The Girl in the Box 01 - Alone

by Crane, Robert J.

  “Little doll,” he growled, the menace in his voice sending chills through me, “Wolfe’s amusement is running low…Wolfe is bleeding…and Wolfe doesn’t like bleeding…a few drops of his blood is of more worth than this entire, stinking gutter trash city…”

  I chanced to look down at my handiwork on his ankle, but what was there could scarcely be described as bleeding. A few drops no bigger than the head of a pin dotted the mat where he was standing. His grin had faded, replaced by a look of savagery that brought back the fear of our first encounter full force. I was face to face with a seemingly unkillable menace – what was I supposed to do now? Run for the stairs? He’d catch me on the turn.

  My breathing had become ragged, not from exertion but from fear. I put myself in this situation because I was sure I could beat him. Now I was almost sure I couldn’t. Unless…

  I lunged forward before he made another move, holding my sword at maximum extension and aiming for his eye. I might not be able to break his skin, but the eyes were always a weak point…

  Once more I felt the blade stop as though it hit an immovable object. I opened my eyes (I hadn’t realized I closed them when I lunged – Mother would have been very upset with me) and saw his hand wrapped around my katana, the tip stopped only inches from his right eye. I pushed it harder, and watched as a thin trickle of red ran down his wrist. He yanked the blade down to his chest level and pulled it toward him. I let it go, but not before he had pulled me off balance and brought me within his reach.

  This close to him, I had a revelation. Where a normal person would have fingernails, he had claws. They jutted out an inch or so above the ends of his fingers, black, with a pointed tip that looked sharp. They seemed to extend as I watched them.

  I tried to stagger back but he seized my right arm and his claws raked into the skin, shredding through my sleeve. I pulled away and fell down, rolling to my feet and slipping away just in time to avoid a slash. I felt my back bump into the wall and realized he had cornered me. I reached up by instinct and grabbed for a weapon, pulling down a dagger and holding it in front of me as he leaped forward and slammed into me, driving me into the wall.

  I opened my eyes and I felt like I’d lost a few seconds. My head spun from the impact. Wolfe was big; I would have bet he weighed well over three hundred pounds. I took a sharp intake of breath and realized he had been laying across me; that he had actually broken through the concrete block of the basement wall by driving my body into it. The powdered dust from the destruction hung in the air like a haze over me as I lolled in some twilight form of consciousness.

  I tried to move my arms but failed. There was a long shadow stretching to the ceiling above me and it reached down with a pointed hand and grasped me, once more, around the neck, hauling me into the air. I knew my feet were dangling below me, but I couldn’t feel them. I looked into those black eyes and my view expanded a little, like a camera when it zooms out, and I realized his face was contorted with rage.

  “Look what you did to Wolfe, little doll.” He shook me, hanging in the air as I was, and twisted my neck so that my eyes rolled toward his midsection. The knife I had pulled from the wall and stuck out to stop him was buried in his gut and a steady stream of blood had soaked his shirt. I would have smiled, but I wasn’t really in a position to.

  His hand wasn’t choking me this time, just dangling me in place. I realized later that I must have been concussed when he smashed me through the wall; had some bones broken, probably my spine as well, because the feeling in my extremities was missing.

  “Wolfe is tired of the way you play.” He pulled me closer to him and I felt his nose run along my neck, heard the faint sound of sniffing. “I don’t think you can move now…” The ominous way he said it turned my stomach. “Now Wolfe can play with you his way…without any interruptions—”

  Before I could find out what that meant (though I had a disgusting theory) a flash of light seared my eyes and something rocked Wolfe from behind. He dropped me and I fell to my side, curled up. Upon impact, I lay there for a moment, unmoving, then realized I could now feel my arms, my legs and everything else. And they all hurt. Another flash of light lit the room and I sat up, nursing a half dozen cuts and some agonizing pain in my back and neck.

  Kurt Hannegan stood at the bottom of the stairs, eyes blazing, what was left of his hair in disarray. In his hands was a shining silver gun unlike any I’d seen before, with a series of three cylindrical barrels that were smoking. “Can you move?”

