Eleven
As the car sped down the interstate, I stole a look at the speedometer. Kurt was doing close to a hundred as I slipped into the back seat and knelt on the floorboard next to Zack. One of my gloved hands held his head while the other wiped the blood from his face. It flowed from his nose, which was broken. The rest of his handsome face seemed unharmed and his eyes fluttered open.
“What happened?” he asked, woozy.
“Wolfe,” I replied.
“Oh. Did we win?”
I heard a snort from Kurt in the front seat. “Do you feel like you won, kid?”
He turned his face to look at the back of Kurt’s head. “I’m still alive, so yeah. Kinda.” His hand crept up to his nose and held it, stemming the bleeding. He sat up, his eyeballs rolling. “What about the other guys?” He looked at Kurt, who made no move but to stiffen and keep focused on the road.
Zack turned to me. His eyes met mine and I had to look away. “I don’t think there were any survivors,” I said, looking down.
“How did we get away?” His voice carried a dreamlike quality.
Kurt harrumphed in the front seat. I shot a glare at him. “Your partner shot Wolfe with some kind of epic blaster weapon that kept him down while I carried you out. Why weren’t all your guys carrying those?”
Kurt didn’t deign to look back. “Because that’s the only one we had.”
I looked back to see Zack studying me. “You’re hurt,” he said.
“You too.”
“Lean forward.” He gently pushed me toward the front seat. “Your shirt is bloody in the back.”
He started to lift my sweater but my hand brushed his away. “I’m fine,” I assured him. “Wolfe rammed me into the wall but I’m already healing.”
“I should check.” Concern lit his slender face and warm eyes. I stared a moment too long, got embarrassed and looked away again. Damn.
I ran my gloved hand down my back and felt a half dozen places where it hurt, but wasn’t agonizing. Then my hands moved to my front and I found some broken ribs and cringed. “I’m fine,” I said as he started to lean toward me. “Really. I’ll be back to a hundred percent before you know it.”
“Must be nice,” Kurt spat. “I know a few guys that wish they had that ability right now.”
“Kurt…” Zack started.
“What?” Kurt’s tone was acid in reply, and he shot a look of pure malice at me. “Miss High And Mighty Little Meta got them killed. Is that too deep for you, Zack? Are you too busy staring into her eyes to realize that there are eight of our guys dead because of her?”
“Shut up!” Zack answered for me, but I was smoldering on the inside. I couldn’t deny the truth of what he was saying, but it didn’t make it sting any less. They were dead because of me.
“We didn’t walk out of there with whatever it was she went for,” Kurt went on, voice breaking like a man on the edge. “What did you need to get from your house that was SO important, little girl, that you’d risk meeting up with Wolfe to get it?”
I opened my mouth to speak but no words came out. I stuttered for a minute before Kurt cut me off.
“I see. Well, I’m glad it was so important that it was worth all those men’s lives. Some of them have families, you know—”
“Enough.” Zack’s voice was commanding enough that Kurt stopped, leaving a pall hanging in the air between the three of us that Zack broke as he leaned in close to me. “In the basement, what I found…”
“I don’t want to talk about that now.” I lowered my voice. “Not with him here.”
“But you’ll talk about it later?” I felt pinned down by his gaze.
“Yes.”
“All right.” He nodded. “But what were you after? Why did we go back?”
“Later.” I tried to put enough emphasis into my words that he’d stop, and he did. We rode in silence.
The drive back seemed to take forever, the cityscape fading into country lanes, and after an eternity on the road we were motioned through the gate onto the campus of the Directorate. Kurt had talked on his cell phone, and I got the feeling from his side of the conversation that we had a meeting to attend as soon as we returned.
That thought was confirmed when we pulled into the garage under the headquarters building. Ariadne waited for us, her blasé suit blending in to the dim light of the motor pool. She exchanged a perfunctory greeting with Zack and Kurt that was less warm than the relieved one she greeted me with, and then she led us to an elevator that went straight to the top floor. We followed her to the double doors leading to Old Man Winter’s office.
He was sitting in his chair when Ariadne brought us in. He made no move to offer seats, but Kurt took one and Zack gestured for me to take the other. Ariadne walked past Old Man Winter and stood behind him, facing the window, showing the entire room her skinny ass.
Sorry, that was probably me projecting some anger.
“Wolfe?” Old Man Winter’s thick eyebrows moved almost unnaturally, but it was the only sign of motion on his face other than some faint curling on his lips as he spoke.
“Still alive,” Kurt replied. “I hit him with the cannon until the charge was out, but it didn’t have a lot of effect.”
Old Man Winter’s eyes moved to Zack, who hesitated. “I think he knocked me out before I got a shot off, sir.”
“No,” I said before Old Man Winter could reply, shifting his penetrating gaze back to me, “Zack hit him in the side point blank with a shotgun blast. Wolfe showed me after it happened – all it did was leave a few red marks. His skin is thick; really resistant to blades, bullets and the like.”
