Untouched The Girl in the Box - By Robert J. Crane Page 0,6

little man so important to make you run out in the middle of the night?

“He’s not...” I stopped talking when I realized I was giving the psycho in my head more fodder for taunting me. Besides, why was I running to see Zack? When last we had parted, it had been after he had extracted a promise from me to not go after Wolfe, a promise I had broken. Afterward, I had spent some time examining my thinking behind that promise and found it lacking; I believed I made it because Zack was hot. Tall, with tousled hair, brown eyes and in amazing shape. Downside: I suspected he was spying on me for Old Man Winter and Ariadne.

At that moment, I didn’t care. Of all the people I had met since leaving my house, Zack was the one I felt most connected to. After he left, things around the Directorate got much worse and—I hated to admit it—I missed having someone to talk to who was close to my own age. It’s not like I had a ton of time to get used to it before he left, but still...I missed him. I felt a tingle of amusement that I knew came from Wolfe, and wished, not for the first time, that I could mentally slap the hell out of him.

I covered the ground between the dorm and the helipad quickly, arriving just after the helicopter set down. None of the observers noticed me as I slipped up behind them and I felt a thrill of predatory success as I stared at their backs and realized I could kill every last one of them.

I would have been disturbed by that, but Wolfe’s thoughts were bleeding into mine with such regularity that unless he “spoke” in my head, I couldn’t be sure whether it genuinely came from me.

I lurked behind them, and saw Ariadne say something to Dr. Perugini that caused Old Man Winter to look back at them both. “He was stable for transit,” Ariadne said, then the rotors cut out her next words before I caught a few more, “…amazed they were able to catch him, really.” Old Man Winter looked past Ariadne and noticed me. He stared, his eyes into mine, before nodding in acknowledgment. He spoke, something low, but loud enough that those around him heard it and looked, each of them finding me in turn.

I moved forward to join them, figuring that lurking in the shadows was a pointless game. I saw Zack, dressed in a paramilitary uniform, olive green overalls with a tactical vest, a submachine gun slung under his arm, and a headset covering his ears. He stepped down and tossed the headset back into the chopper. I could see him saying something to the figures inside.

He turned and strode across the pad to Old Man Winter. I half-expected him to salute, as though I were watching a war movie, but he leaned in and whispered something to his boss. While he did so, others were stepping out of the Black Hawk, four of them, in quick fashion. M-Squad, I figured.

A stir of interest from Wolfe kept me watching them rather than Zack. The first one off the chopper was a man. He had a jaw that looked like it had been carved from an iron bar. It extended down, giving him the look of someone who perpetually stuck his chin out. His skin was dark, his hair black and short, military-style, stubble on the sides and just a patch of black on top. I couldn’t tell what color eyes he had because of the dark, but they were moving fast and they were focused. They found me in the dark, surveyed me—not in the dirty way Wolfe had, but as a potential opponent.

The next off the Black Hawk was a woman. Her hair was short, blond, cropped in one of those boyish, pixie styles of someone who has no time and no interest in impressing anyone with it. Her facial structure was pronounced, Nordic, but her skin was tanned. She saw me, too, and watched me for long enough to do an assessment of her own. She was so severe, I wondered if she ever smiled.

The third off the chopper was a man with long, gray hair and a beard that matched it. The rotor blades stirred his silver locks, blowing them into his eyes, but it didn’t seem to distract him. He gave me the same once-over as the others and halted