

Gabriel shakes her head.

"You can't release me," she states with unwavering certainty.

I wish I could follow her, but her way of thinking is just baffling. She's like the mirage spirit, which is the most confusing of them all, according to Jorge's grandma.

I know very well that she's anything but stupid. I'm aware of what a fucking genius she is. If she told me that 5G spread viruses, I'd probably believe her.

She's never lost any of us. Whatever harm came to us, she was able to outsmart it. She did that by calculating the chances constantly, I also know this, but when we were on a mission, in the middle of chaos, she sounded more like an oracle to us. She always seemed to know the future itself, no less.

Yet, she seems so unreasonable when it comes to her duty. Almost as if she seriously believed herself to be a guardian angel.

"No matter what you say," she goes on, answering my unspoken thoughts, "I can't stop it. It's what I am. It makes me who I am. And I can't stop being myself."

Duke and I exchange looks. We'd have so many questions, but we don't want to upset her more. I don't understand why, but she already seems very distressed, rocking the poor child in her arms as if he was a newborn baby. He seems to enjoy it, though.

I wait for Duke to inquire further. He's always been the suave one.

"You're a kindergarten teacher now," he says tentatively. "And a terrific one, but it's very different from being a tactical controller."

"How?" she asks.

Duke seems to be lost for words.

"It's 98.2% the same," she informs us. "That 1.8% is the singing."

"Oh," Duke mumbles. Very suave, indeed.

"Also, children have cute big heads," she goes on, "and it's a nine to five mission, but the differences end here. They also must be kept alive. And that's the only thing I'm good at, keeping people alive. It makes my life meaningful. It's my life."

We stare at each other again. Gabriel is rocking that child as fast as a cocktail shaker. He's smirking as if he was full of Mojito as well.

Duke clears his throat but says nothing. It's still enough to make Gabriel snap.

"I don't want to have this conversation with you, okay?" she states in a muffled voice. "Why don't you just go and stay away from me? It's bad enough that I know already that you want to kill each other, because my brain is calculating the odds all the time, and it doesn't let me sleep."

"But—" Duke objects, and it annoys her even more. She stops the rocking abruptly, and all of her body goes rigid, just like when I touched her without warning.

"You know what, Duke," she says, "you can't say anything to make me reconsider. When I'm saying that it's the only thing I'm good at, I mean it literally. I'm a literal kind of person. Both 'only' and 'good' need to be taken very literally. First, I don't care about anything else. Second, as you probably noticed, at least two hundred and forty-nine times, I'm an expert in making people survive. I've studied everything. Every tool you can use to kill someone. Every circumstance that can possibly lead to death. Every injury that can end a person's life. Everything! It's my... it's my special interest!"

She says the last words with so much emphasis. And I can't deny my admiration. Truer words have never been spoken; she proved this to us without a doubt. I also find it very relatable, despite my field of expertise being quite the contrary to hers. That's why I can't understand for the life of me the hint of shame in her voice. She should be so proud of this. Even if it causes me a huge problem, and I should kill her for it.

"Noted," Duke says. "But still, we have to find a solution. The virus will kill millions if Mint succeeds."

I fucking hate his snitching ass.

"Including these children here," Duke pushes on.

"Okay," answers Gabriel without further hesitation. "We can talk while the children sleep, but you have to leave your guns in the infirmary cabinet."

I could ask her if she knows that we both can kill a child without a weapon in less than a second. But I'm sure she knows. And she's also calculated the chances already.

It's a 99.5 percent that we won't, and the other 0.5 percent is that idiot Duke stumbles over his own foot and falls on a kid.