Omega The Girl in the Box

25.



I ran down the hall, to the other staircase on the opposite side of the building, the darkness at the end of the hallway enveloping me. The thought that Omega wasn’t here to kill anyone overwhelmed me, and I shuddered to think under what circumstances he might have convinced me to join him, now or in the future. He seemed so sure, and with every word he had said, my certainty grew less and less, until I was left to defend by anger that which I wasn’t sure I even had a defensible position for. I could feel the fury burning inside me, an almost physical reaction, as though I were having heartburn. The still air in the headquarters drove me mad as I dashed up the lighted staircase.

An emergency exit waited on the landing and I pushed through it, felt the resistance against my arms as I opened it and stepped out into the cold. At least five buildings were burning in my field of vision as my feet stepped off the concrete path. The night air was frigid, and I felt it seep through the cracks of my clothing, through the bottom of my jacket to where my shirt had come untucked in all the running, biting at the skin around my belly as I ran off toward the darkened dormitory, the glass and concrete reflecting the fires of the buildings burning all around like some sort of window into hell.

I didn’t see Janus or his party, even though they had (I assumed) exited out the front of the building. Perhaps they were lingering in the lobby, perhaps they had other plans. Either way, I ran for the dormitory. I threw open the glass door when I got there, and saw shadowed faces huddled in the entry; Kurt was up front, his electric-shock cannon in his hands. “Time to leave,” I said, winded from my run.

“What the hell is happening here?” he asked.

“Omega is destroying the campus,” I said, hands on my knees. “You need to get the students out of here. Head for the woods, and don’t get near any of the buildings that are still standing.” I felt a certain grimness as I said it. “They won’t be for long.”

Kurt looked around, his fat face turning on his wad of a bullfrog-like chin. He just looked stunned, unbelieving. “Where am I supposed to go after that?”

“Clear the damned campus,” I said, “worry about the rest later.”

He seemed to freeze like that, and then, haltingly, came back to motion. “All right, everyone,” he shouted, turning back to the few metas behind him, “we’re getting the hell outta here. Follow me, we’re heading to the fence at the edge of campus.”

I saw a flash of movement behind me, and heard a shout of warning from a face in the crowd before I saw what was coming. The glass shattered, exploding in a hail, little shards dragging across my cheek and forehead as I hurried to cover my face with my hands. I tried to look out but something dark and shadowed hit me, knocking me through the freestanding directory posted in the middle of the lobby. I burst through it, feeling the plastic break on both sides as I crashed into the cafeteria wall. My arm hurt to even move, though I fought through the pain, trying to get to my feet.

An enormous shadow stepped through the Sienna-sized hole in the sign, breaking it apart and sending it clattering to the ground. “Hello, Cookie,” came the voice from the hulking mass of Bjorn, “I was talking to Fries and we don’t really like the fact that you’re just gonna walk away from this after humiliating both of us the way you did.”

I pushed off the wall and tottered on my feet, feeling my balance return, my equilibrium coming back after a world-ending sucker punch. “Oh?” I knew I was dazed, needed to buy a moment of time. A repartee such as “Oh?” was not going to do it. “Well, I don’t think your boss is going to be terribly happy with your line of thinking here.” I blinked, trying to figure out what to say. “If he ever is. I’m guessing you’re not the kind of guy who gets paid to think.”

“Always the smart mouth,” he said, and started toward me again. “You always have a smart-assed comment, don’t you?”

