Omega: The Girl in the Box, Book 5

by Crane, Robert J.

  I stared at the back of Bjorn’s head. The man’s head was turned, looking back at Old Man Winter, and just far enough that I could see the edge of his eye under his heavy, Cro-Magnon brow. “No,” I breathed, “not like that. Not him, not anyone. I just...I can’t.”

  He didn’t even flinch. “Your mother would.”

  I, however, did flinch. “I’m not her.” There was a pause. “We can find out another way. He’ll talk.” I drew a deep breath and stood, coming up to my full height. “We’ll break him.”

  Old Man Winter closed his eyes, as though pondering something, and then opened them again, now impassive. “You are correct. We will break him.” I felt the temperature in the room plunge, this time no product of my imagination. My skin, once clammy, felt ice form along the wet dampness of it, the freeze crawling up around me as a winter frost manifested before my eyes.

  Old Man Winter’s hand glowed where it lay on Bjorn’s shoulder, and a thin sheet of ice was forming around it. It grew thicker, denser, as I watched astonished, the frost crept down Bjorn’s arm to mid-humerus and beyond. Bjorn let out a cry, followed by a sustained scream. “Oh, yes,” Old Man Winter said, removing his fingers from Bjorn’s arm as the air in front of his mouth formed a cloud that was visible against his thick, black wool coat. “He will break.”

  With a subtle move, Old Man Winter brought his fingers back down in an open-handed slap that sent a cracking noise echoing through the room. Bjorn’s entire hand dissolved into shards of ice and cascaded to the floor in a pile, no more substantial than a mound of discarded snow. “If it takes losing every limb he has...he will break. And if that fails...” Old Man Winter placed his hand on Bjorn’s chin and held it up, looking into his eyes. “Then we will wait until tomorrow, when he has regrown his limbs...and begin again.”

  12.

  I was out the door before I realized I was walking, my key card granting me exit. I put my back against the wall in the hallway and listened, but heard nothing from inside, nor in the hall save for the vent fans and my own heavy breathing, sharp, punctuated with a gasp every few minutes as I tried to hold in strong emotion.

  The door opened quietly a few minutes later and I averted my eyes to keep from looking inside, and whatever was left of Bjorn. When I glanced, unable to control the instinct to look, Old Man Winter obstructed my view until the door was closed. “You don’t approve of my methods,” he said, stating the bloody obvious.

  “You tortured him.”

  “He would kill anyone who got in the way of capturing you, harm you in any way it took to get what he wanted.” Old Man Winter made no apologies as he stood there before me. He stood just as tall as he had in the room, just as imposing. “Why would I do any less to protect you from them?”

  “They’re a joke,” I said, almost expelling the words as a breath. “Everything they’ve sent, we’ve beaten. To cave to their tactics, to drop to their level—”

  “They will beat us, regardless of level, if we refuse to do what it takes to get to the truth of what they are planning,” he said, and I caught heat in his words for the first time. “You wish to believe foolishly that no matter what comes, you can simply overcome through some sense of unlimited potential or magical destiny, but that is folly. Your life hangs in the balance.” I could hear an urgency from him I’d never heard before, a stirring in his words that hinted at something darker, something deeper. “Omega and all hell that follows is inching closer by the day, and we have little time to prepare you for the role you will take when it comes.” He drew up again and hesitated, and I saw a hint of sadness. “I won’t always be around to protect you—to do what you will not. Soon you will have to do these things for yourself, to be ready to take your place—”

  “Are you leaving?” I asked, not sure how to respond, and not even sure why I was cutting him off. He stared coolly back at me. “Checking out? Bailing in the middle of the fight?”

  “I am one of the oldest metahumans on the planet,” Old Man Winter said, and the tiredness in his voice made it fact more than any of the words did. “I have seen much, done much, endured much. My power fades, even now, from a battle I fought over a hundred years ago that scarred me and left me weaker than anyone knows.” The glisten in the blue of his irises was unmistakable. “Even still, Omega fears me.” The frosty sensation grew in the room, as though his skin were growing cold and infecting the air around him. “When the day comes that they find me—and find me they shall, sooner or later—I will be the first to fall.” His eyes glistened ever brighter. “But not the last, unless you are prepared to do whatever is necessary to fight the battle that they will not expect you to fight. Unless you are ready to do whatever it takes to win, to protect the metas and humans of the Directorate.”

