Omega The Girl in the Box - By Robert J. Crane Page 0,86

that Klementina was all that was left. No, a voice whispered deep inside me, that is not Klementina, either.

“You know,” Fries said, passing by me last, “I always knew you didn’t have it in you to hurt me.” My gun rested at my side, but I felt it twitch in my hand. “It’s the chemistry, you know, between us, the magnetism. You can feel it, can’t you? The irresistible pull—”

I raised the gun and fired, the flash lighting the entire hallway, blinding me for a beat as Fries screamed and fell to the ground. “Sorry, gun just went off. Must have been your magnetism that drew the bullet irresistibly to you.”

His face was contorted with pain. “You shot me...in the ass!”

“It was tough not to. You’re all ass.”

He made another little screech and grunt of pain as Janus and the others peered at me from down the hall. “Sienna,” Janus said, “that was unnecessary.”

“Yeah, well,” I said, and stepped back from Fries as Bjorn took a few steps toward the incubus, “it was fun.”

Janus gave a half-hearted shake of the head, then motioned for Bjorn to pick up Fries, which he did. “This isn’t the end, Sienna,” Fries said.

“Well, it was your end,” I said. “Next time I see you, though, I think I’ll aim for the crotch.”

“You bitch,” he breathed as Bjorn carried him into the stairwell, “I won’t forget this!”

“Neither will I,” I promised, “because seeing you writhe in pain has been just about the highlight of my week.”

Janus remained as the last of them disappeared up the staircase. “Do not forget—we will be destroying your dormitory in only a few minutes. Do get all your people out in time, all right?” He took a few steps closer to me, but paused, just out of arm’s reach. “I know you don’t care for what I’m telling you, for what I’ve done to you, but you’ll see in time that you and I have the same goals. I want to protect and save the metas of this world from what comes for them. The only difference between Omega and you is that we are willing to do whatever it takes to achieve our aims.” He smiled simply. “And you are not—yet.”

“I will never be like you,” I said, feeling it all come out at once. “Great intentions, huh? Yeah, I’ve heard that before. Doing it all for a greater good, for your own good? Heard that before, too. Sounds a lot like my mother...just before she’d slam the door and lock me in a metal sarcophagus.”

Janus gave a slight shrug of the shoulders. “Perhaps she did. Perhaps she was protecting you all along from the things that would hunt you, the things that would hurt you, the things that would use you.”

“I think she was protecting me from you,” I said coldly.

He gave a nod of acknowledgment. “There are worse things than us, though I’m sure you don’t see it that way. Again, yet. I wish you well, Sienna Nealon. When next we meet is entirely in your hands.”

“How about never?” I asked as he turned to walk away. “Never works well for me.”

“Never say never,” Janus said, taking hold of the railing of the staircase as he took his first step. He walked up them one by one, taking his time, not looking back. “Never is a very, very long time, and frankly...you don’t know what will happen tomorrow that might change your mind.”

25.

I ran down the hall, to the other staircase on the opposite side of the building, the darkness at the end of the hallway enveloping me. The thought that Omega wasn’t here to kill anyone overwhelmed me, and I shuddered to think under what circumstances he might have convinced me to join him, now or in the future. He seemed so sure, and with every word he had said, my certainty grew less and less, until I was left to defend by anger that which I wasn’t sure I even had a defensible position for. I could feel the fury burning inside me, an almost physical reaction, as though I were having heartburn. The still air in the headquarters drove me mad as I dashed up the lighted staircase.

An emergency exit waited on the landing and I pushed through it, felt the resistance against my arms as I opened it and stepped out into the cold. At least five buildings were burning in my field of vision as my feet stepped off the concrete path.