Omega The Girl in the Box - By Robert J. Crane Page 0,93
us...and for your own good.”
“Please...” I pleaded. “Please don’t do this. I will kill whoever you tell me to.”
“You are not a killer,” he said, quiet. “Not yet, anyway.”
I didn’t look at Parks or Bastian, holding Zack by the shoulders and using their meta strength to carry him, struggling, toward me. He stopped struggling when he got within a couple feet, stopped kicking, probably for fear of hitting me. I looked into his eyes, and I was more afraid than I’d ever been in my entire life, than when I’d been locked in the box, than when Wolfe threw me into a wall in my basement, than when I thought Gavrikov was going to nuke me or Fries was going to gut me—
“I’m sorry,” I said to Zack as Clary pressed my numb hands against his face, as Bastian and Parks held him there and I felt his skin against mine, the cool touch of the night air revealing the perspiration on my palms, the slick feeling of fear that was all that stood between my lover and I.
“It’s okay,” he said, and he rubbed his cheek against my hand, as though he were stroking me. “It’s okay. Just...be yourself, Sienna. Please.” He smiled, a glorious, genuine smile that lasted only a second or two before the first waver came, as I felt the burning in my hands, felt the swimming in my head, the flicker of those coffee-brown eyes that I loved, and I saw the tensing of the muscles, the clenching of his teeth, that beautiful smile wiped away, now, aghast with horror and anguish—
“I’m sorry,” I said, and I screamed it, “I’m sorry!” The swirling picked up in my mind as my brain made way for him, and he started to shout on his own, to scream, to cry, jerking in the grip of Parks and Bastian, and I fought back against Clary again, but it was impossible, he was immovable, and I hated them hated them hated them ALL...
“Be...yourself...” Zack said, the only discernible sound in the hurricane around me, the gale-force wind in my mind, the tempest rocking my body and his in a tornado of combination, as he screamed, louder and louder, the pain a driving agony now and tearing him apart—
And then he was still, the brown eyes dull, empty; the soul gone from them.
I felt the nausea double, triple, mix with something else, a kind of reckless joy and rush of euphoria that was a hundred times more powerful than what the chloridamide did to me when it hit the vein, and a kind of weak drowsiness settled over me, the emotion blown, and now I wanted more than ever to throw myself into the fire.
“Let her go,” Old Man Winter said, and Clary dropped me to the ground, where I lay huddled, my head overwhelmed, too many thoughts and minds, even behind the wall of chloridamide that remained. “You will remember this day, and look back, and know that I was right.”
“I will look back on this day, and remember...” I said, “...and I will kill you...the next time I see you...” I looked up at him with all the hatred, all the venom, everything I felt down to the last inch of my soul.
Old Man Winter was above me, Bastian and Parks flanking him, and Clary sidling into line behind them. The old man’s face was indecipherable; there wasn’t any expression. It was like it was when I’d first met him, as though I’d never known him at all.
With that, he turned, and strode off through the carnage, the grass and leaves of the dead summer crunching underfoot. Bastian followed first, then Clary, and finally Parks, though he waited a moment. I didn’t look at them, not at any of them. I didn’t want to dignify them with so much as a glance. I clutched my shoulder tight to me, rubbed my arms, which I could not even feel, and lay on my back, looking up to the sky. I didn’t want to look at the body; I knew they had laid me next to him. I reached out for a hand and found it, his bare skin on mine, but his was cold, and lifeless...and mine was not, no matter how much I wished it were. I curled my face against his chest, and it wasn’t moving now, not like last night or this morning, and I knew I could sleep here next to him, undisturbed by his breath