The Girl in the Box 02 - Untouched (10 page)

“What? No,” I said with a little laugh. “He didn’t hurt me. He couldn’t.”

“Oh,” she said. “Sorry I’m not who you thought I was.” She turned to walk away. I watched her go, noticed the sway of her hips, and wondered what kind of a man would be attracted to a woman so obviously starved for attention.

There was a hum from the crowd gathered around me; people were talking, those that had seen my jump, low, muttered voices of incredulity. I think I heard someone mutter, “PCP.”

“Way to stay nonchalant.” Zack eased up beside me. He watched her go, his eyes never moving off her backside and answering my internal question about what kind of man would be attracted to her. The looks of others as she moved through the crowd provided more clarity; apparently, any man with a heartbeat. I looked down at my simple turtleneck and jeans with my new heavy coat. Practical, I supposed, especially for the girl who kills with a touch—but not likely to generate the kind of attention she was getting. “What is she wearing?” I said it mostly to myself.

Zack answered anyway, watching her as she walked away. “Damned near nothing.”

“In this weather? It’s winter. Isn’t she cold?”

She turned and Zack’s eyes alighted on her chest. “Looks like it from here.”

I looked back at him, and I tried not to make it a glare, but I failed. “What?” He looked at me with slight alarm, as though he had no idea why I was irritated with him. I looked to the store that the woman had exited, and sure enough, on one of the mannequins in the window was the exact same dress I had just seen on her.

I drew closer to it, but this time not to look at the mannequin that wore it. I felt my gloved hand touch the glass, as though I could connect with the dress behind it, feel the silk between my fingers. It was a symbol of all I could never be. All I could never have. “Nothing,” I said after another moment. “Can we go to the movie now?”

“Sure.” He stepped out of the way and held out an arm as if indicating I should go first.

Most of the movie I spent buried in my own head, frustrated. I mean, hadn’t it been obvious that I wasn’t destined to be able to touch anyone, anytime? I cursed myself for my foolishness; Zack didn’t want to die, and a relationship with me was just that, a death sentence. At least, if it was to involve anything other than conversations. And if there was absolutely no physical component to a relationship, was it anything other than a friendship?

A guy like Zack had friends. I was fairly certain he could have his pick of any number of women, too. Why wouldn’t he look past me at some devil woman in a red dress? Even if she was twenty years older and taller and more shapely and knew how to apply cosmetics and bleh. Was it possible to hate someone you didn’t know and hadn’t exchanged more than a few words with? I even envisioned walking up behind her, taking off a glove and giving her a little touch to the arm. Not enough to kill her, just enough to zap some of the prettiness away.

Then I cursed myself for being petty and tried to watch the movie. It wasn’t easy; it had no plot and a lot of explosions. I felt my mind wandering for minutes at a time and when it came back, I found I hadn’t missed much.

Afterward Zack offered to walk around the mall for a little while longer but I declined. I suspect he saw through my terse answer, but he didn’t say anything as we walked to the car.

It was a quiet ride back to the Directorate. Even though I could have sworn it was only about twenty minutes, it felt like an hour. We pulled into the parking garage and he stopped the car. I started to turn to him to say good night, but he preempted me.

“Did I...say something or do something that pissed you off?” He was staring at me, earnest, for all his faults.

“No. I’m sorry,” I said. “I thought that woman in red—I thought she was my mom, from a distance. She looked like...” My words trailed off.

“Ah,” Zack said with a nod. “I wondered what would possess you to jump across the mall like that, in public and in full view of a hundred people. It all makes sense now.”

“Why didn’t you ask me before?” I stared straight ahead, looking hard at the concrete wall that was just in front of the hood of the parked car.

“In my experience, if a woman seems upset, it’s better to wait a little while before you probe to get to the bottom of it,” he said. A sage, he was. “You know,” he said with confidence, “in case it was something I did, I didn’t want to make it worse by seeming like I didn’t have a clue.”

