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

by Robert J. Crane

  Chapter 17

  I took a few steps back trying to get away from him, but Gavrikov took it as a sign to enter. He closed the door after checking the hallway again. He pressed his back to the door after shutting it. He was haggard, his face pale, the coloring washed out. Big beads of sweat ran down his forehead and he was breathing heavily.

  I didn’t want to ask, but I did it anyway. “Are you all right?” The backs of my thighs felt the soft impact of the edge of the bed; I could not retreat any farther without making it obvious.

  “What?” His accent was more pronounced and he blinked a few times, as though his eyes were hurting him. “Oh. I have not been...” He stared down at his hands, as if seeing them for the first time. “It has been very long since I last quenched the fire.” He took another deep breath. “I don’t think I’ve done it since...” He looked up, concentrating as if trying to recall. “Not for over a hundred years.”

  “Uh...how do you eat?” My brain screamed at me for my stupidity, asking him dumb questions when I should be jumping out the window, running far, far away from the man who blew up an entire building last night.

  “I don’t,” he said with a grim smile. “When I am afire, I don’t need to eat, I subsist on air—it keeps the flames burning.”

  “Oh.” I pondered that. “You don’t like being human?”

  He looked down at his hands again. “Flesh is easily hurt. Not so with flame; it can be elusive, unquenchable—and it feels no pain.”

  “Ah,” I said, still feeling dumb. “So...what do you want to talk about?”

  “Have a seat,” he offered. I don’t know why, but I sat down on the bed. If he burst into flames, it wasn’t likely to matter whether I was standing or not. He walked past me to the window and looked out. “I have to thank you again for freeing me.” He looked out through the glass, then to either side as if he were trying to find curtains.

  I shook my head when he turned back to me. “The glass is mirrored. No one outside can see us.”

  His hand touched the window and he looked at it, curious. “So many differences since I was a child. We did not even have windows in the house I grew up in.”

  “Yeah, me neither, for all intents and purposes,” I said, drawing a surprised look from him. “I had a somewhat unconventional childhood.”

  “Unconventional.” He nodded and half-smiled. “I like that. I had an unconventional childhood as well.”

  “So.” I felt a little awkward, and I still wondered why he was here. “Mr. Gavrikov—

  “Please,” he said with a wince. “Call me Aleksandr.”

  “Well, I was trying to be a little more formal—”

  “I hate that name. “ His mouth was a thin line. “I am only Aleksandr.”

  “Okay.” The awkwardness did not abate. “Why are you here?”

  He kept his distance, walking over to the desk and the computer that I had yet to use. He pulled out the chair and tentatively sat down in it. He was still sweating profusely and I wondered if he was suffering some sort of withdrawal from not using his power or if he was simply nervous. “Your Directorate—”

  “Let me stop you right there,” I said, drawing a look of curiosity from him. “They’re not mine. I’ve only been here a couple weeks, and mostly because I have nowhere else to go since that psychotic Wolfe,” I felt him stir inside but he kept blissfully silent, “was chasing me down.”

  “Wolfe?” He squinted at me. “You drew the ire of the beast and yet live?”

  “Drew his ire?” I snorted. “I drew more than that.”

  “No matter,” he said with a wave of his hand. “I have heard the legend of this beast. Help me and I will kill him for you.”

  “Too late. I already killed him.”

  I watched Aleksandr’s face drop, a hint of disbelief permeating his clenched expression. “You killed him?” He pointed his finger at me. “You? You did this...by yourself?”

  “I—” I tried to find an easy way to explain but failed. “Yes, I did.”

  “Very impressive.” He nodded. “It explains why you were able to help me escape the lab. But I still need your help to free another.”

  “Um...free them from what?” I tried not to overly worry about it, but I suspected that my potential new bosses here at the Directorate would be less than pleased that I had helped Gavrikov escape. I suspected they’d be even more peeved if I helped him break someone else out. As if having Wolfe running through my head wasn’t a bad enough mark on an employment application.

  “The Directorate has imprisoned someone at their Arizona facility.” He took a deep breath. “Someone I must help.”

