The Girl in the Box 03 - Soulless

by Robert J. Crane

  “Woo hoo hoo,” came a catcall from the other side of the creek. “Look at that; Sienna and Eve, getting all wet and clingy.” A low guffaw came after it and I felt a bitter pang of annoyance. The speaker was a little taller than me but still short for a man. He wore a cutoff tank top and ragged blue jeans, and his hair was thinning on top, obvious since he wasn’t wearing his usual baseball cap to cover it.

  “She’s hurt pretty bad, Clary,” I said. I looked down at her and her eyes fluttered. A thin trickle of blood ran down her forehead.

  “She’ll be fine.” He dismissed us with a wave, turning his head away and puckering his lips in amusement. “It’s not every day I get to see the two of you rubbing up against each other. I might have to watch for a bit.”

  I picked her up and carried her off the rocks to the trail. She was wet, an unconscious, dead weight that wasn’t fighting back. I set her on the dirt, long strings of her hair tangled. They touched the ground and I saw the little granules of sand cling to them. I felt guilty; she was going to be super pissed when she woke up.

  I heard Clary splash through the creek behind me as I knelt next to Eve. Her hair had gotten long; it was short when I first met her. She was very thin, her chest flat, heaving up and down with great effort; her breathing was ragged. When I pulled her shirt back to look at the damage, I heard a moan of pain from her and a deep breath of interest from Clary. I shot him a dirty look and turned back to Eve.

  Her sternum was broken, a hideous blackish blue bruise had begun to spread from the center of her chest. I didn’t dare unzip her shirt to look closer (especially with that pervert Clary behind me) but I knew enough that I was certain I’d have to call—

  “Dr. Perugini is on the way,” came the voice from in front of me. Roberto Bastian came toward us at a jog, his buzzed black hair dripping with sweat. “She’ll be here in five or less. Until then, let’s just assess the damage—” He halted and dropped to a knee next to Kappler. “Damn.” He shot a look at me, but there was a surprising lack of guilt in it. “You’re playing a little rough for a training exercise, Nealon.”

  “The rock kinda got away from me,” I said. “It’s not exactly easy for us ground-based types to take down a flyer. She was throwing her nets at me and I just...” I searched my memory, trying to make my vicious ambush seem not quite so vicious. “...figured out a way to take her down and did it.”

  “Boy, did you,” said Glen Parks, splashing across the creek with Scott and Kat in tow. Parks was an older man, his long hair gray, mustache and beard matching it perfectly; not quite ZZ Top length, but close. He brushed the beard to the side and I could see a contusion across his neck that looked like my wristwatch. “I’m not upset that you took this exercise seriously, but next time be more careful with the neck. Even as a bear I’m not immune to your strength.”

  “Sorry,” I said, somewhat abrupt. I turned my attention back to Eve as Kat eased down beside me, her hands already brushing against Eve’s neck. The German woman was rasping and her eyes were still rolled back in her head. “I was just trying to win.”

  “Damn, you sure were, girl,” Clary said. “But you’re gonna catch all kinds of hell from—”

  “What is going on here?” The crackling of an Italian accent was laced with thunderous irritation. I blanched at the sound of it, and after examination, wondered why I was more afraid of the reaction of a human doctor than the metahumans I had been sparring with only minutes before.

  Dr Isabella Perugini stopped on the bank opposite us, her dark hair pulled back in a ponytail, her white lab coat falling below her knees. She slid off her high heeled shoes and began to pick her way across the stream, trying to balance on the rocks jutting out of the water. Her dark complexion was more flushed than usual, her eyes narrowed at me. “You again?” She said it as she executed a hop from one rock to another. “I thought I sorted you out!”

  “I got carried away,” I said.

  She made her last jump and flinched as her foot caught the edge of the rock she landed on. She cursed loudly, then covered the ground to get to us. She knelt and looked to Kat, who had unzipped Eve’s shirt to expose her bruised and misshapen sternum. “How is she?” the doctor said to Kat.

  “All the problems you’d expect her to have.” Kat ran a hand through Eve’s hair. “Fractured skull, presumably from the landing, broken sternum.” She gave the doctor a wan smile. “I’m working on it. The broken bones will be mended in just a minute.”