“I’ve always found it preferable to having some dumb-assed thing to say.” I steadied myself, trying to brace as he approached me. “I don’t think you’ve learned that lesson yet, which is sad, because it sounds like you’re really old compared to me—”

He moved toward me fast, and I saw a crow in my mind’s eye again ,a dark shadow in flight, and it froze me. I felt him hit me, a short, low punch to the gut that rocketed me into the wall, higher up this time, and I fell something like eight feet to the ground in a crunch of pain that left me breathless. “I bet I can beat that sarcasm out of you. I bet I can make you scream it out. Really, all you need to adjust your attitude is a good beating, a few dozen broken bones to set you straight—”

The flash of lightning that hit him was epic. I’d always seen the weapon that Kurt used fired in light or at least semi-light places. In the darkness it was as though Eleanor Madigan had unleashed everything at him, and it took a moment for me to realize it was Kurt, standing behind him, uber-taser cannon firing into Bjorn’s back, causing the big man to buck from the fury of it. He didn’t fall, though, not completely, instead dropping to one knee as the discharge of lightning halted, leaving Bjorn bathed in a blue glow as the electricity died. “I don’t think you’re gonna be beating anyone today, you steroid-pumping freak.” Kurt’s face was lit by the glow of the barrel. “Now back the hell away from her before I light your ass up with another 1.21 gigawatts.”

I pushed to my feet again, ignoring the pain in my shoulder. “Did you just make a movie reference?”

“It was one of my favorites,” Kurt said, keeping the weapon trained on Bjorn, who was still on one knee.

“You attack me with lightning?” Bjorn spoke, a low rumbling, and I saw his head shift toward the side to look at Kurt. “Me? The son of Odin? Do you know who my brother was?” He stood, and I swore he was even taller as he stared down at Kurt. “I’ve been taking hits from lightning bolts since I was no bigger than a foal—”

“Did you say fool?” I asked and launched myself at Bjorn before he could take a step toward Kurt. Fair was fair, after all, and he had just saved my life, even though I knew I was going to pay for this one. “You’re still a fool, though you’re a bigger one these days than you probably were then—” I tackled him, causing him to slowly begin to tilt over. I brought my working arm up and clobbered Bjorn in the jaw with the hardest punch I had in me, then another as we started to fall to the ground. “And you have to tell me—did your brother look like Chris Hemsworth? Because—”

“Enough!” He hit me with a backhand that caused me to flip off of him. I heard a popping in my jaw as I spun through the air and hit the ground. Another flash drew his attention away, and I saw Kurt fire three times in rapid succession. A red light lit up on Kurt’s face, and I knew from experience that the weapon was running out of charge. I threw myself at Bjorn again, more pain overwhelming me than I knew I could honestly take. I grasped at his leg and he kicked me in the head, hard. I faded out for a moment and awoke as I saw Kurt get lifted and thrown through the glass doors, the shadows wrapping around my eyes as I thought about the time limit I had left to get out of the dormitory before it exploded.

Bjorn let out a roar at the kids, the students, the metas that were here to be protected by the Directorate. A stray thought washed through my mind, wondering where M-Squad was when they should be protecting the kids, but that disappeared quickly. A lone figure stepped out of the crowd, interposing himself between Bjorn and the rest of them, and my eyes, though unfocused, recognized Joshua Harding’s glasses even before I saw his face, that still damnably familiar face.

“All the little children of the Directorate,” Bjorn said, a tickle of glee in his voice. “Little sheep. You’ll all be part of our flock soon.” The big man focused on Harding. “It looks like someone needs to be culled from the herd. Our success as metas is predicated on strength. The weak, the stupid, they should not live, polluting our bloodlines to the next generation.” He closed on Joshua, shoulder down, as though ready to charge, “They should be killed before infecting us with their—”

“I’m afraid I disagree,” I said, leaping onto Bjorn’s back, my hands free of their gloves. I jammed my skin against his neck, holding on tight, “though in your case I am sorely tempted to make an exception to that ‘no killing’ rule I’ve got going.” I felt the throb of blood in his veins as I wrapped my fingers around his throat. He bucked, trying to throw me off his back, his hands prying at mine, trying to wrench them free. I felt the first pull of my power at work, felt the tug of his soul against mine, heard the first grunt of pain from him as his strength began to fail. He screamed, and his legs buckled, and I rode him to the ground, catching it with my feet, holding him in a sleeper hold as he flailed ineffectually against me.