  “Umm, I don’t think I’d be able to help you with that,” I said. “First of all, I don’t know where that is; second, I have zero pull with this organization.” I laughed under my breath, but it died after a second when I caught sight of his face. “Truth is, I’ve done a few things here that would be likely to land me in their jail before too much longer.”

  “I need help,” he said again, this time almost pleading. “I don’t care if it costs my life, I must get this person out of their hands.”

  “I can sorta understand that. Who is it?”

  “My sister, Klementina.” He took a deep breath. “Only...it is not her.”

  I let the air hang with silence while I tried to digest that. “I’m sorry...what? It’s your sister...but it’s not?”

  He stood suddenly and his breathing was heavier. His eyes moved left and right, and he twitched. “My sister died in 1908.”

  I started to wonder if I was dreaming, because of the surreal nature of the conversation. Then I remembered that I could talk to people in my dreams, and wondered if me being dead was a simpler explanation. My head hurt, mostly from being confused. “So they imprisoned her corpse?”

  “No.” He stood and started to pace, his agitation becoming greater as he went. I could have sworn I saw thin drifts of smoke waft from him. “She died...but somehow they brought her back. Except it is not her, because she does not remember anything.”

  “Like a clone?” I know my eyes were wide, and I was trying not to do anything to set him off, but by this point I was fairly sure he was crazier than I was. And with a psycho nutter in my head, I was probably pretty crazy by any objective measure.

  He snapped his finger at me. “Yes! A clone. I worked for...an organization. After a time, I heard rumors that they were working on something. Something for me, as a gift—they wanted my loyalty, to buy it forever. But the facility at which they were working on this gift was lost to an attack by your Directorate. So I went there. I found the scientists that have taken over, but they have no answers for me. All the research was moved when the Directorate took over the facility, and now all that is left are files, some videos. I see her in the records, her face, Klementina’s. Somehow they brought her back, but the Directorate took her away with the other research subjects and sent her to Arizona.”

  I had a sudden, annoying suspicion that sent my skin to tingling. “Describe her for me.”

  “She was tall, with long blond hair, and green eyes. When I saw her last, her skin was tanned from working our farm. In the pictures I saw, she is still so.” He halted in his description and anguish flowed across his features. “Please. You must help me. I have to tell her—” He choked on the words. “I have to make it right.”

  “Hrm.” I thought of Kat Forrest, our new arrival from Arizona, and wondered about the likelihood that Old Man Winter would have had her brought up here, thinking that he was about to capture Gavrikov. “Did she have any powers? You know, like you?”

  “No,” he said with a shake of his head. “She was kind, and gentle. When father would—” He looked away. “She would come to me, try to soothe my injuries.”

  “Uh huh. So would you say she had a,” I swallowed, “healing touch?”

  “I suppose you could say that.” He paced back to the window. “I owe her...an apology. I failed the Klementina that was my siste
r.” He whirled to face me and all I could see was the resolve on his face. “I owe her—this shade of her, at least—freedom. I must get her free.”

  “I can appreciate that you have,” I scoured my mind, “unfinished business or a debt or whatever. But, um...when I said healing touch, I meant literally.” He looked at me in confusion. “Can her hands heal wounds, grow flowers, stuff like that?”

  His brow was furrowed. “I—”

  For the second time since I’d been here, the giant window that ran across the entire wall behind my bed exploded inward. I dropped, using the bed for cover as glass flew over my head and I felt a blast of heat from where Aleksandr had been standing. I poked my head back up and found Clary, skin turned into some dark rock, stepping through the window. Behind him I saw the outlines of Parks, Bastian and Kappler, lurking about a hundred feet away. Gavrikov was already covered in flame again, hovering about a foot off the ground. The influx of outside air had turned the room a frigid cold in seconds.

  “We went all the way down to Fairmont tracking you,” Clary said as he dropped onto the floor, shaking the room. “Found your handiwork. Blowing up a propane truck, Gavrikov? Not cool.” Clary hesitated and his voice turned gleeful. “Actually, I bet it was cool to watch when it happened, but now it’s just a big damned smoking crater and a hell of a lot of lanes of I-90 that ain’t gonna be open again for a longass while. And that poor trucker’s family—”

  Aleksandr didn’t let him finish his sentence. He heaved two enormous fireballs at Clary, one of which burned the big man’s clothing off, exposing a chest of blackened stone. “I liked that shirt,” he said, staring down. “You better not—” Gavrikov fired two more blasts at him, each worse than the last. I felt the air turn superheated around me and closed my eyes to protect them from the intensity of it. Every single bit of the flame that Aleksandr had thrown at him had bounced off, hitting the walls of my dormitory room. The drywall had begun to blaze in four places and the carpet was beginning to catch fire.

