The Girl in the Box 02 - Untouched (3 page)

“Shut up,” I said as my feet found the path and I loped along, barely keeping myself from dropping to all fours the way Wolfe’s instincts were compelling me to. “I’m not a dog,” I snapped to the voice in my head. “I can’t run on my hands and feet the way you can—could.”

But it would be so good to see you on hands and knees again...
A wave of revulsion washed over me and I tried to ignore it as I cut through the wintery air.
Why is this little man so important to make you run out in the middle of the night?

“He’s not...” I stopped talking when I realized I was giving the psycho in my head more fodder for taunting me. Besides, why was I running to see Zack? When last we had parted, it had been after he had extracted a promise from me to not go after Wolfe, a promise I had broken. Afterward, I had spent some time examining my thinking behind that promise and found it lacking; I believed I made it because Zack was hot. Tall, with tousled hair, brown eyes and in amazing shape. Downside: I suspected he was spying on me for Old Man Winter and Ariadne.

At that moment, I didn’t care. Of all the people I had met since leaving my house, Zack was the one I felt most connected to. After he left, things around the Directorate got much worse and—I hated to admit it—I missed having someone to talk to who was close to my own age. It’s not like I had a ton of time to get used to it before he left, but still...I missed him. I felt a tingle of amusement that I knew came from Wolfe, and wished, not for the first time, that I could mentally slap the hell out of him.

I covered the ground between the dorm and the helipad quickly, arriving just after the helicopter set down. None of the observers noticed me as I slipped up behind them and I felt a thrill of predatory success as I stared at their backs and realized I could kill every last one of them.

I would have been disturbed by that, but Wolfe’s thoughts were bleeding into mine with such regularity that unless he “spoke” in my head, I couldn’t be sure whether it genuinely came from me.

I lurked behind them, and saw Ariadne say something to Dr. Perugini that caused Old Man Winter to look back at them both. “He was stable for transit,” Ariadne said, then the rotors cut out her next words before I caught a few more, “…amazed they were able to catch him, really.” Old Man Winter looked past Ariadne and noticed me. He stared, his eyes into mine, before nodding in acknowledgment. He spoke, something low, but loud enough that those around him heard it and looked, each of them finding me in turn.

I moved forward to join them, figuring that lurking in the shadows was a pointless game. I saw Zack, dressed in a paramilitary uniform, olive green overalls with a tactical vest, a submachine gun slung under his arm, and a headset covering his ears. He stepped down and tossed the headset back into the chopper. I could see him saying something to the figures inside.

He turned and strode across the pad to Old Man Winter. I half-expected him to salute, as though I were watching a war movie, but he leaned in and whispered something to his boss. While he did so, others were stepping out of the Black Hawk, four of them, in quick fashion. M-Squad, I figured.

A stir of interest from Wolfe kept me watching them rather than Zack. The first one off the chopper was a man. He had a jaw that looked like it had been carved from an iron bar. It extended down, giving him the look of someone who perpetually stuck his chin out. His skin was dark, his hair black and short, military-style, stubble on the sides and just a patch of black on top. I couldn’t tell what color eyes he had because of the dark, but they were moving fast and they were focused. They found me in the dark, surveyed me—not in the dirty way Wolfe had, but as a potential opponent.

The next off the Black Hawk was a woman. Her hair was short, blond, cropped in one of those boyish, pixie styles of someone who has no time and no interest in impressing anyone with it. Her facial structure was pronounced, Nordic, but her skin was tanned. She saw me, too, and watched me for long enough to do an assessment of her own. She was so severe, I wondered if she ever smiled.

The third off the chopper was a man with long, gray hair and a beard that matched it. The rotor blades stirred his silver locks, blowing them into his eyes, but it didn’t seem to distract him. He gave me the same once-over as the others and halted by the door to the chopper.

The last guy off surprised me. I’m not going to mince words: he was fat. Not the size of a house or anything, but he was a big boy. The others were muscular, but his belly hung out under his fatigues. He was laughing about something as his feet hit the ground, but none of his teammates were laughing with him. His grin was not a happy one; for some reason I got a little dash of an unsettling feeling from looking at him.

