Clarke was startled at how assertive this doctor was. He didn’t know what game she was playing, but she wasn’t a threat. She was probably going to call the cops on him for assaulting Steve, but cops were hardly a threat. If they handcuffed him, he could melt the cuffs. If they shot at him, the bullets would never reach him. If they tried to fight him…

Clarke opted not to argue. He turned around and chose the cleanest looking seat. As soon as the doctor had left, he made sure to extend his will into the chair, cleansing it of the grime and muck so that he felt a little cleaner just by sitting. He could feel an illness coming on just by being in this filthy city in the first place.

Clarke waited patiently, as he had grown used to doing, for several minutes. Time was something that he had plenty of, and he knew full well that there would always be more good deeds to perform, no matter how quickly he acted. Sitting for a moment and resting didn’t sound like a bad idea.

As he waited, Clarke took notice of the other patients sitting in the room with him. The man now had a handkerchief pressed to his lips, giving a loud, obnoxious cough every now and then. Clarke stared at him hard, and the man would glance back every few seconds to meet the unchanging gaze. After the fifth time their eyes met, the man finally spoke up.

“What do you want?” he blurted out. “Are you looking for a fight?”

“Fighting doesn’t entertain me,” Clarke said. “There’s no challenge in it.”

“Then why the hell are you lookin’ at me?”

Clarke just sighed and leaned on the armrest. “You fake being sick to get a doctor’s note so you can skip work. With things the way they are in this country, you should feel lucky that you even have a job. Now, get off your lazy ass and earn your keep.”

The man stared at him wild-eyed. “H-how… How did you—”

“I said GET BACK TO WORK!!”

The man was so shocked in how Clarke was able to see through his ruse that he stumbled out of his chair as he tried to escape. Their eyes never left each other as the man clumsily pushed open the door and ran off into the parking lot.

Clarke sank back into his seat, still trying to hide the cleaned spots. Time passed slowly, so Clarke passed it by reading the ancient magazines on the table. Old sports articles from twenty years ago were some of the obvious choices to read, but they were all about American teams. Clarke had no interest in a sport that didn’t include Manchester. More disturbing were the few magazines with such helpful articles as “How to please your man”. What a thing like that was doing in reach of children, Clarke would never know.