Omega tgitb-5

by Robert J. Crane

  “You should try doing your hair,” he said with a nod that almost caused me to subconsciously reach up; I’d forgotten that Eleanor had run ten thousand volts through me. I probably looked like Lady Frankenstein.

  “Can I beat him unconscious now?” Eve asked me, ignoring Fries completely.

  “I have no objection.” I really didn’t.

  “Your hospitality is lacking around here,” Fries said as Eve stood and circled around the table toward him.

  “Gloves,” Eve said to me, and I puzzled at what she meant for a second before nodding, taking off my gloves, and placing them into her outstretched hand. She slid them on, one by one, and I heard the sound of leather stretching. “You have small, girlish hands,” she said, but I didn’t really hear any judgment in the way she said it.

  “Isn’t that the way you like them?” Fries asked, smiling sweetly at Eve.

  “It is,” she said, smiling back, from just over him. “It really is.” The first punch didn’t so much knock him over as flatten him like a wrecking ball hitting a small building. His chair skittered across the floor and hit the wall, making a gawdawful racket. Fries hit the ground sideways, head bouncing of the tile floor with a terrible crack, his hands still cuffed behind him.

  “Oh my,” Fries said, his head turning as though he were woozy. “I shouldn’t be surprised you’re a man-hater, really.”

  Eve knelt down and got astride him, balancing on one knee, cracking her knuckles. “It isn’t that I hate men. I work with some very decent ones.” She pulled back her fingers, exposing her leather-covered palm, and then reformed her fist and smashed Fries in the side of the head with it, rattling his head against the floor again. “Bastian, Parks, even Old Man Winter. Decent sorts. Clary…has some rough edges.” She hit him again, and I watched him spit out blood. “You, on the other hand, I find no redeeming value in.” She pulled back her fist into a palmhand and ran it into his nose, causing it to break. Blood dripped down the sides of his face and, I presume, into the back of his throat, because he started to gag.

  “You,” she said, rolling him over and placing her weight on his back, “are the worst sort. I know of you, James Fries, and I know what you do to women. How many bodies have you left in dumpsters in the last year? In your lifetime?” She took his face and rammed it into the cold, black floor tiles. “I’ve been begging Ariadne for months to let me have a shot at you—just one shot, as a personal chance to thank you for how you treat women. It sets me—how do you say?—on edge?”

  Fries took a moment to answer, his eyes rolling in and out of focus. He smiled, a terrible, bloody smile. “Yeah. On edge. And I’ve left some bodies by the wayside, it’s true. In alleys, in dumpsters. Tons of them.” She snapped him hard in the nose and he gagged, making a glottal-stop noise as he spit blood out. “You gonna beat me to death for them? You didn’t even know them.”

  “I bet,” Eve said, wearing the thinnest, most lethal smile, “if I told you that I would kill you if you didn’t correctly write down the names of the last five girls you slept with, you’d not only die, you wouldn’t remember a single one of them.”

  Fries smiled again, and I could see the bloody lines tracing between his teeth. “You got me there. I don’t even remember one of them. Sandy, maybe? Cindy? Ah, who cares.”

  Eve nodded slightly, her face tight, then she unloaded another three punches on his face in rapid succession. “You’re going to choke on your own blood,” she said, turning his head to the side to let him gag it out onto the floor, a slow, steady red spill of liquid rolling its way across the black tile, an ocean of death washing toward me.

  I watched, paralyzed, not sure what to say, not sure if I should stop her. My head spun, I felt a pounding sense of guilt, even though it was Fries—the worm—and a murderer of women, and nearly of me. Part of me raged internally and called myself too stupid to live for any remorse I might feel; the other part tried to play up my guilt for not stopping Eve, just as I hadn’t stopped Old Man Winter.

  “If I tell you something, will you stop beating the hell outta me?” Fries said, causing my head to snap up. His teeth were broken now, and Eve had another fist cocked and ready to unload on him.

