“This is all ridiculous,” Eve said, and Ariadne gave her the look again. Exhausted, mixed with exasperated. “I’m due to meet with Bastian and Parks anyway,” she said, and with a subtle bend she tried to kiss Ariadne on the lips. Ariadne turned her face to the side and gave her the cheek. Eve shot me a wicked smile and leaned into her neck, causing Ariadne to squirm and curse under her breath, and giggle unintentionally from the tickle of it. I averted my eyes, trying not to pass judgment on what Eve was obviously doing to get a rise out of me. She slid past me a moment later, same cool smile, and pulled the door all the way open before she left.
I waited a moment for Ariadne’s embarrassment to fade before I spoke. “Is it my imagination or is she getting more provocative by the day?”
Ariadne averted her eyes from me, focusing instead on her computer monitor. “It’s probably not your imagination.”
I let that hang for a beat. “She got a buzzsaw in her g-string or what?”
“I don’t know,” Ariadne said. “And it’s not really a conversation I want to have with...well, anyone, actually.”
“I’m glad you added that little caveat because otherwise I might feel like I was being excluded or something.”
“Have you checked on Kat recently?” Ariadne said, back to business, her eyes on the stacks of papers around her desk, organizing as she went, trying to avoid looking at me.
I grimaced. “No. Kind of um...embarrassing, I guess.”
“You’re the team lead,” she said. “You could at least try and show some concern for her, even if you don’t like her.”
“I like her fine,” I said, folding my arms and leaning against the door. “Why does everyone always say that? I like Kat, she’s always been nice to me. I’m just not always sweet in return; it’s who I am. It’s not like I’d throw her into a pack of wolves if I got the chance. We hang out outside of work, you know. And I would go visit her, but it feels...awkward.”
“Awkward?” Ariadne paused what she was doing, and the sun shining through the windows behind her glinting on her red hair. “It’s awkward for you...to visit her in the medical unit?”
“It’s awkward for me,” I said, drawing out my words, “because when Kat woke up, she remembered me, but not her boyfriend. Which is fairly weird, as far as such things go. And a little creepy, you know, forgetting the person you supposedly love and remembering a co-worker? Kind of made me wonder if she might have been harboring a little crush or—” I paused, stricken, watching Ariadne’s eyebrow raise, her expression implacable. “It was just an expression. I didn’t actually wonder—I mean, I haven’t wondered, you know, about anyone else—”
“Whatever,” Ariadne said, and turned back to the folder in front of her, opening it.
“‘Whatever’?” I stared at her, getting no reaction. “You been cribbing notes from me on how to talk?”
“Just trying to express my disinterest in your mind’s wanderings in a way you’ll intuitively get,” she said, not looking up from what she was studying.
“I take it this conversation is over?” I pushed myself off the doorframe where I was leaning, felt the line of the wood against my back as I did it, felt the weight go back to the balls of my feet, light, agile, ready to move. When she didn’t say anything, I turned to go out the door, letting my hand brush the frame. I paused, let myself do a half turn, a question eating at me. “You could have left, you know.” She didn’t look up, fixated on the folder. “I know it feels like you’re essential, but when it’s all hands on deck for defense, I don’t see you picking up a gun and wading into all hell—”
“I have nowhere else to go,” she said, looking up, her tone crisp and impatient, her glasses balanced between her thumb and forefinger. She put them on her face, then broke eye contact with me.
“Bora Bora,” I suggested. “Your complexion could use it as much as mine could, and we are heading into another Minnesota winter—”
She didn’t interrupt me with words, just a half-snorted laugh of mirth. “I’ve got work to do,” she said, but more gently this time. “Take care of yourself, Sienna. Don’t be a hero. You’re important. Remember that.”
“So when it all comes down, you’ll be taking shelter like the assistant director should be, right?” I asked, watching for her reaction.
“Point taken,” she said. “Just don’t do anything stupid to put your life at risk.”