Old Man Winter surveyed us all. His shocking blue eyes made me uncomfortable as I waited for him to speak, to say something, anything. He didn’t.
Ariadne did. “Yet somehow, last time—” she turned from the window and looked at me—“you managed to penetrate his skin with darts and drug him.”
“Those dart guns were designed by Doc Sessions,” Kurt interjected. “They have a microtip, smaller than any needle, so they inject without breaking the skin.” He tossed a sneer at me. “It’s nothing she did.”
“Yeah, well, I hurt him this time, too,” I said as I wiped some blood off my lips with my glove. I looked down; the dark drops blended well with the black leather, leaving it looking shiny and wet. “And I didn’t need a portable howitzer to do it.”
“Yeah, because you stuck out a dagger and let him run you through a wall.” His face was red with anger, a flush that extended to the balding spots on his head. “I’ve got a great idea to stop him; let’s stick you in front of him with a bigger sword and let him put you through a wall again – and again – until one of you dies. I know which one of you I’m rooting for—”
“At least I tried,” I said, not looking up from my glove. “I didn’t sit around in the corner waiting to die.”
“Oho, courage from the meta-bitch,” Kurt said, standing up. Zack stepped between us, unsteady on his feet, but I didn’t budge from my chair. “Yeah, you got a lot of guts to back up the inhuman strength and super-fast healing. Why, I don’t know how us normal folks that just break and die when Wolfe hits us can be so cowardly! Except we weren’t, because a lot of good guys died today so that he could get another shot at you—”
“Maybe it was the other way around,” I said, turning to meet his accusation. “Maybe I wanted another shot at him.”
Everyone froze. Kurt looked down at me with an almost total lack of understanding. A look of knowing had dawned across Zack’s face while Ariadne appeared stricken at the window. Old Man Winter, as per usual, kept his expression neutral through either long practice or a complete lack of emotional attachment to the situation. I suspected the former, but I didn’t know him well enough to be sure.
It felt like the air had stagnated, as though everybody had paused and no one was taking any breaths; as though I had tossed out a grenade in the middle of the room and we were just waiting for it
to explode.
“You did it on purpose.” Kurt was the first to recover. “You didn’t go back for anything; you went there so you could take a crack at Wolfe, and you threw away eight of our guys in the process, you—!” He lunged at me, screaming unintelligibly, and Zack caught him midway, struggling to control his partner’s bulk as Kurt pushed toward me.
I continued to stare at the blood in my glove. It was a few drops; nothing compared to what was on my hands.
“Get him out of here, Davis!” Ariadne’s shout crackled through the air. “Hannegan, get yourself under control!”
I turned to look at Kurt, whose face was purple with outrage. Zack was no longer restraining him, but he still held a protective arm out between me and Kurt. I didn’t need it. Beaten, wounded, internally bleeding and I could still have broken him into tiny pieces, then everyone else in the room one by one. Sweet gesture, though.
“Zack,” Ariadne called out to him. “Go to medical. You look like Hannegan drove over you.”
They walked out together, Kurt storming and Zack following a few paces behind. Zack turned back to meet my eyes at the door and mouthed the word “Later” before he closed it. If Kurt had said it, I would have considered it a weak threat. With Zack, I knew it was a promise – of a conversation that I didn’t want to have. Ever. I sighed and turned back to Ariadne and Old Man Winter.
Ariadne seemed to be struggling for words and I recalled our last conversation and my suggestive insult. “We are…glad to see you made it through this episode in one piece. Dr. Sessions is all set to begin your—” she paused for a moment—“non-invasive testing tomorrow morning.”
I stood up and started to leave, but something stopped me and I turned back to face Old Man Winter, who was still looking at me with that damned eerie stare. “You knew Wolfe would cut through your agents, didn’t you?”
“That’s a ridiculous assertion,” Ariadne said from behind him. If he was insulted, he didn’t show any more umbrage to it than anything else I’d said. “If we’d known this was going to happen we wouldn’t have sent anyone, especially not you.”
“Not what I asked,” I replied. “And you’re not who I asked. You offered to just send your agents because you didn’t want to endanger me. So my question stands – you knew he would cut through them, yes? Not you, Ariadne.” I pointed at her. “He overruled you.”
Old Man Winter gazed back at me. “If Wolfe was there, it was certain that he would cut through any agents we sent.”
I felt my mouth dry out at the words he spoke, and my voice quivered, just a little, as I whispered my next question. “Then why did you let us go?”
“Enough.” Ariadne’s words cut off his quiet reply, and she surged forward from her place behind him, putting a hand on my elbow and trying to escort me out the door. I restrained my impulse to flatten her. “You wanted to go, we helped you in exchange for your consent to test you—”
“No.” I shook her hand off with almost no effort. “I need to know.” I looked back at Old Man Winter, and he did not shy from my gaze. He held his hand up to stay Ariadne.
“Because you demanded it,” he said with slow, measured words. “And you are more important to us than a hundred agents.”
The blue eyes forced a chill in me as he answered, and they followed me unceasing as Ariadne led me from the room. This time I did not resist her.