Alone: The Girl in the Box, Book 1

by Robert J. Crane

  ~

  Fourteen

  That ended Zack’s questions, thank God. He said some more things after that, but I missed pretty much all of it. My head was buzzing and I couldn’t focus. I forgot that I was hungry and as soon as I could get away from him I did, leaving him in the cafeteria. He extracted a promise from me that we would talk more soon, and I didn’t argue because I didn’t have the energy.

  Ever been in a fight that gets really emotional, and you may have been feeling absolutely wonderful five minutes earlier but suddenly you’re just exhausted? That was me; all my energy was shot and I dragged myself back to my dormitory. I crashed on my bed, but I didn’t fall asleep. Instead I thought about Mom again; of the last time I saw her, when she shut the door on me, even as I was screaming, hammering my palms against the steel and begging her not to – and then she peered at me through the little sliding door, her eyes looking into mine, and she said something different than the hundreds of other times she’d put me in.

  “Whatever you may think, I do this all for your own good.” I wasn’t in a position to pay attention at the time (I was as distressed when I went into the box as a cat being dunked in water – I’ve seen it on TV) but her look was different than usual. Less spiteful. Less vengeful. Less pissed. I might have seen a trace of sadness in her eyes, though I didn’t recognize it at the time.

  Then she shut the little door and left me in the darkness.

  I thought about her again, concentrating hard, trying to focus on her as I drifted off to sleep. I awoke the next morning, an alarm going off beside the bed. I hadn’t set it, but it was blaring. I looked at the clock and realized it was timed so I didn’t miss my appointment with Dr. Sessions. Someone from the Directorate must have done it, fearing (probably rightly) that I didn’t much care if I made them wait. Probably Ariadne. That bitch.

  I thought about blowing it off, but the truth is I was curious. After all, they kept telling me I was meta-human, and I believed it, but I wondered what other abilities I might have. I was hoping for flight, because that would be cool.

  When I got to Dr. Sessions’s office, he was sitting behind his desk, looking at something. When he heard me enter he turned and pushed his glasses back up his nose and looked through them at me. “There you are.” He began nodding and picked up a tablet computer that sat next to the laptop on the desk. “Have a seat; I need to have you fill out this questionnaire before we begin…” He handed me a clipboard and pen, then turned to walk away. I gave him a quick smile of thanks, which caused him to back away. I sighed internally. Even when I wasn’t trying to, I could drive people away from me.

  The questionnaire took an annoyingly long time and asked some invasive personal questions (“How many sexual encounters have you had in the last seven days? Two weeks? Month? Six months? Year? Five years?”) Not like it was a difficult one, since until a few days ago I’d had zero human contact outside of Mom.

  There were other ones that delved into health history, how I was feeling, when was the date of my last physical (“Never!” I printed in big, bold letters), when I first noticed a difference in my abilities – and on it went for a hundred and fifty questions, covering both the important (“Do you have any known allergies?”) to the mundane (“When was your last bowel movement?”). I thought about scrawling “None of your damned business” but ultimately I just answered the questions – almost all – truthfully.

  The last question – “Describe in detail any unusual abilities or skills” – gave me pause. Part of me wanted to know more, to find out what kind of meta I was. Okay, all of me wanted to know. But that was tempered by the fact that I had only been here for three days and still had zero idea of who (if anyone) I could trust. If I told them I suspected I could use my dreams to communicate with others, would that be considered some kind of power or a sign that I was slipping in the sanity department? I believed I could talk to Reed through my dreams, but it was too weird to consider normal and as yet too unconfirmed for me to know with certainty I could do it. After all, it could have been his power, not mine.

  I answered the question, “Superior Strength, Speed, Agility and Intelligence” (no, I didn’t put a smiley next to the intelligence part) and left any other suspicions off. As I had filled out the form, the doctor had milled around the lab, adjusting various pieces of equipment, humming as he skittered about.