  I nodded, blanching from the pain that filled me.

  “Then go!” He jerked a thumb toward the stairs as he pointed the weapon at Wolfe once more and fired. The barrels emitted a beam of pure white and Wolfe’s body shook, pushing him from his side to his back. His nose twitched and his eyes, though glossy, looked at me with inarticulate rage. His hand slid from where it lay to grasp me around the ankle, just barely holding it.

  “Little doll…”

  I ripped my ankle from his grasp and brought it down hard on his face. Then again. When I lifted my foot, I saw him smiling. He tried to roll to his side but failed.

  “GET MOVING!” Hannegan fired twice in rapid succession, his blasts rolling Wolfe to a facedown position.

  I staggered over to Zack, whose eyes were shut, his face a bloody mess. “We have to get him out of here,” I said to Kurt.

  “Dammit,” I heard Hannegan mutter under his breath. The gun went off twice more when my back was turned and I shot a look back to Wolfe, who was fighting to get back to his feet. “I’m running out of juice for this thing!”

  I reached down to Zack and wrapped an arm under his chest and pulled. Lifting him was only marginally more difficult than walking by myself was at this point. Unfortunately, walking by myself was quite the challenge. I made for the staircase, supporting him as I climbed. I heard the gun discharge twice more, then some swearing from Kurt, and heavy footfalls on the stairs behind me as I turned the corner and entered the living room.

  I staggered past the sofa, pausing for a beat as I saw two dead Directorate agents in the living room, one with a look of shock on his face, the other missing his head. I stepped over another body on the porch, this one missing at least one arm. Another was splayed out under the tree in the front yard as though he were napping in the snow. I almost slipped at the same spot as last time I left the house, but recovered.

  I opened the door to the backseat and threw Zack in, then hobbled to the front just as Kurt cleared the driveway. He slid into the driver’s seat and was already starting the car as he slammed the door. His foot was on the accelerator before it was in gear, causing a loud thump as the car rocked and the tires slipped on the snowy pavement.

  I looked back at the house. Wolfe staggered out the front door, clutching his ribs, and broke into a run as we shot down the street.

  “He’s gaining on us!” I shouted as I looked back, watching Wolfe streak along behind us, loping on all fours. Like a dog.

  Kurt took the corner so fast we slid until the wheels caught and took off again. I heard a screeching noise and turned to see Wolfe dig his claws into the trunk. Little bits of metal flaked off as if they were paper. I looked through the rear window and saw those black eyes staring back at me, the mouth of the demon upturned in a grin. I couldn’t take my eyes off him. He was keeping pace with the car, barely, trying to use his claws to secure a hold to grab on.

  Kurt floored it as we shot through another intersection, then turned to get on the freeway. Wolfe’s hands fell free of the trunk, but he kept running behind us, still watching me. He maintained his pace all the way to the top of the onramp, at which point Kurt put the accelerator to the floor and I saw Wolfe’s black eyes recede in the distance as we made our escape.

  Eleven

  As the car sped down the interstate, I stole a look at the speedometer. Kurt was doing close to a hundred as I slipped into the back seat and knelt on the floorboard next to Zack. One of my gloved hands held his head while the other wiped th
e blood from his face. It flowed from his nose, which was broken. The rest of his handsome face seemed unharmed and his eyes fluttered open.

  “What happened?” he asked, woozy.

  “Wolfe,” I replied.

  “Oh. Did we win?”

  I heard a snort from Kurt in the front seat. “Do you feel like you won, kid?”

  He turned his face to look at the back of Kurt’s head. “I’m still alive, so yeah. Kinda.” His hand crept up to his nose and held it, stemming the bleeding. He sat up, his eyeballs rolling. “What about the other guys?” He looked at Kurt, who made no move but to stiffen and keep focused on the road.

  Zack turned to me. His eyes met mine and I had to look away. “I don’t think there were any survivors,” I said, looking down.

  “How did we get away?” His voice carried a dreamlike quality.

  Kurt harrumphed in the front seat. I shot a glare at him. “Your partner shot Wolfe with some kind of epic blaster weapon that kept him down while I carried you out. Why weren’t all your guys carrying those?”