  “Trying to save your own life now?” Eve asked, and hit him again, snapping his head back. “I think your pleading may be falling on the deafest ears you could have found in the Directorate, Fries.” She hit him again, and I saw his eyes unfocus, one of them starting to swell shut, the purpling on his cheek obvious and growing.

  “Wait,” I said, only just louder than a whisper, but enough for Eve to hear me and halt before her next punch. “What do you think you could say that would convince Eve to stop?” I asked, and Fries turned his head, letting his neck hang slack, looking at me out of his one good eye.

  “I’ll tell you…” His words came out slurred, his lip split open and bleeding down his neck, “who’s running…Operation Stanchion.”

  “You’ll tell us who’s running it,” I said, taking the two steps to carry me to Fries’ side, and kneeling to get closer to him, “and what it’s all about, what’s happening.”

  “Don’t know…what’s happening,” Fries said, his head lolling. “Don’t even know the objective…they…thought I was a high risk for Directorate capture so they didn’t…tell me.” His pupil was dilated, he was concussed, and he sounded like he was drunk.

  “Give me a name,” Eve said, readying her fist. “Give me a name, or so help me, my next punch will sever your serial killing head and end your little perverted reign of impotence forever.”

  Fries’ once-handsome face was twisted, an eye already swollen shut. The strong smell of iron filled the air, and he seemed to have no strength in his neck. Eve had him suspended by the front of his shirt, which she had torn while pounding him into hamburger. He was missing at least eight teeth by my count, and his lips were split in three places, his face swelling so rapidly it looked like he had fallen into a bees’ nest. “Okay,” he said, now barely audible. “I’ll tell you. I’ll tell you. I just saw him the other day…Janus. It’s Janus. Janus is running Operation Stanchion.”

  17.

  “Who the hell is Janice?” Bastian asked as Eve and I re-entered the observation room to find him waiting with Ariadne and Parks.

  “Janus,” I said, drawing every eye in the room to me. “Roman god of doorways and transitions. Had two faces, supposedly. Not really sure how that would translate in non-mythological terms.”

  “He is a liar,” Old Man Winter said, squeezing into the room behind us, Clary following him, “so the colloquialism fits for him being two-faced.”

  “Did no one else manage to return any further information?” Eve asked, slipping off my gloves and handing them casually back to me. They were slick with blood, and I held them at a distance from my body, as though I were too good for them.

  “No one got quite as…persuasive,” Ariadne said, “as you did. At least not for as long, or as close to the…uh…edge.”

  “No one else came as close to beating their subject to death is what she means,” Parks said with more than a little acrimony.

  “My only regret was that I didn’t finish,” Eve said. “He’s slime. He rapes women and kills them with his power, and finishes with their corpses. I bet he couldn’t even get it up if a woman wasn’t screaming in pain for him. I have never encountered a more loathsome creature in my life, and I wish I could beat him to death over and over.”

  “This is to the damned edge of the line, Director,” Parks said in a low growl that reminded me of the wolf within him. “We don’t do this sort of thing, sir. Beating people in interrogations? Freezing someone’s arm and breaking it off?” He drew himself up. “We’re better than that.”

  “Not the biggest fan of these aggressive tactics myself, sir,” Bastian said. “We let ‘em stew, we break ‘em traditionally, without laying a finger on them. Not one of them is tough enough to take the isolation forever.”

  “We do not have forever,” Old
Man Winter said. “We may not even have a day. Omega is coming, make no mistake. They have marked us as a threat, they desire to eliminate us, and they are operating on a timetable so aggressive we are left with few options.” He ran a cold, surveying set of eyes over us, not flinching away from looking anyone in the eyes. I blinked away from his first, though. “This is certain: the damage could be greater than anyone of us can calculate.”

  “Should we evacuate the campus, sir?” Bastian said, cutting through the air that had suddenly gotten thick in the room. “Get the younger metas out of here, maybe give the admin staff some time off and keep a skeleton crew here for the next couple weeks while we wait for the anvil to drop?”