  He moved his hand to my shoulder, a heavy, leaden weight, but the way he did it was unlike how he had touched Bjorn. “It is much responsibility I place on your shoulders, I know. The weight of the world, perhaps, it feels to you. But I do this because you...are the only one who can bear it. There is no other.” His shoulders were slumped now, his black coat billowing around them as though there were extra space, and the shadows from the fluorescent lights on his face made it seem like he was gaunter, bonier, more shadowed and skeletal than he had ever looked before. Like death, frozen and forbidding, as though he were already dead, as though it had settled on him down to the bones, and he simply had yet to stop moving.

  “Do you think they’ll be coming soon? For you, I mean?” When I asked, I sounded like a scared little girl.

  “I have no idea.” I heard him breathe again, back to life. “This Operation Stanchion is concerning...to see them moving resources toward us and not know their specific aim.” He grew quiet for a moment. “You must prepare. You must ready yourself for what is to come. To turn blindly away from this or to trust fate to be kind is a fool’s lot, and yields a fool’s results.” His voice grew hard like iron as he stood again. “And you are no fool.” He turned and walked toward the end of the hall, leaving me behind.

  I felt pitiful, scared, feeling the true dread of Omega, of what was coming, in a way that I hadn’t since the arrival of Wolfe had forced me to hide in a cell here in the basement, hoping he would eventually leave town, leave me alone. Henderschott hadn’t scared me, not really. He had hurt me once or twice, but not enough to drive the fear into me the way Wolfe had. Same with the vampires they sent, and Mormont, whom they turned from the Directorate’s service. None of them scared me like Wolfe did, none of them hurt me like Wolfe did.

  Except Fries. That little rodent. Exempting Wolfe, they couldn’t beat me in a fight, not even with Bjorn, who was a bruiser. But Fries came at me sideways, touching on all my insecurities at a time when I was vulnerable. Then he betrayed me and twisted the knife, the snake. The hallway seemed narrower now, the air thicker, and the chill had left with Old Man Winter. I started toward the stairs, the beige walls blurring together. Now they were after me again, maybe after Old Man Winter, too. If they wanted to topple the Directorate, knocking over Old Man Winter seemed like it would be the way to go about it. Who’d step up after him? I liked Ariadne, but I got the sense that she relied on him to do more than was obvious on the surface.

  My legs carried me up the stairs, through the lobby and out the door. I hit the crisp air and took a breath. All the feelings of confinement began to fade, that tightness in my chest as if I couldn’t breathe for what I had to contemplate. Breaking a man’s arm off out of fear for what was to come, for what he knew but wasn’t telling...I don’t know that I would have had it in me to harm even Bjorn in such a way.

  But I didn’t know that it was totally wrong, either. Not when we were dealing with the same people who sent Wolfe, the man who tried his best to rape and torture me. It sounded as though Bjorn was cut from the same cloth.

  I cut across the campus on the way back to the dormitory; heading to the training
room was my first instinct, but I couldn’t bring myself to do it. I needed quiet. Operation Stanchion bothered me. Who named their little plans in such a grandiose and evil way? A stanchion was just a pillar, after all, a post, and what did that have to do with me? Or did it refer to Old Man Winter, the pillar of the Directorate?

  The leaves were packed to the ground, and a frost had come with morning, turning everything a silvery, shimmering white when the sun hit it. The blades of grass crunched under my boots in a way that was almost alien to me, so different from their sweet give in summer. The frost was in the air, too, crowding into my sinuses and nose, freezing the little hairs inside. It was bitter—too bitter by far for October.