He reached into the chopper and pulled something out, slinging it over his shoulder to carry. It was a tube, about six feet long, a couple feet wide and a foot deep. It reminded me of an oversized coffin at first glance.

Actually, it reminded me of the box my mother used to put me in, but smaller and more compact.

The big guy joined his comrades and the four of them walked across the helipad as the Black Hawk spun up the rotors and lifted back into the air. I turned my attention to Old Man Winter, who had finished his conversation with Zack.

Zack moved to talk to Kurt. The two of them were partners the day they came to collect me from my house. I didn’t know if they still worked together, because they’d had something of a falling out after Kurt tried to hit me at one point. I wasn’t sure if Zack knew what had happened since then, but I doubt he’d be excited to know that his partner had driven me to an encounter with Wolfe.

I caught a subtle look as he was talking to Kurt. He held eye contact for just a second longer than he had to, and I saw a smile.

Ariadne broke away from the crowd and walked over to me. “You should be sleeping,” she said, resting a careful, gloved hand on my shoulder.

“Am I not allowed to be here?” My words came out more bitter than I had intended. I thought that was because of Wolfe’s influence, but given my past history with Ariadne, there was a strong possibility that it was all me.

“No,” she said, remaining cool in spite of my acrid tone, “I just meant that I assumed you would be resting.”

“I heal fast.” I looked past her, trying to catch Zack’s eye again. “I’ve rested enough, anyway.” That was more defensive.

“I heard you broke into the cafeteria after it closed and took some food.” She watched for my reaction.

I froze, trying to keep my eyes from widening. Had I done that? I managed to speak after a short pause that I hoped she attributed to my guilt at being found out. “It’s better for all involved if I don’t have to go to the cafeteria when I don’t want to. Safer, really. It’s like a public service.” With the flight of the Black Hawk, things had gotten quieter on the helipad. “I’m surprised you don’t have a helipad on the roof of Headquarters.” I was desperate to change the subject by that point.

“We do.” Ariadne crossed her arms and looked back at M-Squad. “But it’ll be easier for Clary to carry his...cargo...” She nodded to the burden that the fat guy was carrying over his shoulder, “...to the science labs without having to navigate an elevator or stairwell.”

“Big guy like that?” I inclined my head toward the coffin. “He looks like he can carry a lead casket for a ways.” I stared at the object, but he had it inclined so that I couldn’t see anything but the bottom and sides. I was beyond curious about what it contained; I wondered if it was the mysterious reason why M-Squad had been in South America for so long.

“I’m sure he can. But it’s delicate, and it would be best if it were undamaged.” She smiled, a tight, insincere one that told me worlds about how much of my question she was avoiding answering.

“Hey.” Zack appeared in front of me, Kurt a few steps behind him.

“Hey,” I said, feeling like the single greatest idiot in the world for repeating his greeting back to him. Genius level IQ, and I was still reduced to this by a boy. FML. (Yes, I know what it means.)

“I heard you broke your promise.” He didn’t come off as accusatory, which surprised me, and yet, didn’t. If he was spying on me, getting into an argument seemed counterproductive. “But I also heard you killed Wolfe, so...good job.” On the other hand, maybe he was just happy that Wolfe was dead. I knew I was.

If I was dead, I wouldn’t be talking to you.

Shut up
, I thought with all my might. I must have grimaced while thinking it, because Zack raised an eyebrow. “Yeah...I’m sorry. I just couldn’t wait for you guys to get back.” I looked away from him.

“Damn shame you killed Wolfe,” the fat guy from M-Squad said, loud enough that it told me he’d been eavesdropping. I turned to find him leering at me; well, not so much me as my body; his eyes were looking below the equator and moving up slowly. “I was looking forward to tangling with him. But if he can get himself killed by a little girl, “ he said with a laugh that sounded like a bark, “ I guess he wasn’t so tough, was he?”

“You’re a moron, Clary,” said the leader, the first guy off the helicopter from M-Squad. “You’re just lucky most people judge by appearances, like you do, and write your fat ass off or you’d be dead ten times over.”

“You think I’m fat?” One of Clary’s eyes had squinted, drawing his puffy cheek up his face and causing it to wrinkle. “This is three hundred and twenty pounds of ripped steel.” He waved a hand over his body. “And the ladies love it.”