  Perugini turned back to me, one eye cocked and twitching, the other narrowed. She didn’t say anything. She didn’t have to.

  “Training’s rough,” Bastian said as I avoided her gaze. He looked at me, expression neutral. “It’s gonna be fine. We’ve got Forrest; she’ll fix it.”

  Perugini’s mouth became a thin line. “What happens on the day she isn’t around?”

  Kat let out a sharp exhalation and fell back on her haunches, then lay down on the rocky shore. “That day is not today,” she said with a gasp as I watched little blades of grass and weeds spring up from between the rocks she lay on, reaching up to stroke her exposed skin. “She’ll be fine.” Kat lifted her head to look at Dr. Perugini. “I might need a minute, though.”

  I heard the sound of feet splashing in the water and looked up to see Ariadne Fraser making her way across the water. She held her high-heeled shoes in her hands, and her black jacket and skirt were taxing her balance. I raised an eyebrow in surprise when she made it across the bank, her pantyhose having developed three runs along her thighs and two holes in the toes from her crossing. Her red hair was the only splash of color visible on her as she made her way over to us, serious as ever. “Situation?”

  Perugini answered, frost under her words. “She’ll be fine. Training exercise got out of hand.”

  Ariadne dropped to her knees next to Eve, looking down at the German woman, who was still unconscious but now breathing easily. “Why is she out?”

  “She landed on her head,” Perugini said, her eyes glancing at me for a brief second. “Kat has healed her skull fracture but I suspect she won’t be awake for several minutes, possibly an hour.” The doctor put on her stethoscope and placed the metal end on Eve’s chest. “There doesn’t appear to be any lasting damage but I’d like to do an MRI just the same.”

  “You’re sure she’s all right?” Ariadne looked back up at the doctor, her eyes slitted, her hand clutching Eve’s in a way that caught my attention. I looked up and saw Clary looking back at me. He gave me a subtle nod, a wide grin on his face.

  “I’m sure.” Perugini wrapped her stethoscope around her neck. “Have someone come out here with a Humvee to pick us up with a stretcher. I want to get her back to the medical unit for tests and observation until we’re certain she’s fine.”

  Ariadne hadn’t taken her eyes off Eve the entire time Perugini was speaking. “Okay. Bastian, do it.”

  “Yes, ma’am.” Roberto stood up and took a few steps away, speaking with his hand up to his ear.

  “How did this happen?” Ariadne’s voice was quiet, but it crackled with accusation and left a silence no one seemed eager to fill, least of all me. I started to speak, but was interrupted by Clary.

  “Sienna hit her with rock while she was flying and she came crashing down into the creek.” Clary’s tone was purest joy, as though he were a kid tattling on his wicked sister. “She put some heat on it, too, took Eve right outta the sky like a friggin’ plane comin’ down—”

  “Thank you, Clary.” I don’t want to say I was frightened of the icy edge in Ariadne’s voice, but it was probably the harshest I had ever heard her sound. I didn’t back away, but my eyes locked onto hers and I caught an undefinable hint of something that made my heart beat a little faster. Ariadne let go of Kappler’s hand and stood. “You’re all dismissed.” She locked eyes with me. “You too. We’ll discuss this tomorrow.”

  “I’m sorry,” I said. “It was an accident—”

  “Did you intentionally knock her out of the
air with a boulder?” Ariadne’s voice came out low, almost whispered. When I nodded, she followed with, “Then that tends to rule out the possibility of it being an accident.” Her eyes were dark and they watched me. “We’ll discuss it tomorrow. Just go.”

  I paused and started to reply – something about them pitting me against unfair odds, since Eve could fly and had been a member of M-Squad dealing with dangerous metas long before I even showed up, about how maybe I was doing her a favor by pointing out a pretty big vulnerability in the way she did battle – but every one of those arguments died on my tongue. I nodded and turned away, forcing one foot in front of the other as I walked out of the clearing and into the trees.