I heard Wolfe’s laughter ringing in my ears and I saw red. “Of course it wasn’t you,” I said, calm. How did I manage that calm? No idea. “Well,” I said with an urgency I couldn’t define, but that welled up along with a hundred other emotions I didn’t want to give voice to, “good night.” I grabbed the handle to the car door and forced it open, rushing to get out before he could say anything else. My hand gripped it tighter than I intended, and I heard a squeaking noise as I stood up, and I looked down to find the door hanging free of the car, loose in my hand.

I stared at it with incredulity for a moment before a torrent of bitter anger burst loose somewhere within and I screamed a curse. I hurled the car door as I stomped away from the vehicle toward the nearest exit. I heard it crash, the window breaking when it hit the wall, and I heard it bounce into something else. The earsplitting sound of a car alarm going off echoed through the whole place as I pushed my way out of the garage’s exit door and blissfully found myself out of the garage and on the snowy grounds of the Directorate.

Chapter 11

You should let your anger out to play more often
, Wolfe said a little while later, as I was about to get into bed.
It’s quite becoming, little doll
.

“You’re a hobo who’s living rent-free in my brain,” I said out loud as I turned down the covers. Someone had snuck in and made the bed and cleaned the room while I was out. At another time, I might have been impressed with the turndown service. As it was, it was added to the pile of things annoying me, the lack of privacy I felt in this place.

No need to get so hostile
. Wolfe’s tone (in my head, the bastard still has a tone) was leering, taunting.
Wolfe was paying you a compliment.

“I need your compliments like I need another mysterious enemy trying to kick my ass,” I said, flopping down. “Since I already acquired another of those today, I’ll pass on your ‘kind’ words.”

Poor little doll, whose life is aught but mysteries and lies,
he said, almost soothing.
So troubled, so sad, so...delicious. And how you feel about the agent is even more tasty.

“Go screw yourself.” I buried my head in the pillow.

There, there. What if Wolfe could make some of the mystery go away?

“Like you did with my mother? Thanks, but that turned out to be more mystery.”

Such a shame, Wolfe was going to tell you all about the man in the metal suit...

I raised my head up. “You don’t know anything about him.”

Wolfe snickered at my uncertainty.
David Henderschott, age 58. He doesn’t look it, of course. He ages well, like powerful metas tend to. He was pretty too, before someone...
He paused in his narrative and I could almost hear a squeal of excitement in my head
...cut him up. Now he’s not so pretty anymore. Very strong, though.

“Why is he wearing armor?” I clutched my pillow in my hand. “To hide what you did to him?”

Wolfe laughed, a shallow, short bark.
His skin can stick to whatever it touches. He used to use it to rip the flesh off his foes, but Wolfe taught him the error of his ways, oh yes he did. Now Wolfe would guess he’s scared to come out and play.

“Who does he work for?”

Tsk, tsk, little doll. What will you do for the Wolfe?

I smiled, but it wasn’t one of deep satisfaction. “I’m not doing a damned thing for you.” I flipped the switch by the bed that triggered the lights. “Night night.”

Oh, little doll...you’ll be sorry
. Without another word, it was like he picked up and went to another corner of my mind and lay down. I had a vision of him, like the proverbial dog licking himself, and I got disgusted and tried to put it out of my mind.

Sleep was horrible, filled with a hazy nightmare. I walked over snowy fields into a building with brick sides and down long, yellowed corridors. I saw fire, blazing, hot, heard words spoken that I couldn’t understand, and then felt the wind at my face as I ran.

I awoke as an explosion flipped me into a snow bank.

I blinked in shock as I felt the damp cold slide down the back of my shirt for not even the first time today. I got my bearings and vaulted to my feet. There was noise behind me and I turned. I was standing in the middle of the campus, somewhere between the Headquarters and where the science building, where Dr. Sessions had kept his lab, had been only moments before.

There was still some of it left, but what there was happened to be covered in flames, the fire stretching up to the heavens. I ran toward the building and felt the heat wash over me the closer I got. The brick building had once been three stories; now only a few spots remained where more than a few feet of brick stood at a stretch. I wondered if anyone could have survived just as I saw a shadow moving around behind one of the walls.

I heard screaming, shrieks everywhere around me. The heat from the burning building was intense, the smell of smoke pungent and overpowering. I looked and saw others had come, flooding across the campus toward the site of the calamity. One of the screaming voices caught my attention; it came from within the burning building.

