Omega The Girl in the Box - By Robert J. Crane Page 0,90

heard a moan from Bjorn and I stomped on his face out of pure pique. The moaning stopped, and I stood there for a long moment, staring at the dormitory—and the wreckage of my life.

26.

I heard footsteps behind me and turned, my hands raised defensively, then I relaxed. “Geez. Give a girl a heart attack.”

“Are you all right?” Bastian was at the lead, Clary and Parks a few steps behind him. I caught the glint of light off Eve Kappler’s wings as she descended to land nearby. At the rear of the procession, Zack was walking in front of Old Man Winter and Ariadne, who was holding her side, her gray suit darkened by blood coming from her nose and beneath her ribs.

“I’m fine,” I said, holding my shoulder. “I sent the kids out of here so I could go look for you all.”

“You left them undefended?” Parks said, pushing past Bastian to stand only a foot from me.

“They’ll be fine,” I said, “Omega wasn’t here for them. Nor for any of us, really. Not to kill, anyway.”

Bastian looked me over while Parks spoke. “Oh, yeah. And you look like hell because they weren’t here to kill anyone.”

“They weren’t,” I said, letting my eyes fall off Zack and back to the fire. The relief coursed through me that he was safe, and I watched the dormitory burn.

“You let them escape,” Old Man Winter said in the low rumble, speaking over the crackle of the flames.

“I stopped Bjorn here,” I said and gave Bjorn a gentle kick to the trapezoid. I squinted and looked to him. “How did you know I let them go?”

“I saw,” Ariadne said, clutching her side. “On the security monitor.”

“Thanks. I didn’t need any help or anything,” I said acerbically.

“You wouldn’t have gotten any from us,” Ariadne said, her voice straining. “I was watching. The rest of them were fending off about thirty metas that didn’t act at all like they weren’t here to kill. Pretty damned far from it, I would say.”

Old Man Winter walked to where Bjorn lay and lifted him up by the head and neck, Bjorn’s unconscious bulk hanging limp in his hands. “Janus deceived you. He likely sent Bjorn back to retrieve you.”

“Maybe,” I said, and the smoke made my eyes burn as I turned back to them. “I don’t think so, though. They’re worried about something else, something worse.”

“They are right to worry,” Old Man Winter said, shaking Bjorn like a puppet in his grasp. “Do you know what this storm is that is coming? Do you know how it will affect us, our people?”

“Since you haven’t told us anything about it, no.” I folded my arms. “Only what Janus said. It’s tied to the exterminations.”

“You have no idea because you are not ready,” he said, countenance darkening, “because you would not know the enemy if you saw it, this destruction that creeps toward us, wiping out metas continent by continent. If it presented itself to your very face, to you, and you recognized it for what it was, you would still fail to stop it because you are unwilling to do what is necessary—to kill when you confront evil.”

I felt myself redden in the heat of the fire. “Maybe you’re right,” I said, feeling myself fade, as though I could slip into the darkness and away from the ire of Old Man Winter, who was losing his chill rapidly and more obviously than even the time I’d seen him face Wolfe. “Maybe this isn’t for me, the fight, the battle; I don’t want to kill anybody. I don’t want to be responsible—”

“Unfortunately,” Old Man Winter said, tugging on Bjorn, letting him hang in front of me, “that is not an option. I know what waits at the head of the organization—they are called Century, by the way, since you want to know what I know—and I know that you, and you alone, are the only one that stands a chance—a hope in hell—of stopping them.”

“How do you even know that?” I asked, feeling ruthless, cynical, angry. “You didn’t know who I was a year ago! You didn’t know I existed! You couldn’t even figure out what Omega is up to! How do you presume to tell me what some black box organization that sounds like a movie production company is up to a world away?”

“Because I know who heads them,” he said, and there was a rattle in his voice, “and I have feared him since he crippled me over