  Chapter 3

  I heard the sounds of conversation die down behind me as I grew further and further from them. The heat in the woods was oppressive, even under the shade of the trees. The air didn’t feel like it was moving, even when a brief gust of wind shifted more hot air in my direction, turning the sweat that was already trickling down my back into a tepid river that slid down the crease of my spine. I took a deep breath, sucking in the warm air, feeling it seem to stick in my nose and mouth, felt the perspiration drip from my forehead into my eyes, mixing with a little of the moisture already there.

  Dammit. I got so caught up in the training exercise, in winning, in beating the others, that I let myself get carried away. For years I’d had no one but Mom to spar against, and now, only a few months out in the world, was testing myself against people that tracked and caught metas for a living. I felt a twinge of relief at the knowledge that Eve Kappler was going to be all right, and a little bit of pride knowing that I’d knocked her out of the sky.

  Kappler was a severe woman by nature: she was thin, austere, too dry in personality and reserved in her manner to draw much attention. She had never really been nice to me (not that I’d smite her for that; there were a lot of people in the Directorate that had never shown me kindness; I’d be smiting for a long time to get to them all) but that didn’t mean I wanted to hurt her. It was practice. Mom had never intentionally hurt me during practice. Well, most of the time, anyway.

  I ran my sleeve along my cheek, slopping off the salty mix of sweat and the first annoying hint of tears. I wanted to believe they were from all the perspiration that was in my eyes, but I suspected they might also have been from the pride stuck in my throat, that burning feeling that I couldn’t swallow away even though I wanted to. I had just gotten called out on my performance in the midst of my peers and fellow trainees. I hated that.

  I took another breath, in and out, then another. I had stopped walking and was just standing, feeling the hot air gathered around me in a wall, like some sort of fortress of heat that had enshrouded my body. My long sleeves, gloves and pants didn’t help, and even though I wore tennis shoes, my socks were long. They were all soaked, some from sweat but most from wading into the creek to recover Eve. Every single article of my clothing was starting to stick to me, even as the water that had taken up residence within had matched my body temperature; only a little dash of coolness was running down and surprising me every once in a while. The rest just felt like sweat.

  The first days of brutal summer had started only a couple weeks ago; before that it had been a beautiful, sunny-skied and cool-aired spring, all the way to the last of June. Since then, it was as though the weather had decided to get hostile. I had to say I preferred winter as a season to summer; it was colder, but even factoring in the number of times I’d landed in the snow while fighting, I didn’t get as wet as I did sweating during these training exercises, which were an everyday thing, in one form or another.

  “Hey.” I had missed the footfalls behind me, caught up in my own thoughts. I turned without drying my eyes, hoping that the sweat would mask the other, marginally less stinging liquid. I doubted it would. Scott was there, along with Kat, who was leaning on him. They walked like I envisioned a couple would, her arm around his waist, her face looking more drawn than it had a few minutes ago. She rested against him, leaning her weight against his muscular chest. If we had been in a different place, and different people, she could have been a drunken sorority girl, leaning on her boyfriend for support.

  And I could have been a...I dunno. Something else.

  “You took down Eve pretty hard.” Scott stopped, repositioning himself as Kat pushed off him to stand on her own two wobbly feet.

  My hands came up to cover my mouth as I wiped the sweat that was beading on my upper lip. “Yep.” I let them rest there, as though I could cover the lies that were bound to drip out when he asked the inevitable question.

  “Why?” It was Kat who asked it, her hair looking stringy because of the humidity, but without a hint of the frizz that was afflicting mine. Thanks, humidity. It’d take a miracle and an hour with the flat iron later to get the kinks out.

  I didn’t move my hands away from my mouth. “Why what?”

  “Why’d you take her down so hard that I had to fix a skull fracture, a broken sternum and three ribs?” Kat let go of Scott and dropped to her rump, sitting with her legs in front of her. “I know we don’t do these kind exercises where we beat the hell out of each other for real very often, but we’ve done it enough to know you don’t lose control like that.” She laughed and tossed a blond lock over her shoulder. “I mean, when it comes to the training, you’re like the queen of control; it’s why you’re Parks’ favorite—”

  “I just didn’t think.” I was sweating even harder now, my lip pressed up against my hand, more perspiration trailing down my forehead from my hairline. I felt my shirt sticking to me and all I wanted was a shower. “It got away from me, the rock. The adrenaline was pumping after we took down Parks—”

  “After you took down Parks, you mean? When you left us behind?” The accusation came out of Scott, his arms folded but his manner cool.

