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

by Robert J. Crane

  Chapter 1

  Sienna Nealon

  Present Day

  I awoke in a cold sweat. The red light of the clock told me it was close to five A.M., and my eyes searched the room around me, trying to acclimate after another nightmare. I worked to get my breathing under control as I sat up, walls spinning around me. The only other light came from the windows and the far distant lamps that lit the Directorate campus.

  The Directorate. That’s where I was. A secret organization dedicated to policing humans with powers beyond the norm— metas, they were called. I still wasn’t sure I believed that the Directorate did what they claimed to, but I had very little evidence as yet of what their true intentions might be. All I knew was that so far they’d helped me when no one else had.

  I still didn’t trust them.

  My breathing returned to normal. I blinked my eyes a few times to adjust to the darkness and then I stood, letting my feet touch the soft, carpeted floor. The room smelled sterile, with just a hint of dust from what I assumed was the reconstruction it had undergone. I looked back through the glass, which was flawless, having been replaced only a couple days ago. Hard to believe it was such a short time.

  Until a little over a week ago, I had been a prisoner in my own home for over ten years. Mom kept me from leaving with a simple threat: if I got out of line, was disobedient in some way, offended her or didn’t mind my manners, she locked me in a six-foot-tall metal sarcophagus. It certainly kept me from running. The drywall dust had a light and pleasant smell compared to the stench of being locked in that metal box for days at a time.

  I had left my house in a rush, pursued by agents of the Directorate, who, at the time, I thought had ill intentions toward me. I’d met a guy named Reed who also helped me. Good looking, in a tall, dark and handsome kind of way, if you’re into that. I kind of am. Maybe. He helped me get away from the Directorate for a while, but we got attacked by a beast.

  The beast’s name was Wolfe. He had lived for thousands of years, had killed countless people before we crossed paths, and after we tangled, he became obsessed with me. Everyone tells me I'm strong. Wolfe was stronger. So much stronger that it wasn’t even a contest. He manhandled me, humiliated me, bent me, broke me, cut through a dozen or more armed Directorate guards, and left me in a bloody heap more than once.

  I shook away the thought of Wolfe as I padded, barefoot, into the bathroom. I felt the cool night air against my skin. I was wearing only a bra and panties, less than I had ever worn to bed in my life, but there was a reason for it beyond simple tactile pleasure.

  When I squared off against Wolfe for the last time, it was because he had held the entire city of Minneapolis hostage, leaving a trail of dead bodies until I came out of hiding and faced him. The Directorate higher-ups, Old Man Winter, his gal Friday Ariadne, and even one of the agents, Zack (he’s a cutie, that one) begged me not to go up against Wolfe again. They urged me to wait until their highly trained team of metas, M-Squad, returned from a mission so they could handle it. But people were dying, and Wolfe seemed unstoppable. Since all he wanted was me, I went to give him what he wanted.

  Meta powers are twofold. One, they have enhanced strength, speed, dexterity—attributes far above a normal human’s. I can lift heavy objects, run faster and farther, leap fences, and essentially do stuff that makes everyone but Superman look pathetic. I was reminded of this again as I went to take a drink of water after washing my hands and I accidentally burst the bottle, soaking the bathroom floor, the sink, and myself.

  I shouldn’t think about Wolfe while I’m taking a drink. Or handling anything delicate, come to think of it. But these days, it’s hard not to think about him all the time.

  The second set of powers a meta possesses is unique to each one, to his or her type of metahuman. Wolfe, for instance, had skin that was highly adaptable to damage. If he got shot, the next time it happened he was able to take a greater amount of that kind of damage. I saw a shotgun go off at point blank range and leave nothing but red marks on his skin.

  It was in my final confrontation with Wolfe that I had discovered my other power. I am a succubus, possessed of the ability to drain a soul, or the essence of a person, with nothing but the touch of my skin. He had me in a chokehold, but I touched him, and he screamed, and I drained the life out of him.

  Hence the bra and panties for sleepwear. If anyone came for me during the night, I wanted to be able to defend myself. I didn’t think anyone would, but when you’ve been imprisoned in your own home for twelve years and then turned loose in a world where everyone wants a piece of you, it’s easy to develop a sense of paranoia. Except it’s not paranoia when they’re actually after you.

  I sighed, feeling the water dripping down my skin. I looked at myself in the mirror. I didn’t know for certain, but I was pretty sure my meta powers also included enhanced hearing, smell, sight, taste, and feeling, because it felt like I could see every detail of the water drops that were tracing their way down my pale belly.

