I scarfed my eggs and ham without much delay, sitting by myself. It was a little unusual; I’d fallen into a pattern of eating my meals with Reed, Kat and Scott, or at least Zack. Failing that, sometimes I would eat on the run or skip a meal. I looked around the cafeteria and found myself unsettled at being alone. Which was strange for a girl who used to eat almost all her meals by herself, with only Mother occasionally around for company.
I finished and walked back to headquarters, ignoring the fall chill in the air. I hit the lobby of HQ and the heaters kicked in the moment I walked through the doors, spreading slowly over my skin as the cool air faded. I felt the heavy dryness of it in my sinuses as the soles of my shoes clipped along on the tile floor keeping pace with all the other civilian employees of the Directorate who were making their way in to go about their daily jobs. Suits and ties abounded, women wore darker-toned dress pants and jackets, and almost everyone was already wearing full-length winter coats.
I veered behind the sweeping double staircase on either side of the lobby and made my way to the emergency stairwell at the back of the building, the one that also led down. The concrete walls around me established a pattern that ran all the way to the emergency floodlights at each landing. The sounds of the people milling about the lobby on their way to their serious, professional day disappeared as I heard the heavy metal door to the stairwell shut behind me, an echo bouncing around in the four-story room like a thunderclap after lightning.
I pushed through the door at the basement entrance and found myself in a long, narrow hallway. The walls were beige, a kind of wallpaper on them made up of tiny lines that intersected like fine wire mesh, a texture so small that I wondered if the non-metahuman eye could even perceive it. Black doors lined the walls, and I realized for the first time I had no idea how many of them were actually cells, and if any of them were occupied besides the two filled with our Omega friends. Just outside the staircase entrance were the more luxurious cells, the ones that were almost like standard living quarters but more secured; the further one got from the stairs, the more they became like a square without any sort of differentiation; an arrangement designed to keep the prisoners contained within off-balance, and Spartan enough to give them almost nothing to work with in planning any sort of escape.
Old Man Winter stood in the middle of the hallway like an imposing pillar holding up the whole building. He wore a winter coat like so many of the other men, but I blinked in surprise—it had to be close to eighty degrees in the hallway. He always tended toward heavy clothing, but I wondered if perhaps it was to hold the cold in, toward him, rather than keeping the warmth in as it was for most people. I watched him as I walked, and he seemed to take no notice of me until I was within a few feet, at which point he swiveled on a heel and looked down at me. Almost seven feet tall, that was no challenge for him, since I was not even five and a half feet tall myself.
“You are early,” he observed, arms folded over his coat.
“It doesn’t pay to be late when you’re working with the boss,” I said. “Are we going to be interrogating James Fries as well, while we’re here?”
“Pointless, I think,” he said, his rumbling voice given resonance by the acoustics of the hall. “Fries is a messenger boy, a strong meta, but not one of the privileged of Omega. Bjorn, on the other hand, was the son Odin, before he passed.”
“Odin’s son?” My face scrunched up and I pondered the oversized man who had wrecked my whole team in Des Moines. “He looks nothing like Chris Hemsworth.”
Old Man Winter ignored me. “He will, I think, be a better choice to speak with. More...knowledgeable, having been brought to America specifically for whatever this Operation Stanchion is.”
“How do you know that?” I asked, feeling a flash of confusion coupled with the fear that I had failed to read something that had been prepared. Unprepared was not a good feeling, especially in front of the boss.
“This morning, J.J. ran a...tracking program, I believe he called it...searching through U.S. customs for certain patterns. One emerged, detailing passport irregularities.” Old Man Winter peered down at me, cold blue eyes seeming to glow in the fluorescent light of the hall. “After comparing them to photographic records, he found Bjorn.” Old Man Winter let out a deep breath, fogging the air in front of him, something that reminded me of the smell of a December wind. “Unless Omega is planning something else, that means that Bjorn is here for Stanchion.”