  “I drew her away from you,” I said. “I don’t know what else I could have done to help you. I wanted to win, and it was just...” I pulled my hands away from my mouth and licked my lip, tasted the salty residue of sweat.

  “It’s not Wolfe, is it?” Scott stared me down. His T-shirt had been white when we started, but now it was gray in the places where he had sweated through, and bore the stains of dirt and grime from where he’d been pinned to the ground. “He’s not breaking out or whatever—”

  “He’s not,” I said. “I haven’t heard from the rogues’ gallery in my head in months. I think Zollers and I have that under control.” That was mostly true. The medication Zollers had given me was working, but I had other help as well.

  “I guess it was hard for us to tell by the way you acted back there,” Kat said, sarcasm oozing through her words, which were laced with a kind of bone-weariness. Her eyes flicked down, and they were lacking the brightness that was ever-present in them. “I didn’t mean that. Accidents happen, especially when they’re trying to train us for all the possibilities that could happen out there. It’s just not like you.”

  “It happens.” Another voice joined our conversation. My head swiveled and I saw Glen Parks, shifting out of the shape of a wolf again. “You get reckless after playing this like it’s a game for too long.” He got taller as he walked, leaving behind all fours as his fur receded into the long beard and hair that I was accustomed to seeing. “Too much of this type of training’s not good. We need some real world experience for you three.” He halted behind me. I didn’t look away, even though my eyes were burning, this time from the sweat. “Especially for you, before your killer instinct gets away from you.”

  I felt a burning again in the back of my throat. “I...do not...have a killer instinct.”

  Scott coughed. “Um...haven’t you already killed three people?”

  My tongue seemed to stick to the roof of my mouth and my jaw fell open. “I didn’t...I mean, Wolfe was unintentional and Gavrikov...he was gonna nuke Minneapolis.”

  “And the other guy?” Scott stared back at me. “Henderschott? The one you trie
d to teach to fly?”

  The angry red settled in my cheeks, burning me as I took a breath before answering. “That wasn’t me.”

  Scott looked back the way we had come, back toward the creek, which I could still hear running in the distance. “Yeah, well that was all you. And Eve wasn’t an enemy.”

  “This is a pointless discussion.” Parks’ voice was rough, like a flint striking a rock or a knife running over a sharpening stone. “Byerly, help Forrest back to her room. And let her rest, will you? You know how using her power takes it out of her.”

  The burning in my cheeks got a little worse; I was pretty sure that Scott and Kat were sleeping together, but I didn’t really want to know for fact if it was true. Most of that was because there was someone I wished I could be sleeping with, but it wasn’t possible for me to touch him for more than three seconds without causing him excruciating pain followed by death. They walked away, Scott half-carrying Kat toward the dormitory building, which was quite a distance.

  “What’s your problem, Sienna?” My head snapped back around to find Parks still looking at me, the rough, wrinkled skin around his eyes folded more than usual. They weren’t quite slitted, but they were a lot closer to closed than normal. It was the same look he got when we’d go to the firing range for weapons practice and he had to focus on a target at some distance. Parks was blunt to a fault, but he didn’t mean anything bad by it. He just said what he thought and let you sort it out.

  “I’m just tired.” I couldn’t get a hand up to cover my mouth without Parks knowing I was lying. Hell, he probably knew anyway because his eyes grew more closed and he nodded. For the last six months he’d watched me as he trained all of us. We were a class of three, so it’s not like he had a ton of people to pay attention to. “We’ve been at a higher tempo of training lately, early mornings, late nights, all that. Like you said, it just wears on me. I’m ready to get to it.” I tried to hold my head higher, look him in the eyes, all that point-the-chin-in-defiance stuff. “I’ve had enough of the games. I want to get out in the field and go to work chasing down rogues.”