I felt a chill unrelated to the Director’s presence. “What?”
“I’m to return to Rome immediately,” he said, and I could hear nothing but the sour notes as he said it. “Immediate recall. They have me booked on a flight that leaves in three hours.”
“You can’t be serious,” I said, a sick pit in my stomach churning the acids within. “We’re looking down the barrel of imminent attack here.”
“I know,” he said, “and I told them to sit on the pointy end of an umbrella and open it. I’m staying.”
“No,” Old Man Winter said, “you should go. And you should take Sienna with you.”
“Director,” Ariadne said, silencing the voices that started to speak around her, “are we certain that sending Sienna to Italy is going to be safer than keeping her here?”
“Europe’s in a mess right now,” Reed said. “Not something my bosses wanted to get into on the phone, but I get the sense there are some pretty major moves going on over there at present. I’m not sure you’d be protecting her by getting her there. And our headquarters stays mobile by necessity—Europe is Omega’s backyard, and our relationship with them isn’t exactly peaceful coexistence, if you know what I mean. They’re trying to wipe us out, and vice versa.”
“Sir,” Bastian said, “if we’re facing imminent attack, we could really use a meta with her power on the line with us to defend the Directorate. Sending away one of our best fighters might not be the strongest idea.”
“Has anybody asked what Sienna actually wants to do?” Clary’s voice wavered before it came out.
All heads turned to me. I felt my mouth open and close before I spoke. “I’m not leaving,” I said, almost as surprised I said it as the others were hearing it. I saw Parks nod, a slight smile on his lips. “I’m not running from Omega, not ever again.” I felt my cheeks redden. “I ran from them once before and a lot of people died. I haven’t forgotten, not for one day, what that felt like. I won’t do it again. If they want me, they know where to find me, and I’ll be right out front kicking the ass off whoever they send to do the job.”
“No offense,” Reed said, “but that’s really dumb.”
“Thanks,” I said. “But I’m a big girl now, and that means not running from my problems, even when they’re pretty big themselves.”
“You have no idea,” Old Man Winter said, and his voice sounded brittle. “But it is your life, and your choice.” He looked down, staring into the distance at Madigan on the other side of the window, before turning back to Reed. “Return to your people. Apprise them of our situation. Ask them for help. Tell them how dire our need becomes. Urge them to hurry.”
Reed’s eyes were wide, his head snapped back as though from being hit. “You can’t be serious. I can’t leave now—”
“You must,” Old Man Winter said, and he took a step closer to Reed and put a hand upon his arm. “You must. I knew your father, when we were together at the Agency. He was a good man, a noble man.”
“Wait, what?” I asked. “You knew our father?”
He turned his head slowly to look at me. “I did.” He slid his gaze back to Reed. “He was a man who stayed behind on the day the Agency was destroyed, trying to save as many lives as he could. He was not a man who would abandon his fellows, and I understand your desire to stay, especially for your sister. But—” he cut off Reed’s rising protest before the words left my brother’s lips, “you remaining here will make little difference now. You returning with the knowledge of what we face and a half dozen more of your people could mean the tide of the battle shifts in our favor.”
“I don’t know that we’ll make it back in time,” Reed said in a hushed, almost choked voice, his head bowed. “My bosses—they move slow. I never know what they’re going to do, if they’re going to listen—”
“You will make them listen this time,” Old Man Winter said, and I saw Reed’s head come up to meet the Director’s piercing gaze. “You know what is at stake. Come back to us with what you know, if nothing else. Come back to us with all you can rally, even if that is only yourself and the knowledge of what we face from this Operation Stanchion.”
There was a solemn silence. “I will,” Reed said. “I will...be back.” He turned to me. “I will. Before you know it.”
“I believe you,” I said, swallowing the sudden choking fear and trying to replace it with a smile.
“Ariadne,” Old Man Winter said, “please have a driver take Mr. Treston to the airport.”