“I won’t,” I said, and started toward the elevator, leaving the open door behind me. “After all,” I said, wending my way across the sunlit rows of cubicles, “odds are real good that with what Omega’s gonna throw at us, even if I just stuck to doing smart things, it’ll be plenty dangerous enough to kill me.”
21.
Interlude
Eden Prairie, Minnesota
The day goes slow, agonizingly so, Janus thought, even with the unexpected pleasure of company. “This is how it always was before the big moves, the big operations,” he said. “Time slows to a ticking of the second hand, when you want it to speed up. Waiting is interminable, acting is preferable, but patience is all there is at this point. This waiting will be the death of me. Thousands of years of life, and I’ll die waiting.” The old man’s smile crested on his face, then receded. “I suppose that’s what we all do, though, isn’t it?”
“I wouldn’t know,” came the soft voice of the female who had slept in his bed last night. “I haven’t died yet.”
“I’ve seen enough of it, you know?” He let the words tick out, spill out. “Seen it from humans, seen it from our kind. No one really faces death any differently. No one is ready when it comes, not really. You can go in your sleep, I suppose, and it won’t distress you like the other kind does—in your face, obvious, looming. But if you’re awake?” He held up his hands. “I’ve never seen anyone go gracefully awake. Not if they know it’s coming, anyway.” He turned his head to look at her, the blond curls, her smooth curves and unblemished skin. “How did your brother take it, when he went?”
A shrug. Tanned skin hiding up to the waist under the blanket. “Gracefully. I don’t know if he knew what he was in for, at least not at first. Maybe at the end, though.”
“He wanted it to be over, didn’t he?” Janus stared out the gap in the curtains. “I spoke to him, you know, before he went to the Andes. He was a man slipping, obsessed, trying to get hold of whatever was left for him, focused on one thing and that only.” He looked back at her again. He’d seen a million like her in his life, perhaps more, yet had never lost his appetite for them. Blonds. Brunettes. Redheads. Yes, please. The younger the better, though at a century, this one is older than my usual taste...and yet delicious nonetheless.
“I’m not all that worried about him now.” She shook loose the sheets that gently entangled her, exposing herself to him totally, as she made her way across the dim, cheap, thin carpeting of the motel, away from the comforter and bedspread. “I wasn’t then, either.”
“That is because you could not remember him before.” Janus felt in his pocket for the cigarettes he hadn’t carried in over forty years, the things he had quit. “You watched him die and you had no memory of who he was.”
“Still don’t,” the voice came, empty. “I mean, I see it, now, like I see so many other things-like a movie on a screen, but there’s no texture, no emotion, no caring.” She shrugged her bared shoulders and made a mischievous smile. “I doubt he knew that you had been keeping me as your woman while you were trying to bring back my memory.”
Janus shrugged, and felt her hand run across his shoulder, felt the touch of youth and energy in it. “I doubt he would have cared, so long as he got you back. But, oddly, I didn’t hear you complain. In fact, I believe it was you who initiated...”
“It was,” she said, and kissed him. What a bawdy old man am I, Janus thought. Anyone who saw the two of us in here would know
instantly what to think, a thousand judgmental thoughts—and every one would be right. Old man, young girl. A laugh sounded in his head.
“Careful,” he said, and tugged away from her, feeling her touch against the cloth of his suit.
“Still worried about me?” she asked, with a twinkle in her eye that warmed his...well, not his heart, that was for certain.
“Not you,” he said. “I believe you, I see the truth and heart of you. Still skeptical, though, if you’ll forgive me. Erich Winter is no fool, and although it delights me to see you, dear girl, and overjoys me to have you in my bed once more, I must ask...do you know why you are here?”
“Because you found me,” she said, and he saw the coyness. “Because I remember now.”
“Oh?” He seated himself in the chair by the window, an old, red one with gold tones in the threads, worn by time and age and people sitting in it. “What do you remember?”