  I wasn’t very tall, about five foot four, and my brown hair was tangled from the way I slept on it. My eyes looked more blue than green, and I had acquired a couple of small freckles since the last time I had studied myself in the mirror. I had yet to see the sun, but I had spent enough time outside that they had formed, one on my cheek and one on the tip of my nose. I stripped, removing the wet clothing, and toweled off before I turned off the light.

  As I turned to leave, something in the mirror caught my attention. A flash of black eyes, tangled, matted, dirty hair, far different than the slight mess that mine was, and a vision of wicked teeth, the type a predator would use to rip and shred its prey. The eyes watched me, and I could almost taste the desire for my blood—and something else, less savory.

  So pretty, the voice came. So pure and sweet and untouched.

  “Dammit, Wolfe,” I said, my words coming out as close to a growl as I could imagine, “Can’t you just go away?”

  The unfortunate side effect of my power, one which I had told no one about yet, was that I now had Wolfe bouncing around in my head. He gave a running commentary on my life; his thoughts ranged from the mundane to the disgusting, and I got all of them—unfiltered, profane, and revolting. Living a life cooped up with my mother had kept me more or less innocent, and having this diseased freak sharing my skull was giving me nightmares, both figurative and literal, as I got to witness his crimes every night as I slept. And there were so many.

  Can’t go away, he whispered back. You and Wolfe are bound together, little doll. Intertwined.

  I resisted the urge to vomit in my mouth and flipped the light switch, casting the bathroom in the bright aura of the overhead lamps. The reflection of Wolfe was gone from the mirror.

  Such sweetness, he intoned, his words growing with verve in my head. Wolfe would have touched you, Wolfe would have made you scream with pleasure—

  “You would have died,” I said to my reflection, as though I could sense his presence behind my eyes. “Oh, wait,” I said with mock joy, “You did. And it couldn’t have happened to a more disgusting creature.” I thought about it for a beat. “Actually, you dying did make me scream with pleasure—”

  I felt a searing pain in my skull, one that dropped me to my knees. With my eyes almost squinted shut, I could only see blurry shapes in the mirror; one was flesh-toned, on its knees, the other was behind me, stalking back and forth—

  I turned, but there was no one there. I fell back on my haunches, felt the cold linoleum of the bathroom floor against my backside, and lay down, closing my eyes and putting a hand over my throbbing head. “You’re such a bastard,” I said. “Why don’t you tell me what you know about my mother?”

  I stared at the ceiling, waiting to see if Wolfe would reply. He didn’t.

  Mom had gone missing about a week before the Directorate had ousted me from my house. Everyone here denied knowing anything about her disappearance. Wolfe knew something, I suspected, but in the last da
y or so of sharing skull space with me, he’d been cagey.

  He was there, I could feel him, skulking in my brain. The headache was his doing. Whenever he had a burst of strong emotion, I felt its effects. Yesterday, when I was leaving the medical unit, a stay caused by my last fight with Wolfe, Ariadne had offered me different options of where I could stay on the Directorate campus.

  “We have a variety of dorm rooms,” she said, talking in a quiet voice, as though I were too brittle to be exposed to words spoken at normal volume. “Or, if you would feel safer, you could stay in the secure room in the Headquarters basement—”

  “How about the dorm room I stayed in before?” I asked her, not sure where the question came from.

  “The one where Wolfe...attacked you?” She took a step back, her eyes wide. “I assumed that there would be bad memories associated with...that place.”

  I had felt a little thrill run through me, a surge of pleasure at the memory of what he’d done to me there. It wasn’t my feeling, which would have been closer to nausea, but it was strong enough to overwhelm my own emotions. “Yeah,” I said. “I’ll stay there.”

  Ariadne didn’t have the most expressive face; it was reserved most of the time, and her red hair was always the only splash of color in her drab attire. Still, on this occasion, she had emotion—concern. For me.

  “I’ll be fine,” I said. “He’s dead. Nothing to fear from him now.”

  Oh, but there is. I ignored him.

  Ariadne’s fashion sense was prosaic; it was as if the dull and dreary winter weather was her inspiration. Wolfe threw out an uncharitable and crass thought about what he’d do to liven up her look and I ignored it even though it caused a vein in my eye to pulse. She didn’t argue with me anymore after that, just let me go to my room—to rest, I told her. I didn’t, though, not the rest of that day. Not until well after nightfall, and then I was plagued by the nightmares that had caused me to wake in a sweat.

