**
The vibration of his phone woke him a second time. It was CJ again.
“Hey CJ,” he said quietly, standing to move into another room of Crysta’s apartment.
“There you are! We’re back and we have the goods! Get your ass over here; I wanna hear about what happened last night!”
Hugo laughed a little, “Alright, I look forward to hearing what you guys did on the East Coast. We’ll be over in a bit.”
“We? Are you with the doctor?” There was a note in CJ’s tone that was off-key.
Hugo scratched the back of his head, “Uh, yeah. I crashed at her place.”
“But you can make portals,” she responded, her voice monotone.
He shrugged, “I…ran out? We were really tired.”
“Sure, fine whatever. Bye.” The call disconnected. Hugo stared at the phone for several seconds in complete bewilderment. What had he done wrong?
“Was that CJ?” Crysta asked as she walked into her bedroom, rubbing her eyes. She hid a yawn behind her hand.
Hugo nodded, “They got a hold of one of those wristbands that blocks abilities. Are you ready to head over? We can wait if you still need to sleep.”
Crysta covered another yawn, “No, no. I’m fine. How are you feeling?”
Hugo smiled, “Much better. Thank you.”
She smiled back, “Good.”
“No, I mean really, thank you. For everything.”
Crysta’s eyes brightened, and her smile spread, “You’re welcome.”
And then they just stood there awkwardly for a few seconds before Hugo finally remembered he needed to open a portal to make any progress towards meeting up with Clem and CJ at the Phoenix Foundation.
“Holy crap what happened to you?” CJ exclaimed the second she saw them, her eyes wide. Confused, Hugo glanced down at his shirt. Oh, the blood stains. His face flushed and he mumbled something about changing real quick and backed out of the room and into his apartment. Once he’d changed into something less disturbing, he went back to the Foundation. Crysta was sitting down with CJ and Clem in the conference room, a coffee in her hand. He should have offered to take her back to her apartment to change first. He hadn’t thought of that.
“Ok, I think you guys should go first,” CJ proclaimed, glancing between them. Hugo glanced nervously at Crysta.
“Well, we were working on the inhibitor when we got a call from Charles…” Crysta began to tell the story and Hugo supported, filling in a few details towards the end when Crysta had been paying much less attention to what was going on.
“You guys got to fight zombies and a werewolf? What the hell! We got entirely normal looking people. One of them could control fire and the other two dropped pretty fast. They sucked and we were awesome. Zombies? No fair! And why’d you let him get shanked anyway, Dr. McFadden? You can control metal things!”
All of Crysta’s attention was suddenly focused on the table, “I…”
“CJ! That’s not fair, Cry-Dr. McFadden was focused on the werewolf. I should have been paying more attention to what was going on around me.”
“But…you’re no good at that. I was supposed to protect you. This meeting sucks, I’m going!” CJ stormed out of the room, slamming the door behind her. Hugo just watched after her, his mouth open.
“Oops?” Clem offered the two of them. Hugo ran a hand through his hair. Clem pulled the white strip of metal and plastic out of his pocket, pushing it towards Hugo, “There you go. Think you can do something with that?”
Hugo picked it up, turning it around. The fabric around the band was translucent, showing the faint shadows of a small circuit board underneath. “Maybe. It’ll take some time. What did you guys find out?”
Crysta stood, “I’m going to go talk to CJ.”
Clem shook his head, “She won’t listen to you right now. Give it some time.” Crysta frowned, but sat back down. “We didn’t learn much; it’s surprisingly difficult to read people while they’re sleeping. We had to follow him for quite a while to get that. It was difficult because Mary was helping him move around. I want to go back before he wakes up to find out what he knows.”
Hugo looked to the door, “But CJ’s…”
“Oh, she’ll talk to me, it’s Dr. McFadden she’s pissed at,” Clem pointed out blandly.
“But Crysta didn’t do anything!”