“I remember why,” she said, kneeling down and resting her chin on his knee. “Why Omega. Why I was with you. Why I lost my memory. For a good cause , of course,” she added.
“Of course.” He took a deep breath and reached for the water in the little plastic opaque cup he’d left on the end table by the bed. “I always wondered if the next time you lost your memory, the serum we gave you would work. It was always experimental, you know, but supposed to keep everything there, a layer under the surface, so that when the life drained out of you from overuse of your powers—your good heart, you never could keep from using too much of yourself—it’d be like shuffling your personality to the bottom of the deck. And now, back to the top again.” He took a sip of water, felt it roll around on his tongue, cleanse his palate. “Back to yourself.”
“I know who I am now,” she said.
“Of course you do, my dear,” he said, “but you were never in doubt, given the time to come back to us. It’s her we need to talk about now.” A slight sigh came from the slender girl, and he felt the press of more weight upon his leg. “Now, now, don’t be jealous. I’m only here to help her in her...transition. As I helped you, once.” He looked down into her green eyes. “Come now, Klementina, this is such an unexpected and fortuitous thing, having you call us as you did, having you escape the Directorate as you did now, at this time. Surely, if it is as you say, and you remember why you worked with us in the past, things have not changed for you...have they?”
She lay her head sideways upon his knee and sighed again. “No. I haven’t forgotten. And I understand she’s important, but—”
“No buts,” Janus said. “She is important. You need not understand all of it, but know that she is just as important as the last one. This whole operation, the entirety of Stanchion, it was for her.” He held up a hand to forestall argument when he saw the lips purse, the cheeks redden, the whole face turn pouty. “Listen. Stanchion was first priority, but don’t think that it was my only concern. I would have done right by you. We would have accomplished our mission,” he checked his watch, “which we still will, and thank you, my dear, for making this interminable wait so much more bearable by coming back to me. But we would have done it all—put the Directorate out of the picture, placed Sienna Nealon just where we wanted her, and we would have extracted you at the same time, brought you back to yourself, dispensed with that ridiculous identity you’ve taken on, this—Katrina Forrest that you had become—”
“Kat,” she said, her naked body pressed against the leg of his pants, almost wrapped around it like a coiled snake, the green in her eyes flashing with the light of the motel sign. “They called me Kat.”
22.
Sienna
I lay in my bed, alone, as the shadows crept across the floor again. It was quiet. I wouldn’t say too quiet, because I knew it was nearing nightfall and the admin staff had been absent all day, but it was definitely not the Directorate I was used to. Any of the meta kids who had tenable home situations had been shuffled back to their parents or relatives. Most of them lived in small towns, dedicated meta communities anyway, so the cloisters would be better protection for them than the campus at this point. It was a calculated risk, but it didn’t seem likely that Omega would be interested in tracking down meta kids when the Directorate was their primary enemy. Only the orphans remained here on campus with the rest of us.
A pall had settled over the place; it was starting to look abandoned, the falling leaves taking over the campus in volume and numbers that hadn’t been a problem back when we had a grounds crew. The whole place seemed empty without most of the people, even though I didn’t associate with almost any of them. It was worse knowing Reed and Scott were gone. I thought about visiting Kat and dismissed the idea as patronizing, as though I were trying to force some sort of empathy out that I didn’t really feel.
I waited for sleep to come claim me, wondered if it would. I hadn’t heard from Bastian or Parks all day, which I took as a good sign; they were supposed to call if the world started to end around us. Personally, I suspected that would be something I wouldn’t need a lot of heads-up about. When Omega came, I kinda thought I’d know the hour and minute it started to happen. It wasn’t going to be subtle. Not this time.
My phone lit up and I pulled it off the nightstand at the first beep. The screen lit up when I thumbed the power button, and I swiped my finger across the message icon to bring up a text message. It was from Zack.