“No,” he said in a strained moan, “please...I don’t want to...not with you, not my soul...”

“Don’t worry,” I said, and let him go before punching him in the jaw so hard I heard it break. “I have standards, you know. And frankly, my psycho-mutant quota is filled for five lifetimes.” I let his limp body slip from my grasp. “Looks like you’ll live to be a moron for another day, Bjorn,” I said to his unconscious form. “Bad news for you, worse news for the rest of us.”

“Hey,” a voice came to me, waking me from the slight trance I seemed to be in, squatted as I was over Bjorn’s fallen form. It was Harding. “You said the building was gonna blow up, remember?”

“Yes. Right.” I hoisted Bjorn onto my shoulder. “Let’s go, people!” I shouted, rallying the half-dozen or so teenagers. They were huddled, frightened after the battle they’d just witnessed, their hushed voices bouncing off the walls. “Last one out gets to die in a horrible explosion.” I gestured to Joshua. “Pick up Kurt, will you?”

He raised an eyebrow at me, then looked at the fallen form of Hannegan, lying prostrate in the glass partition between the doors that led out of the dormitory. “He’s kind of a big guy.”

“What, you haven’t manifested yet?” I said, drawing an ire-filled look. “I just saved your life, remember?”

I caught subtlety from him, and saw that confidence again. “Maybe someday I’ll repay the favor,” he said as he made for Hannegan, stepping gingerly out of the broken glass hole that Hannegan’s body had made when Bjorn had thrown it out the window. We fled, Harding and I following the last of the kids out of the dormitory and reaching a safe distance of about a hundred yards away as the building burst into a ball of fire. The force of the explosion threw me off my feet, sending Bjorn to the ground and me ass over teakettle into a bed of leaves.

I looked up at the orange glow all around me, saw the chill of my breath fog the air, felt the pains in my body—shoulder, back, ribs. I could smell the acrid smoke of all the destruction wrought, could almost taste the stench in the air, the oily, chemical flame smell from the campus burning—my home. I tilted my head in time to watch the headquarters go up in a blast of flame and force, the biggest explosion of the night. I felt a quiver in the ground, and I wondered where Zack was, where Old Man Winter and Ariadne were—where M-Squad was.

“You okay?” Harding spoke from above me, still holding Kurt on his shoulders, hands anchored to Hannegan’s back and pants leg.

“I’ll be fine,” I said, forcing myself to sit up and clutching my shoulder to me. “You take Hannegan and the others and get to the woods. Get off campus. Do what I told Hannegan to do and find a way out of here.”

He stared back at me through the glasses, and he looked unbowed, cool. More than I felt, that was for sure. “Come with me.”

“Can’t do that,” I said, and I stood, feeling like a zombie coming back to life. I saw the others that were with us, the kids, saw them all recovering from the force of the explosion; it looked like almost every one of them had been knocked off their feet as well. “There’s only a few of you; get to safety. Get a headcount, move together, and I’ll be along in a little bit, once I finish searching for survivors.”

He watched me carefully. “Looking for your boyfriend?”

I sighed. “Among others.” I couldn’t see much motion through the smoke and shadows that now filled the once-peaceful, tree=lined campus. “Get ‘em out of here, Joshua. Keep them safe.”

He shrugged, no mean feat with Hannegan on his shoulders. “I’ll get ‘em out of here. But I’m going my own way once they’re clear. I’ve got things to do.”

I shook my head, in no mood to argue. “Fine. Whatever. Thanks for your help.”

“So long, Sienna,” he said, carrying Kurt on his shoulders and waving to the others as I watched them fall in behind him in a sort of procession, the flickering flames of our campus lighting their passage through the smoke and destruction—their passage through hell. “I’ll see you again.”

“Why do I not doubt that?” I asked as the last of them disappeared into the smoke being blown from the dormitory fire. I heard a moan from Bjorn and I stomped on his face out of pure pique. The moaning stopped, and I stood there for a long moment, staring at the dormitory—and the wreckage of my life.