  The linoleum on the floor was causing my body to ache, and I felt a throbbing in my head. I sat up, felt the pain Wolfe had inflicted fade, and grabbed hold of the counter, pulling up to my feet. I stared once more into the mirror, looking at myself, my face, my eyes. There were bags underneath them; I looked tired.

  I turned out the bathroom light and walked back out into the room, heading to the closet. The feeling that Wolfe had been watching me while I was nude left me unsettled; I dressed in silence, slipping on a long-sleeved sweatshirt and jeans.

  The air was warm enough; I could feel an unseen heater fighting against the chill of the winter outside. The window was one-way, Ariadne had told me, a type of special glass that was tinted so that whatever happened inside could not be seen from outside, even if the lights were on. I had walked around the dormitory building and couldn’t see anything but my own reflection, even at night, when I knew there were lights on inside.

  I walked to the window with confidence that I was unseen. The ground was covered in snow, at least a foot deep if not more; the only disruption to its smooth, unblemished surface was the place a few hundred feet away where a path had been cut with a snow blower so people could walk and some footprints that were not fresh—mine. Far in the distance lurked a pine forest, the green needles blending with the black of night.

  The sky seemed lighter than I remembered it being a few minutes ago. I stared out and saw a flat spot next to the headquarters building with heavy lights sticking up out of the snow around it, reminding me of a baseball game I’d seen on TV that was played at night.

  I watched, looking through the dark, and saw figures standing on the concrete—the red hair of Ariadne was visible even at this distance. Old Man Winter was with her, towering above her small frame, and it looked like the wind was swirling snow around his legs.

  Old Man Winter was the boss of the Directorate. Ridiculously tall, he looked like he was in his seventies, and his face looked as though it had been carved out of rock that had been exposed to the elements for too long. His eyes were the most piercing blue you could imagine, though even I couldn’t see them at this distance. Standing next to him was a shorter man, a fatter one, and I knew it was Kurt Hannegan.

  Kurt and I had a history of antipathy. He’d been the one that had helped me deliver myself to Wolfe, unbeknownst to Old Man Winter and Ariadne. Kurt and I had no love lost, not since our first encounter when he broke into my house and I pummeled him. If that wasn’t enough, since I arrived at the Directorate I had caused the deaths of quite a few of his fellow human agents. None of them were intentional but I doubt it mattered to him; he didn’t like me before that, and it wasn’t the sort of thing that was going to put me on his good side.

  The three of them stood to one side of the lighted area. The wind was blowing hard, and with the exception of Old Man Winter, they were wearing heavy coats. I pressed a hand against the glass and felt the chill seep through; the temperature outside had to be below zero. Two more figures joined them, one from the Headquarters building, the other cutting across the snow from in the distance. Based on the shuffle of the steps, I knew that one was Dr. Ron Sessions, the lab geek that the Directorate kept on hand. The other was shorter, her frame undeniably female, dark hair whipping in the wind. I suspected it was Dr. Perugini, the woman who ran the medical unit and had treated me several times since I arrived. When she turned, I caught a glimpse of her chiseled features.

  Once Sessions joined them, the five of them stood to one side of the patch. I watched, waiting for something to happen. Ariadne appeared to be speaking to Sessions and Perugini while Old Man Winter watched, his mouth unmoving, and Kurt stood to the side, stamping his feet to ward off the cold. I could feel Wolfe stirring in my brain, wondering what they were up to. His thoughts matched mine, but I was trying to mask my thoughts from him. I had my doubts that it was working.

  What are they waiting for, little doll?

  “I don’t know,” I said. “Why am I bothering to answer your sick ass?”

  Hard to resist the Wolfe, isn’t it?

  “Don’t think that just because you’re in my head that you have any idea what I think.” There was a flicker of movement outside, and Wolfe didn’t bother answering.

  A helicopter descended. I recognized the type, my photographic memory reconciling what I was seeing with what I had seen in movies. It was a Black Hawk, and I could see the doors open as they descended. I saw a figure emerge, hanging out the door while waiting for the helicopter to touch down, a figure that was shorter than Old Man Winter by a lot. It was all I needed to see, and I had grabbed my coat and was slinging it on as I ran out the door.

  Zack had returned.