The Girl in the Box 02 - Untouched (11 page)

I did. Sessions was still crying out—in pain, I thought—until I looked back and saw that around her hands, fresh skin was springing up on his face, replacing the cracked and blackened with new, pink flesh. It spread out in an effect that rippled over his visible skin. New hairs sprang from his once bald head and his shrieks became a low moan then ceased. His head dropped to the ground and he let out a long, deep exhalation.

“Pulse returning to normal,” Dr. Perugini said, her stethoscope on his chest. “He’s in stable condition.” She snapped her fingers and someone slid a stretcher and a backboard into the snow next to Sessions and they started to load him onto it.

“How did she do that?” I asked, low, but loud enough to be heard.

Scott Byerly was the one who answered. “She’s a Persephone-type. She can give life with a touch.”

“Give life?” I stared at the girl, still on her knees in the snow, which had indeed melted around her legs, brown grass visible against the tan skin of her thighs. I looked closer; blades of grass were turning green and waving against her sun-kissed skin, and it wasn’t my imagination. It was almost as if they were trying to touch her. “Persephone was the Greek goddess of seasons. She couldn’t give life to people, just to plants.”

He shrugged. “I said Persephone-type, not Persephone herself. It’s based on myth and legend, after all.” He stared me down, and I saw a hint of a smile poke at the corners of his lips. “What are you?”

I looked away, back to Kat, who was sitting on the ground, resting, her eyes closed, gold hair flowing around her face, which was red from exertion. She looked at peace, and she sank back, laying flat on the ground, embraced by the patch of green in the midst of all the snow. Her breath was still coming in and out with regular certainty, the steaming heat of it boldly visible against the bright lights surrounding us. I saw the calm around her, watched the grass play at her fingers, touching it, tickling it, and I felt a surge of envy.

They were carrying Dr. Sessions away now, away from her, the girl who had given him life, returned it to him with her very hands. I looked back at Scott Byerly, and his eyebrow was raised in expectation. “Me?” I asked, and I felt hollow inside, empty of everything, even Wolfe. “I’m her opposite—everything that she isn’t.” My jaw hardened. “I’m death.”

Chapter 12

I didn’t sleep for the rest of the night. I’d left Scott Byerly and his stupid question behind with my cryptic answer, not even bothering to gauge his reaction. Well, maybe just a little. His face scrunched up as I was turning from him. I can’t say that was satisfying, but it was better than stopping to explain the literal truth I had told him.

I am death. My touch brings it. Where Kat Forrest was a tanned, lovely, blond-haired princess of life, I was a dark-haired, pale-skinned angel of death. Her green eyes represented life; my bluer ones represented winter and the end of that life.

Worse than the nasty comparisons that witnessing Kat’s power had spawned in me were the questions. What was I doing outside when the building had exploded? Why couldn’t I remember it? Why was the flaming lunatic so thankful to me?

When I returned to my dorm room, I had to take another shower. The fall and the fire had done a number on me. No one had asked, probably because they hadn’t seen, but my leather gloves had burned to my skin on the back of my hands. I ripped them off, the leather shredding and pulling the flesh in patches. I let them bleed out in the shower, the diluted red standing out against the cream-colored tiles that surrounded the drain. I watched the little stream of maroon as it came in streaks, circling the inevitable.

My hands still itched by the time I was done, along with a few places on my chest and legs where the same thing had happened. Good thing the Directorate seemed to have their finances in order, I reflected as I tossed my previously new outfit in the garbage. I was going to cost them a lot of money if I kept ruining clothes at the pace I was going.

The bruise on my cheek from earlier was gone, I saw as I looked in the mirror. One plus was that since I had awoken in the field, Wolfe hadn’t made a peep. I wondered if he was sleeping. Or maybe the explosion scared him into a kennel in my mind.

I returned to my room and stared out the window for the rest of the night. I had a very, very nasty suspicion about how things had unfolded the night before, based partially on my dreams and partially on the fact that Wolfe had very much wanted to get Gavrikov out of his cage. He should have been overjoyed, swinging from the metaphorical rafters in my head at the fact that it happened, but he was dead quiet instead.

Not good.

