Untouched tgitb-2

by Robert J. Crane

  “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 sister.” 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.

  Chapter 18

  They took me to the medical unit, where no one spoke to me, not even Dr. Perugini. The rest of them were just quiet, but Perugini was irritable and glared at me constantly, in addition to giving me the silent treatment. She injected something into my other arm and I didn’t stop her, mostly because M-Squad was standing around watching me. Before my eyelids fluttered and I drifted off, I reflected that I wouldn’t be surprised if I woke up in a confinement cell. Whenever they allowed me to wake up.

  I came to still in a bed in the medical unit. The room was dark, and there was not a sign of anyone else, even in the dim light. A machine to my right was beeping every few seconds. My hand hurt, which was funny because it wasn’t there the last time I checked. My mouth was dry and my arms were restrained, a large steel bar locked into place across my upper body and another at my waist. My hands were pinned beneath them so that I couldn’t even get enough leverage to move them a half inch. My right hand, the one that was missing, was encased in a box of some kind, but it was difficult to see with the bar across my abdomen.

  Also, I had an itch on my nose and had to pee worse than I’ve ever had to before.

  I didn’t want to say anything, but those two urgent needs brought words to my lips faster than anything else could have. “Hello?” I was hesitant, almost as if I was afraid of who would answer.

  The door to Dr. Perugini’s office opened and she stepped out, her hair pulled back. I heard the click of her high heeled shoes on the floor and when she got close enough, saw the weariness in her eyes as she stifled a yawn. “I’ve grown so tired of you I can’t help but fall asleep in your presence.”

  “I’ve grown tired of being here, Doc.” I chafed under the bands keeping me in the bed. “When can I leave?” I felt tension as I waited for her answer.

  I was surprised when it was hysterical laughter. She bent double, hand over her face, clutching at her sides. After a few minutes, she stopped, letting out one last chuckle (that I suspected was fake) and turned serious, looking daggers at me. “Oh, I’m sorry,” she said, her voice rising, “it takes a while to REGROW AN ENTIRE HAND!” She shook her head self-righteously and took a needle out of her pocket.

  “Hold up,” came a voice from the door. I looked past her as she turned and saw Dr. Zollers standing there, hands folded over his sweater vest. “Don’t administer that just yet.” He walked over to the bed and looked me over. “Living a little rough, Sienna?”

  “What can I say? I live a hard-knock life.” There was a steady, thrumming pain coming from my missing hand. I had a suspicion that I was getting some new nerve growth.

  Zollers chuckled. “I wasn’t even talking about that. I was talking about the personality conflict you’ve got going on inside. You know, you versus the beast within?” He leaned closer. “It’d be a hard thing, living your life when you’ve got Wolfe in your head.”

  I blinked at him in disbelief, and I felt all the blood drain from my face. “How did you know?”

  “Old Man Winter told me,” he said, straightening back up. Perugini watched him with a glare and he smiled at her. “He’s suspected for a while now. But thanks for confirming it.”

  “I didn’t want to tell anyone,” I said. I felt the slow gut-wrench of fear settle over me. If they weren’t going to lock me away before for aiding Gavrikov, this would surely do it. “I figured you’d all think I was crazy—or worse. And when he started taking over my body—”

  “You should have said something.” He pulled out a needle of his own and pulled the cap off it with his teeth. “We might be able to control him with medication. Or some dog treats.” He smiled.

  “So that’s what makes a good headshrinker,” Dr. Perugini said with a roll of her eyes, “an overdeveloped sense of irony and a willingness to engage in psychopharmacology.

  “That and a bitchin’ sweater vest collection.” He tugged on the front of his outfit. “You like?”

  Dr. Perugini snorted in disgust. “She’s in a lot of pain. She needs something to help with that.”

  He raised an eyebrow at her then looked down at me in the bed. “Pain she can deal with, I think. Crazy is a whole different problem, and typically more serious. Make no mistake, having Wolfe as a mental hitchiker means you are opened up to all sorts of crazy.”

  I gulped. “Will this make him go away?”

  “I doubt it,” Zollers said. “This is just gonna take the edge off a little. It’s called Chloridamide. It’s a low-grade antipsychotic; it hasn’t quite passed the FDA yet, but I think it’ll be just the thing to keep you calm for a bit while we work out what to do.”