I thought about that for a moment. Stanchion had something to do with me, plainly, because Bjorn had inferred as much when I was fighting him. If Omega was sending in more operatives to capture me, this was nothing new. They’d been sending them at me for almost a year, to the point it was now almost comical in result. Or it would have been, except for what happened to Kat. Their last two operatives had ended up decapitated (and I didn’t even feel bad about it, because they showed no human characteristics at all), the one before that was locked up in a cell even now, the one before that had been thrown off a building by the one predating him (by Wolfe, who was locked in my head).
“You seem unworried,” Old Man Winter said, jarring me back to the here and now.
“I don’t know. It’s hard to keep getting charged up about this. If I did, I’d spend all my time worrying. Whatever comes, I can deal with it.”
“You should not be so cavalier,” Old Man Winter said, somehow more serious than the way he said everything else. “Omega is a very serious threat, one which you have defeated through a combination of luck, skill, power and the assistance of others. Bjorn is not to be underestimated, though he is no great thinker. Whatever they are planning now seems to indicate a deeper consideration for long-term strategy rather than just throwing whatever they have on hand at you. Using Wolfe as their opening gambit should not be overlooked; he was the best they had to offer. They do not hesitate. Their means are brutal, and they will do whatever it takes to achieve their aims.” He looked at me, steadily. “What are you willing to do?”
“What am I willing to do...to what?”
“To find out the truth about Operation Stanchion and what it means for you.” Old Man Winter was unflinching. “To discover Omega’s aims. These are all questions which could be of great use to us if we were to find answers.”
“I’m willing to question Bjorn as long as necessary to get some answers,” I said.
Old Man Winter reached out to the door, finally looking away from me. He placed his hand in his pocket and withdrew a key card that looked no bigger than a scrap of paper in his massive palm, and ran it over the reader in front of the door. The glowing red light on the reader turned green with a subtle beep. “Follow,” he said and opened the door to the cell.
The room was small, ten by ten by ten, like the rest. The squares that made it up seemed to blur together for me, and I put aside my thoughts about all else to focus on Bjorn. He didn’t look quite as he had yesterday when I’d been fighting him. His short brown hair was still powdered with the dust of our battle. He had blood on his face and chest that had gone uncleaned, though his wounds were gone. His shirt was missing, along with boots and any other sort of clothing save for his pants, which were a dirty corduroy and speckled with all the evidence of our fight. He was shackled to a chair that was metal, bolted to the floor in the middle of the room, and he was still cuffed about the wrists and ankles.
“Bjorn,” Old Man Winter said in some form of greeting. “It has not been nearly long enough.”
“So it is you, Jotun,” Bjorn said, his brow arced in a forty-five degree slant on either eyebrow. “I had heard you were the head of the Directorate, giving shelter to this one. Do not expect me to remember the old times fondly and cooperate with you.”
“I do not expect you to remember anything fondly,” Old Man Winter replied, his breath still frosting the air. “But you will cooperate with me, or your memories will go from less
-than-fond to a much darker place.”
Bjorn’s back straightened at this, his shoulders squared, even with his arms trapped behind his back. “You will get nothing out of me, Jotun. Do your worst.”
Old Man Winter stopped in the middle of the room, towering over the seated Bjorn, who was not exactly a small guy. “Do you remember that time in...what did they call it, the Huns who lived there? I find myself forgetting the names the Germanic tribes gave to the old places. I have heard that in old age, humans default to their childhood remembrances. I find the opposite is true for me, that I cannot remember the names of the places from my youth, though I can recall the sight of them in vivid detail. For example, I recall that maiden that you bedded, that local girl from a tribe, how you called her a virgin sacrifice, and how when her brothers came after you in the morning, you caved their heads in with your fists as the girl cried behind you and begged you to stop. Do you remember what happened after that?”
Bjorn showed little reaction, only the slightest of a smile. “I remember her voice, but not her name. Is that strange? I don’t remember any of their names.”