  The entry to the dormitory was quiet; the younger students were in their classes. It wasn’t close to lunchtime with the bustle of all the administrative employees coming to the cafeteria in droves. I wondered how much they knew about what we did here. There were hundreds of employees, after all, and most of them lived off-campus. I doubted most of them even worked with the metas, which left me curious. There was a divide between the admin and school business, I knew that, and I supposed a person could even work in the administration building without ever knowing that the kids at the school had anything different about them; it wasn’t as if any of them had scales, or had snakes growing out of their shoulders, or anything like that. The most bizarre thing on campus was Clary, and that had more to do with his personality than his power, except when he shifted his skin.

  On the other hand, seeing Eve Kappler flying past a window might be a hint that something was not quite what it seemed on campus.

  I inserted my key card in the elevator and rode up to the third floor. When I arrived, I stepped off and walked down the white hall, noticing a few potted trees that hadn’t been there before. Decoration to brighten up the dull landscape with winter coming, I supposed.

  I paused as I reached my door. The one next to mine, the one that belonged to Kat, was open, the card reader’s bar an angry red, and a buzzing noise coming from it, the quiet sound of low-voltage electricity arcing. I walked toward it tentatively, the thought that I might be walking into trouble only a faint idea in my mind. I lay my hand on the door, which was half open, and I could see the light flooding in from the windows. It was a sunny day and the room was lit like mine, bright and pleasant. I took a quiet step inside, then another. The living room and kitchen were silent, nothing moving as I came around the wall and got a full look.

  Kat’s furniture was roughly the same as mine and in the same layout. All her appliances were Directorate standard, though again, she had taken some effort to spruce up the walls with the posters I didn’t care for. I heard a faint scratching from the bedroom, and I walked through the middle of the apartment on my way to the bedroom door, which was drawn at a forty-five degree angle.

  With a touch I sent it open, the oiled hinges allowing it to move without making a sound. The bed was against the far wall, and someone was sitting on it, a man in jeans and a black t-shirt that went perfectly with his darker, more tanned complexion—something I had always thought bizarrely out of place in Minnesota, especially going into winter. “Scott,” I said quietly, and he looked up, his blond curls bobbing, his eyes only slightly puffy. I would honestly have expected more emotion, but it was possible he had been here for a long while.

  “Sienna,” he said, and his voice was scratchy, like a needle run over a record. He cleared his throat and tried again. “How are you?”

  “How am I?” I looked at him with incredulity. “I’m fine. I’m a little worried about you, though.”

  “Dr. Perugini said I’m okay.” He held something in his hand, and I realized after a moment it was a CD, and he lay it on the bed, the clear plastic case catching the light.

  “I kinda doubt she examined you in the way I’m talking about,” I said. “I realize you’re fine, physically—”

  “Well, we don’t have a psychiatrist anymore to make sure I’m gonna be all right mentally, so...” He shrugged fatalistically. “I guess I’m just gonna have to limp on in my own way, kinda like every other teenager who just lost a girlfriend.”

  “That’s one way to look at it.” I edged a little closer to him. “Kind of a healthy way, too, I suspect.”

  “Well, I’m all about my health here,” he said, waving vaguely to his body, which I admit, was well sculpted. In spite of being unserious about almost everything, working out and eating right was something Scott did almost to distraction. And it showed. Not that I noticed, of course, but because others had told me. And I saw him with a shirt off, once, at the beach. Maybe more than once. And not always at the beach. Anyway.

  “I don’t think too many people have had their girlfriend completely forget them,” I said. “That might be new territory. Something you could stake your claim to.”

  “Why does that matter?” he asked with a shrug. “Lots of people wish they could forget their breakups.”

  “But Kat wasn’t breaking up with you,” I said. “She sacrificed her memory of you to save your life.”

  “Yeah, I get that,” he said, and I saw a flush hit his cheeks. “She’s brave and self-sacrificing, and now she can’t remember me, or any of our little inside jokes, or that we slept together every night, or anything...at all...from the last nine months. I might as well not have existed in her life.”

  I swallowed heavily. “I’m sorry, Scott.”