  Kurt didn’t deign to look back. “Because that’s the only one we had.”

  I looked back to see Zack studying me. “You’re hurt,” he said.

  “You too.”

  “Lean forward.” He gently pushed me toward the front seat. “Your shirt is bloody in the back.”

  He started to lift my sweater but my hand brushed his away. “I’m fine,” I assured him. “Wolfe rammed me into the wall but I’m already healing.”

  “I should check.” Concern lit his slender face and warm eyes. I stared a moment too long, got embarrassed and looked away again. Damn.

  I ran my gloved hand down my back and felt a half dozen places where it hurt, but wasn’t agonizing. Then my hands moved to my front and I found some broken ribs and cringed. “I’m fine,” I said as he started to lean toward me. “Really. I’ll be back to a hundred percent before you know it.”

  “Must be nice,” Kurt spat. “I know a few guys that wish they had that ability right now.”

  “Kurt…” Zack started.

  “What?” Kurt’s tone was acid in reply, and he shot a look of pure malice at me. “Miss High And Mighty Little Meta got them killed. Is that too deep for you, Zack? Are you too busy staring into her eyes to realize that there are eight of our guys dead because of her?”

  “Shut up!” Zack answered for me, but I was smoldering on the inside. I couldn’t deny the truth of what he was saying, but it didn’t make it sting any less. They were dead because of me.

  “We didn’t walk out of there with whatever it was she went for,” Kurt went on, voice breaking like a man on the edge. “What did you need to get from your house that was SO important, little girl, that you’d risk meeting up with Wolfe to get it?”

  I opened my mouth to speak but no words came out. I stuttered for a minute before Kurt cut me off.

  “I see. Well, I’m glad it was so important that it was worth all those men’s lives. Some of them have families, you know—”

  “Enough.” Zack’s voice was commanding enough that Kurt stopped, leaving a pall hanging in the air between the three of us that Zack broke as he leaned in close to me. “In the basement, what I found…”

  “I don’t want to talk about that now.” I lowered my voice. “Not with him here.”

  “But you’ll talk about it later?” I felt pinned down by his gaze.

  “Yes.”

  “All right.” He nodded. “But what were you after? Why did we go back?”

  “Later.” I tried to put enough emphasis into my words that he’d stop, and he did. We rode in silence.

  The drive back seemed to take forever, the cityscape fading into country lanes, and after an eternity on the road we were motioned through the gate onto the campus of the Directorate. Kurt had talked on his cell phone, and I got the feeling from his side of the conversation that we had a meeting to attend as soon as we returned.

  That thought was confirmed when we pulled into the garage under the headquarters building. Ariadne waited for us, her blasé suit blending in to the dim light of the motor pool. She exchanged a perfunctory greeting with Zack and Kurt that was less warm than the relieved one she greeted me with, and then she led us to an elevator that went straight to the top floor. We followed her to the double doors leading to Old Man Winter’s office.

  He was sitting in his chair when Ariadne brought us in. He made no move to offer seats, but Kurt took one and Zack gestured for me to take the other. Ariadne walked past Old Man Winter and stood behind him, facing the window, showing the entire room her skinny ass.

  Sorry, that was probably me projecting some anger.

  “Wolfe?” Old Man Winter’s thick eyebrows moved almost unnaturally, but it was the only sign of motion on his face other than some faint curling on his lips as he spoke.

  “Still alive,” Kurt replied. “I hit him with the cannon until the charge was out, but it didn’t have a lot of effect.”

  Old Man Winter’s eyes moved to Zack, who hesitated. “I think he knocked me out before I got a shot off, sir.”

  “No,” I said before Old Man Winter could reply, shifting his penetrating gaze back to me, “Zack hit him in the side point blank with a shotgun blast. Wolfe showed me after it happened – all it did was leave a few red marks. His skin is thick; really resistant to blades, bullets and the like.”

  Old Man Winter surveyed us all. His shocking blue eyes made me uncomfortable as I waited for him to speak, to say something, anything. He didn’t.