I moved toward the wreckage and jumped over the nearest wall. I felt my flesh start to char, smelled the flames and the tang of what I suspected was the first degree burns that were already causing my skin to redden. I saw a lone figure on the ground, scorched from head to foot and I reached out, grabbing hold of him and lifting him into my arms. I vaulted back over the wall and tried to carry him away from the building. A pitched squeal stopped me long enough to look down.

It was Dr. Sessions. I was carrying him like a baby in my arms, and I hurried away, not wanting to look at him, just trying to get away from the fire. The smell of burning meat was everywhere, in my nose, in my eyes, in my throat and it was threatening to make me gag, cry or throw up. Maybe some combination of the three. The heat was steadily getting weaker until I ran into something and fire burst around me.

I fell on my backside, Sessions still in my arms. I looked up and saw the same eyes I’d seen only a day before, behind the glass of a containment cell as Clary carried it away from me.

Gavrikov.

I drew a sharp breath as I looked at him. He was wreathed in flame from head to toe, not an inch of flesh visible. The fire stood out, reaching a few inches from his arms, his head, from everywhere. His eyes were something else entirely, just a shadow and a shape, with no hint of a pupil or an iris, as though they were nothing but spheres surrounded by a living, breathing fire.

He drew up in front of me and I remembered what Zack had said about him, about his power to control flame; he could start an inferno right here with me at the heart and there wasn’t a thing I could do about it other than chuck a charred lab rat at him and run. And that was iffy.

He stared down at me with those burning, empty eyes and raised his hand. I scooted Dr. Sessions off me, laid him on the snow with only a murmur of pain from him and stood, wary and ready to dodge, for whatever that might have been worth. I stared at him, he stared back at me.

“Thank you,” he said, his voice no more than a whisper. “Thank you.” I looked at him, confused but still tense. I braced for whatever he might do. He seemed as though he might take another step, lifting a leg off the ground, but instead his other leg joined him and he hovered a few feet above me. “Your kindness will not go unrepaid.”

I felt a clutch of unnerving suspicion inside, but before I could question him, he shot into the sky in a blur, and he was gone.

Dr. Perugini was beside me in the next moment, bending low over the body of Dr. Sessions, barking commands to others around her. I turned to look at him and realized that his flesh was charred, hideous. His lab coat was burned perversely, his glasses fused into his flesh. His clothing was blackened, what was left of it. I couldn’t see a single place where he wasn’t burned, and I wondered how he could still be alive.

“Sienna,” Ariadne cut through the chaos and I realized with a shock that she was wearing a robe, a red one, silken and utterly out of character for what I would have suspected of her. “What did you see? What did he say to you?”

I couldn’t take my eyes off Dr. Sessions. “I don’t know,” I lied, far too nimbly. “Is...is he going to be okay?”

“Does he LOOK like he’s going to be okay?” Dr. Perugini nearly screamed the reply, her distress increasing the potency of her accent. “I need...” Her head spun around until it alighted on Kat Forrest, who was standing in a nearby knot of metas in nothing but a tank top and briefs. “You.”

The delicate, gushing girl who I had met earlier in the cafeteria stepped forward, tentative. She shook from the cold, and her breath came out in great clouds as she walked in halting steps toward where Dr. Perugini waited for her. “He doesn’t have all night!” Perugini snapped and Kat quickened her pace, dropping to her knees in the snow. She reached out, her hands curled up tight to ward against the cold. She unfurled them, bringing them to Sessions’ face. I may have imagined it, but it seemed like the snow was melting around her legs.

Her hands were on his face, the soft light of the overhead lamps illuminating the nighttime scene. He moaned when she first brushed his cheek, then again when her fingers anchored around his cheeks. The charred and blackened flesh seemed to grow redder around where her hands rested and Sessions grunted in pain. Then he started to scream.

I made a move forward, shrugging off Ariadne as she grasped at me. I felt a hand land on my shoulder and I started to turn and attack, but as I moved to do so, the hands released me and I was left staring at Scott Byerly, his hands raised as he took a step back. “Watch,” he said.