Family
( The Girl in the Box - 4 )
Robert J Crane
Just hours after finding Andromeda and crossing paths with her mother, Sienna Nealon finds herself back at the Directorate and up against a bigger threat than ever before. Omega, the organization that unleashed Wolfe and others upon her, has declared war on the Directorate and the first strikes have already landed. Facing the seemingly unstoppable forces of Omega and Sienna's own mother, the Directorate seems poised for defeat when a new threat rears its ugly head - a traitor in their midst, one that may mean the destruction of everything Sienna has come to care about.
Robert J Crane
Family
The fourth book in the Girl in the Box series
Chapter 1
One Year Earlier
I was sitting on the couch watching a stupid sitcom when she came out of her bedroom. There were times I could tell Mom was on edge, ready to pick a fight, and that was one. “You didn’t clean my bathroom,” she said. I ignored her the first time. Don’t know why I did it; it’s not like ignoring her had ever stopped her before.
She walked across the living room. The darkness from all the windows being covered was kept at bay by the lamps I had on. The dull flicker of our TV (an old, square boxy one, not the new, flat HD kind) cast shadows that jumped as it switched between scenes, casting the room in a brighter shade of bluish light. Our brown suede couch was pressed against my cheek, the smoothness of the material felt oddly warm, heating up the side of my face that lay against it. I was stretched out, the hot dogs I had eaten for dinner making me sluggish and sleepy, the smell still hanging in the air from an hour ago when I had microwaved them.
Our house was small, and the main living area was over half of the first floor. Mom didn’t even have to shout to be heard over the television, standing only ten feet away from me, at the entrance to the hallway that led to the bedrooms. “Sienna. You didn’t clean…” she said, forcing my eyes to come to her for a moment before they went back to the TV, “…my bathroom.”
“I’ll get it once my show is over,” I said, uncaring. On the screen, Neil Patrick Harris was propositioning a woman, and I wanted to see if she’d fall for his line of bull or not. I suspected she would; fictional women were prone to being blindsided by jerks who just wanted to get in their pants. I knew this because I watched an hour of TV a day and read copious amounts of books, and there was a distinct common theme when it came to most of the women I saw – get used, abused, and discarded. Bleh.
She took another step, blocking the TV, casting her shadow over me, her silhouette outlined by the light from the screen. “You’ll do it now.”
“Hey!” I sat up, all thoughts of laziness and lying on the couch evaporated, the heat already in my face from irritation.
“Your chores aren’t done,” she said, a smug, self-satisfied look on her face. “Clean the bathroom and you can finish watching it.”
I glanced at the clock. “It’ll be over by the time I get done cleaning,” I said, and pointed at the digital clock on the microwave. We didn’t own a DVR, those magical things I’d heard others talking about – on TV, only. I hadn’t left my house for as long as I could remember.
“Then I bet next time you want to watch a show you’ll make sure your chores are done before I get home,” she said, and her smile was overly sweet, patronizing.
“Really?” I asked, my studied disbelief allowing me to keep a calm I didn’t feel inside. “You’re that bent out of shape about me failing to do one little chore that you want me to shut off the TV ten minutes before the end of my show?
“No,” she said, and there was an undercurrent in the way she said it that caused my muscles to tense involuntarily. “I don’t want you to shut off the TV.” She reached down and pushed the power button on the front of the unit, and it flipped off in a flash that seemed almost in slow motion as it disappeared into a pinprick of light at the center of the screen. “I’ll take care of it for you.”
“What the—” I was on my feet in a quarter second. “I was watching that!” I knew my voice was raised; dangerous ground. I didn’t care.
“Now you’re not,” she said. “If you want to be watching it again, go clean the bathroom.”
“It’s not my fault you shed hair like a cat,” I said, not bothering to keep my voice down. “I shouldn’t have to clean up your mess!”
Her eyebrows tilted down, and I knew I was edging onto her nerves. Good. “Cleaning my bathroom, as well as yours, is something you clearly know to be part of your weekly responsibilities. This is not new. It has occurred every week for years, and is not something you simply forget and do later – it is something that you pretend to forget every so often, because you find it unpleasant. That’s a shame,” she said without any remorse. “But as an adult I find all sorts of things I do unpleasant, such as working to pay for your housing, your clothes, the food you eat, the television you enjoy—”
“When I abide by your tyrannical commands.”
“When you follow the rules,” she said, slow, steady, the cadence of the words drumming into my head. “When you do as I say. You need to learn responsibility to accompany your self-discipline, and it’s as important as any martial art I could teach you.”
“I don’t care about any of the things you want to teach me,” I said, and I heard a hiss in the back of my throat, like air escaping from an overinflated ball.
“That’s not a luxury you’re afforded,” she said, the faintest hint of dark clouds beginning to gather around her head. I was steaming, though, and I wanted to push; I could feel the heat boiling off my skin. “You’re edging closer and closer to testing the boundaries,” she said. “Do you need a reminder of what happens when you push the limits in this house?”