  He noticed me after a minute or so, and favored me with a smile as he approached. “We’re going to do some physical tests next, then I’ll give you this – a standard, multiple choice I.Q. test – and we’ll see how you do.”

  For the next three hours, he put me through my paces. I thought maybe I had pissed him off in some way, because he was not kind in his efforts to “test” me. I ran on a treadmill at the highest setting for a long time, well past the point where I was bored and into the realm of thinking of casting myself into the place where the tread meets the plastic at the back, hoping to end my life with the added benefit that perhaps the running would stop as well. It couldn’t have been an ordinary treadmill because I swear I had to be running at fifty miles an hour.

  He made me breathe into a machine (to test my lung capacity), had me lift weights (I cursed him because there was no measure of how much they weighed and he refused to tell me) and hit a punching bag. Then he handed me rubber balls and had me throw them at a target on a wall at full strength, which I did (until I turned all three of them into pancakes).

  “It would have been easier if you would have taken your gloves off,” he said, looking over his glasses at me.

  “Sorry, Doc. Rule number four.”

  A look of confusion swept over his face. He led me over to a table in the corner. “One last thing.” He bade me to sit.

  “The intelligence test?”

  “Two more things. First—” He reached onto the table and picked up a needle along with a strip of rubber. “I need blood.”

  My eyes narrowed. “I would suggest trying your local blood bank, because you’ll get none from me.”

  He didn’t smile. “In order to analyze—”

  “Test what you have, Doc,” I said in a voice that I hoped didn’t allow for argument, “if none of that pans out, we’ll talk about a blood draw in the future.”

  He stood there for a moment, looking like he was a broken robot, his head shaking in a twitchy fashion while he tried to come up with a response. He must have failed, because he never said anything, just tossed the I.Q. test on the table and shuffled away.

  I attacked the test with a certain frustration. It was easy, and I used the pen provided to violently circle my answers on the multiple choice form. As I did, thoughts of the agents I had gotten killed kept running through my head. Zack had worked with all of them. He didn’t seem that bent out of shape by the fact they were dead.

  Kurt did. That was an honest reaction. Hannegan had already disliked me; now he hated me. I circled answer D, responding to a question about square roots, bringing the pen around to give it an extra loop, and nearly tore through the paper. Whoops. Gotta be careful with super strength, I guess.

  But Zack? He was more concerned about things that happened to me (an almost total stranger) instead of worrying about his co-workers being dead because of me. I came to the conclusion that he had to be planted. Like Ariadne, he was restraining his emotions, putting them in the backseat to focus on the job at hand. Had to be.

  Which meant Ariadne and Old Man Winter probably told him to get close to me, because he was the nearest to my age of all their people. And hot. H-O-T. Ariadne may be dumb, but I doubted she was blind enough to miss that little fact. And Old Man Winter himself said I was more important than a hundred of their agents.

  That was a harrowing boost to the ego, let me tell you. There wasn’t much on the I.Q. test about history, which was a shame because it was one of my best subjects. It wasn’t the first time in history someone’s life had been prioritized over another’s. Not even close. But when I heard him say it,
it started to worry me about the Directorate.

  It got me wondering if they were some sort of racial superiority group, focused on putting meta-humans into a power position. Or maybe Old Man Winter was just that screwed up in his priorities, that he could cast a hundred human lives aside without losing any sleep over it.

  Or maybe he was losing sleep over it. It wasn’t like I knew him well enough to tell.

  I finished the last question and looked around for the doc, but he was gone. He must have walked out while I was focused on the test. I left it on the table and walked out of the lab, heading out into the cold air thinking I might finally get that meal I had been craving since last night. A blast of windblown snow hit me in the face as I left the lab and hiked across the campus. I marveled at how smooth it looked.

  I found the cafeteria crammed for breakfast. In fact, based on the size of the room there had to be at least a couple hundred people in there. I had only visited in off-peak times so to see it full was quite the surprise. There were men in suits scattered through the room, as well as other men and women dressed in work attire of various sorts, and a smattering of people I assumed were metas dressed in casual clothes, jeans, t-shirts, most of them younger than the folks dressed professionally.

