The Girl in the Box Series, Books 1-3: Alone, Untouched and Soulless

by Robert J. Crane

  Twenty-two

  Wolfe bolted into the mall at the approach of another half dozen cop cars; probably not because he couldn’t take them all out and then some, but because he had other things on his agenda. The news reported later that he’d cut his way through the patrons of the stores, leaving another thirty or so dead, a few others wounded before he bolted out an exit and disappeared.

  At this point I was ill enough that I flipped off the TV. Watching wasn’t helping. A reminder that I’d had a hand in the deaths of another sixty or more people, people who had families, parents, kids – that didn’t help me at all. It didn’t help me want to keep my promise to Zack, anyway.

  I stared at the stainless steel walls for the next hour. I resolved not the smash the TV to pieces, no matter how much I wanted to vent my frustration. I went to the bathroom and took a long, hot shower, but not as long as I wanted because I kept thinking about all the people dead right now that wouldn’t ever again get to experience the simple pleasure of something as basic as a hot shower on a cold day. Or shopping malls. Or theaters…or anything that Zack had listed off. Ever again.

  Or a hug from someone who loved them.

  I had been ready to turn off the water and get out when I started shaking with emotion at that thought. I heard someone say once that it wasn’t possible to miss what you never had. But if that was true, why did I want someone to love me, to hold me, just once?

  It took me almost twenty minutes to compose myself, and when I stepped out my dinner was waiting for me, along with an unpleasant surprise.

  “I brought your food,” Kurt Hannegan said with a sneer. “No one else wanted anything to do with you.” He had been almost to the door to leave and had turned back just to toss the shot at me.

  “I’m not hungry.”

  “I guess it’s hard to work up an appetite when all you do is sit by while people die because of you.” He paused at the door for a beat, then turned to knock on it so the guard would let him out.

  “Wait,” I called to him. My voice must have sounded as lifeless to him as it did to me, because he listened.

  “What?” The air of impatience surrounded him as if, insult now delivered, he couldn’t wait to get away from me.

  “I don’t want anybody to die,” I said in a voice that sounded smaller to me than I could have imagined when I formed the words.

  “It’s a little late for that now,” he snarled. “Hell, it was too late the day after you goaded Old Man Winter into sending us back to your house.”

  “I need your help,” I said to him.

  He laughed. “You’ve had my help before and all it got was a bunch of my buddies dead—”

  “I want to go to Wolfe. Myself.” He raised a stunned eyebrow. “I don’t want anybody else to die. I need to get out of here so I can go to Wolfe; so I can end this.” I held up my hands at my sides. “So I can give him what he wants.”

  Hannegan hesitated, regarding me with suspicion. “You playing games with me?”

  “No,” I said, returning to the lifeless voice. “I just want this to be over.”

  “Yeah,” he said, suddenly incensed, “and get my ass fired for helping you commit suicide.” His eyes narrowed. “But I tell you what…your guard changes at seven A.M. If someone was to try and escape an hour before that, at six, especially if they were super strong, they could sweep through the guards – without hurting anybody seriously,” he said with emphasis, “and there might be a few minutes when the cameras were off. If you went west, past the cafeteria and across the field toward the woods, there’s a road behind the wall of the campus. A meta could clear it with a jump, easy.”

  “And what would I find there?” I was hollow, just waiting to see what he had in mind.

  “Maybe nothing. Maybe a ride.” He turned back to the door. “I wouldn’t want to be accused of helping you.”

  “You’re not,” I said in a rasp.

  He knocked on the door and left without further comment. After he was gone, I stared at the blank TV screen for a while. Decision made. You know what finally did it? What finally pushed it over the top? I saw at least one of the dead cops was a woman. She looked to be of an age where she might have a little girl. A little girl whose mom wouldn’t come home tonight.

  Sounds familiar.

  I watched TV to kill the time without falling asleep. I found now that the decision was made, all the weariness of the last few days was creeping in, ready to overtake me. But I couldn’t let it, not yet. They hadn’t left me an alarm clock and I didn’t trust myself not to sleep through this, or I would have tried to contact Wolfe in my dreams. I asked the guard at the door for some coffee. He sneered, made a sarcastic comment about how he wasn’t my serving wench, and let me know he’d have someone else deal with it.

  I couldn’t wait to punch him in the face.

  I’d never passed slower hours, not even in the box, without any visual or auditory stimuli but those I made myself. Every news report that rehashed the incident at the mall and all the new deaths seemed elongated, stretching into infinity. The metal hands of the clock that hung in my room moved as though they weighed tons rather than grams.