  Ariadne did. “Yet somehow, last time—” she turned from the window and looked at me—“you managed to penetrate his skin with darts and drug him.”

  “Those dart guns were designed by Doc Sessions,” Kurt interjected. “They have a microtip, smaller than any needle, so they inject without breaking the skin.” He tossed a sneer at me. “It’s nothing she did.”

  “Yeah, well, I hurt him this time, too,” I said as I wiped some blood off my lips with my glove. I looked down; the dark drops blended well with the black leather, leaving it looking shiny and wet. “And I didn’t need a portable howitzer to do it.”

  “Yeah, because you stuck out a dagger and let him run you through a wall.” His face was red with anger, a flush that extended to the balding spots on his head. “I’ve got a great idea to stop him; let’s stick you in front of him with a bigger sword and let him put you through a wall again – and again – until one of you dies. I know which one of you I’m rooting for—”

  “At least I tried,” I said, not looking up from my glove. “I didn’t sit around in the corner waiting to die.”

  “Oho, courage from the meta-bitch,” Kurt said, standing up. Zack stepped between us, unsteady on his feet, but I didn’t budge from my chair. “Yeah, you got a lot of guts to back up the inhuman strength and super-fast healing. Why, I don’t know how us normal folks that just break and die when Wolfe hits us can be so cowardly! Except we weren’t, because a lot of good guys died today so that he could get another shot at you—”

  “Maybe it was the other way around,” I said, turning to meet his accusation. “Maybe I wanted another shot at him.”

  Everyone froze. Kurt looked down at me with an almost total lack of understanding. A look of knowing had dawned across Zack’s face while Ariadne appeared stricken at the window. Old Man Winter, as per usual, kept his expression neutral through either long practice or a complete lack of emotional attachment to the situation. I suspected the former, but I didn’t know him well enough to be sure.

  It felt like the air had stagnated, as though everybody had paused and no one was taking any breaths; as though I had tossed out a grenade in the middle of the room and we were just waiting for it to explode.

  “You did it on purpose.” Kurt was the first to recover. “You didn’t go back for anything; you went there so you could take a crack at Wolfe, and you threw away eight of our guys in the process, you—!” He lunged at me, screaming unintelligibly, and Zack caught hi
m midway, struggling to control his partner’s bulk as Kurt pushed toward me.

  I continued to stare at the blood in my glove. It was a few drops; nothing compared to what was on my hands.

  “Get him out of here, Davis!” Ariadne’s shout crackled through the air. “Hannegan, get yourself under control!”

  I turned to look at Kurt, whose face was purple with outrage. Zack was no longer restraining him, but he still held a protective arm out between me and Kurt. I didn’t need it. Beaten, wounded, internally bleeding and I could still have broken him into tiny pieces, then everyone else in the room one by one. Sweet gesture, though.

  “Zack,” Ariadne called out to him. “Go to medical. You look like Hannegan drove over you.”

  They walked out together, Kurt storming and Zack following a few paces behind. Zack turned back to meet my eyes at the door and mouthed the word “Later” before he closed it. If Kurt had said it, I would have considered it a weak threat. With Zack, I knew it was a promise – of a conversation that I didn’t want to have. Ever. I sighed and turned back to Ariadne and Old Man Winter.

  Ariadne seemed to be struggling for words and I recalled our last conversation and my suggestive insult. “We are…glad to see you made it through this episode in one piece. Dr. Sessions is all set to begin your—” she paused for a moment—“non-invasive testing tomorrow morning.”

  I stood up and started to leave, but something stopped me and I turned back to face Old Man Winter, who was still looking at me with that damned eerie stare. “You knew Wolfe would cut through your agents, didn’t you?”

  “That’s a ridiculous assertion,” Ariadne said from behind him. If he was insulted, he didn’t show any more umbrage to it than anything else I’d said. “If we’d known this was going to happen we wouldn’t have sent anyone, especially not you.”

  “Not what I asked,” I replied. “And you’re not who I asked. You offered to just send your agents because you didn’t want to endanger me. So my question stands – you knew he would cut through them, yes? Not you, Ariadne.” I pointed at her. “He overruled you.”