The Girl in the Box 03 - Soulless (11 page)

“This is your lucky day,” I said as I pressed my hand against his face. Even unconscious, I felt him squirm when the pain started. I held contact for another couple of seconds and then pulled my hand away. I could see the rise and fall of his chest, the regularity of his breathing a sign of the mercy I didn’t even know I had in me. “Don’t worry,” I said. “You won’t remember any of this.”

Chapter 10

Sienna Nealon

I awoke to a headache that felt as though a lumberjack had decided to chop down my skull. Light was shining through a window and there was a faint rattling that I was sure was between my ears, the remnants of my brain trying to escape its own stupidity for drinking too much last night. I groaned and realized that the buzzing was not in my head: it was in fact to the left of it, on the nightstand next to the hotel bed I was sleeping in.

I rolled over and grabbed my phone, slapping the talk button without bothering to check the display. I wondered for a half-second if this was what life had been like before Caller ID. “Hello?” My voice was little more than a croak.

“Hey.” I heard the quiet voice of Zack on the other end of the line and sat up, far too fast for my own good.

“Owww,” I said, my hand rushing to my temple, which felt as though it were about to explode.

“You okay?” Zack sounded a little resigned. Or cautious. Actually, it was hard to tell because the pain in my head was so sharp.

“Yes. Just...have a headache.”

“Hm. First night on a mission, away from the Directorate...” He sounded like he was brainstorming. “Let me guess, they gave you cover as an FBI agent, complete with an ID that said you were over twenty-one.”

“Should I worry that you immediately assume the worst about me?” I tried to cram some reproach into my words, but I’m pretty sure it failed. I dangled my legs over the edge of the bed. Apparently I hadn’t managed to shed my suit before I passed out.

“You should assume that I’ve been a college student at roughly your age. My fake IDs weren’t as realistic as what the Directorate can produce. Also, I’ve been on some of those ‘sit around and wait’ assignments. They’re moments of excitement followed by long stretches of boring nothing.”

“That sounds familiar.” I stood up and hung my head, because it felt better for some reason. I paused, trying to string together some thoughts. “About last night...”

“It’s all right, you don’t have to apologize. I know it’s been tense for you lately.” His voice was soothing.

“Yeah, I...wait, what?” I bristled, every muscle in my body tensing as the meaning behind what he said made it through my fog-addled brain. “What did you just say?”

There was a long pause on the other end of the line. “I...I said...”

“Did you just say
‘I
don’t have to apologize’?” I felt my jaw clench. “I know damned well I don’t have to apologize. I was just minding my own business in my room when you came in and we had a lovely conversation about how you secretly resent the fact that I can’t put out, which is something that you’ve never had the balls to say to my face.”

I waited for a response, and when it came, there was a little heat on it. “This isn’t the time to have this conversation.”

“Really?” I almost yelled at him. “When’s a good time to discuss the fact that we’ve been dating for months and can’t touch for more than two seconds per day? Wedding night? Golden Anniversary? When would be the appropriate time to talk about the fact that we can’t have sex, Zack? Please, tell me so I can write it into my schedule!”

There was the barest gap of silence on the other side. “Fine, you want to do this now? Yes, it’s grating on me, okay? But that doesn’t mean—”

“It’s grating? Grating?” I let fly with my disbelief. “Just say it, okay? It’s frustrating and it’s never going to get any better! Unless you really love the touch of heavy leather gloves, you’ll be enjoying a nice embargo of skin-to-skin contact for the rest of your life.”

“I – what? Touch of leather gloves? You mean, like—”

“I mean it’s never going to get better, Zack.” I was firm, final.

“So, what?” He didn’t even sound real on the other end of the phone. “You want to be done? Finished with me?”

It felt a little like someone was choking me, and the pain in my head was splintering, telling me to say something I didn’t really want to. “I think we’ve gone as far as you can go with me, Zack. If you ever want to have anything approaching a normal life, yeah...I think we’re finished.”

