Omega The Girl in the Box - By Robert J. Crane Page 0,43
Just outside the staircase entrance were the more luxurious cells, the ones that were almost like standard living quarters but more secured; the further one got from the stairs, the more they became like a square without any sort of differentiation; an arrangement designed to keep the prisoners contained within off-balance, and Spartan enough to give them almost nothing to work with in planning any sort of escape.
Old Man Winter stood in the middle of the hallway like an imposing pillar holding up the whole building. He wore a winter coat like so many of the other men, but I blinked in surprise—it had to be close to eighty degrees in the hallway. He always tended toward heavy clothing, but I wondered if perhaps it was to hold the cold in, toward him, rather than keeping the warmth in as it was for most people. I watched him as I walked, and he seemed to take no notice of me until I was within a few feet, at which point he swiveled on a heel and looked down at me. Almost seven feet tall, that was no challenge for him, since I was not even five and a half feet tall myself.
“You are early,” he observed, arms folded over his coat.
“It doesn’t pay to be late when you’re working with the boss,” I said. “Are we going to be interrogating James Fries as well, while we’re here?”
“Pointless, I think,” he said, his rumbling voice given resonance by the acoustics of the hall. “Fries is a messenger boy, a strong meta, but not one of the privileged of Omega. Bjorn, on the other hand, was the son Odin, before he passed.”
“Odin’s son?” My face scrunched up and I pondered the oversized man who had wrecked my whole team in Des Moines. “He looks nothing like Chris Hemsworth.”
Old Man Winter ignored me. “He will, I think, be a better choice to speak with. More...knowledgeable, having been brought to America specifically for whatever this Operation Stanchion is.”
“How do you know that?” I asked, feeling a flash of confusion coupled with the fear that I had failed to read something that had been prepared. Unprepared was not a good feeling, especially in front of the boss.
“This morning, J.J. ran a...tracking program, I believe he called it...searching through U.S. customs for certain patterns. One emerged, detailing passport irregularities.” Old Man Winter peered down at me, cold blue eyes seeming to glow in the fluorescent light of the hall. “After comparing them to photographic records, he found Bjorn.” Old Man Winter let out a deep breath, fogging the air in front of him, something that reminded me of the smell of a December wind. “Unless Omega is planning something else, that means that Bjorn is here for Stanchion.”
I thought about that for a moment. Stanchion had something to do with me, plainly, because Bjorn had inferred as much when I was fighting him. If Omega was sending in more operatives to capture me, this was nothing new. They’d been sending them at me for almost a year, to the point it was now almost comical in result. Or it would have been, except for what happened to Kat. Their last two operatives had ended up decapitated (and I didn’t even feel bad about it, because they showed no human characteristics at all), the one before that was locked up in a cell even now, the one before that had been thrown off a building by the one predating him (by Wolfe, who was locked in my head).
“You seem unworried,” Old Man Winter said, jarring me back to the here and now.
“I don’t know. It’s hard to keep getting charged up about this. If I did, I’d spend all my time worrying. Whatever comes, I can deal with it.”
“You should not be so cavalier,” Old Man Winter said, somehow more serious than the way he said everything else. “Omega is a very serious threat, one which you have defeated through a combination of luck, skill, power and the assistance of others. Bjorn is not to be underestimated, though he is no great thinker. Whatever they are planning now seems to indicate a deeper consideration for long-term strategy rather than just throwing whatever they have on hand at you. Using Wolfe as their opening gambit should not be overlooked; he was the best they had to offer. They do not hesitate. Their means are brutal, and they will do whatever it takes to achieve their aims.” He looked