  “Why are you sorry?” he asked, and his eyes were narrowed in genuine confusion. “You didn’t make her lose her memory.”

  “It was my mission.” I sat down on the bed, leaving a few feet of distance between us. “I was in charge. It’s my fault that—”

  “Listen to me,” Scott said, and all the brittle was gone from his voice. His eyes were lidded, puffy, but they burned with inner fire. “I want you to hear this, and maybe it’ll make me feel better, too. What happened at the safe house wasn’t your fault. You took a beating to keep us from dying, and without you, we’d all have croaked, I’m sure, after tangling with that big bastard. What happened in Iowa was Clary’s fault, because he’s an idiot. And we knew he was an idiot, that there was nothing but rocks in his damned skull. We would have been better off without him.” The last part was spat out like a curse. “No one on that mission could have controlled Clary. No one.”

  “I appreciate what you’re saying—”

  “But you’re gonna blame yourself anyway?” He looked away, and his hands came behind him so he could lean back, legs still draped over the edge of the bed. “Might as well. Plenty of that going around.”

  “It wasn’t your fault either, Scott.”

  “Nope,” he said, staring into the window on the far edge of the room, to the blue sky beyond the tinting that made looking out bearable. “Doesn’t stop me from blaming myself, though.” He shifted position a little. “Would you mind leaving me be? I kinda just want to be alone right now.”

  “Sure,” I said with a perfunctory nod. “If you want to talk, later, I’ll—”

  “If I want to talk, no offense but I’ll look for a more sympathetic ear,” he said, looking at me almost pityingly. “You’re a lot of things, Sienna—leader, badass, friend—but camp counselor you’re not.”

  “Pretty sure friends listen to each other when they have problems.” I felt that curious clench in my jaw. “I want you to know...I’m here for you if you need—”

  “Please don’t get sappy for the first time in your life, ever,” he said, and he looked at me with a hint of pity. Then after a pause, “Thank you.”

  “You’re welcome,” I said, easing my way back to the door, which I drew closed behind me as I made my way out of the apartment.

  13.

  Technical services called me on my new cell phone an hour later, a secretary with a perfunctory message asking me to come to Ariadne’s office immediatel
y. It was a bit of a puzzler, honestly, because usually she either called herself or a messenger slid a paper note under my door if it was considered to be an unholy enough hour to give someone a phone call that wasn’t urgent. I made my way into the Directorate lobby and rode the elevator to the fourth floor, the lift filled with administrative employees coming back from lunch. I’d skipped mine (again), not really in the mood for conversation after running through everything in my mind for an hour straight.

  Ariadne’s door was ajar when I arrived, and already filled to near capacity. Clary was sitting in one of the chairs, his bulk slumped over, not as jovial as usual. His head was down, as though he couldn’t bear to look at me. It didn’t seem to be a reaction solely to my entry to the room, either; he was quiet long before I walked in. Eve Kappler was in her usual position, leaning against the hutch behind Ariadne. I had a feeling Ariadne’s skin was ready to crawl from her casual lingering there. Ariadne was not the sort given to public displays of affection, or even association, and her relationship with Eve was an open secret, much gossiped about in the halls of the Directorate. While she tried to keep it quiet, Eve did everything in her power to subtly remind every one of us that she was sleeping with the second-in-command. I wouldn’t have wanted that sort of political game played around me, but I wasn’t Ariadne, so I didn’t have to worry about it.

  Roberto Bastian was looking dark as ever, leaned against the wall just past the door. “Ma’am,” he said with a nod to me. I liked Bastian; he was a pro, always respectful, and he never disregarded anything I said just because I ran the junior league version of his team. Parks was next to him, and the grey-haired older man gave me a nod as well when I came in. Reed was hanging in the corner behind Clary. Every one of them had been in these exact positions in this office before when I’d come in, as though we had fallen into some bizarre sort of rut. The only thing missing was Kat to sit in the chair next to Clary and Scott to stand behind her. I usually lingered in the corner with my brother, which was where I went now.