  “Who knows how long it could be?” Ariadne said. “I mean, the Director says soon,” she favored him with a submissive nod, “but they’ve known where we are—where Sienna is—for quite some time. They could have moved against us at any point. It could be tomorrow, it could be the day after, it could be six months from now. Just because they’re putting their people into the country doesn’t mean it’s happening now. For all we know, we just took out their entire strike force.”

  “You didn’t,” came Reed’s voice from behind Old Man Winter. He shouldered his way into the room. “It’s coming, soon. Like…next week or sooner.” He looked around at each of us, his long, dark hair disheveled from the wind outside. “My bosses say they’re just ratcheting it down right now, dragging the last few pieces into place.”

  There was a stark silence, one that I finally broke. “Oh, good. Because I hate a long wait before I die.”

  Reed shook his head. “They don’t want you dead. Anything but is the word. They want you alive, just like always.”

  I let a little scratchiness enter my voice, probably from the fatigue and the fact my head was whirling. “Do your bosses know why Omega is so keen on having me alive that they’d start a war with the Directorate?” I caught a flash from Old Man Winter’s eyes as I asked, something that was both subtle and yet obvious; no one else reacted to my question but to turn to Reed to listen for his answer.

  “If they do, they’re not sharing,” he said, “but they barely tell me a fraction of what they know over open lines. I only got this much out of them before they dropped a hammer of their own on me.”

  I felt a chill unrelated to the Director’s presence. “What?”

  “I’m to return to Rome immediately,” he said, and I could hear nothing but the sour notes as he said it. “Immediate recall. They have me booked on a flight that leaves in three hours.”

  “You can’t be serious,” I said, a sick pit in my stomach churning the acids within. “We’re looking down the barrel of imminent attack here.”

  “I know,” he said, “and I told them to sit on the pointy end of an umbrella and open it. I’m staying.”

  “No,” Old Man Winter said, “you should go. And you should take Sienna with you.”

  “Director,” Ariadne said, silencing the voices that started to speak around her, “are we certain that sending Sienna to Italy is going to be safer than keeping her here?”

  “Europe’s in a mess right now,” Reed said. “Not something my bosses wanted to get into on the phone, but I get the sense there are some pretty major moves going on over there at present. I’m not sure you’d be protecting her by getting her there. And our headquarters stays mobile by necessity—Europe is Omega’s backyard, and our relationship with them isn’t exactly peaceful coexistence, if you know what I mean. They’re trying to wipe us out, and vice versa.”

  “Sir,” Bastian said, “if we’re facing imminent attack, we could really use a meta with her power on the line with us to defend the Directorate. Sending away one of our best fighters might not be the strongest idea.”

  “Has anybody asked what Sienna actually wants to do?” Clary’s voice wavered before it came out.

  All heads turned to me. I felt my mouth open and close before I spoke. “I’m not leaving,” I said, almost as surprised I said it as the others were hearing it. I saw Parks nod, a slight smile on his lips. “I’m not running from Omega, not ever again.” I felt my cheeks redden. “I ran from them once before and a lot of people died. I haven’t forgotten, not for one day, what that felt like. I won’t do it again. If they want me, they know where to find me, and I’ll be right out front kicking the ass off whoever they send to do the job.”

  “No offense,” Reed said, “but that’s really dumb.”

  “Thanks,” I said. “But I’m a big girl now, and that means not running from my problems, even when they’re pretty big themselves.”

  “You have no idea,” Old Man Winter said, and his voice sounded brittle. “But it is your life, and your choice.” He looked down, staring into the distance at Madigan on the other side of the window, before turning back to Reed. “Return to your people. Apprise them of our situation. Ask them for help. Tell them how dire our need becomes. Urge them to hurry.”

  Reed’s eyes were wide, his head snapped back as though from being hit. “You can’t be serious. I can’t leave now—”

  “You must,” Old Man Winter said, and he took a step closer to Reed and put a hand upon his arm. “You must. I knew your father, when we were together at the Agency. He was a good man, a noble man.”

  “Wait, what?” I asked. “You knew our father?”