Clem shrugged, “Why are you trying to convince me? I’m not a 15-year-old girl.” Clem pushed away from the table, standing, “Ok. We should get going. I’ll give you a call as soon as I find out anything. Let us know if you can break the bands, it would really make my job a lot easier.”
“I’ll see what I can do. Thanks Clem.”
“I’ll try and talk to CJ, but I don’t think it’ll do much good. See ya,” Clem gave them a little wave and then left.
Hugo looked to Crysta, who was still mostly staring at the table. Shit. He couldn’t think of anything that would convince her that him getting stabbed wasn’t her fault. “Let me take you back to your apartment so you can get changed. Then we’ll go out for lunch before we get started on the armband, ok?”
Eventually Crysta nodded, standing up, “Ok.”
“What do you want?”
She put a finger to her lips and consulted the ceiling for a moment, “A sandwich?”
Seriously? “What…kind of sandwich?”
“Hmmm…a turkey club sounds really good.”
Hugo stuck his hands in his pockets and shrugged, “There’s a sandwich shop down the street, is that ok?”
She smiled, “Perfect.”
He created the portal to get her back to her place and they stepped through. He could take her anywhere, and she wanted to go to Quizno’s. A meatball sub sounded really good actually. He waited in her living room while she got dressed, awkwardly sitting on her couch, hands stiffly in his lap. She came back out looking like she hadn’t slept on the floor all night. She looked good, but then she always at least looked professional, with her skirts and button down shirts and vests. Lunch, focus on lunch. They walked to the store in complete silence, not for lack of trying on her part. Crysta seemed ready to start several conversations, but then she’d look at him and stay silent. He wanted to be more helpful in the interaction, but every time he tried to open his mouth, only the vision, the kiss that had seemed so natural at the time, would come to the surface, and that was exactly what he didn’t want to be talking about.
The sandwich shop was near-empty and so they were quickly sitting at a table and eating. Hugo caught himself staring at Crysta’s hands as she held the damp cup of soda, taking a sip from the straw. He immediately turned his attention to his meal and started eating.
He was so focused on not paying attention to her that he almost missed it when Crysta finally spoke, “You are fine, right? You’re not still hurt and just trying not to worry me?”
He shook his head, “No, no, I feel just fine. Really. Thanks.”
Crysta nodded and gave her attention to her drink again.
Lack of conversation made eating take considerably less time than Hugo thought it would. Soon they were throwing their wrappers away and stepping back outside. The wind had picked up a bit, but it was still much warmer than it had been when they’d walked in.
He wanted to speak, but he couldn’t make his thoughts fit into anything coherent. He tired really hard to comb through the information he’d learned about Vitaly so far, maybe come up with something for CJ and Clem to use, but it seemed to be monumentally difficult to not think about someone when they were walking right next to you, close enough to grab their hand, if you really wanted to…
Ok! This was getting absurd. He needed to sort out whatever was going on in his head (who was he kidding he knew exactly what was going on,) but-
“Are you tired?” Crysta was peering at him, her eyebrows drawn towards each other. He stopped short, a little surprised. His hands were shoved in his pockets and he suddenly wondered if they’d ever decided
where they were walking to; they’d already passed the office building. When he didn’t immediately answer, her frown deepened, “Hugo?”
“No…I mean…I was just thinking?” He responded hesitantly.
Her expression and tone lightened quite a bit with curiosity, her hands going behind her back, “Oh? About what?”
Oh just the exact thing he didn’t want to talk about. Hugo shrugged and watched a car pass on the street, “Nothing really.”
“Oh?” Crysta said in the ‘you’re full of shit but I’m going to humor you’ tone, “Where are we headed then?”
A cave in the mountains, perhaps? He cast his glance down the street looking for an answer, but wasn’t coming up with anything. He was pretty much all-around failing today. “I guess we should go back to the office and see if we can pick apart that armband thing.” Crysta nodded, and they headed back towards the building. He hadn’t been the only one quiet during lunch. He hoped she still wasn’t thinking about what CJ had said, but she probably was.
The Sound of Wind Page 103