“That does not surprise me at all,” Old Man Winter said, surprisingly gregarious, even as I was trying to keep down my breakfast in the midst of these discussions. “I wanted to kill you for that, did you know?” He bent at the waist, as Bjorn’s head jerked in surprise. “My respect for your father kept me from it, though. You lived as a god, and all you wanted was there for the polite taking; there was never a need for the sort of violence and thuggery that you and your kind visited upon the humans. But for you it was never about receiving the gifts of those who worshipped us for our power; it was about taking that which they did not wish to give freely.” Old Man Winter rumbled with every word, and the temperature seemed to drop in the room. “Strength over kindness, as it were. Force over grace. Did you thrill to the thoughts of what you did there?” Old Man Winter leaned in closer to Bjorn’s ear. “Did it keep you warm on the cold nights when we returned to our homeland? Did the memory excite you long after you killed the girl, her father, her brothers and all the others who did not stand idly by while you murdered their kin and fellows?” Old Man Winter’s hand landed on his shoulder, resting there. “Is that the way you like it?”
I cleared my throat, and both of them looked up, seeing me as though for the first time since I entered the cell with Old Man Winter. “Perhaps we could...return to the main subject?” I asked, wondering if I was overstepping my bounds and figured I was about to get a warning to shut up from Old Man Winter. Or at least a gaze that would freeze me in place.
“Quite right, Sienna,” Old Man Winter said, returning to his full height. “Bjorn, you will tell us every detail of this Operation Stanchion—its purposes, its players, its timeline, and you will do so now.”
Bjorn did not laugh this time, nor smile, nor react almost at all. He kept his head facing forward, and I saw the slightest shudder from him. He opened his mouth as if to speak but faltered, taking a moment to recover before speaking again. “No. I will not.”
“Very well, then,” Old Man Winter said, now beginning to orbit Bjorn slowly, one small step at a time. “Then we seem to have reached an impasse.”
I blinked in surprise at Old Man Winter’s change in attitude. Was this as far as he was willing to go? I didn’t exactly want to be party to torture, but I assumed that perhaps there would at least be a face punch or two for Bjorn, who, as Old Man Winter had just established, richly deserved it and probably quite a bit more.
Old Man Winter remained quiet for only a moment. “You realize, of course, that Sienna is a succubus?” He took a step around to the front of Bjorn and waited there, indicating me with a long, extended finger pointed at my chest. “That she drained the very life and memory out of Wolfe? That she can take your memories and leave you as thoughtless as a legume, break you to her will and make you no more?”
Bjorn’s eyes flicked toward me, then went straight ahead again. “I had heard she was a succubus. I didn’t know you allowed meta-draining on your campus, Jotun. How low you’ve sunk, to allow a soul eater to go to work on your own kind.” He spat in Old Man Winter’s face and I flinched. “Let her do her worst. I won’t cooperate with scum, with her kind, or with you if you’re the sort who does that.”
“I have not yet begun to sink,” Old Man Winter said, using his sleeve to wipe slowly across his face but not bothering to stand up and remove himself from spitting distance, “but perhaps, very soon, you will see that I will do whatever it takes to defend those under my protection.” He stood and glowered down. “Sienna.” He looked back at me. “Find out what he knows.”
I froze for a moment, as surely as if he had just used his frigid breath to ice me into place. I felt my legs come back to me, and I took halting steps to get behind Bjorn, who watched me, his blank affect showing the first signs of strain. I began to take off my glove, wondering which would come first—Bjorn breaking or Old Man Winter telling me to stop. I walked a slow arc around Bjorn, trying to keep my calm, trying to portray winter’s cold, like the Director, to look like this was nothing, no big deal, something that happened all the time. I kept my lips a narrow line, ignored the stuffiness of the room, the lack of movement, the air currents that my body made as I swept along. It was as though all particle motion had stopped, neither Winter nor Bjorn were speaking, and I felt every step I took.
