Untouched The Girl in the Box - By Robert J. Crane Page 0,20
his plate.
“Excuse me?” I was halfway through a mouthful of eggs.
“When we take on the job of being an agent, it’s understood that we’re going up against metas. Most of them aren’t that powerful. Some of them are.” He stared at me, his eyes smoldering. “Policing metas is a dangerous business; especially since we have no powers and no way to know if we’re up against an innocent person who’s never done a violent thing in his life or the next psycho criminal who’ll be glad to gut you and serve you for dinner.” His eyes darted left and right. “It’s a hazard of the business. Scott’s got no right to take you to task for those guys dying.”
“Maybe,” I said, noncommittal. “You didn’t have to deck him for it.”
Zack licked his lips. “He didn’t even feel it, did he?”
“Only a little,” I said. “Why’d you do it?”
“Frustration.” He let out a muted exhalation combined with an exasperated sigh. “I wanted to knock the crap out of Reed, too.”
“Good job showing some restraint. If Reed really is a meta, he would have pummeled you, unlike your friend.” My hand left my fork behind and I rubbed the bridge of my nose. “What happened in South America?”
“I went to find M-Squad.” He put his hands on the table. “I found them.”
“And a flaming metahuman in a casket.” I stared him down and he tried to play it off but failed. “What happened? You got sent to retrieve them, but they were gone a long time; longer than Old Man Winter thought they’d be gone.”
He concentrated, as though he were bringing up details of a story. “They were sent to our facility in the Andes Mountains.”
“How many facilities does the Directorate have?” I crinkled my nose, trying to make it seem like an innocent question.
“Six in North America, two in South America, two in Europe, four in Asia, one in Australia, two in Africa.” His eyes darted back and forth, looking up the whole time, as though he were trying to recall. “I think that’s it. Anyway, they got sent down to the Andes facility—”
“For what?”
“Because the facility went dark. Completely offline, radio blackout, silence, dead air, all that. And we hadn’t even had the facility that long—”
“What?” I frowned. “Was it new?”
“No, we took it over from someone else. Are you going to stop interrupting me so I can finish my story?”
“Sorry.”
“So anyway, it went offline, and Old Man Winter had a suspicion he knew why, so he sent M-Squad down there with that coffin contraption after telling them about Gavrikov.”
“I thought you said they went offline?”
“They did. Somehow he knew it was Gavrikov.”
“How—”
“I don’t know,” Zack said, exasperated. “Because it’s Old Man Winter, and he knows all kinds of things he shouldn’t theoretically know. Do you want to hear the rest of the story?” I nodded, and he went on. “Gavrikov was there for some reason. He had come to the facility with something in mind. He killed the entire staff—about fifty people, in case you were wondering—and set up shop. Well, M-Squad started playing feint-and-parry, trying to get him boxed in so they could force a confrontation, but he wouldn’t engage them directly.”
He took a breath, and I jumped in. “Before, you said Gavrikov had energy projection capability...”
“Yeah, he flies and can throw fire. I heard from M-Squad he can even explode.”
“Reed mentioned that Gavrikov was responsible for the Tunguska explosion in 1908.”
I watched as Zack’s jaw dropped open. “You told him about us capturing Gavrikov?”
I shook my head. “He already knew.”
Zack’s mouth became a hard line, his eyes looked down at the table, and I could tell he was suppressing a kind of deep internal fury. It was the wrong moment for it, but I actually thought it was damned cute. Outwardly, I gave no sign. I hope. “How did he know?” he asked, restraining whatever anger he was feeling.
“I didn’t ask.”
“If ever you get a chance again,” Zack said, measuring his words, “do ask. This is something that only a dozen people in the world knew as of this morning.”
“Sure. Though I think you’re naïve if you believe he’d tell me. So did he explode for you guys? Wipe out a few square miles of real estate in the Andes?”
Zack was distracted, but he went on. “Not quite, but I guess Clary had him pinned in a building at one point and he blew up, left nothing but a crater. It took Clary a while to climb