Omega The Girl in the Box - By Robert J. Crane Page 0,6
last noises of the rotors dying down. “He’s here to be interrogated, after all.”
“Hard to do brain damage when he didn’t have a brain to damage,” Reed said from next to me.
“Oh, he has a brain.” I looked at my half-brother with a cocked eyebrow. “A horrific and sleazy one, but it’s there. Cunning doesn’t begin to describe this one.”
“Yeah, well, let’s get this cunning, sleazy bastard into lockdown,” Scott said, Kat at his side. “Because some of us have plans for tonight.”
“Carry him down,” I said, giving the nod to Scott.
“Yes, ma’am,” he said with a smartass salute, and reached down to pick up Fries’s legs. “Reed, old boy,” he said, affecting a British accent, “would you mind being a decent chap and help me carry him? There’s a good lad...”
“What’s with the British accent?” Reed asked, grabbing Fries by the arm and lifting him onto Scott’s shoulder.
“Trying to make you feel at home,” Scott said with a wide grin. “You know, because you haven’t been home to talk to your bosses in a while.”
“They’re in Rome, not England.”
“Oh, right,” Scott said with a twinkle in his eyes, “then it must be cos’ I want’d to sound a bit sophisticated, innit?” he said, changing his voice into a horrible Cockney accent. With a laugh, he sauntered off toward headquarters with Fries on his shoulder, Kat and Hannegan trailing behind him.
“Easy catch,” I said, turning back to Ariadne as they left, leaving me with her, Zack and Reed.
Ariadne raised an eyebrow. “We were watching through the headset camera Reed was wearing.”
I shrugged, and felt a slight trace of burn on my cheeks, not from the wind. “And?”
Ariadne kept her cool, I had to give her that . “The Director has...concerns.”
“Concerns? Other than the fact that the frigid cold weather isn’t getting here fast enough to suit him, what concerns does he have?”
There was a pause, then a flicker in her eyes. “Why don’t we talk about it with him? We need to do a quick debrief with you as team lead, anyway.” She looked from Zack to Reed. “Good work, gentlemen.”
“It was a good takedown,” Reed said. “We got him alive, and that’s how it was supposed to be.” I realized he was preemptively defending me, as though he was expecting me to get reamed for some reason.
“No doubt,” Ariadne said with a tight expression meant to cut off any further discussion. “Gentlemen, we’ll have a full after-action review with the two of you tomorrow morning. We’ll email you a time and place.”
Zack seemed to recede slightly. “We’ll see you later, right? An hour?”
I managed a weak smile. “As soon as I’m free, I’ll be along.”
“Okay,” he said, and took a quick step toward me, giving me a kiss on the cheek. “See you then.”
Reed gave me a wave using only his fingers to waggle up and down. He followed Zack, and I watched the two of them make their way toward the dormitory. Ariadne was already on the move, high heels clicking as she walked the path toward headquarters. I followed a few steps behind, waiting for her to say something as we passed into the lobby and headed toward the elevators. She didn’t speak again until we were in one of them and she had pressed the up button.
“How do you think you did?” She turned to look at me, but her arms were crossed in front of her. The doors shut behind us, quieting the buzz of activity in the lobby.
“I think we held to the mission parameters to bring him in, and that I got the job done.” I watched her turn her head back to the front of the elevator car as it dinged and the doors opened. “Did I not get the job done right?”
“Sort of,” Ariadne said, stepping out without waiting for me; she knew I’d follow. She walked stiffly, her tone terse but not unkind.
I followed in silence through the bustling cubicle farm that was ringed by offices on the top floor of HQ. Headquarters was only four stories high, but somehow the view it offered of the campus was still commanding. I walked into Old Man Winter’s office a few steps behind Ariadne, and she took her usual position at his shoulder, like a parakeet. He remained behind his rough stone desk, the bright background of the autumn-tinged woods behind him through the window.
I stood at near-attention, my arms behind me in a military posture I’d picked up from Roberto Bastian,