“What limits?” I snapped back. “Nothing is allowed in this house! Oh, wow, I get an hour of TV per day after all my schoolwork and chores and if I haven’t offended the warden! Wow, that hour of TV really makes my other twenty-three worth living; it’s a standard of living one step above life in a French prison a couple centuries ago.”
“If you’d like, I can take away your TV and your copy of ‘The Man in the Iron Mask’ as well,” my mom snarked. “Then you wouldn’t have a frame of comparison for the tragic cruelties of your life, and maybe you’d realize that you’ve got a bed to sleep in and enough food to eat, somewhere warm to live, and safety from all the other dangers you don’t even know exist out in the world—”
“Because you won’t let me out in the world to see.” I glared at her. “It’s all a big mystery, and when you walk out the door every day and shut it behind you so I can’t see what’s going on, you leave me here in the dark – unless we’re talking about the times you lock me in the box, because then you REALLY leave me in the dark—”
“Someday you’ll understand,” she said, a fire taking over in her, her hair bobbing as she shook her head. “Someday you’ll see, and realize how lucky you were I protected you all these years, kept you safe, even if you don’t like the way I do it—”
“You always say that, you self-righteous bitch!” I let it fly before I could stop myself. My shoulders and chest heaved with the reckless emotion. Mother blanched almost imperceptibly. “Protect me from what? Keep me safe from what? You won’t tell me, you won’t say a damned word about what it is that you’re saving me from. You just throw me in a metal box in order to keep me here,” I gestured at the walls around us, “in this box so we can’t talk about what goes on outside it—”
“We don’t discuss what happens outside these walls,” she almost hissed.
“I’m talking about what happens inside them,” I said. “About you locking me in. Unless it’s all a desolate, post-apocalyptic world outside, you
’re keeping me away from something.” I smiled in small triumph. “You can’t keep me in here forever, Mother. Someday—”
She moved fast, faster even than she did when we would spar in the basement while she taught me martial arts. “Not today,” she said, her face a mask and her hand gripping my upper arm, pinching into the flesh and causing me to cry out as she jerked me off-balance. “And I’ve had enough of your smart mouth, your casual disdain, your insolence—”
“And I’ve had enough of you!” I yelled, and she jerked my arm again, dragging me along behind her toward the basement. “I hate you! I hate you!”
I couldn’t see her face, but her dark hair swayed as she pulled me down the steps. I tried to resist, and halfway down I caught the railing. She pulled me so hard my sweaty fingers slipped off of it and my knee hit the floorboard. I felt the skin tear and cried out, but she never stopped. I was forced back to my feet as she half-walked, half-carried me down the stairs. When we reached the landing I tried to pull away again. I could feel the tears coursing down my cheeks, partly from rage, partly from the humiliation of having my whole person violated by being treated so roughly. I could feel the trickle of blood running down my shin under my pants.
“Someday you’ll realize,” she said, dragging me around in front of her as she stopped at the foot of the wooden stairs, “all this is for you.”
“I don’t care about someday! I hate you!”
“So be it,” she said, unflinching, unreacting, emotionless. “But you will still respect me – and the rules. And you will obey.”
She twisted my arm again and I cried out as she pulled me the last few steps toward the box. It stood a hair over six feet in height, metal, a couple feet deep and a few feet wide – big enough to imprison me easily enough – and with enough space that I could slide to my haunches and sit with my knees folded in front of me, so I could rest my head on them and fall asleep. “I’ll never respect you,” I said. “I hate you and I always will.”
“Fine,” she said, her voice iron. She pushed me into the box, and I hit the back and felt it wobble, as though it would tilt and fall over, leaving me on my back. My eyes widened but she stepped in and stabilized it with one foot, returning it to equilibrium. I had tipped it before, in the past, and it was horrible, being stuck laying flat. I preferred it the way it was, end up, and she knew it. “Don’t push me, Sienna,” she said, holding me inside. I saw her eyes, and there was something else in there, something deep, behind the irises, something beyond fire or anger. She shut the door and I heard the pin secure it – there was no escape, not now. “And I won’t push you,” she said through the small, mailslot-like hole that hovered in front of my face.
“I’m sorry,” I said, not really sorry but realizing at last, as my fury abated, that this was not where I wanted to be. “I’m sorry! Please, let me out!”
“You should spend your time in there thinking about how you’ll do things differently when you get out,” she said, her inflection dull, dead, as bored as if she were doing something menial that required no thought. Cleaning the bathroom, perhaps. “We won’t have this happen again.”
“I hate you,” I said, and I sobbed, and realized I hated myself for doing it, for showing this measure of weakness. “I wish my father were here. He would have loved me. He wouldn’t have ever done any of this to me. Not like you, you f—”
“Your father would understand,” she said, acknowledging the man even existed for only the second time since I’d known her. “This – all of this – it’s for your own—”
“You don’t care anything about my good,” I said sullenly, and stared back at her eyes. “You don’t care about me at all.”
She stared at me again, a long, uninterrupted silence between us, and I thought I caught just a waver, that certain something in her eyes, as it threatened to break loose. But after a moment it was gone, replaced by the implacable look of Mother, just as she was every time I went in – undeterred. “It’d be easier to think that’s true,” she said, voice husky. “But if it was, I’d let you out. You need to learn. Following the rules will save your life. Discipline will save your life.”