  The last five minutes were the worst. I would follow the plan Kurt laid out. Even though I didn’t trust him, I suspected he wouldn’t have any problem taking me to die, especially if he could get away with it.

  With two minutes left, I stared back at the news. The timing was perfect: they were just beginning a montage of pictures of all the people who had died so far in this insanity. I watched their faces scroll by, some smiling and innocent – the children, mostly – some staid and serious, caught in candid shots. I would have wept, but my resolve was hardened. Soon enough, there wouldn’t be any more.

  I walked to the door at six, knocked on the steel and waited for it to slide open. When it did, the same guy that had told me that he wasn’t my serving wench became my bitch instead, and I battered him against the opposite wall with a single punch. Not bad, considering he was at least a hundred pounds heavier than me.

  Three more guards flooded the hallway. I pulled the gun from the first and heaved it at the farthest guy, and my enhanced dexterity scored a perfect hit; the butt of the shotgun clipped him in the jaw. I had seen people get knocked out before, but this time it was like slow motion; his eyes fluttered, he looked woozy for a second, then he dropped to his knees and flopped facedown.

  I grabbed the closest guy to me as he went for his radio and yanked him forward, pulling him off balance with the ease of uprooting a small plant. I landed a hammerfist on the back of his head and he went down. I surged forward with a front kick, catching the last guy in the corridor in the stomach, knocking the wind out of him. I followed up with a punch that broke his jaw as well as knocked him out, giving the Directorate guards yet another reason to hate me. There were so many.

  After the last one hit the floor, I looked down the steel-plated corridor. It stretched about a hundred feet in either direction, and there was no sound or movement. Most of the Directorate staff were out for the night, so this building was likely much quieter than, say, the dormitory building where all the metas and on-campus staff lived. Nonetheless, I crept quietly up the stairs to the first floor, where, without even leaving the stairwell, I found an exit door.

  I studied it in a rush, making sure it wasn’t an emergency exit that would set off a fire alarm. It didn’t appear to be, so I pushed through the crossbar and opened it, sprinting out into the snow. I was back in my turtleneck, coat and gloves…the only thing I was missing was a ridiculous hat to keep my head warm. And I was headed home.

  I ran across the snow, heading toward the woods. I passed the dormitory building, giving it a wide berth, snow up to my knees but still moving fast, when the alarm klaxons began howling. They might have found my handiwork in the basement. All those guards beaten senseless.

  I didn’t spare a thought for it, just ran faster. I was having to lift my legs high to clear the snow, b
ut I was amazed at how fast I was moving. I went several hundred yards through two feet of snow in seconds. I reached the tree line and kept moving, trusting my reflexes to keep me from getting clotheslined by a low-hanging branch or plowing into a tree trunk.

  Darkness appeared in front of me and I realized it was the wall. It stretched a good ten feet up and was made of solid block.

  And I cleared it in a jump.

  I landed on the other side with an inelegant roll, brushing off the snow as I got to my feet. I heard slow clapping coming from in front of me. Lit by the beams of headlights, Kurt Hannegan stood in front of his car. “Very nice. Now can we get out of here?”

  I followed him, getting into the passenger side and shutting the door. He gunned the gas, wheels slipping on the wet pavement. “Where to?” he asked, hands gripping the wheel and his jaw clenched.

  “Just drive me to my house,” I told him, brushing the snow off myself. He shot me an angry look as he watched it land on the upholstery. “I have to let Wolfe know where to find me.”

  “Do it after I’m gone,” he said with a scowl.

  “Fine,” I lied. “I’m going to sleep until we get there.”

  “Don’t know why you’re bothering,” he shot back. “You’ll be getting plenty of that soon.”

  I didn’t respond to his dig, instead leaning back in the seat, resting my head against the side of the car, close to the window. The steady thrum of the tires against the road gave off perfect white noise, and the motion of the vehicle rocked me to sleep.

  Darkness encompassed me, enshrouded me, took me away from the road and the headlights and that asshole Hannegan, and deposited me right where I wanted to be. Blackness surrounded me, swirled me into its vortex, and then, in the distance, I saw a spot. Burrowing through the dark, it got clearer and clearer, coalescing into a shape – like a man, but with black eyes, horrific teeth and a face that gave me nothing but fear. He drew closer and closer, a smile lighting his terrible features. A smile that broadened when I spoke.

  “Wolfe…it’s time to play.”