The Girl in the Box 01 - Alone (6 page)

My mind raced, trying to think of something to ask Zack to change the subject. “You said my mom was one of the most powerful metas in her generation? So not all metas are the same, power-wise?”

“Yeah, there’s a scale – some metas are stronger than others.” He looked up at the bench still balanced on my shoulder. “That’s why Ariadne wants to test you. Even without knowing what your other powers are, knowing your strength could give some insight into what kind of meta you are.”

“Hm.” I whipped the bench as if to smash it against the ground and noted the panicked look in Zack’s eyes as he flinched and brought his hands in front of his face. I stopped it a few inches from the walk and gingerly placed it back where it had started and shot him a dazzling smile. “Fraidy cat.”

He looked at me, eyes wide. “I couldn’t tell you without testing, but seeing the way you handled that bench, I think you’re right up there with your mom on the meta power scale.”

I looked down. “I don’t know about that. I fought back against Wolfe and he shook off my attacks and grabbed me like I was nothing.”

“Yeah, but Wolfe is a freak of nature. Most metas don’t live for thousands of years. He has.”

“I don’t doubt that, but he manhandled me. His strength was incredible; I couldn’t fight back at all.” I felt the bile rise in my mouth as I said that. Mom had always dominated me, but she’d never completely crushed me the way Wolfe had. It made me sick – and angry.

“He’s THE top of the scale for power and he has millenia of experience fighting. He’d give M-Squad a run for their money, and they’re all way up on the scale, and there’s four of them.” He shook his head. “I want you to promise me something.”

I looked up at him and felt a tremble. “What?”

“You ever run across Wolfe again, do what the rest of us do – run like hell. He’s a beast. And he will kill you.”

Zack showed me around the grounds and after we walked through more buildings and met more people than I could possibly remember, he took me to a four story brick building, a perfect square but with windows spaced every five feet on each floor. There were entrances at each corner. We walked into one of them to find the interior indicated it was a much older building than most of the others.

Yellowed corridors ran around the perimeter. They looked as though they might have been white when the building was built, but they had yellowed through time and use to the color of a boiled egg’s yolk. The center of the structure looked to be one giant chamber and around the edge of the building a variety of labs were open to viewing by glass walls. “It’s the science labs,” Zack said.

“So this is where they cut me open?” I looked at him with a raised eyebrow.

“Not quite.” A voice from behind made me turn. A small man with glasses and a white lab coat covering a shirt and tie came in behind us and stomped his feet. His hand came up to brush some snow off his shoulder and I saw no rings or jewelry on thin, delicate fingers that matched with his gaunt figure. He had zero hair on his head, not so much as an eyebrow, and wore the hipster-chic black rimmed glasses that seemed popular nowadays based on how many people wore them on TV. I think they look stupid, but in his case it might have been a clueless fashion decision.

“This is Dr. Ron Sessions,” Zack said with an introductory wave. “He’s our chief science guru.”

Dr. Sessions took a couple of strides toward me. “Is this Ms. Nealon?”

I looked from Zack to the doctor. “I’m Sienna, yeah.”

His eyes lit up, and it was a calculating stare. “Ariadne sent me to look for you and here you are, in my humble halls.”

“She wanted you to talk to me about the testing?”

He nodded a bit too eagerly. “Wanted me to explain the basics of it. It’s a thorough process, so it could take a little while to go through and answer any questions you might have. Do you have some time now?”

I felt a gravitational pull toward the door I had come in through. “I’m kind of tired. Why don’t we talk about it tomorrow?” I threw a thumb at the darkening skies outside. “It’s close to sundown; been a long day, you know.”

His hairless eyebrow scooted down his face. “It’s four o’clock.”

“Yeah,” I said with an air of excuse-making. “But I nearly got strangled to death yesterday and it took a lot out of me. I’ll stop by and talk with you tomorrow.”

I threw a look at Zack, and I could tell he knew I was lying. “I can show you to the cafeteria if you want. You should probably eat before you sleep.”

“Nah.” I waved him off. “I’m just going to head back to the dorm. Thanks, though.”

He froze next to the doctor, who was still squinting at me. “All right. See you around.”

I gave them both a last wave and pushed my way out the door. I didn’t run across the campus, but I definitely walked faster than normal. I wasn’t used to the cold wind that whipped over the grounds as sundown approached. It felt like it was cutting right through me.

I walked into my dorm room and flipped on the lights. It wasn’t huge, but bigger than I would have expected. It had a full bathroom, a queen sized bed, small refrigerator, a desk and a walk-in closet. Some thoughtful person had even left a pen and paper on the stand next to the bed, in case I wanted to write a letter home to no one.

I checked the fridge and found a half dozen bottled waters. I pulled one out, broke the seal on it and dumped it down the sink in the bathroom. I washed out and refilled the water bottle from the tap. Can’t be too careful.

I took a sip of water as I looked around the room. I didn’t know much about video surveillance, but there were a half-dozen places they could have put a camera. The good news is that it was on the ground floor and there were big windows, so if they came for me in the middle of the night I could send a chair out the glass and follow behind. I had a reasonable amount of confidence that I could run faster than any of them. Hopefully fast enough to escape into the trees if need be.

I sat down on the bed and realized for the first time just how tense I was. My shoulder muscles were crying out for relief; I’d been walking around ready for someone (Wolfe) to come jumping out at me. I rubbed my neck with one hand while I held the bottle with the other.

