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

by Robert J. Crane

  Chapter 28

  Our first stop once we landed was the medical unit. I saw Dr. Perugini waiting along with Old Man Winter, Ariadne, and Dr. Zollers as the helicopter came in for a landing. I thought about bracing myself for the inevitable onslaught, but instead I just soaked up the rays of the sun, beaming down from outside. When the blades spun down and the doors opened, Scott was the first out. He looked a little discombobulated, but his skin was pink and fresh, like I suspected a newborn’s would look. He caught my eye as he passed and nodded.

  Roberto Bastian and Eve Kappler were in the cockpit but Parks and Clary were in the back with us. The whole way back, Clary had a look on his face like he was pissed off he missed the fight or something. Parks, on the other hand, stared out the window, like me. Zack had been on his headset pretty much the whole time, except for firing a reassuring smile at me now and again.

  I waited until Clary had cleared the door and then Parks gestured that I should go next. Ariadne looked especially stiff, standing with her arms crossed, stern, head held high. Old Man Winter still dwarfed her, his hands relaxed at his sides. I felt Zack behind me as I walked across the helipad cradling my wrist. It didn’t seem to hurt anymore.

  Dr. Perugini looked up from where she already had Scott on a gurney, wrapped in a blanket, and gave my arm a cursory glance. “Might be fractured. Let’s get it set before you do anything else.”

  Dr. Zollers caught my arm as I started to go by. “We’re gonna have a long conversation later, I’m sure.” He didn’t look mad, just...knowing, or something. Like he was sharing a secret only I could know about. He pulled a needle out of his lab coat and pointed to my arm. I rolled up my sleeve and he gave me a quick shot. I felt the drug start to work in less than thirty seconds as the cacophony that had been present in the back of my head began to die down and I started to feel drowsy.

  I followed Dr. Perugini as Clary pushed the gurney into the Headquarters building. We navigated the corridors to the medical unit quickly and were settled in within minutes. Dr. Zollers began monitoring Scott’s condition, more as a precaution, it seemed, while Perugini found her way over to me.

  She poked and prodded at my hand and wrist. She reached under the cart she had slid over with her and pulled out a brace. “No point in doing a cast since you’ll be healed by tomorrow, but it will be best if we control the direction of the healing.” She took the brace out of the box and began to wrap it around my wrist. “Got into trouble again, eh?”

  “See it however you’d like,” I said to her, inflectionless.

  She didn’t bite immediately, but after a moment she did. “How do you see it?”

  I thought about it before answering. “I made amends for some bad decisions in my past.”

  She stopped and looked up from what she was doing, as though she were trying to smoke out the truth by looking in my eyes. Whatever she found, she kept to herself. “Good for you,” she said, and finished tightening the brace before she turned her attention to Zack, who was talking to Scott. “You! You’re next.” He protested, but she didn’t let him sway her. She had him take off his tactical vest and then his shirt, examining some bruising on his shoulders from where he jumped out of the helicopter. I watched.

  Kat made her way over to me as I lay on the bed, trying to work up the motivation to move. “You saved my life,” she said with a little smile.

  “You’re welcome.” Her eyes clouded over and she looked troubled, as though she were trying to find a way to say what was on her mind. “Spit it out,” I said with an air of impatience.

  “I was thinking about the rooftop.” She fumbled with her hands, gripping the rail of the bed. “When you faced that maniac in your basement, you were the only one there.”

  “Yeah, and?”

  “So...I mean, you faced someone as bad or worse than...” she tried to say it but it didn’t come out as anything but a pronoun. “...Him. But you faced Wolfe alone, all by yourself. And on the rooftop, you didn’t have to be there. You had no reason to stay, you don’t know anybody in Minneapolis. Scott has family in the area and Gavrikov would have chased me around the planet...but you didn’t have any reason to be there.”

  “I told you before.” I crossed my gloveless hands in my lap. “I had my reasons.”

  “Well...thank you.” She smiled at me, and I still felt bad for her.

  She started to shuffle back to Scott’s bedside but I called out to her. “Wait!” She turned, almost expectant. “Do you know if there were anymore of those turtlenecks and jeans in the closet down in the room you were being held captive in?” I fingered my shirt, which was once again tattered around the arms and shoulders and my jeans were wet and caked with dirt and blood from the rooftop battle. “I think the rest of my clothes got lost in the fire.”

  “Yeah, there were a few of them,” she said. “Coats and gloves, too.”