There was a smoldering quality about the way he said his next words, like there was a fire underneath every single one of them. “If that’s the way you feel—”

“It’s not the way I feel, Zack.” I should have been on the edge of panic, ending things like this. It’s not like I set out to do it the day before, when I was content on the campus, in training, and with my boyfriend. “It’s the way it is. You’re too big a boy to keep holding back; time to grow up. My life is solitary confinement – it’s a prison sentence, and you don’t deserve it, even if you do act like an ass sometimes.”

“That’s it?” I could hear the edge in his voice. “It’s over?”

“Yeah.” I didn’t have an edge in mine. I was just tired. “It’s over. Be safe in Michigan.” I pushed the end button on my phone without waiting for his reply and sagged back onto the bed, taking a deep breath. I felt a burning at the corner of my eyes, and I couldn’t believe what I’d just done.

In a way, I was sorry I hadn’t done it sooner. I mean, I kissed another guy at the bar last night, and almost got carried away. That’s not the strongest sign that things were going well in my relationship with Zack. In fact, it was probably a sign that there were some deep, serious, underlying problems. Well, one anyway. And just because I had to live the rest of my life to less than the fullest didn’t mean he had to.

There was an insistent knocking at my door and I levered myself back up and opened it to find Kat waiting. “Ariadne wants us all on the phone in an hour to make our report.”

“Fine.” I massaged my temples. “You want to come to my room or what?”

She shrugged. “Sure. I think I can have Scott up and moving by then.” She looked down at my attire and made a face. “You might consider showering and changing your clothes. You look—”

I looked down at myself, at what I was wearing. “A little ragged, yeah. I’ll do that. See you in an hour.”

I shut the door and got to work. I rummaged in my overnight bag and found pain relievers and the other drug I was taking. I popped the acetaminophen, then an equal dose of ibuprofen, then got my syringe ready for my morning injection of chloridamide. The injection was critical because if I didn’t take it, the souls of the people I’d absorbed tended to get a little...feisty...in my head. I took a deep breath and plunged the needle into a vein. I was fortunate in that I was a meta; if not for my continuously regenerating vein structure, I’d likely be out of places to inject the drug by now.

The shower brought me back to life, and after I spent a few minutes getting my hair straightened and had changed into a fresh suit, I felt worlds better. The pain was still lingering behind my eyes, but it was in the recesses of my mind rather than front and center. And it didn’t hurt to blink.

An hour later, there was a knock on my door and I opened it to find Kat, who was as sunny in her disposition as ever, and Scott, who wore sunglasses and looked as though he’d had an anvil dropped on his head. He grumbled some sort of greeting as he slouched into the room and flopped in a chair at the table. Kat sat across from him, a small smile seeming to be her only defense against laughing at both of us.

When Kat’s phone rang, I caught a nearly imperceptible twitch at the edge of Scott’s eyebrow. I might not have noticed it but for the fact I felt one myself. “Just a second,” Kat said to whoever was on the phone. She pulled it away from her ear and pushed a button. “You’re on speaker, Ariadne.”

“Get packed and get moving,” came Ariadne’s voice over the phone. “Early this morning a car was reported stolen from a parking lot in Ellsworth, Wisconsin, just across the river from you. We flagged it as a suspect vehicle on a hunch and it was found abandoned an hour ago by a police patrol in a neighborhood in Eau Claire, Wisconsin. I’m sending you the address.”

“How do we know that the stolen car is linked to our mystery robber?” The question occurred to me even through the haze in my head.

“We don’t.” Ariadne sounded tense. “But we’ve got nothing else to go on and car thefts aren’t exactly a common occurrence in Ellsworth, where the dairy cows outnumber the people twelve to one. Get moving, all right? I’ll check in with you in a few hours; we’re managing a crisis with M-Squad so I may not be quite as quick to respond right now. Stay out of trouble.” There was a click and the phone shut off.

“Ah, words of confidence and encouragement,” I said, lighter than I felt.

We were in the car and moving a few minutes later, leaving the town of Red Wing behind. We rode through downtown, which seemed to be mostly brick buildings, and got on a bridge that stretched across a wide river. On the other side a sign proclaimed that we had entered the state of Wisconsin. If I hadn’t been so hungover, I might have rejoiced at crossing my first state line. As it was, I sat in the back and tried to keep my eyes hidden behind my dark sunglasses.