  As I walked to where the line formed to get food, my stomach rumbled. It coincided with a hush falling over the cafeteria – a slow, steady lowering of the volume level. I got a tray and began filling it. I was hungry, and not for broccoli. As I worked my way to the end of the line I started to overhear murmurings from both the workers behind the counter and people talking in the rest of the cafeteria.

  “…that’s her…”

  “…got all those agents killed…”

  “…heard some crazed meta named Wolfe is hunting her…”

  “…she did it on purpose…”

  “…eight of them dead, almost got Kurt and Zack too…”

  “…crazy bitch.”

  The last one caught my attention, but I restrained myself before I whipped around to confront whoever had said it. I realized my hearing had not gotten sensitive, that most of the people were speaking loud enough for me to hear them. Which meant they were looking for a reaction. My eyes scanned the crowd as I left the line with my tray. The professionally dressed people looked away. About ninety percent of the folks in casual dress did likewise if they saw me look at them; a quick, furtive glance here and there if they got “caught.”

  But a few of the men in suits – the agents – were speckled throughout the crowd, and their looks were hard, hiding behind furrowed brows and cold eyes. And a small contingent of the casually dressed – the metas – were glaring and not bothering to hide it. They were all concentrated around one table.

  I stared back at them, defiant. Yeah, I screwed up. But good luck getting me to admit it in public. I didn’t bat an eye as their ringleader, a young guy probably only a few years older than me, gave me the stare-down right back. He had short dark hair and a nose that rounded a little at the end. The look of spite in his eyes overpowered his other features, turning what might otherwise have been a nice smile into something that looked more like a downward facing crescent moon.

  I saw a small table empty in the far corner where the two windowed walls met each other – maybe the last unoccupied table in the place. Not a friendly face in sight, just a lot of people shunning me and a few more that were clearly pissed. Perfect. I pondered just carrying my tray out the door and back to my room where I could eat in comfortable solitude, but something in me resisted it.

  I’d been alone for years. Locked away, trapped, whatever. It didn’t bother me if I had to eat by myself. In a lot of ways, especially right now, doing that would have been the easiest choice. But still, my brain resisted the notion, urging me to not let these people get to me, to not run away and hide.

  So when I picked my path to the empty table I made sure it went right past the group of metas that were scowling me down.

  I waited to see if they would speak as I approached. I even pondered being a real ass and inviting myself to sit down in one of the empty seats at their table, but decided against it. I may not have been looking to make friends, but I didn’t want to actively cultivate enemies if I didn’t have to.

  I just wanted to…confront them. Just a bit.

  I almost didn’t get my wish. They kept silent and a few even broke off their glares as I approached. I returned each hostile look in kind, until finally I rested my eyes once more on the young man: the ringleader, judging by the vibe I was getting off him. He didn’t look away. He was waiting to see if I’d flinch.

  I didn’t. But neither did he. He stood up as I passed. Damn. Thought I was gonna make it by.

  “Hey,” he called out. “Friends of mine got killed on your stupid errand.”

  “I’m sorry about your friends,” I said with an astounding level of calm for the tension I was feeling inside. I think I meant it.

  “‘Sorry’ doesn’t bring them back.” His glare was piercing.

  “Neither does anything else I can do.” The acerbic edge to my statement was probably what pissed him off. “Unless I have some amazing powers of resurrection I have yet to discover.”

  His look got angrier, thanks to narrowed eyes and a snarl on his lips. “They stuck their necks out for you.”

  “Far be it from me to suggest otherwise. But they also died doing the jobs that they took on, that Old Man Winter sent them to do. They knew there was a risk Wolfe could be there.” I had stopped my forward motion and waited for Mr. Angry to reply. Might as well get this out of the way, and if I was lucky I could get the entire cafeteria off my back in one move.

  “So you’re one of the self-superior metas that gives the rest of us a bad name.” His arms were folded across his body. “Don’t really care if a bunch of humans die, so long as you get what you want.”