She nodded and pulled her cell phone from her pocket, dialing it and speaking quietly into it while Reed made his way over to me. “Are you gonna be all right ‘til I get back?” he asked, and I tasted a familiar hint of dry mouth as he said it.
“I managed for seventeen years without you,” I said, trying to make it sound as natural as I could. “Somehow I’ll muddle on.”
“They’re coming,” he said, and he lowered his voice. Clary and Eve had shuffled away from us, out the door and into the hall, Bastian and Parks were by the window to Madigan’s cell, and Old Man Winter watched Reed and I from near the door. “They could be here before I get back.”
“They’ll get a hell of a fight from me,” I said. “I’m not going anywhere quietly with the bastards who sent Wolfe and Fries after me.”
“I know you won’t,” he said, and put a hand on my shoulder. “I...wanted to be here with you...”
“To the end?” I asked, and felt a slight choking sensation in my throat. “It’s not over yet.”
“Then why does it feel like it?” I heard a quiver in his voice. “Maybe you should come with me.”
“I can’t,” I said, “and please don’t ask me to again. I belong here. Before I came here, I was a shell, a prisoner, a nobody. I had no future but four blank walls, and every day was doomed to be the same. Now I’m...” I felt a smile crack my stony facade, “...somebody. Just because Winter is afraid doesn’t mean it’s over.”
“He’s lived for thousands of years,” Reed said, looking over to see Winter watching us. “If he’s scared and telling you to run, maybe you should take a hint from him.”
“No,” I said, pushing my bravest, most belligerent front forward, determined not to let my brother see me shake. “Because I’m young and stupid,” I said with a smile, “and I don’t fear anything anymore, not after Wolfe. If the worst comes, maybe I’ll just let him out of his kennel to run around and see what happens.”
“I can’t believe you’re joking at a moment like this,” he said, shaking his head, grim.
“Gallows humor. It’ll be okay. We’ll hold ‘til you get back.” I didn’t bite my lip, but I pursed them, holding them stiff to keep the emotion bleeding over from moving them.
“Who’s being a jinx now? Should I say, ‘I’ll be right back’?”
“Only if you want to die in a plane crash.”
“I’ll hurry,” he said, and the levity vanished. “Like Old Man Winter said, I’ll get what they know, and I’ll come back. I’ve got a couple friends who owe me favors. If nothing else, we’ll come trotting back as fast as I can get a turnaround flight. Two or three days, maybe.”
“Hurry back,” I said, and I let him start to turn for only a second before I pulled him around, taking care to keep my hands on his coat, not touching his skin. I pulled him close to me, ignoring the cologne that I always hated, and buried my face in his hair, smelled the sweet fragrance of it, hugged him tighter, his broad chest against me. I felt him hug me back, strong arms holding me in them, and I wondered for just a second if this is what it’d be like to be hugged by our father, then I banished the thought from my mind and pulled away, gingerly, giving him a kiss on the cheek as we broke.
“Don’t do anything stupid while I’m gone,” he said, letting his hand rest on my shoulder for another moment before he started toward the doo
r.
“You mean like fighting off an Omega attack on our campus?” I smiled through the screaming crying in my head. “Wouldn’t dream of it.”
He paused at the door and gave me a nod. “You know...I wish I’d told you. Earlier, you know. When we first met. I should have trusted you could handle it. We could have had...so much more time...to talk about it, and whatnot.”
I made my face a mask, tried to pretend concrete had been poured over it so my cheeks wouldn’t move, but even still I felt my eyes get glazed, blurry. “I wouldn’t have believed you,” I said. “I didn’t know what family really felt like until...” I looked around, suddenly a little embarrassed. “I’m glad you waited until I was ready.”
He looked like he wanted to say something else, but he rapped his hand against the doorframe, a nervous thing, a few different emotions alternating on his face. I thought he might speak, but he finally just turned and disappeared into the hallway with a last wave—but no last look.
It was just as well. I felt the first drops coming down my cheeks, hot, stinging, and I wondered when or if I’d see my brother again.
18.
