Omega The Girl in the Box - By Robert J. Crane Page 0,42

in a chorus that reminded me of white noise as I tuned it out. The smell of eggs and bacon were prominent, as were the onions for the Denver-style eggs. All the cafeteria workers were dressed in brown aprons, their hairnets making them into a line of mushrooms blooming against the white, sunlit walls.

My fingers, still covered by gloves, ran along the glass window between me and the food, as though I could somehow impart the tactile sense of taste along with the touch, something small to calm my raging stomach, which was reminding me I had skipped both lunch and dinner yesterday. It had a bad habit of holding me accountable for missed meals (which happened increasingly often due to work lately) with a bad case of the rumblies. I could almost taste the food as I slid my tray down the three steel rails that ran the length of the counter.

“Excuse me,” I heard from my left. I turned and saw that teenaged boy who had been staring at me only a couple days earlier, the one that had been in the cafeteria line. He had hair that seemed to droop around his head in a bowl, falling to just above his neck. It was a careless sort of haircut, and his brown eyes were hidden behind a thick pair of glasses. “Can you pass me an apple?” he asked, pointing just past me to where the apples and oranges waited in bowls at the end of the line, in an area reserved for self-service foods like crackers and condiments, cereal and such.

I thought briefly about why he was bothering to ask me when in two seconds I would be clear of it and he could get whatever he wanted, but I put it out of my mind in the name of civility. “Sure,” I said, and tossed him an apple. He caught it, cradling it against his red t-shirt like it was some treasure. He looked familiar, I thought as I gave him a moment’s more look before turning away and finding a table of my own. And not just from the cafeteria line yesterday, but from somewhere else. He didn’t look much different in age than me, but...I shrugged. Not my worry.

I scarfed my eggs and ham without much delay, sitting by myself. It was a little unusual; I’d fallen into a pattern of eating my meals with Reed, Kat and Scott, or at least Zack. Failing that, sometimes I would eat on the run or skip a meal. I looked around the cafeteria and found myself unsettled at being alone. Which was strange for a girl who used to eat almost all her meals by herself, with only Mother occasionally around for company.

I finished and walked back to headquarters, ignoring the fall chill in the air. I hit the lobby of HQ and the heaters kicked in the moment I walked through the doors, spreading slowly over my skin as the cool air faded. I felt the heavy dryness of it in my sinuses as the soles of my shoes clipped along on the tile floor keeping pace with all the other civilian employees of the Directorate who were making their way in to go about their daily jobs. Suits and ties abounded, women wore darker-toned dress pants and jackets, and almost everyone was already wearing full-length winter coats.

I veered behind the sweeping double staircase on either side of the lobby and made my way to the emergency stairwell at the back of the building, the one that also led down. The concrete walls around me established a pattern that ran all the way to the emergency floodlights at each landing. The sounds of the people milling about the lobby on their way to their serious, professional day disappeared as I heard the heavy metal door to the stairwell shut behind me, an echo bouncing around in the four-story room like a thunderclap after lightning.

I pushed through the door at the basement entrance and found myself in a long, narrow hallway. The walls were beige, a kind of wallpaper on them made up of tiny lines that intersected like fine wire mesh, a texture so small that I wondered if the non-metahuman eye could even perceive it. Black doors lined the walls, and I realized for the first time I had no idea how many of them were actually cells, and if any of them were occupied besides the two filled with our Omega friends.