Omega The Girl in the Box - By Robert J. Crane Page 0,47
abundance. This Operation Stanchion rumbles closer to fruition, and we remain like children running about in the woods after dark, unaware of the danger about to unfold around us.” He placed a hand on Bjorn’s shoulder. “You will not use your power to unearth his plans?”
I stared at the back of Bjorn’s head. The man’s head was turned, looking back at Old Man Winter, and just far enough that I could see the edge of his eye under his heavy, Cro-Magnon brow. “No,” I breathed, “not like that. Not him, not anyone. I just...I can’t.”
He didn’t even flinch. “Your mother would.”
I, however, did flinch. “I’m not her.” There was a pause. “We can find out another way. He’ll talk.” I drew a deep breath and stood, coming up to my full height. “We’ll break him.”
Old Man Winter closed his eyes, as though pondering something, and then opened them again, now impassive. “You are correct. We will break him.” I felt the temperature in the room plunge, this time no product of my imagination. My skin, once clammy, felt ice form along the wet dampness of it, the freeze crawling up around me as a winter frost manifested before my eyes.
Old Man Winter’s hand glowed where it lay on Bjorn’s shoulder, and a thin sheet of ice was forming around it. It grew thicker, denser, as I watched astonished, the frost crept down Bjorn’s arm to mid-humerus and beyond. Bjorn let out a cry, followed by a sustained scream. “Oh, yes,” Old Man Winter said, removing his fingers from Bjorn’s arm as the air in front of his mouth formed a cloud that was visible against his thick, black wool coat. “He will break.”
With a subtle move, Old Man Winter brought his fingers back down in an open-handed slap that sent a cracking noise echoing through the room. Bjorn’s entire hand dissolved into shards of ice and cascaded to the floor in a pile, no more substantial than a mound of discarded snow. “If it takes losing every limb he has...he will break. And if that fails...” Old Man Winter placed his hand on Bjorn’s chin and held it up, looking into his eyes. “Then we will wait until tomorrow, when he has regrown his limbs...and begin again.”
12.
I was out the door before I realized I was walking, my key card granting me exit. I put my back against the wall in the hallway and listened, but heard nothing from inside, nor in the hall save for the vent fans and my own heavy breathing, sharp, punctuated with a gasp every few minutes as I tried to hold in strong emotion.
The door opened quietly a few minutes later and I averted my eyes to keep from looking inside, and whatever was left of Bjorn. When I glanced, unable to control the instinct to look, Old Man Winter obstructed my view until the door was closed. “You don’t approve of my methods,” he said, stating the bloody obvious.
“You tortured him.”
“He would kill anyone who got in the way of capturing you, harm you in any way it took to get what he wanted.” Old Man Winter made no apologies as he stood there before me. He stood just as tall as he had in the room, just as imposing. “Why would I do any less to protect you from them?”
“They’re a joke,” I said, almost expelling the words as a breath. “Everything they’ve sent, we’ve beaten. To cave to their tactics, to drop to their level—”
“They will beat us, regardless of level, if we refuse to do what it takes to get to the truth of what they are planning,” he said, and I caught heat in his words for the first time. “You wish to believe foolishly that no matter what comes, you can simply overcome through some sense of unlimited potential or magical destiny, but that is folly. Your life hangs in the balance.” I could hear an urgency from him I’d never heard before, a stirring in his words that hinted at something darker, something deeper. “Omega and all hell that follows is inching closer by the day, and we have little time to prepare you for the role you will take when it comes.” He drew up again and hesitated, and I saw a hint of sadness. “I won’t always be around to protect you—to do what you will not. Soon you will have to do these things for yourself, to be ready to take your place—”