“Doc, is this really necessary?” I looked at him with constrained irritation. “Dr. Perugini has told you I’m healthy after conducting a physical, I feel fine—”
“Research, Sienna,” he said with a suppressed smile that tightened the lines around his eyes. “We understand so very little about how metahuman abilities work, frankly, so it’s important to take every opportunity to further our understanding. I promise I’ll make it as quick as possible.”
“Fine,” I said with a sigh, and he closed the door. I took off my clothes in silence as I put on the gown, felt the cold touch of the tile floor on my feet, the nip of the air as I removed my shirt and jeans. The heat exchange above me was faintly letting out some warm air, which helped. I sat on the examination table, a padded monstrosity that sat in the corner. The faint smell of alcohol from the disinfectant station above the sink permeated the room, and the soft groan of the table felt like it could be audible three buildings away. “I’m ready!” I called out, hoping Dr. Sessions was still standing outside the door and hadn’t wandered back to his office and forgotten about me.
The door creaked open and he stepped inside, wearing a buttoned-up lab coat. “This won’t take long,” he said, as he closed the door behind him. A blue latex glove rested on the handle as he closed it, catching my attention.
“That won’t protect you,” I said, pointing to the glove. “Keep that in mind.”
“I’m well aware of the spectrum of your powers,” he said as he circled around behind me. I kept a wary eye on him as he walked to the sink and started pulling things out of the cabinets above the counter. “I am, after all, the one who did the experiments to test those powers.”
Shortly after I had arrived, Sessions and a few of his lab assistants (I never caught their names) took turns touching my exposed skin. It never lasted more than a few seconds, but they determined the threshold at which most people begin to experience effects from my touch (three seconds) and how long it takes the average human to pass out (about six seconds). For obvious reasons, we never definitively answered how long it would take me to kill a person. I was pretty sure it was something like twenty seconds. I’d never seen them pass out from it, though. I’d just seen them scream all the way to the end.
“I’ll need to draw some blood,” Sessions said. “I’d also like to get saliva samples—”
“You want me to spit in a petri dish?” I looked at him with a combination of loathing and skepticism. “Are you a real doctor or did you get your degree in the Caribbean?”
“Harvard Medical School,” he said with aplomb. “Highest Honors.”
“Your mother must be so proud.”
“Oh, she is,” he said, as though what he were saying were of no more import than giving me a weather update. “Very proud indeed.”
“I wonder what that’s like,” I said, muttering under my breath.
“Shall we begin?” He lifted his head up and smiled brightly, causing me to stir. I felt his touch as he pushed up my sleeve, and I watched him as he started to draw blood. His blue latex glove was on my bicep, and I resisted the urge to flex hard and knock it away just to show off. My muscles didn’t look all that big. Actually, they were roughly the size of any of the other non-meta women at the Directorate. I had the strength where it counted, though—performance.
After a moment, a thought broke through and I reached to swipe at his hand. “Doc, the glove won’t protect you for more than—” I stopped, and looked up at him, his face broken wide into a grin. He squeezed my arm for emphasis, and I realized he’d been holding onto me for well over ten seconds, and he was still sitting there, unaffected. “How?”
“New material,” he said, and kept his hand on me. “I won’t bore you with the technical details, but it’s the same approximate thickness of a latex glove, but slightly more flesh-suitable, shall we say?” I felt his hand resting on me, and he was right. The glove wasn’t rubbery, it didn’t tear at my arm hairs as he ran it down to my forearm. It felt smooth, soft, almost like skin but not quite. He gave me a squeeze and brought the needle out with his other hand. “Might as well get this done while we’re at it, but my plan is to keep a hand on you throughout the exam to test how long this material holds up.” He gave a little shrug. “If it works, we could look at getting you some gloves made from it.”
I stared at his fingers, draped in the blue material, snugged tight to his skin. “How about more than that?”
“More than what?” He blinked and readjusted his glasses. “More than gloves?”
“Yeah,” I said, as I licked my lips. “What about...like...a bodysuit?”
His eyes seemed to stare off into space and his face scrunched up in thought. “Why would you need one of those? Your hands are the weapons, keep them contained and you should be fine—”
“Because,” I said, cutting him off, “maybe I don’t want to always be a weapon.”
“Then wear gloves,” he said, clearly not getting it. “It’s simple, puts the safety on, if you were to continue the weapon analogy—you stick with long sleeves, long pants, shoes, and as long as you don’t touch anyone with your face, you should be fine.”
“You’ve never known the touch of a woman, have you Doc?”
He stared at me, inscrutable, for another few seconds and then the intense look of study dissolved. “Oh! Oh, for intimacy! You want a bodysuit so you can...” He blinked again, and his look of revelation cascaded into discomfort as his voice lowered in pitch and his face fell. “Oh. Yes, I mean...it is theoretically possible to make an entire body encasement of the material, and it’s not that difficult for us to synthesize here in the lab.” He gave my arm another squeeze and gently stuck another needle in my arm. “That is certainly something we could look into for you.”
I stared straight ahead, considering the possibilities. “How...resistant is the material to breakage?”
