The Girl in the Box Series, Books 1-3: Alone, Untouched and Soulless

by Robert J. Crane

  Eight

  I sat up in bed and looked around. I hadn’t even bothered to crawl under the covers. The red face of the digital clock on the dresser told me it was after midnight. I reached over and found the bottle of water I filled earlier. I picked it up, took it to the bathroom and dumped it out again. Just in case they snuck in while I was sleeping. Paranoia, thy name is Sienna.

  After I filled it from the tap and drank two bottles, I laid back down on the bed. I was almost positive I had just talked to Reed in a dream. I went to sleep thinking of him and I dreamed of him. But he was right. What happened there was not like a regular dream. All the weirdness and surreal atmosphere of a dream was gone; it felt like we’d had a conversation in the waking world, but with a hazy backdrop.

  Could I touch people’s dreams? Was I a telepath, a mind reader? My thoughts raced while I thought about the possibilities. I’d never read a mind, so it probably wasn’t that; unless it hadn’t fully manifested as a power yet. Or maybe it was just limited to dreaming.

  I thought about Mom as I lay there. Thought about when she used to get home, and how we’d eat dinner and talk about…I dunno, whatever. Training, mostly. TV shows, sometimes.

  The world outside? Never. Rule #5. We don’t talk about the outside world. It doesn’t exist, for conversational purposes. We stay inside the house. The four walls that defined my life.

  I thought about Mom and her rules and I wondered if maybe I could dream and talk to her, see where she was. I set the water bottle aside and lay back, this time crawling beneath the covers. I thought about her, about the smell of the chicken soup she used to heat up out of the can with the TV going in the background as we sat on the couch and talked. I recalled watching her walk out the door in the morning, and hoping that she’d open the outside door to the porch before the inside door to the house had shut, so I could catch just a glimpse of the outside world (she never did).

  Then I thought of the times I’d disobeyed her. The times I’d let her down. I shuddered. The times she punished me.

  The last time.

  Somewhere in that succession of thoughts I drifted off again, and I woke to the sound of distant voices and a raging hunger. I blinked the bleariness out of my eyes and felt my skin covered in a cold sweat. My dreams this time had definitely not brought me to Mom. Light streamed in from a gray sky outside, peeking in through the blinds.

  I padded into the bathroom and stripped off my clothing, which was sticking to my body. I thought for a moment about the idea of the Directorate watching me and I sighed, a deep, uncaring sound as I looked around the bathroom. I felt truly disgusting; there was still residual mud and grit in my hair from the parking lot two days ago when Wolfe had dropped me, even though someone had tried to clean it.

  I sighed again and with a shrug I decided that I wanted a shower more than I wanted to worry about someone spying on me in the bathroom.

  The hot water felt great, renewing me as it washed over my skin. Little flecks of dried blood that had caught in my sweater from the fight with Wolfe flaked off and swirled down the drain. I stayed in there longer than was necessary to get clean; the shower has long been my place for rejuvenation, the only spot where I could get privacy from Mom. The only place I’m allowed to shed my gloves, my shirt and all else.

  I stepped onto the rug and took a moment to appreciate the warmth of the dormitory bathroom. Even in a house as buttoned up as ours had been, drafts ran through it with alarming regularity. I could always tell what season it was by how cold I was when I got out of the shower. The bathroom here was perfectly insulated, though, and as I felt the soft squish of the plush bathmat between my toes there was a touch of that feeling of unfamiliarity again. It was as though I were so far outside my comfortable life that I almost couldn’t recognize the actions I was taking as my own; like they were those of a stranger I was watching on TV.

  I stepped out into my room wearing a towel and pulled open the closet to find a half dozen outfits. I took a look at the clothes I had discarded – dirty, disgusting and a little bloody. I wanted to put them back on, but it would undo the shower. Instead I picked out a black turtleneck and a pair of jeans and put them on, unsurprised to find that they fit me perfectly. I was only going to the cafeteria, but I grabbed the coat I had worn yesterday and slipped on my gloves, the only part of my ensemble not completely caked with filth. Rule #4. Old habits die hard.