The fading shadows of day were growing long when I reached my quarters. The darkening sky reflected the grim sadness closing in on me as I lay on my couch and waited for the sun to set. I felt like I was being swallowed up in the inevitability of the darkness. I thought of Scott, and how I’d seen him earlier, a shell of his former self, and I wallowed in misery like he did. In spite of my brave face for Reed, I worried about when Omega was coming, about what form their attack would take, and who, if anyone, would be taken. I felt my cheek against the soft velvet of the chair I was lying against, and I watched the darkness descend in my room as the shadows rose along the walls with the fall of day, and I felt hopeless, truly hopeless, for the first time in a long time.
A knock woke me from a sleep I didn’t even know I was in. I hesitated at the door. “Who is it?”
“No one,” came Zack’s voice from the other side. “Well, maybe someone. I dunno. What do you think?”
I opened the door to see him standing tall, wearing a sweater that made him look particularly dashing, kind of...homespun, in a way. I pulled him to me, letting the door close. I kissed him full on the lips for as long as I thought I could get away with, and then hugged him tight, felt the fuzz of his sweater against my cheek. “You’re somebody to me.”
“Whoa, there,” he said. “Take it easy on that meta strength.” I loosened the grip, not realizing how hard I had been holding him, and he smiled down at me. “What’s the matter?” he asked, his smile fading. “What’s wrong?”
“Reed left,” I said, stifling emotion. “His bosses ordered him home, and he didn’t want to go, but Old Man Winter told him to, so...he left.”
Zack did not react to this for a moment, almost seeming like he was rocking back on his heels. “Wow. I guess I figured Reed would stick around no matter what.”
“He wanted to,” I said, leading Zack back to the couch. “He really wanted to, but...he’ll be back in a few days.” I sat down on the couch and Zack sat on the arm of it. He seemed uncomfortable, and I looked at him quizzically but he waved it off. “I don’t know. I think it’s gonna get bad.”
“I don’t get it,” Zack said. “We’ve captured three of their operatives in the last few days, I mean, some tough ones, too, as I understand it. Fries is a pretty nasty incubus from the reports I’ve read. Bjorn didn’t sound like a real picnic; I mean, for strength he had to be top of the scale, and this last one, Madigan—I haven’t seen the report yet, but a Thor-type? Nasty. They’re throwing their A-listers at you, and you’re bouncing them back like they’re nothing.” He gave me an encouraging smile. “Unless this Operation Stanchion consists of stacking all their people in our jail cells until they burst at the seams, it would appear that they are losing this round so far.” He hesitated, and looked to me for approval. “Wouldn’t it?”
“Yes,” I said. “No. I don’t know. The problem is the uncertainty. Yeah, you’re right, we’ve kicked the ass of everything they’ve sent along so far, with some skill, some luck—but it just feels like...they’re in the shadows. They’re unknown. We’re in the dark, waiting for something bad to happen. You ever have that? Where you’re waiting for something you think is gonna be bad, and it comes and it wasn’t as bad as what you anticipated?”
“Sure,” Zack said. “That’s exactly what I’m saying. The fact that you’re beating their best, taking down every meta they throw at you...doesn’t that give you some confidence that with everything we’ve got at our disposal, that we can take whatever they push at us and cram it right back down their throat?”
“Maybe. I just know that what they’ve thrown at us so far hasn’t exactly gone down painlessly.” I pointed to the wall, on the other side of which lay Scott’s quarters. “Look at what happened to Kat. She’s never gonna remember a thousand things about her relationship with Scott. And that’s pretty mild as far as consequences go, but it’s devastated him. What if they kill someone? What if their attack is focused, and determined, and draws a bead on one person and just...takes them out?” I bit my lip. “That’s what I’m afraid of. That this time they’re not coming to capture me at all, that they’re coming to kill Old Man Winter so that they hit the Directorate in a place where it never recovers.”
Zack slid off the arm of the couch to sit next to me. “It’s sweet that you’re more worried about the Director than yourself in all this.”