All other Directorate campuses evacuated and shuttered except Arizona. Will be by in a little while, finishing up a meeting with Kurt.
I sighed and lay the phone on my chest. I wanted him here with me now, not later. It felt like the next breath stuck in my lungs, caught there, like a stitch in my ribs, a pain I couldn’t dispense with. I wanted this over, even if it was going to end badly. When problems came at me, my philosophy was to confront them, because if you fear something and you charge into it anyway, odds were good you wouldn’t fear it for very long. Unless “it” was actually something gravely harmful, like a running chainsaw, in which case...yeah, I suppose you’d still fear it even after running into it once.
The stars were starting to come out to play now, and I lay on top of the bedspread, waiting. I looked at the deepening purple of the sky, the first twinkles of light out above the orange fade of the horizon, and I wondered again how long it would be. Wondered why they were coming for me. And then I wondered what Mom was up to. That one was really strange.
I saw the first sparkle of light on the horizon, a red light hanging over the campus like a falling crimson star, and I watched it descend with steady regularity past my window. No surprise attack, no explosions, no metas gone wild streaming across the lawns in attack formation. Just a flare. A simple, red flare, falling onto the south lawn. I watched it go, the very thought prickling my mind—we didn’t use flares, didn’t need flares, we had freestanding light posts all around the campus to illuminate the whole thing if we wanted it done—
I heard the heater cut out, the lights all died out in the main room. I heard the quiet, reassuring hum of electricity stop all throughout the building, followed by the last few dying sounds of the warm air pushed through the heat exchange. The vent above me quit making the whooshing noise that was incredibly loud to meta ears as it pushed out the last of its warm air.
A moment later, the first explosion rocked the campus.
23.
I was off and running, my feet carrying me down the stairs. I saw no one in the hallway outside my quarters, not Scott, not Kat, and none of M-Squad. I raced across the lobby, the lights casting dark shadows over the faces of people clumped inside, watching out the glass front of the building. As I shoved my way through a (very) small crowd, I saw Kurt Hannegan near the doors. “Keep ‘em safe,” I said to him as I passed, and got a nod from the big man in return. I paused at the entrance to the lobby, about to go out the front door. “Where’s Zack?”
“HQ,” he said. “
Got a call from Old Man Winter a few minutes ago to run over there; he’s in charge of us, now.”
“You’re in charge here ‘til he gets back, right?” I asked, and watched him think about it for a second.
“Yeah.” Hannegan nodded, his jowls rocking in the motion. “Explosion sounded like it came from the science building.”
“On my way. You might wanna lock the doors behind me.”
Hannegan didn’t even bother to sneer. “You really think a lock’s gonna keep Omega out?”
I ran out the door, the cold night air cutting across me. The skies had turned overcast while I wasn’t looking, clouds moving in and darkening the sky further. It was night, blackest , the light of the nearby town shining off the clouds, miles away. I cut around the side of the building and stopped as my eyes beheld the spectacle in front of me.
The science building, the new and shining gem of the Directorate campus, was in flames—again—fire roaring where it had stood, as though it had been entirely replaced by an inferno. I ran, feet crunching in the leaves, the orange hues cutting through the blackness of the campus night, not sure if I should be afraid or not as I ran toward the destruction.
I slowed as I grew closer, and halted about forty feet from the entrance to the building. I saw a lone body on the ground on the walkway. I ran to it and fell to my knees, rolling the corpse over and smothering the fire that was licking at it. It was scorched up and down it, the flames having had a good bit of time to work.
It was Doctor Sessions, I realized from the half of a face that remained. I had pulled him from the flaming wreckage of the last science building still alive and he had been healed by Kat. This time, I realized, staring into the dead eyes of the doctor, there would be no last-minute healing, no ultimate salvation. I took off my glove and held my fingers to his wrist, trying to feel for a pulse against the burnt and blackened skin; there was none.
Omega: The Girl in the Box, Book 5 Page 19