After a few minutes we cleared the low lying river country and found ourselves zipping down a road with farms on either side. Cattle grazed in the pastures as the sun beat down overhead. One cow was lingering so close to the fence I could see her jaw moving while chewing her cud as we passed.

Towns and fields streaked by as I thought about Zack. I closed my eyes and tried to imagine what he was doing right now, facing off against some meta in Detroit. I truly cared for him, which was why I had to let him loose. At least, that’s how I justified it as I stared out the window, watching the endless fields of green go by. I felt like a glutton for pain, like I wanted to clutch the misery close to my heart and let it sit there. It was all for him, I told myself, and somehow that made it hurt all the more.

We took Interstate 94 east to Eau Claire, Kat driving the whole way. She didn’t have the siren roaring for this trip, though she did strategically flick it on a few times when we were caught behind slow moving cars on two lane roads. And once for a tractor.

When we got off the freeway, we followed a main thoroughfare into a stretch of commerce, and then turned onto a side street. It was past noon, and the sun was directly overhead, bright and glaring. Kat kept the car under the speed limit as we followed the GPS to the address Ariadne had sent us. There was a car, an old Dodge, parked on the curb. We came to a stop behind it and I looked around. There was no sign of movement, nothing.

I opened my door and stepped out into the boiling midday heat. The humidity once again gave my skin an immediate sensation of moistness and I felt the beads of sweat start to gather on my forehead. “Never thought I’d wish the sun away,” I muttered under my breath. I caught a chuckle of appreciation from Kat. Scott just grunted.

The three of us approached the Dodge the way we might have approached a corpse; slow, tentative, and with undue caution. “No one inside,” I said. “We’ll need to check the trunk.” I looked around the street once more. The residents of Eau Claire clearly had enough sense to stay in during this awful weather, though a lawn sprinkler was going off a couple doors down.

“You think there’s anything here?” It was Kat that answered. Her blond hair was up in a tight bun today, and her petite frame and dark sunglasses coupled with her black jacket really did make her look like an FBI agent. I felt another tingle of annoyance; the girl could just look good regardless of circumstances.

Scott leaned over the passenger window and reached his hand through. “Glass is broken here.” He pushed a button on the dash and I heard the locks disengaging and the trunk springing open.

I walked to the rear of the car, my hand hovering just over my gun. I edged around the trunk lid and sighed when I looked down. “Nothing. A blanket, a spare tire and a jack.”

“Sounds like all the ingredients for a redneck first date—” Scott said with a smile that was cut short by a sizzling sound. His body jerked, his face drew tight and his sunglasses flew off as he spasmed, a peculiar blue light dancing over him like little bolts of lightning running across his suit.

“Kat, down!” I shouted and barely had time to hit the pavement before a bolt of electricity shot past me and hit the car. I rolled across the lawn and came up with my pistol, a Sig Sauer P250. I loved my meta powers, but they weren’t a hell of a lot of use at range – or against something that shot lightning bolts.

“Too late.” The voice was low and gravelly. I saw Kat lying on the street behind the car, splayed out on the ground with three guys in black tactical vests huddled around her and Scott. Two others stood at either bumper of the car, covering me with weapons of their own, big shiny silver ones that reminded me of the kind the Directorate used to bring down stray metas. Their leader was standing over Kat, an assault rifle in his hands and pointed at me. “Now are you gonna give yourself up or are we gonna be leaving your body to go rancid in the heat?”

Chapter 11

I stared him down, my gun aimed at his comrade who was standing to my right. Assuming they were human, even my meta speed and my skill with the pistol wouldn’t be enough to save me from getting blasted by at least one of them. I took a closer look; their vests were bulky, which told me that they were likely kevlar. I considered trying to aim for their heads instead of center mass, but dismissed it as a bad idea. Aiming for a small target in my first combat shoot seemed like a recipe for failure. Besides, even with a vest the bullets would put a full grown man on the ground in a world of hurt.

“So what are you gonna do?” Their leader spoke again, and I saw the others flick their eyes toward him. “Live or die, your choice.”

“I’m somewhat attached to the former,” I said, keeping my gun trained on the rightmost enemy.