  The dormitory building was large and seemed to contain quite a few people. I guessed they were all metas like me, retrieved at some point or another by the Directorate. They seemed to be keeping to themselves, didn’t meet my eyes in the corridors, which caused concern for me. Some of them hung together in small groups, and I could feel them looking when my back was turned.

  I remembered seeing a sign for the cafeteria somewhere near the entrance I had used yesterday, so I walked the corridors looking for it. When I found one, I followed it to a large, open space with a hundred or more tables. Glass windows stretched from floor to ceiling of a two story-high space, looking out onto the snowy grounds. One wall opened up into a long serving line with a variety of different foods sitting out in a self-serve style, from Jell-O to meatloaf. A digital clock hung overhead, announcing that it was almost noon.

  I passed through the line without difficulty; there was no cash register at the end, so I just walked off through the ever-increasing crowd and found a table by myself next to the window and sat down, ready to eat.

  I was attacking the meatloaf when Ariadne sat down across from me. She wore an overly friendly look that put me on an annoyed footing made worse by some of my food choices. The coffee was not going well with the meatloaf. How was I supposed to know that? Mom never let me have coffee and people on TV drank it with everything. Bleh. Meatloaf tasted different than I expected, too.

  Ariadne must have sensed my disquiet because I did not acknowledge her after she sat down. “Good morning,” she said, breaking the silence. “Actually,” she continued, smile widening, “I suppose I should say—”

  “If the next words out of your mouth are ‘Good afternoon,’ I promise it won’t be for you.”

  She blinked in slight shock. “Didn’t—”

  “Sleep well? No.” My eyes narrowed as I lied. “Something about the thought of having a load of tests run didn’t sit well with me.”

  “Does that mean you’ve decided against the testing?” Did I detect a note of disappointment in her voice?

  “Didn’t say that. I haven’t decided yet. Either way, I’m not enthused about them.”

  “Ah.” She nodded. “Perhaps we can help change your opinion. I’ve been asked to bring you to see the Director.”

  “Erich Winter?”

  “Yes.”

  “Great.” I slid aside the tray with the coffee and gawdawful meatloaf. “I’d like to ask him some questions anyway. Shall we?”

  The priceless look of uncertainty on her face gave way to a forced confidence as she led me downstairs to an underground tunnel leading to the headquarters building a few hundred yards away. “No need to walk through the snow if we don’t have to,” she said. I had wondered why she wasn’t wearing a coat. She wore instead another colorless business suit, not the same as the one she’d had on when I met her but not different enough for me to care.

  We emerged from the tunnel into the basement of the headquarters building and climbed a staircase to the fourth floor. I looked out the window as we walked down the corridor. The sky was still covered in clouds. I sighed. I had yet to see the sun.

  We paused before a set of heavy wooden double doors. Ariadne knocked so softly I wondered if it was even possible to hear it inside. There was no answer but a moment later a click came from the handle and the door swung open to admit us. Ariadne gestured for me to go first but I shook my head and pointed for her to enter. She shrugged and did. I followed her a moment later.

  The office was big, with a heavy stone desk standing in the middle of the room. It looked like a
slab of flat rock that someone had propped up on two supporting blocks and used as a table, and it stretched about six feet across. There was no sign of paper on it anywhere, just a tablet computer. A lone painting of a winter landscape hung from the wall on the left hand side and two chairs were set before the desk for audiences.

  Old Man Winter had opened the door, but by the time I was inside he’d already returned to his chair and sat down. He was tall, probably at least six foot five. His hair was close cropped on the sides and deep furrows were carved in the lines of his brow. His face was long, his eyes were sunken; bags hung beneath them, giving him a look of a man well over sixty and possibly over seventy. He was not thin but neither was he fat – he had a look of muscle and power that belied his years.

  And his eyes were an icy, icy blue, and fixed with a stare that sent a deep chill through me.

  “This is Sienna,” Ariadne said to him, as though I could be anyone else. The only sign that he heard her was a slow, short nod, during which he never broke eye contact with me. I stared back, unwilling to be the first to look away. This was a game, I thought.

  Ariadne said nothing and neither did he. He didn’t blink, didn’t look away, until finally my eyes were burning and I had to close them. He did not smile when I looked at him again, but I caught the thinnest suggestion of upward movement on his lips.