“The next lady to love your body will be the first, I’d wager.” I said it before I knew I had, and heard the snickers from M-Squad, Dr. Perugini and Zack. Even Kurt seemed amused by my barb. The old guy in M-Squad let a low, rolling guffaw of purest amusement. “Unless you’re resorting to picking up lovers from the graveyard,” I said, pointing at the object on his shoulder, “in which case they’re not loving you so much as—”

Clary turned a bright red and I watched him clutch the coffin a little tighter, and he let out a loud grunt. “I’m not gonna sit here and be insulted by some tweener punkass bitch.”

“Yeah, you’ve got important things to do,” the older guy spoke up. “You were talking about your damned motorcycle the whole time we were gone. You gonna go ride your ‘phat hog’?”

Clary’s embarrassment turned to glee. “Naw, your mom said she’s busy tonight.” He let out a high, long burst of laughter, one that was obviously fake, and turned to Dr. Sessions, slapping him on his skinny back and nearly waylaying the good doctor. “Come on, Doc, this son of a bitch is getting heavy.”

I watched Doc Sessions nod and turn, leading the way toward the science building, Clary in tow and Perugini following behind them. When he turned to follow Sessions, the coffin dipped and I saw the top of it for the first time as he repositioned it to carry it like a backpack. It was flat, with a small window, just enough to show something glowing within, like fire in a bottle. He dipped it lower, and I saw something else—

Eyes. There were eyes staring at me from within. Plaintive, begging, filled with a fear that I knew all too well; the fear of a captive confined, one who might never take another free breath again.

Chapter 3

“Who is that?” I asked Ariadne. I turned and caught a flash of her face pinched as though she had just pulled a splinter from her finger. I turned to Zack, and he looked away.

“Aleksandr Timofeyevich Gavrikov,” the leader of M-Squad said to me. “One of the most dangerous metas you’ll ever meet.” He nodded at the capsule on Clary’s back. “That’s a containment cell Dr. Sessions designed to keep metas that have high energy projection abilities under control—without it Gavrikov could fry everyone.”

“How’d you catch him, then?” I didn’t throw any undue sarcasm into the words; I was curious.

“By not getting anywhere near him,” the Nordic woman said, a slight smirk curling her flat lips.

“I think introductions are in order,” Ariadne said. “Sienna Nealon, this is Roberto Bastian,” she nodded to the leader, then to the woman, “Eve Kappler and Glen Parks,” she indicated the older guy, who gave me a genuine smile, one that (surprisingly) didn’t creep me out. “And of course the other gentleman,” she strained at the word, “was Clyde Clary.”

“Don’t call him Clyde,” Parks said, his gray beard reminding me of a thousand grandfathers I’d seen on TV. “It doesn’t bring out the sparkling side of his personality.”

“Sure it does,” Eve said. “He sparkles like broken glass—then cuts you.” Her smile became a smirk, a self-satisfied look that either Wolfe or I found insufferable and wanted to destroy along with the rest of her sculpted face. I think that was Wolfe. Mostly.

“Sir.” Roberto turned to Old Man Winter. “Would you like us to make our report now or in the morning?”

Old Man Winter kept his silence. Everyone waited for his pronouncement, which came with all the gravity his position and deep voice afforded. “Come to my office at noon. We have other matters to discuss.”

“Yes, sir.” Roberto saluted, then nodded to Glen and Eve, and the three of them headed toward the dormitory building, Kurt in tow.

I looked back to Clary and Sessions, almost to the science building now. The capsule carrying Aleksandr Gavrikov looked heavy, and Clary was struggling to readjust it again.
Let him loose
, Wolfe said from somewhere in the depths of my brain.

Shut up
, I told him, as if that would work.

If you let him loose, Wolfe will tell you what he knows about your mommy.

Son of a bitch. That immediately put me on guard; if Wolfe wanted someone out of confinement, there was no stronger indication that said person should remain under lock and key, preferably buried under several tons of soil, indefinitely.

You don’t know anything
, I thought back to him.
You’re just lying to get your way.

He was quiet for a split second, and a thought floated to the surface of my mind.
3586 Curie Way, Bloomington, Minnesota.

I blinked, and Ariadne caught it. “Tired?”