The sun rose without me seeing it, once more hidden behind the clouds. I was disgusted enough that if I could have somehow wished myself to Tahiti and left this awful city behind, I would have. Actually, that might not have entirely been because of the sun.

A note was slid under my door shortly after sunrise, suggesting I attend a meeting with Ariadne and Old Man Winter in his office at 9 A.M. I shrugged when I saw it, trying to play cool in case there were cameras watching, but inwardly I trembled. Did he know? Could he know? What had I done?

I skipped breakfast. My stomach was tied in knots anyway; why bother to give it something else to bitch about? I walked to the HQ building when it got close to time. The air was crisp—actually, I’m romanticizing, it was still brutally cold, just like every day since I left my house. Tahiti was sounding better and better. There was still a smell of burning in the air and when I passed in sight of the science building, my suspicions were confirmed—it was still smoking. The smell it gave off was acrid and awful and stuck in my nose, tormenting me even once I was inside Headquarters.

I knocked somewhat tepidly on Old Man Winter’s door. I was early, and a sizable part of me (all of me, if we’re being honest) hoped he wasn’t around. It opened to reveal Ariadne, her usual smile forced across her face. “You’ll have to forgive us,” she said as she ushered me to a seat, “It’s been a busy night and we haven’t had much time to prepare for this meeting.”

“‘Busy’?” I looked out the window behind Old Man Winter, who was sitting placidly behind his desk as always. His eyes had yet to remove themselves from me since I walked in, but I was used to it. It wasn’t like he was undressing me mentally—at least I didn’t think he was—it was more like he was always assessing, testing me, my willpower. I could swear he read the lies in how I moved, my reluctance to even be here. I worried that if he stared long enough, he’d be able to root out that I was carrying my own worst enemy inside my head, and that wasn’t figurative speaking. “I’d hate to see what you’d be talking about if you started pulling out the really descriptive adjectives—you know, like calamitous, explosive, apocalyptic—”

“Yes, well.” She cut me off, her politeness for once infused with iron. “It’s not as though this is the usual for us.”

“Sure, sure,” I said in what sounded to me a very Midwestern way. “Last week, near-invincible psychos, this week, men who explode into flames and girls who touch the dead and bring them back to life.”

“Even for us,” she said, “that’s not normal.”

“When you’re dealing with people who have powers like ours, what is?” I said it airily, but the word stuck in my head. Normal. What was normal? Everything I wasn’t, at this point. “Is this about the history lesson I asked for?”

“Yes.” Ariadne seated herself next to me. “It’s also a briefing on the state of meta affairs in the modern age.”

“Ooh, a briefing,” I said. “I feel like I should be wearing a colorless pantsuit.” I blinked at Ariadne, dressed once more in monochromatic businesswear. “Like that.” I blanched inside and Wolfe howled with laughter, the first sound he’d made since last night. The sad part was I couldn’t blame that one on him; there was something built into my relationship with Ariadne that made me want to insult her more than anything.

Her face was drawn, her eyes lowered. I wondered, far in the back of my mind where I hoped Wolfe couldn’t see it, if my constant slings and arrows at her were actually hurting her feelings.
If so, she should get thicker skin
, Wolfe said, shattering my illusory idea of having private thoughts. I rolled my eyes, possibly insulting Ariadne further. Unfortunately, I couldn’t tell her that I wasn’t rolling them at her, but at the asshole brainclinger.

Old Man Winter stood, drawing my attention from Ariadne. He pulled himself up to his full height, towering over the two of us, and walked to the window, looking out on the campus. He seemed to focus on the remains of the science building in the distance. I waited for him to say something, and after a minute of silence I spoke. “How can you manage to keep this place secret after an explosion like that?” I looked from him to Ariadne. “It’s not like that was quiet; it had to be audible for miles around.”

“There is nobody around for miles,” Ariadne said. “But you’re right, it was heard in the next town over. Fortunately, the local law enforcement are in our back pocket, which means it won’t be investigated, and it seems the media is still too focused on Wolfe’s reign of terror to give this any thought.”

“Got your own little cover up going on,” I said with grudging admiration. “I suppose you guys have it all figured out, keeping things secret and hidden from the normal world.”