He didn’t even raise an eyebrow. “It’s tougher than latex, can take more pounds per square inch of pressure before suffering a rupture. For something of that nature, it would need to be measured and specially fitted in order to give the level of...ah...protection...you’d require for uh...such activity.”
“So it is possible?” I tried to look him in the eyes, but he didn’t bother to look up from drawing his fifth vial of blood. “You can do that? Make a suit for me?”
“Yes. Although,” he said, placing the last vial into the little row in the container he had for them and withdrawing the needle from my arm, “I might suggest that for your purposes, it would be easier for your paramour to be the one to be fitted for the suit.” He flushed. “Assuming that your...ah...partner...would be male rather than female.”
“Fair assumption in this case.” I cocked an eyebrow at him. “Zack Davis. You know him?”
“An agent, I believe?” Sessions seemed to give this some thought. “I’m certain I’ve met him, but I can’t place a face offhand. Regardless, if you intend to engage in...activities of the sort you’d indicated, it would be easier on a purely mechanical level for the male to wear the suit.”
“Sure,” I said with a vague sense that I was agreeing to something, but not really caring what it was. “Whatever you say.”
“If you wish for...Mr. Davis to have a suit of this material, send him over to me at his earliest convenience. Taking measurements is simple enough, and it’ll take a few days to fabricate. It’s hardly a panacea that will solve all your ills, but we could probably synthesize another every few weeks if need be.”
“That would be marvelous,” I said with a hunger. I felt a buzz in my stomach, a nervous energy that stemmed from excitement coupled with nerves. “Thank you, Doctor,” I said, and genuinely meant it.
“I haven’t done anything yet,” he said, once again blank. “Except draw your blood, I suppose, though I don’t know why you’d be thanking me fo
r that.”
“I’m thanking you for telling me about this,” I said, trying to stay calm. Sessions was a dolt, complete and utter, clueless about basic human need or desire. “It’s a chance for me to live a normal life.”
“Oh, I see,” he said, but I could tell by his voice he didn’t. “Well, that’s good. Now, if you can just open your mouth,” he brandished a swab, “I need to get a sample of cheek cells...”
I sighed, and opened my mouth. The swab was long, white and had cotton on the end. It was not pleasant, not fun, but it didn’t matter because my head was already elsewhere. This suit was something that could change my life, could make me able to touch my boyfriend, to feel him against me without two layers of clothing to separate us. We could sleep in the same bed, could stop fooling around in our dreams...and start doing it in the real world.
And I wouldn’t have to worry about his eyes turning colors anymore.
5.
The exam lasted longer than I wanted, and was far more invasive than I really cared for. I sighed with relief when I was done. That I’d learned about the new material was worth the inconvenience of dealing with Sessions and his complete lack of humanity . When finished, I dressed and worked my way back to headquarters, where I found Parks in the watch room next to the basement interrogation chamber where Fries was being held. I watched Fries, who sat with a black hood over his head, handcuffed to the metal table in the center of the room. There was no cot in the cell, and I wondered if he’d slept sitting up in the chair. Actually, I wondered if he’d slept at all.
“Would you have, in his place?” Parks asked when I voiced that thought to him, “We’ll be able to get an idea of his state of mind when we pull that hood off.” His gray hair flowed over his shoulders, somewhat more controlled today than it normally was. Its usual state was to be bushy, but it looked like he had washed and perhaps combed it. “Let’s take a look, shall we?” His expression was almost wolfish, his teeth bared as though he were a feral creature ready to strike. He strode out of the observation room and into the hallway, unlocking the door using a key card. The door opened with a gentle whoosh, and I walked in first when Parks gestured for me to.
Fries wore the same clothes he had when I had encountered him yesterday in his apartment—suit coat, black pinstriped pants, leather shoes, no tie. I could see the top of his chest in the space between the hood and his unbuttoned shirt; I had seen him with it off, and he was muscular, in very good shape. I suspected he spent some time on that, probably more as a vanity thing than any sincere desire for the added strength his definition would bring him. I circled him and came to a stop just to his left. His head moved under the hood, swiveling to follow the sound of my footsteps.
Parks took up position at the shoulder opposite me, and looked at me over Fries’ covered head. Parks reached down and took hold of the hood and gave me a questioning look. I nodded. He gave me a wink and then yanked the hood off, causing Fries to blink at the brightness of the light. He shut them harder when I yanked off the duct tape.
Fries blanched, then slowly opened his eyes, keeping them squinted as he stole a look first at Parks, then at me. “Oh, good, it’s you,” he said upon seeing me. “I was hoping it’d be you.”
I stared at him, forcing my face to carry an expression that I hoped conveyed bleak humor. “Because I didn’t hit you hard enough yesterday to satiate your masochistic desires?”
“No,” he said, and formed a smile that caused me to feel another desire to pound his face into tenderloin. “I just like seeing you, that’s all.”
“I assure you, the feeling is not mutual.”
“Enough of this crap,” Parks said. “Fries, we’ve got questions for you.”
“I’m sure you do,” Fries said, turning to face Parks. His expression went from a grin to something more concealed, calm. “I doubt I have any answers for you, though. At least none that would satisfy.”