  I smiled weakly. “Any side effects?”

  He shrugged. “Nausea, vomiting, burning while urinating, blood loss, diarrhea, liver failure, renal failure, heart failure, cancer, tumors, paralysis-”

  “Nice.” I faked a smile. “You’re joking, right?”

  He laughed. “Wouldn’t matter if I was serious. You’re a meta, you shrug off all that stuff.” He took a sterile swab from Dr. Perugini and rubbed it along my arm where my sleeve was rolled up. “Except the burning while urinating. That would probably still sting.”

  “There’s a cautionary tale in there somewhere,” I said, sarcasm tingeing my words. “How did Old Man Winter know I was carrying around Wolfe with me?”

  Zollers smiled again as he injected the needle in my arm. “You’re not the first succubus to cross his path. I think he’s playing things a little close to the vest, though. Big surprise, coming from him, right?” The last words were delivered with unrepentant sarcasm. “But as he is the boss, that’s his prerogative, I suppose.”

  “Yeah,” I said, my head starting to grow hazy. “I get the feeling it’s not the first time.”

  “You’re probably going to sleep for a while,” Dr. Zollers said. “This is something new for your system, and one of the genuine side effects is drowsiness, which is working along with the fact that you’re tired because your body is healing. You’ll build up some resistance after the next few doses and pretty soon it won’t affect you at all, okay?” He took care rolling my sleeve back down, making certain he didn’t touch my skin, even with the latex gloves he was wearing. “When you get out of here, you’ll go talk to Ariadne and Winter first, but they’ll tell you I’m next on your list after them. Doesn’t matter if it’s day or night, you come see me.”

  I stared up at him. His chocolate skin was blurring, running into the white ceilings in the most bizarre mixture. “Why?”

  My eyes were already closed when he answered. “Because together, we’re going to find a way to put Wolfe in a cage.”

  Chapter 19

  I awoke again to the beeping of the machines, this time with Dr. Perugini standing over me. “Oh, good, you’re awake,” she said without enthusiasm.

  “I had to pee before I fell asleep,” I said. “Did I…”

  “You got a catheter after Zollers injected you.” She delivered the news with a little snippiness. Th
e restraints were gone, though my hand was elevated. The flesh on it looked to be an angry red, with blisters standing out like little white bubbles against a torch red background. Also, now it itched.

  I rubbed my eyes with my good hand. “I’m hungry.” My stomach growled as if to emphasize the truth of my statement.

  “I’ll send for the cafeteria to bring you something in a few minutes.”

  “Poison?” I asked with a smile.

  She ignored my wisecrack and used her stethoscope to take my pulse, avoiding touching my skin even with her gloves. “You are nearly back to normal, which is good because I want you out of here as soon as possible.”

  “Oh, I don’t know about that, Doc.” I said trying to be coy, but I think it came off sneering. “After all, I can’t do any more damage when I’m here. Once I’m out in the world, it’ll be no time at all before you’ve got the medical unit full again.”

  She let out a hiss that startled me, it was so violent. “You,” she said, spitting it at me with the same vehemence as the Italian curses she so frequently used.

  “Me what?” I shot back. “I didn’t ask for any of this—not my powers, not my mom to disappear, not Wolfe to come after me, nor this Armored Assclown. I wasn’t looking for Scott Byerly to grab at me when Wolfe was so close to the surface of my mind, and I damned sure wasn’t spoiling for a fight with Clary! I didn’t ask Gavrikov to vaporize my hand, I never wanted a single person to die—but they all happened, and I can’t do anything about them now.”

  “ Porca miseria !” She withdrew her hands and took a step back, and for a moment I thought she was going to spit on me. “Oh, yes, you have had such a miserable time. So many bad things have happened to you, poor you, nobody else has it as bad as Sienna.” Her voice came slow, mocking me.

  It smarted. Enough to bring that curious burning to my eyes, the one I wished I could disavow. I hate crying, and I wasn’t going to do it in front of an enemy. Not that I had many friends at this point. Or ever. “Yes, I have had a miserable time. And you don’t hear me griping about it.”