  He turned his head slowly to look at me. “I did.” He slid his gaze back to Reed. “He was a man who stayed behind on the day the Agency was destroyed, trying to save as many lives as he could. He was not a man who would abandon his fellows, and I understand your desire to stay, especially for your sister. But—” he cut off Reed’s rising protest before the words left my brother’s lips, “you remaining here will make little difference now. You returning with the knowledge of what we face and a half dozen more of your people could mean the tide of the battle shifts in our favor.”

  “I don’t know that we’ll make it back in time,” Reed said in a hushed, almost choked voice, his head bowed. “My bosses—they move slow. I never know what they’re going to do, if they’re going to listen—”

  “You will make them listen this time,” Old Man Winter said, and I saw Reed’s head come up to meet the Director’s piercing gaze. “You know what is at stake. Come back to us with what you know, if nothing else. Come back to us with all you can rally, even if that is only yourself and the knowledge of what we face from this Operation Stanchion.”

  There was a solemn silence. “I will,” Reed said. “I will…be back.” He turned to me. “I will. Before you know it.”

  “I believe you,” I said, swallowing the sudden choking fear and trying to replace it with a smile.

  “Ariadne,” Old Man Winter said, “please have a driver take Mr. Treston to the airport.”

  She nodded and pulled her cell phone from her pocket, dialing it and speaking quietly into it while Reed made his way over to me. “Are you gonna be all right ‘til I get back?” he asked, and I tasted a familiar hint of dry mouth as he said it.

  “I managed for seventeen years without you,” I said, trying to make it sound as natural as I could. “Somehow I’ll muddle on.”

  “They’re coming,” he said, and he lowered his voice. Clary and Eve had shuffled away from us, out the door and into the hall, Bastian and Parks were by the window to Madigan’s cell, and Old Man Winter watched Reed and I from near the door. “They could be here before I get back.”

  “They’ll get a hell of a fight from me,” I said. “I’m not going anywhere quietly with the bastards who sent Wolfe and Fries after me.”

  “I know you won’t,” he said, and put a hand on my shoulder. “I…wanted to be here with you…”

  “To the end?” I asked, and felt a slight choking sensation in my throat. “It’s not over yet.”

  “Then why does it feel like it?” I heard a quiver in his voice. “Maybe you should come with me.”

  “I can’t,” I said, “and please don’t ask me to again. I belong here. Before
I came here, I was a shell, a prisoner, a nobody. I had no future but four blank walls, and every day was doomed to be the same. Now I’m…” I felt a smile crack my stony facade, “…somebody. Just because Winter is afraid doesn’t mean it’s over.”

  “He’s lived for thousands of years,” Reed said, looking over to see Winter watching us. “If he’s scared and telling you to run, maybe you should take a hint from him.”

  “No,” I said, pushing my bravest, most belligerent front forward, determined not to let my brother see me shake. “Because I’m young and stupid,” I said with a smile, “and I don’t fear anything anymore, not after Wolfe. If the worst comes, maybe I’ll just let him out of his kennel to run around and see what happens.”

  “I can’t believe you’re joking at a moment like this,” he said, shaking his head, grim.

  “Gallows humor. It’ll be okay. We’ll hold ‘til you get back.” I didn’t bite my lip, but I pursed them, holding them stiff to keep the emotion bleeding over from moving them.

  “Who’s being a jinx now? Should I say, ‘I’ll be right back’?”

  “Only if you want to die in a plane crash.”

  “I’ll hurry,” he said, and the levity vanished. “Like Old Man Winter said, I’ll get what they know, and I’ll come back. I’ve got a couple friends who owe me favors. If nothing else, we’ll come trotting back as fast as I can get a turnaround flight. Two or three days, maybe.”

  “Hurry back,” I said, and I let him start to turn for only a second before I pulled him around, taking care to keep my hands on his coat, not touching his skin. I pulled him close to me, ignoring the cologne that I always hated, and buried my face in his hair, smelled the sweet fragrance of it, hugged him tighter, his broad chest against me. I felt him hug me back, strong arms holding me in them, and I wondered for just a second if this is what it’d be like to be hugged by our father, then I banished the thought from my mind and pulled away, gingerly, giving him a kiss on the cheek as we broke.