  I had a feeling that one was going to sting later but for now I pushed it aside and focused on my reply. “That’s not what I said.”

  His chin jutted out. “But it’s what you meant.”

  “Oh, is your power to read minds? No? Then don’t tell me what I meant.” I looked back at him with a gut full of defiance. I’d likely be blaming myself again later for the deaths, but I wasn’t going to let him burn me with it; not now. “If I could do it all over again, I wouldn’t have gone back. But I can’t and I have to live with what happened. And you can take your rage and fire it up your ass.”

  He didn’t say anything, but his jaw hardened and his nostrils flared. I realized that the pretense of standing there if I wasn’t looking for a fight was pretty flimsy, so I made my way to the table. I sat down and looked out the window, trying to ignore all the stares from behind me.

  A figure came up from behind a few minutes later and slid the chair out without asking. I was ready to gripe when I looked up. “Oh, it’s you.”

  Zack sat down. “What are you doing here?” He cast an almost furtive look around. People were still staring. “It’s not the most comfortable environment to be eating your lunch in, is it?”

  I took another forkful of beef and chewed it while I pondered my response. “You mean because everyone in the room hates me?”

  “That’s not true,” he said. “I don’t hate you.”

  “Kudos to you for being the only one.” I feigned applause for a couple beats before reaching down with my fork and spearing a bite of stray roast with unnecessary force. “So this is what being the school outcast would have felt like. I didn’t really miss much being locked away all these years.” My voice quavered and came out much lower. “Not that it matters.”

  “It doesn’t matter if anybody likes you?” His voice carried a hint of skepticism.

  “Nope. I’ve lived my entire life without the approval of any of these people. I suspect I can live the rest of it the same.” I stabbed another piece of beef. “Especially considering how short it’s likely to be.”

  “We can protect you from Wolfe i
f you stay,” he said, his tone soothing.

  “Oh boy,” I said with mock enthusiasm. “I can spend the rest of my life wandering the halls of this place, feeling useless and listless and trapped, just like when I was at home – except here I’m surrounded by people who hate me.” As if to punctuate my statement, I pushed my tray away. I was done.

  “At least nobody here will lock you in a metal box for days at a time,” he replied, a touch defensive.

  “My entire life is boxes.” I twirled the fork before setting it down on my discarded plate. “First I was trapped in my house or in the box; now I’m trapped on your campus. Most people are trapped in their towns, or their jobs, or their way of life. We go through life in our little boxes until we find ourselves in the last one, buried in the ground.”

  My tone was rueful, and I didn’t care how general I was being. I was in a foul, depressive mood. I suspected that this guy, the only one in my life to ever show an interest in me (other than Reed, I guess), was doing it to spy on me for his boss, and I found myself longing for the simplicity of my house, where at least I knew where I stood. Act out, Mom gets pissed and I get stuck in the box. Simple.

  He pushed back from the table. “That’s a bit—”

  “‘A bit’ what? Accurate? Morbid?” I laughed. “It’s a bit irrelevant. I’ll stay here, milking the security of your Directorate for all it’s worth, because I’ve got nowhere else to go and there’s no way I can beat Wolfe. So I’ll wait, and bide my time, and hope that when your much vaunted M-Squad comes back they can find a way to kill him so I can at least have the luxury of deciding where I want to go and what I want to do with the rest of my life.”

  “It doesn’t have to be this way.” His voice was soft, almost lost in the din of the cafeteria conversations. “You could work with us here, build a life at the Directorate.”

  “And what? Join M-Squad? Be a test subject? Hang out like all these other metas, waiting for – what? I don’t even know what they do here!” My hand gesticulated toward the table of metas that had accosted me earlier. “Part of me just wants to go home. And the rest of me…” My voice cracked.

  “What?” He leaned forward but kept his hands far from mine. I could see the intensity in his eyes, the concern, and it just pissed me off all the more because I was so sure it was fake and I wanted it to be real, more than anything. “What do you want?”

