Untouched The Girl in the Box - By Robert J. Crane Page 0,26
and swung it open. I found myself in a waiting room with chairs lined up against the walls and a fish tank in the corner. On the far wall was another door, solid, which I assumed led to the inner sanctum of Dr. Quinton Zollers, who would be helping me diagnose problems I didn’t even recognize I had. I found myself surprised that Wolfe didn’t have a funny comment for this situation, and then wondered if perhaps he was sleeping.
There wasn’t another soul in the waiting room, so I made my way to the inner door and knocked, three sharp raps. A voice boomed out. “Sienna Nealon...come right in.”
I took a deep breath, and swung the door open.
Chapter 8
Dr. Zollers rose to meet me when I entered the room and to his credit didn’t blink at the sight of my torn clothing. I had expected one of those long fainting couches, facing away from the practitioner. Instead, I was surprised to find a few comfortable chairs and an office that was set up more like a living room. A couch sat in front of me, a full sized one, and three chairs sat across from it, with a coffee table in the middle. Sitting in one of the chairs was a shorter man with dark skin that spoke of his African heritage, a goatee, and eyes that glittered as though he knew the punch line to a joke he hadn’t shared yet.
“Howdy,” he said, not extending a hand, keeping them both clasped on the armrests of his seat. The faint smile he wore went well with his eyes, and he inclined his head in greeting. “It’s my very great pleasure to meet you, Sienna.”
“The feeling is...” I hesitated, and knew I was letting loose a little too much sarcasm, “...mutual.”
“I kinda doubt that.” He sat back down and pointed at the couch. “Have a seat.”
“Right here?” I pointed to the couch he indicated.
“Wherever,” he said with a slight shrug. Then, as if sensing that my immediate thought was that the bed back in my room seemed like a good option, he added, “In the office.”
I snapped my fingers theatrically. “Damn.” I sat on the couch and stared at him. He stared back, still wearing that smile.
“So. What do you want to talk about?”
“Oh, I don’t know. How about the season the Vikings are having?”
He raised an eyebrow. “You a sports fan?”
“Nah. I just thought it’d be more fun than what Ariadne wants us to talk about.”
“What do you think Ariadne wants us to talk about?” He gave me a shrewd look.
“This is gonna be a brutally long session if all you do is ask me questions every time I say things.” My eyes searched the walls for a clock.
“Why would you think that all I would do is ask questions?” His smile got broader. “Talk about anything you’d like, we’ll go from there.”
“Let’s talk about the Directorate. How long have you been here?”
He thought about it for a beat. “About three years.”
“How many doctors do they have on staff here? I mean, Perugini, Sessions, you...do they have a full-time herpetologist too?”
He nodded without any hint of levity. “For the reptile metas, sure.” After a moment in which I was sure he was dead serious, he laughed. “Kidding. I don’t know. I pay less attention to their staffing than I do to their staff.”
“And your job is to help them...” I tried to find a phrase that would fit and be insulting, but I failed, “...psychologically decompress?”
“That’s a part of what I do,” he said, his voice smooth. “Agents get put in stressful situations, they may have to use violence in their work, and it’s something that stays with them. Also, the metas we have here sometimes go through a rough transition. Though,” he said with a sense of irony, “usually not quite as rough as what’s happened to you.”
“I was gonna ask how you manage to keep any of them here if what happened to me was normal.”
“You probably know this, but what happened to you was not ‘normal,’” he said. “I’ve counseled a lot of metas who have come here after realizing that they won’t be able to fit in with their former lives the way they thought they could before. None of them have been attacked the way you were—hunted by a psychotic super-meta who wanted to capture you.”
“Kill me,” I said in a whisper. “He wanted to kill me. But not right away.”