  “You’re gonna burn the girl’s stuff up, Gavrikov!” Clary shouted at him.

  I was coughing, but I managed to get out, “I don’t own much of anything.”

  “Well you’re gonna burn the girl up, and she’s already hot enough without your help!”

  I was crawling toward the exit to keep that from happening, although I did blanch at Clary’s comment. I heard a fire alarm klaxon start wailing and then the sprinklers activated, and suddenly I was no longer hot but now cold again as the chill water soaked me through my already damaged clothing. I stopped at the door and used the wall as an aide to pull myself up. There was smoke billowed at the ceiling, but Gavrikov and Clary were already outside. Kappler, Bastian and Parks were circling them, but keeping their distance.

  I watched them out the window. Gavrikov was throwing fire at Clary ineffectually. Clary advanced on Aleksandr but every time he would get close, Gavrikov would fly away and hurl another burst at him, with an occasional shot toward the other three to keep them at bay.

  “Aleksandr,” I called, staggering to the window. By now, the sprinkler system had almost extinguished the flames in my room and the carpet was sodden, squishing underfoot with every step. “He’s invulnerable to your attacks! Get out of here before they capture you!”

  With that, Parks, Kappler and Bastian, all three of their heads swiveled toward me, as if seeing a new threat for the first time. “I’m not getting involved in this,” I told them, hands raised, as I stepped over the window ledge and into the snow. “Just hate to see him get overmatched and pummeled.”

  As I stepped out, I saw a ring of black-clad agents in the distance, along with Old Man Winter and Ariadne. They were far enough away that I could only distinguish them by Ariadne’s red hair and Old Man Winter’s staggering height. It occurred to me that they either saw Gavrikov enter my room through a security camera and figured out who he was or else they were listening and/or watching my room.

  Gavrikov floated away, drawing Clary charging after him. He reached a distance away from me and then with a flash of heat and light he shot back toward me, stopping a foot or so away. “Will you help me?” His voice was different now, laced with a kind of crackling heat, something that sounded far different from human.

  “I...” I stopped and looked around, the agents closing in, ringing us. Gavrikov turned and saw them and he burned brighter, as though ready to explode. “No! Wait!” He turned back to me, his head whipping around, the fire burning brighter. I held out my hand. “I’ll help you, but you can’t hurt them! Please! Just go for now, come find me when things have calmed down, I’ll...” I looked at the agents charging closer, Old Man Winter with them.

  The air grew colder; I could feel it because I was soaked from the sprinklers and I felt ice start to form on the outside layer of my clothing. “Go!” I said. “Get out of here!”

  He looked around once more and the heat blazed hotter around him. A short blast of fire filled the air in front of me, knocking me backward over the window frame. I landed on my back with a wet splash in my room, a stinging pain in the hand I had held out which quickly moved down my wrist and stayed there. My head ached from the landing. I saw a streak of fire trace across the sky like an angry star, flaring in the night until it disappeared.

  Faces appeared above me, and I didn’t feel like I could fight my way through all of them or adequately run, so I just lay there. Clary was the first to climb into my room, followed by the rest of M-Squad, then a few agents, all wearing their tactical gear and black masks. One of them pulled his off; it was Zack. He shook his head at me in deep disappointment.

  “Yeah, I know. Save it,” I said, feeling surprisingly weak. His disappointment changed in an instant, into something more approaching horror. His mouth was open, his normally handsome face twisted in disgust. “What?”

  “Sienna,” he gasped as Old Man Winter appeared in view above me with the others. “Your hand.”

  I looked down at my hand, the one I had extended toward Gavrikov, but it had nearly vanished, all the way to the wrist. There was no flesh, no muscle, no connective tissue left—only bone, scorched, blackened and bare.