Her fingers came up and I saw them move through the slot, and it started to slide closed as I held myself together for only the seconds before it was shut, leaving the darkness to surround me. I began to sob, slowly at first, as one made its way out, then another, and another as I started to break down, great heaving emotions causing me to lay my back against the wall of the box and slide down, my arms wrapped around my knees as I sat in the darkness, alone – just like always.
Chapter 2
Now
The rocket-propelled grenade hit our car with the force of a sledgehammer against an egg, waking me out of a sound sleep. We had been on our way back from Eagle River, Wisconsin, and I had fallen asleep. It had been a long day – and night, and several more of those before this one. I don’t know when I had passed out, but I knew that most of the sleep I’d had over the last few days had taken place in hotel rooms and cars, and I was lucky that I had abilities to heal that were above normal humans, because otherwise I would have had a permanent crick in my neck.
I felt the shock of the explosion reverberate through my head as the car, already swerving, was lifted from the ground and went into a sideways roll. I felt my body jerk to the side, my head hitting the window it had been resting against, breaking it as the roof crumpled above me as it hit the road.
Everything seemed to be at half speed, as though I could see the fragments of glass rush in front of my eyes in slow motion, pelting Andromeda, who sat next to me, and Scott Byerly, who was in the seat beside her at the other window. I saw Zack and Kurt in front of us, their heads jerked to the right by the motion of the car flipping, Zack’s hands still anchored on the steering wheel.
The car came upright again, all four tires exploding from the force of our landing. My seatbelt held me tight, snug against the soft leather interior, and my head smacked the headrest. When I blinked away the feeling of disorientation, I realized that the front of the car was smoking at the hood, and the windshield was broken, only shards left, like little pebbles all stacked together around the edges of the window.
It was Scott who spoke first, bleariness heavy in his voice. “What. The. Hell. Did we just set a record by hitting the world’s largest roadkill?”
I felt a stinging pain on my forehead, and when my hand reached up, I felt sticky blood, and my fingers came away with crimson adhering to the whorls of my fingerprints. “Roadkill doesn’t explode when you hit it,” I said. “That was an RPG.”
“Again?” Scott asked. “How many is that today?”
“Don’t stop to count now,” I said, fumbling for my seatbelt. “I wouldn’t want you to strain yourself when you should be fleeing for your life.”
“Do you…ever…” Kurt was talking from in front of me, but his voice was a rasp. “Just…get serious…for a minute?” I released my seatbelt and leaned forward, looking over the seat, which was tilted at a funny angle. Kurt was arched forward, pinned against the dash, and blood was running out of his mouth. His airbag had deployed but had already deflated, looking like a used white t-shirt that hung from above the glove box, and he was mashed against it.
“Never,” I said, and clicked the release for his seatbelt. There was smoke in the air, a chemical aroma that made me want to gag. And something else, too, as I turned my head to look at Zack. “Are you okay?”
“Who, me?” He shook his head, and slapped at his airbag, which was still inflated. “My car just got hit by rocket fire on a rural Wisconsin highway. I’m pretty damned far from okay.” His hands ran along the length of his body, as though he were checking for injuries. “But I think I’m uninjured, for the most part.” He kicked his door open and started to get out.
“I am also fine,” I heard Andromeda say behind me. “But the one behind me did not fare quite so well.” I looked back at Andromeda, wondering what she meant by that. Her sandy hair loo
ked different than when I had met her, now that it was dry. She wore a tourist T-shirt that we had bought in Eagle River that had the name of the town etched on it along with a picturesque landscape reflective of that area of the northwoods, along with sweat pants.
I realized after a moment what she meant, and I cringed. “Scott, check on Reed.” I saw the blond man nod, and then lean over the seat to get to Reed, who had been sitting in the hatchback when we flipped.
“Not good,” Scott said as I tried to open my door and failed. “He’s hurt pretty bad.”
I breathed a curse, then kicked the door open, breaking it free of its hinges and sending it skidding across the pavement. I heard a noise in the distance, over the crackling of the flames that were beginning to grow under the hood of the car, a slow, steady, repetitive noise that sounded like the humming of tires against pavement when you’re in a car driving down the highway.
I knew, though, when I stepped out of the car, that it wasn’t that. The cadence was too high; it was cycling far too fast to be anything of that sort. It was something else, something that spun at a much faster rate than tires, something that was disturbing the air around it rather than beating against unrelenting asphalt. A helicopter overflew us, one of the old Hueys like the ones from Vietnam war movies, and it settled into a slow descent only a hundred yards in front of us.
The highway we had been on had two lanes, with woods running along either side past the small ditches that were placed below the sides of the road to catch runoff. There were buildings a mile behind us, a small town built on the highway, and there were a few mailboxes spaced out on the shoulder. One was only fifty feet from where I stood. “Mailboxes mean houses,” I said under my breath.
“They are no safe haven,” Andromeda said, slipping out of the car behind me to take up position at my side.
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