  “Oh, good.” I looked back down at my bare hands.

  She walked back to Scott’s bedside and I looked around the room once. Zollers and Perugini were consulting in the corner, Zack and Kat were talking to Scott. I presumed M-Squad was with Ariadne and Old Man Winter. I tried to decide if I wanted to talk to them today or tomorrow and realized I didn’t really care which, so long as I got some fresh clothes.

  I left the medical unit without saying anything to anyone. I didn’t sneak out; I didn’t have to. Everyone was occupied and no one saw me leave except Zollers, who caught me with a sly smile that told me I’d see him later. That was fine, so long as it wasn’t now.

  I went to the staircase and found my way to the basement. The confinement room that they’d kept Kat in was unlocked now, no key card necessary. I walked in and went to the closet, finding exactly what she had promised inside. I grabbed a change of clothes, along with some undergarments that also fit me and went into the bathroom.

  I took maybe the longest shower ever known to man, taking care to keep my wounded arm out of the spray but drowning every other inch of my skin in hot water. I scrubbed off the dried blood, the caked-on grit from the roof, and afterward I combed all the tangles out of my hair. I stared at myself in the mirror. I was the same girl I had seen a thousand times before, in the mirror of my own bathroom, back home, before all this happened.

  Except I wasn’t. The blue-green eyes were different. Not weary, but aged. I’d aged even in the weeks since I left home.

  I heard a noise outside and dressed quickly. I didn’t slide my gloves on until after I opened the door to find Zack waiting. I let out a breath I didn’t know I had been holding and rolled my eyes. “What are you doing here?”

  He looked at me innocently. “Came to check on you. Kat told me you were coming for clothes but I didn’t realize you were going to shower too.” He nodded at my wet hair. “I can wait if you want to dry off first.”

  I shook my head. “No big deal. I’m fine. I might sleep down here; it’s as good as anywhere else and I don’t know if I have it in me to walk all the way back to the dormitory building tonight. Besides, I’m sure Ariadne and Old Man Winter will be looking for me tomorrow morning.”

  “I wouldn’t worry about that.” He said it with more assurance than I would have expected.

  “I’m not worried.” I blinked my eyes, as though I could just shed the tiredness out of them with that little effort. “Worst comes to worst, I move along on my own.” I felt a strength in those words that wouldn’t have been possible a week earlier. “I’m okay with that, really. Maybe for the first time.”

  “I don’t think they’re going to ask you to leave,” he said. “But why the change? Not that you showed much sign you were feeling all dependent before, but what triggered the shift?”

  I took a deep breath. “I don’t know. I guess I’ve been so busy feeling sorry for myself for all that’s happened, for all the tough breaks—literal, in some cases,” I held up my wrist, the brace still snug around it. “I’ve been jonesing so hard to be normal, whatever that is, that all I could think about was mys
elf, about how I’d have to live a life where I had walls up all the time, where I couldn’t really connect with anybody.” I held up my hands as I slipped the gloves on. “Where I’d live untouched by people or emotion or life.”

  He nodded slowly. “It’s up to you whether you connect with people or not. And I hate to break it to you, but your own little world is not the center of the universe.”

  I cocked my head at him and shot him a “duh” look. “Thanks, Galileo. You’re a little late to the party on that one. And not fashionably so, like...party’s over, GTFO. I figured it out, thanks.”

  “How?” He took a step closer to me, reminding me for some reason of Gavrikov as he took the first steps toward Kat.

  “It was Aleksandr,” I said, thinking about it. “He lived over a hundred years with his flames up all the time, by choice, ever since...whatever happened with his sister. He chose to live that way, isolated, alone. I think...” I felt the loneliness creep over me, the walls start to rise, and pushed them away, “...I would give anything to be able to take the barriers down and just live. And I can do that for most of them.” I held up my hands, uselessly, showing him the gloves once more, the things that separated me from everyone. “All but one, anyway. It’s not normal, but it’s all I can do—”

  He interrupted me by taking two strides to close the distance between us and before I could say anything his arms wrapped around my back, enveloping me, and he pressed his lips to mine. My eyes closed; the touch was magnificent, warm and sweet, and he pulled away just as I felt the first stirrings of my power start to work. I took a breath and opened my eyes, and his were staring back at me, brown and big and with his smile reflected in them. He had a really nice smile.

  He didn’t say anything else, just pulled away, leaving me speechless, standing there with my wet hair, and walked to the door. “See you tomorrow,” he said, and the door shut before I could answer.