“I worry about you, too, lunkhead,” I said, and put my head on his shoulder, letting my hair flow down his chest. “Humans are just disposable foot soldiers to Omega.”
“I haven’t forgotten,” Zack said, and I could hear the tightness in his voice. “A lot of my buddies died when they decided to wipe out our agent ranks, you know.”
“I know.” I let my hand run along the front of his sweater, coming to rest on his collar. I wasn’t wearing my gloves, because I hadn’t bothered to replace the ones Eve had sullied with one of the numerous spare sets in my closet yet. I avoided his skin, instead rubbing the soft threads between my thumb and forefinger. “You should get out of here for a few days. Maybe take a vacation.”
I felt his head turn more than saw it. I didn’t want to read his reaction, but I heard it in his voice. “You know I’m not leaving you.”
I felt the weight of my head against his shoulder, and I wondered if it felt like the weight of the world to him. “Yeah. I know.”
He took his hand and ran it across my cheek and I realized for the first time he was wearing a glove, a very soft, almost skin-like glove. I glanced down, expecting to see fabric but saw a flesh-toned color in its stead. “You like it?”
I ran my hand across his, felt the ripple of my nerves, my flesh, as we touched for longer than we ever had before. “Did you...?”
“Picked it up this afternoon,” he said with a ready smile. “Doc Sessions made it more flesh-colored, said he thought that’d be less...I dunno, odd or something.” He pulled his sleeve up and I saw his arm, covered with the material of the suit. I ran a hand up his to his bicep and gave it a squeeze, as though I were touching him, really touching him. “You like?”
“I like.” I let my fingers stay on his arm, then ran them further up his sleeve to his shoulder. “And it goes...?”
“Pretty much everywhere,” he said, pulling down his turtleneck to reveal the top edge of the suit around his neck. “Hands, feet, toes, and uh...” he hesitated, “everywhere in between. It stretches, too,” he said, suddenly looking uncomfortable, “so, you know...it uh...it works uhm...well. And whatnot.”
My hands found their way down to the bottom of his sweater, and I lifted the bottom edge of it, sliding my hands along his waist, working the material of the suit between my fingers, feeling it give and stretch as I kneaded it. “And you can feel everyt
hing through it? It’s not...”
“Oh, yes,” he said, nodding. “I can feel everything. It’s thin, really thin, and it’s almost like touching, no barrier in the way.” I leaned in and nuzzled his neck, kissing the area covered by the thin sheen of the suit, and I heard him take a sharp inhalation. “Yep. I can definitely feel that.” I broke away and came up after a moment and my eyes met his. “Are you sure you’re ready?” His whole face was patient expectation mixed with desire, and I could read it in him as though it were written in letters across his chest, his face.
“I’m ready,” I said. “I’ve been ready for this for...so long. I just...we still have to be careful.”
He smiled. “We’ll take our time.” His hand ran along my arm, taking my hand, his fingers threaded through mine, no glove, as real as if he were truly touching me. I felt the warmth, the pressure of his squeeze, and I closed my eyes. “I love you.”
“I love you, too.” I tried to return his smile but it faltered.
“You sure?” he asked, and I felt the concern in his touch this time, the way the pressure was different, no leather between my hand and his, no cold cowhide holding back the subtleness of his caress.
I opened my eyes. “I’m sure.” I kissed him again, and then stood, taking his hand in mine. “Never been surer of anything.”
He ran his hand over my cheek, a caress I’d felt a thousand times briefly. This time it lingered, sweetly. I felt his hand in mine, and I looked in his eyes. I led him toward my bedroom, just as we had a hundred times before. But this time was different, new, unfamiliar, and when we passed through I shut the door behind me, as though I could close out all the distractions, all the worries, all the thoughts of Reed, and Omega, and Old Man Winter, and leave them outside. I closed the door and we went inside, and left everything of the outside world behind until morning.
Omega: The Girl in the Box, Book 5 Page 16
