Omega The Girl in the Box - By Robert J. Crane Page 0,33
carried.
“Thanks.” I started to hold it up to my head but stopped, looking at it, confused.
“Hey, you want the rest of it?” I glanced back; he still held the other half of it.
“DAMMIT!” I started to hit the steering wheel out of sheer frustration and thought the better of it at the last minute, realizing my meta strength would enable me to break it into pieces and leave us stranded. I hit the gas instead as we made the turn onto the on-ramp, and I throttled up the gas as we raced up the interstate.
“Status report,” I said after a few minutes of silence.
There was a hesitation, then Clary spoke. “You talking to me?”
“No, I’m talking to the four unconscious people. Use your head, Clary! Of course I’m talking to you.”
“Umm,” he withered under my glare. “Scott’s still bleeding, but not as bad. Reed’s out and his face looks like someone took a brick to it.” He frowned. “What happened to him, anyway?”
“Someone took a brick to his face,” I said, clenching my jaw. “What about our friend from Omega?”
“Oh, yeah, he ain’t movin’.” Clary’s voice revealed a hint of self-satisfaction. “I got him trussed up real good, three sets of our heavy handcuffs on his wrists, two on his ankles, and one holding it all together like that plastic thingy they use on six-packs.”
“How’s Kat?”
“She looks like she ain’t been out in the sun for about a hundred years,” Clary said, no trace of irony. “But she’s breathing and all, seems all right. I pinched her on the tit and she didn’t move, though, so I think she might be out pretty hard.”
I let that settle for a second. “You did...what?”
“Well, I—”
“Never mind. Keep your damned hands off her, Clary, and see if you can find a way to call the Directorate.”
He was silent for a moment. “Maybe a pay phone?”
I thought about that. “Do you know the number?”
“No. It’s in my cell phone—”
I sighed, but not really at him. The sad truth was, I knew the number, but I was still working through things in my head. “Is Kat all right? Still breathing?”
“Yep.” I heard a silence for a beat. “She’s definitely still breathing and all. Feels nice and warm.”
I turned my head at a snap to look at what he was doing and found him with a hand on her chest. “Clary, you pervert! Hands off!”
“I was checking her pulse!”
“Her pulse is way north of where you were checking for it!”
“I was trying to see if I could feel her heartbeat, you know, close to the heart itself, because it would be stronger there, right?”
“Never mind,” I said. “No one’s in critical condition. They’ll all survive...so let’s just drive. Really fast. We’ll stop in a few minutes and change the license plates and then we’ll just haul ass to get home.” I bit my lower lip. “And hopefully everything will work out.”
8.
We pulled through the gates of the Directorate a few hours later. The ride had been quiet, the opposite of the trip down, Clary keeping himself silent. Our prisoner did not awaken, nor did any of our other passengers. When we stopped, I did a quick check of Reed and Scott. My brother’s face was a mess, but had already started to heal because of his meta abilities and what Kat had done with her powers. Scott, on the other hand, was pale from what I assumed to be extreme blood loss. He’d started to regain his color by the time we were pulling up to the gates, but I wasn’t terribly eager to hear Dr. Perugini’s assessment of what had happened (or Old Man Winter’s, come to think of it, or Ariadne’s).
We pulled up to the front of headquarters and I found Ariadne waiting for us. As I stepped out, her jaw dropped and she rushed forward. “What happened to you?”
“Clary,” I said through gritted teeth. I wasn’t over it yet. “We’ve got wounded—Kat, Scott and Reed—but we also have a prisoner.” I opened the back doors to the van. “Can you get Dr. Perugini out here?”
She nodded sharply, her phone already in her hand. “Isabella,” she said. “Get to the front of HQ, we’ve got wounded.” I heard the soft beep as she cut the connection. A cool wind picked up as I opened the back doors to the van and Ariadne let out a gasp as she looked inside. “What the hell happened? Why didn’t you call?”