  I froze, and I knew in that moment I was on the brink of tears. Suck it up, I told myself. I took a moment to compose my emotions, shoving them into the back of my mind. I’m tough. I made the decision not to let even an ounce of feeling into my voice. “I don’t know.” It came out more brittle than I would have hoped, but it still sounded strong. “And it doesn’t matter right now, because my only priority is survival.” He nodded almost sadly as I stood up. “Everything else comes later.”

  I left the cafeteria, head in a spin. I waited around my room for a while, not really sure what to do. There was a flatscreen TV hanging from the wall, but I didn’t see a point in watching anything. I didn’t really miss it that much after not watching for a few days.

  I settled on going to the gym, which I did in spite of the fact that Dr. Sessions had paired me with the treadmill from hell earlier. I stuck with a recumbent bike for my self-directed cardio, and whaled on a heavybag that a trainer assured me was made especially for metas (she told me this with a very friendly attitude until someone came up and whispered to her, at which point her disposition matched the weather outside). So I hit the heavybag even harder, punishing it for every bad decision I’d made lately, imagining the face of that guy in the cafeteria as I belted it another one, then wished I could pound Wolfe like I was pounding it. Unfortunately, Wolfe hit back.

  After I finished I went back to my room and showered. I checked the time and found that it was mid-afternoon. I hung around a little longer. Someone had left me an e-reader. After reading for an hour or so I realized it was basically the same as a book but more convenient, and the novelty wore off. I’ve read lots of books.

  At four thirty I decided I could get dinner and that it’d be early enough to dodge most of the crowd at the cafeteria. Besides, the sun would be down by 5:30, so I might as well be ready to sleep when it got dark. I decided I’d try and dream of Mom or Reed again. Probably Mom, since I wanted to prove I could contact others in their dreams and I’d talked to Reed twice already.

  The cafeteria was near empty, and I snaked as much food as I could, keeping a careful watch on what went on my plate. It’s not that I thought the workers would do something evil; it’s just I’ve seen enough on TV detailing what wait staff do to the food of people they don’t like to make me paranoid. It adds another dimension to being hated.

  The dinner was chicken, and it was good. I managed to creep out of the dining hall just as it started to get busy. A few poisonous looks and some stage-whispered comments that lacked originality were my reward for lingering too long. A hall clock told me it was 5:45. The sun, which I still hadn’t seen, was either down or the cloud cover it was hiding behind was thick, because it was dark outside.

  I paused by a window in the corridor outside my room and stared across the grounds. What would Mom think of all this? I wondered. Where was she? Why did she leave? I swallowed hard. What caused her to flee? Was she in trouble?

  Was it me?

  The smells of dinner filled my nose as the volume of the crowd in the cafeteria was on a steady rise, so loud now I could hear them from where I was on the other side of the building. Most of the professionals had gone home for the day, but the casually dressed metas passed me in the hall, on their way to evening meal. Their conversations were excited, those of people among friends, and they dropped off when they saw me.

  I realized I had been staring out the window at a lamp for the last five minutes. Going to the gym to work out again didn’t appeal to me, and I had a feeling Dr. Sessions wouldn’t be getting back with my results this evening. I thought of Mom again and knew that what I wanted was to go to sleep and try to dream of her.

  I walked down the hall to my door and opened the handle. It wasn’t locked, because I didn’t have a key for it. Since everyone hated me, I supposed I should get a key, so that no one could sneak into my room while I was away.

  I closed the door and flipped the light switch and realized that I was, by far, too late, because not only had someone snuck in while I was at dinner, but they had stayed to wait for me.

  “Hello, little doll,” came the whispered, throaty voice of Wolfe, towering above me. His hand came down and grabbed me around the neck while I was still too stunned to react. “Wolfe has been waiting for you.” He pulled me close to him and I felt his hot, stinking breath on my face, then felt the warm wetness of his tongue licking my cheek. “It’s time to play.”