The bedspread was dark navy, the only splash of color in a room that was a dim beige. It was so generic and stark, totally lacking in décor, it had to have been done by a guy. No woman could abide anything this plain and boring. I thought about how straightforward and businesslike Ariadne’s wardrobe was and conceded that maybe she could have done it. But no one with any taste.

I found it hard to believe how much things had changed for me in the last couple days. My mind went once more to Reed, and I found myself wondering if he was okay. I thought about those brown eyes, and they hung in front of me. I lay back on the bed and they still lingered; and a few moments after I lay my head on the pillow, I fell into a deep sleep.

I knew I was dreaming. It was weird, but I could feel it, the darkness of the room just fading away as I slipped off to unconsciousness. Streaks of light from outside the window shot through my field of vision and a sensation of falling was replaced with a feeling of weightlessness, like the moment before you step down a stair in a dream and your heart catches and you wake.

Except I didn’t wake. I saw Reed again, those brown eyes staring, searching for me. The haze around me began to lighten. Splashes of color entered the world around me and I realized Reed was coming into focus, details adding in front of my eyes. He looked at me with confusion. “Sienna? Where are we?”

I felt a chill and looked down. There were two figures at my feet. A face stared back at me with dead eyes. “I think we’re in the parking lot of the grocery store where Wolfe found us.”

He looked at me with practiced skepticism. “What’s going on here?”

I shrugged. “I don’t know.”

He looked at the body at my feet. “I remember going to sleep…but this isn’t like any dream I’ve ever had. In a dream, you can’t pick your words, and ridiculous things happen. Like a man with a platter of cheese slices comes wandering through, and it seems totally normal until you wake up.” He eyed me with an air of uncertainty. “Right?”

“I’ve never dreamed about a man with cheese slices.”

“But you know what I mean? This really happened, right?” He looked down at the body. “I remember this guy’s face.”

Remembering the two men who died here – trying to help me – took the thought of laughter away. “What happened to you? I woke up at the headquarters for those two clowns who broke into my house.”

Reed flinched. “Yeah, I saw them get you. I had to bail. Wolfe messed me up pretty bad or I might have tried to fight them off.”

I narrowed my eyes as I looked at him. “Are you a meta too?”

His hands fell to his waist. “Yeah.”

“So what can you do? What’s your…power?”

“The basics. Stronger than most. Nothing compared to that Wolfe guy, but I can tip over a car if I have to. I heal fast, of course. Some other stuff. Nothing major.” He looked down, eyes avoiding mine.

“Uh huh. So why didn’t you square with me when we were talking in the store?”

“It’s your first day out in the world, you’re running to escape from some guys who are shooting at you, and I get to break the news to you that you’re a superhuman. Yeah,” he said with sarcasm, “that wouldn’t have sent you running away from me.”

“It might not have.” I thought about it for a minute. “Yeah, it probably would have before I met Wolfe. Where are you now?”

He shied away from my look again. “You’re at their base?” He hesitated. “With those guys…from…”

“The Directorate. It’s what they call themselves.”

“Yeah. You’re with them?”

“Not ‘with them’ like we’re on the same team, but yeah. They want to run tests on me. Tell me what I am. Where are you?”

“Can’t tell you.” He cringed as he said it. “Sorry. I don’t trust them.”

I looked at him in annoyance. “I’m not staying here forever. I’m trying to decide if I want to let them figure things out for me before I leave. How am I supposed to find you if you won’t tell me where you are?”

He finally looked me in the eye. “Seems like you’ve found a way to contact me. So talk to me again when you’ve escaped.”

I threw my hands in the air. “Where am I supposed to go?”

He started to fade, getting hazy again, like there were gaps in his skin replaced by darkness. “Anywhere. Just get away from them.”

I woke up with a start.

I sat up in bed and looked around. I hadn’t even bothered to crawl under the covers. The red face of the digital clock on the dresser told me it was after midnight. I reached over and found the bottle of water I filled earlier. I picked it up, took it to the bathroom and dumped it out again. Just in case they snuck in while I was sleeping. Paranoia, thy name is Sienna.

After I filled it from the tap and drank two bottles, I laid back down on the bed. I was almost positive I had just talked to Reed in a dream. I went to sleep thinking of him and I dreamed of him. But he was right. What happened there was not like a regular dream. All the weirdness and surreal atmosphere of a dream was gone; it felt like we’d had a conversation in the waking world, but with a hazy backdrop.

Could I touch people’s dreams? Was I a telepath, a mind reader? My thoughts raced while I thought about the possibilities. I’d never read a mind, so it probably wasn’t that; unless it hadn’t fully manifested as a power yet. Or maybe it was just limited to dreaming.

I thought about Mom as I lay there. Thought about when she used to get home, and how we’d eat dinner and talk about…I dunno, whatever. Training, mostly. TV shows, sometimes.

The world outside? Never. Rule #5. We don’t talk about the outside world. It doesn’t exist, for conversational purposes. We stay inside the house. The four walls that defined my life.

I thought about Mom and her rules and I wondered if maybe I could dream and talk to her, see where she was. I set the water bottle aside and lay back, this time crawling beneath the covers. I thought about her, about the smell of the chicken soup she used to heat up out of the can with the TV going in the background as we sat on the couch and talked. I recalled watching her walk out the door in the morning, and hoping that she’d open the outside door to the porch before the inside door to the house had shut, so I could catch just a glimpse of the outside world (she never did).