“It has not always been so,” Old Man Winter spoke finally, his low timbre crackling with a surprising amount of energy. “But the modern history of metahumans has been one of hiding our existence from the rest of the world, of letting ourselves fade into myth and legend and cloaking our activities so that humanity does not become suspicious of those of us who have abilities beyond theirs.”

“You were around when metas walked tall and proud,” I said. I couldn’t see his reaction, not even in his reflection, but I suspected it was insubstantial. “Why the change?”

“Why, indeed?” His hand reached out and touched the window. “Metahumans did not just walk among humans in the days you speak of, they ruled mankind. We were gods among men. A thousand humans with spears and swords could not defeat a single strong metahuman. Entire armies tried and were wiped out in battles so bloody that they became the stuff of legend—and we became the bane of human existence and the single greatest obstacle to the freedom of men.

“Imagine a meta possessed of the will to become a conqueror, someone with the strength of a man like Wolfe, but more cunning and less psychotic.” I heard a grumble in my head from Wolfe at Old Man Winter’s assessment of him. “That was the story of a hundred dictators who threw their will onto the huddled masses of humankind, over and over again through the millennia, from the Greek gods of old to later, more subtle attempts of men like Rasputin to assert their influence over world powers.”

“Why were the later ones less obvious?” I asked him out of genuine curiosity.

“Your experience in fighting metahumans is colored by your encounter with Wolfe.” He was calm, dead calm. “Most metas are not immune to bullets. Technology has been the greatest equalizer for mankind. Whereas a superpowered metahuman might defeat an entire army in the old days, now he must contend with rifles and machine guns, bombs and explosives. Against the might of a modern army, with training, discipline, and handheld weapons with more ability to kill than entire armies of the ancient world, all but the most powerful among us would fall. Take yourself for example.” He turned to me, those ice blue eyes seeming to glow against the backdrop of the gloomy sky.

“In the days of old, one with your power and strength, the ability to kill with a touch, to move faster than any human foe, with power enough to kill in a single blow and drain them with agonizing pain should they touch you—you would have been a goddess. Because of your speed, your dexterity, your strength, with a sword in your hand, you could have killed a thousand men and watched the rest flee in fear. Even the arrows of archers would have to have been lucky indeed to bring you down.

“But now, a man with a single gun could end your life with a well-placed shot.” His finger traced a line ending at his forehead. “Certainly, you are more resilient than a human, and a wound to anything but your head would not kill you, but if one knows what they are facing...well,” his voice trailed off for a moment, “it’s not as though bullets and bombs are a commodity that mankind is soon to run out of.”

“So metas have spent a good portion of history trying to conquer people.” I shrugged. “Not a huge surprise. I’ve studied history. Why should we be any different than the rest of mankind?”

“Because we can be better,” he said with a low intonation. “The story of mankind is one fraught with struggle, true enough. But it is also the tale of a people reaching for more, desiring more than to be static, immovable, and mired in the mistakes of the past. If we are to be nothing more than a warlike people, forever locked in a struggle for dominance, then the metahumans are of no more purpose than any other weapon or person of power in the modern age.

“The need for secrecy has become a paramount concern, especially as governments possess more and more means to control metahumans.” His eyes were dull, almost sad. “We dare not challenge them openly, and thus far America has been content to let us rest in the shadows so long as we are not an open threat. I have worked with those in charge of the country’s response to metahuman incidents. They have little to no desire to round up a small minority of people for internment or worse so long as we keep a low profile. Other governments...” His words drifted off, along with his gaze, “...are not so reticent.”

Ariadne leaned forward. “Approximately three hundred and fifty metahumans were killed at a Chinese government facility less than a week ago.”

“That’s...” I let my mind run with the numbers I knew and came back with an answer. “That’s over ten percent of the metahuman population, based on the number you gave me.””

“It is.” She sat back and drew a deep breath. “We don’t know what happened; reports are somewhat sketchy. The facility was supposed to be a training center for the People’s Liberation Army’s metahuman development program. Either they destroyed it after deciding that it wasn’t worth the risk or someone else did it for them. Either way, the meta population took a steep dive last week.”