The clammy feeling of a sweat crawled across my skin as I took up position behind Bjorn. I could tell by the twitch of his muscles that he was trying not to look at me as I stood behind him. I lay my discarded glove across his shoulder, and he blanched at the feel of it. It fell to the floor and made a soft plop as it landed. I looked up at Old Man Winter, but he was still on Bjorn, unyielding. I put my gloved hand on Bjorn’s other shoulder, and he looked at it as though a spider had crawled on him. His shoulders were tense, his muscles at full flex, hands still locked behind him.
“Last chance,” Old Man Winter said. “Before she extracts your soul like a walnut, leaving only a broken shell behind.”
Bjorn held his quiet for almost a minute, and finally, Old Man Winter nodded to me. I lay my bare hand on Bjorn’s shoulder, and he tensed once more, as though he could shuffle off the chair and away from me. I felt the stir in my fingers first, as though the blood were running to them. I was warm now, my breathing slow but deep, each exhalation a sweet release. I felt the rush as my skin tingled all over, the sweet, warm sense that Charlie had talked about, desire and pleasure filling my mind as I heard the first scream leave Bjorn’s lips. It was a small howl, not only loud in the physical space, but in my head, through the tie between us created by my touch, the drag of his soul against the bond with his body as my power tore at him, ripping a little bit of him from it moment by moment. Thoughts began to cascade through my mind, flashes of images, faces, emotions, and I held my hand on him for only another second before I tore it away, my breathing turned ragged, painful. My hand shook, and craved what it had held only a moment before, and the rest of me did, too.
I hunched over, hands on my knees, drawing slow breaths and unable to pull myself back up. I turned my head sideways to Old Man Winter, who looked over Bjorn and down at me, the closest thing to concern rimming his eyes. “Are you all right?”
“Fine,” I said. “But if I touch him any longer, he’s going to be a permanent spectator in my life like the others, and frankly, I could use fewer sickos in my head, not more.”
Old Man Winter held his position, towering above Bjorn, far, far above me. “Sienna...you must extract this information from him. He will not tell us. Sifting it out yourself is the only way...and is necessary to begin to gain hold over your powers.”
“I can’t...” I said. “I can’t keep them at bay without chemical assistance. And I don’t want another one in there. Not like this. Not ever.”
Old Man Winter took two steps around B
jorn and knelt to one knee, still almost able to look me in the eye if I had been standing up, which I wasn’t. “You know the dire predictions of what is to come, not only from Omega now, this Stanchion, but of the other warnings, the storms that come for us and all our kind—indeed, all humanity as well. You will be one of their protectors, but to do so, you will need the strength to do what is necessary.”
“I can’t,” I said. “I can’t even control them without chloridamide. I can’t do it.”
“You must,” Old Man Winter said, his voice an urgent hiss that dragged out the word must. “You are vital to our success.”
I stared at him. “What do you know that you’re not telling me?” The cold inside me was almost indescribable, my body crying out for the warmth of Bjorn’s soul, mine for the taking if I only reached out—but from Old Man Winter, for once...it wasn’t cold at all.
“That you are key.” He stared at me, and the iridescent eyes of blue warmed. “But it is all at risk. If you are unwilling to do what it will take to protect even yourself, how can you protect anyone else?” His hand came to my shoulder. “You must learn to control your power. To not fear it.” He looked to Bjorn. “And you must be willing to kill when it is necessary.”
“He’s a prisoner,” I said, and looked past Old Man Winter to Bjorn, whose eyes were open wide but rolled back in his head. His mouth hung open and spittle was rolling down his chin. The smell of fear and sweat filled the cold air in the room. “He’s helpless. Give it time, we’ll break him.”
There was something I saw, a flash in Old Man Winter’s eyes, and he stood abruptly. “Time is not a luxury, and nor is it something we possess in abundance. This Operation Stanchion rumbles closer to fruition, and we remain like children running about in the woods after dark, unaware of the danger about to unfold around us.” He placed a hand on Bjorn’s shoulder. “You will not use your power to unearth his plans?”
Omega: The Girl in the Box, Book 5 Page 11
