Omega The Girl in the Box - By Robert J. Crane Page 0,22

you so, Ariadne’.” I frowned. “Assuming I survive.”

She squinted at me with one eye crinkled, slightly appalled. “‘Chris Hemsworth-like abs’?”

“You wouldn’t understand,” I said, and started up the stairs. “The point is, I’m not the biggest believer in luck, but Omega has this tendency to whack us every time we underestimate them. It’s like turning the crank on a jack-in-the-box, and when the damned song is over, the jack pops out with a mallet and beats the hell out of you.”

“Wait...what?” She shook her head. “You’re talking about abs and jack-in-the-boxes. This is a straightforward mission. Go to Des Moines, do recon, if it looks bad, call for backup. Don’t endanger your team unnecessarily. There’s no shame in admitting you might be in over your head if you see something suspicious. We can dispatch the rest of M-Squad if needed.”

I paused at the top of the stairs. “Yeah, all right.”

“Are you sure you’re okay with this?” She halted next to me, her eyes looking into mine with the barest hint of concern. “You don’t normally get worked up about these things—you’re cool, calm, efficient—not predisposed to rattling on about jinxes or some faux God of Thunder’s abs. If you don’t want the assignment, it’s fine. I’ll send M-Squad.”

“It’s not that,” I said, feeling my fingers wrap around the thick metal safety rail. “It’s just...” I halted. “These guys sent Wolfe after me and Henderschott. They tried to get Fries in my pants, then flipped Mormont—or whatever you called it—and turned loose a couple of bloodthirsty vampires to try and catch me.” I shook my head. “It feels like every time we’ve got a grasp on what we’re dealing with, something else comes popping out that’s more horrific than the last thing they set loose.”

“You think Henderschott, Mormont and the vampires were worse than Wolfe?”

I felt myself freeze and stiffen, all motion stopping around my body. “No. Nothing is worse than Wolfe. And nothing has stayed with me like him, either.”

“Yes, well, having a monster stuck in your head isn’t the sort of thing that goes away, I suppose,” she said. “This is our best chance to get to what Omega’s doing now, and if you don’t feel comfortable with it—”

“I’m going,” I said, firm, feeling it all the way down. “I’m just...cautious, okay? They’re not world-renowned for coming at us open-handed. You’ve got their slimy mouthpiece in there, and he’s just grinning up a storm, like he’s just having a conversation with us sitting on his couch. It worries me that Fries is so cool. They must have known we’d come for him—that I would, after what he did.”

“He hid,” Ariadne said. “He changed identities, he changed apartments, he probably thought we couldn’t find him after Eagle River. He was wrong. Just because he’s been trained to play it cool when most of us would be showing some concern doesn’t mean anything. Omega is not some invincible organization with limitless resources and the ability to know our every move before we make it. The fact that your mother hit them so hard, in places they didn’t expect, proves that they can make mistakes.” She lowered her voice. “The fact that they lost Andromeda, someone so important an entire facility was dedicated to her, proves they’re not invincible.”

I felt a sliver of fear mingled with sadness at the mention of Andromeda’s name. “And I might feel better about that if we had turned that win into something, anything that worked to our advantage. But even the autopsy left us with no clue what she was, or why they wanted her, or anything really, beyond the fact that we pulled two traitors out of the Directorate’s inner circle that we wouldn’t have had a clue about if she hadn’t told us before she died. Let’s face it Ariadne—these guys have been kicking our asses since day one, and we know almost nothing more about them beyond the fact that they used to be gods, than we did when we started. I don’t know about you, but when someone’s pounding my skull in, I like to think that after nine months of it, I’d have at least some handle on who they are and what they want.”

“We know what they want,” she said. “The same thing they’ve always wanted. You.”

I hissed, expelling all the air from my body. “But ‘why?’ is the more valid question. And, by the way, just as an aside, sending me to their secret safe house when we have