“You, unable to satisfy?” I arched an eyebrow. “Common occurrence.”
“I don’t hear any complaints,” he said with a light shrug and a smile.
Something primal and brutal welled up inside me, and I couldn’t contain myself. I hit him before I even realized I was going to, leveling him with a punch that sent his chair over backwards and snapped his head against the floor with a crack that I felt reverberate off the walls. “That’s because the women you seduce are dead before you finish,” I said, leaning over him. I reached down and forced my gloved hand against his throat and lifted him back up, setting his chair upright against the wall. “If you didn’t kill them, they might tell a different story.”
I heard him take a deep breath around my hand, his wrists still attached to the chair courtesy of the handcuffs. “I do know how to make the girls scream.” He coughed. “I didn’t hear you complain.”
I restrained myself from hitting him. “Oh, I didn’t? Sorry. I was very unsatisfied with the look I got at your equipment. It seemed pitifully inadequate to the task before you.”
I caught a flash of rage in his eyes that disappeared behind another smile, this one faker than any of the others he’d used on me. “Heh. Very good. But you wouldn’t know what satisfaction is, would you, Sienna?”
“Enough,” Parks said, and I felt his hand on my shoulder, gently. I looked back and saw that there was no mistaking the look in his eyes—Back off, it said. I walked back to the table, seating myself on its edge. “We’re here to talk to you about your employers.”
“I’ve got nothing to say about my employers,” Fries said, leaving the smile plastered on. I heard the click of his handcuffs against the chair as he rattled them.
“You sure about that?” Parks gave him a dead stare, cold and unmoving, without a trace of warmth.
Fries smiled tightly. “Yep. If you’re planning to torture me, though, I suggest you get started. It might take a while to get to the good stuff.”
A sound came from the door, unlocking and opening, cutting short Parks’ reply. We turned to see a flash of red hair as Ariadne stuck her head in. She flushed at the sight of Fries, who smiled back at her. “I need to speak with the two of you for a moment.”
“Nice to see you again, Ariadne,” Fries said with a little shrug . His hands clinked the cuffs as the chain reached maximum extension. “I’d wave at you, but I think you can see I’m a bit tied down here.”
“Just the way I prefer you,” Ariadne said. “Parks, Nealon...a word, please.”
I cast a look at Parks, who shook his head in a warning that took me a moment to decipher. I realized he meant I shouldn’t show hesitation in front of Fries, but when I looked at Fries he was already grinning at me. Too late. I followed Parks into the hall where the door slid shut behind us and Ariadne activated the lock.
“This one’s gonna be tough without getting physical or using chemicals,” Parks said the moment the door clicked shut. “He’s got a serious reserve of self-confidence that ain’t bluster. Probably been trained to resist interrogation.”
“Doubtless,” Ariadne said, “but that’s not why I called you out here—”
“He said it was nice to see you again,” I looked at her pointedly. “You know this scum on a personal basis?”
She shook her head. “In passing. I didn’t realize it at the time, but he tried to flip me a few months ago.”
“Flip?” I looked from her to Parks. “Like...physically?” I lowered my voice. “Like...”
Ariadne let out a hiss. “No. As in flip me from the Directorate to Omega. I didn’t know who he was at the time, and it was a clumsy attempt, but it had...” I saw some of the life drain out of her, “...repercussions. I’m not going to go into detail, but suffice it to say the Director is fully aware of what happened, and you needn’t concern yourself with it. We have something else brewing.”
“What’s that?” I asked.
“Just a moment,” she said, and I caught movement at the far end of the hall, by the door to the stairwell that led out of the basement. “Here he is.”
A thin man in skinny jeans, with thick, square-rimmed black glasses came bouncing down the hall in a worn olive green jacket that looked like he had been paid by the Salvation Army to get it the hell out of their store. His black, wavy hair was spiked into an angled fauxhawk.
“J.J.,” I said as he walked up, tablet computer in his hand. “It’s always so nice to see you leave your cubicle for a little while.”
“Because the air here in the dungeons is so much fresher than what we get on the fourth floor?” He looked at me with a querying eyebrow. “Ariadne asked me to tell you what we found.”
“Found from what?” I asked.
“Fries’ cell phone,” Ariadne replied, smug. “Reed bagged it during your raid. Go on, J.J.”
“Recent history was kind of a boon ,” J.J. said, holding up the tablet so I could see. “The man’s not what you’d call real communicative, so it’s not like there was a ton to sift through in his thirty-day history.”
“I’ve heard that incubi and succubi can be a little unsociable,” I said without a trace of irony.
“That might be underselling it for him,” J.J. said. “Two numbers, that’s it. One’s a cell phone that I backtraced. Area code says it’s from Manhattan, but it was last used in downtown Minneapolis yesterday afternoon at about three-thirty p.m.” He held up the tablet and a city grid showed up on the screen. “It wasn’t logging the GPS, but just based on the cell tower data it looks like the user was pretty close to Fries’ apartment when the call was made. After that, it went dark, completely offline, no record that it’s been on the network since.”
Omega: The Girl in the Box, Book 5 Page 5