  “Sienna is still considering whether or not to go through with the testing,” Ariadne informed him. He sat stock still in his chair behind the desk and continued to stare me down. I like to think a lesser person would be intimidated by his constant eye contact. I was annoyed. “She has questions for you.”

  His gray eyebrows rose as if he were asking a question of his own. He waved his hand at me in a vague gesture that I took as a sign to proceed with my inquiries.

  I stared back at him, trying my utmost not to blink. “Do you know what happened to my mother?”

  He shook his head slowly, breaking eye contact for the first time since I entered the room. “No.” His voice carried an obvious Germanic accent, even in the brief response. He raised his hand toward me once more, indicating to ask my next question.

  I tried my hardest not to glare, but I probably failed. “Who would know?”

  This time the eyebrow rose only a hint and he glanced toward Ariadne, who answered for him. “We have a variety of different sources of gathering information, including sending some of our agents to question people under the guise of being police officers investigating her disappearance. I have a report that you can read, but here’s the gist: your mother has been working as an MRI technician at Hennepin County Medical Center for the last fourteen years under an assumed name—”

  “So she’s really not Sierra Nealon?” I asked without surprise.

  Ariadne’s fake smile held more patience than irony. “She is. She’s been working under the name Brittany Eccleston. She has friends and co-workers, a pretty well established life built around her work – and none of them that we questioned knew she had a daughter.” Ariadne hesitated. “She’s had a reasonably active social life, dinners with friends, though not much indication that she’s done any dating—”

  “Did she ever mention any men? Your father, for instance?” Old Man Winter spoke up, his voice at a low timbre, smooth and accented.

  “No.” I shrugged, indifferent. Mom didn’t talk about men. It wasn’t in the rules; it just never happened. “Why, are you my father?”

  Amusement crossed his weathered features, but only for a moment. “Hardly.”

  I shrugged again. “Just curious. I heard you worked with my mom back in the old days and I have no idea who my dad is.”

  His head inclined in a nod. “I did not know her well. The agency was large and I was not in a position of influence.”

  “What did you do?”

  His reply was a slight shrug, his large shoulders moving only a few centimeters, as if he were trying to conserve energy by making as little movement as possible.

  “I think what’s important,” Ariadne reinserted herself into the conversation, “is that we help you find her. And if we can assist you along the way by answering questions about what kind of powers you have, that would be of interest to you, wouldn’t it?”

  I chuckled, more to myself than anyone. “I’ll figure it out.”

  Ariadne’s expression hardened. “Assuming you have the time. There’s a pretty dangerous monster hunting you.”

  I looked back at Old Man Winter, and he was watching me, gauging my reaction to the threat of Wolfe. “He’s a real bastard,” I replied, “but I’m not going to spend the rest of my life hiding out here on your campus, even if I did consent to your tests – which I haven’t, yet.”

  Ariadne and Old Man Winter exchanged a look. Concern from her; obvious, easy to read. From him, harder to tell, but I thought I saw amusement again.

  She turned back to me. “Let me be honest—”

  “First time ever?” I cracked. “Give it a shot.”

  She ignored my jibe. “Your mother was powerful, but the records of her capabilities were lost in the destruction of the Agency. We have no idea who your father was, if he was a meta, what capabilities he might have had, but given your mother’s likely exposure to metas in her work, we’d expect he probably was. Based on our observations of your healing abilities, your strength – yes, we saw you lift the bench, well done – we suspect you’re quite powerful. We want to know—” she focused on me—“what you’re capable of, and frankly, we’d like you to join us.”

  This time I let loose more than a chuckle. “Join you? Why?”

  “We do important work here,” she said, undeterred by my laugh. “Keeping the meta-human population from running amok while helping them to fully understand and control their abilities is a noble task.”

  “I’m not going to argue that you need to police these metas,” I said. “But I haven’t even come to a decision on the testing, so I doubt you’re going to be getting much consideration on your offer until I have that one figured out.”

  She looked back at Old Man Winter one more time and he nodded again, one of those subtle blink-and-you-miss-it head motions. She turned back to me. “What do you want?”

  I smiled, wide, with a joviality I really didn’t feel. “I want to go home.”