Robert Crane - Omega

“It’s not that,” I said, feeling my fingers wrap around the thick metal safety rail. “It’s just…” I halted. “These guys sent Wolfe after me and Henderschott. They tried to get Fries in my pants, then flipped Mormont—or whatever you called it—and turned loose a couple of bloodthirsty vampires to try and catch me.” I shook my head. “It feels like every time we’ve got a grasp on what we’re dealing with, something else comes popping out that’s more horrific than the last thing they set loose.”

“You think Henderschott, Mormont and the vampires were worse than Wolfe?”

I felt myself freeze and stiffen, all motion stopping around my body. “No. Nothing is worse than Wolfe. And nothing has stayed with me like him, either.”

“Yes, well, having a monster stuck in your head isn’t the sort of thing that goes away, I suppose,” she said. “This is our best chance to get to what Omega’s doing now, and if you don’t feel comfortable with it—”

“I’m going,” I said, firm, feeling it all the way down. “I’m just…cautious, okay? They’re not world-renowned for coming at us open-handed. You’ve got their slimy mouthpiece in there, and he’s just grinning up a storm, like he’s just having a conversation with us sitting on his couch. It worries me that Fries is so cool. They must have known we’d come for him—that I would, after what he did.”

“He hid,” Ariadne said. “He changed identities, he changed apartments, he probably thought we couldn’t find him after Eagle River. He was wrong. Just because he’s been trained to play it cool when most of us would be showing some concern doesn’t mean anything. Omega is not some invincible organization with limitless resources and the ability to know our every move before we make it. The fact that your mother hit them so hard, in places they didn’t expect, proves that they can make mistakes.” She lowered her voice. “The fact that they lost Andromeda, someone so important an entire facility was dedicated to her, proves they’re not invincible.”

I felt a sliver of fear mingled with sadness at the mention of Andromeda’s name. “And I might feel better about that if we had turned that win into something, anything that worked to our advantage. But even the autopsy left us with no clue what she was, or why they wanted her, or anything really, beyond the fact that we pulled two traitors out of the Directorate’s inner circle that we wouldn’t have had a clue about if she hadn’t told us before she died. Let’s face it Ariadne—these guys have been kicking our asses since day one, and we know almost nothing more about them beyond the fact that they used to be gods, than we did when we started. I don’t know about you, but when someone’s pounding my skull in, I like to think that after nine months of it, I’d have at least some handle on who they are and what they want.”

“We know what they want,” she said. “The same thing they’ve always wanted. You.”

I hissed, expelling all the air from my body. “But ‘why?’ is the more valid question. And, by the way, just as an aside, sending me to their secret safe house when we have no idea what’s contained within? Not the best idea ever for keeping what they want out of their hands.”

She twitched and looked away, her gaze swiveling to the white concrete block that surrounded us in the stairwell, looking out over the banister. “The Director thinks you’re one of our best resources against them because whatever they throw at you, you seem to be able to turn around relatively easily.”

“Relatively easily?” I stared at her openmouthed. “Wolfe nearly killed me. Fries nearly—” I stopped. “Mormont would have taken me to them if Zollers hadn’t saved my life.”

“You’re not going after them alone, nor do you have to go at all if you don’t want to,” she said. “Your choice.”

“You’re damned right I’m going after them,” I said. “I just…ugh. I hate everything they’ve done to me so far. I hate them.”

“I’d feel the same if I were you.”

“Whatever.” I shook my head. “When does the chopper leave?”

She looked at me in surprise. “Chopper? I’m not having you take the chopper to Des Moines. Not for this. The uncertainty of the mission coupled with the recon element means you’ll need to approach quietly, with some subtlety, and a chopper hovering over a suburban neighborhood with people deploying out of it on zip-lines doesn’t exactly fit the bill. You’ll take a van; it fits the mission profile better.”

I grimaced. “How long of a drive is it to Des Moines?”

“Four, maybe four and a half hours?”

“Dammit,” I said, and my hand came up to massage my eyebrows. “This is bad.”

“What now?” Ariadne said, her voice rising with alarm. “What is it?”

“I’m going to be stuck in a confined space with Clary for the whole drive.”

“…and that’s why I left Nebraska,” came the droning, cornpone voice of Clyde Clary. Scott was driving and Kat was riding next to him, her face suffused with boredom. Reed and I were seated in captain’s chairs directly behind them and Clary was in the back in a massive rotating chair that was anchored to the floor in front of a computer console. It was all kind of sci-fi, or FBI, but I didn’t really care. I was so annoyed and bored by Clary’s stupid stories that I was ready to reach forward and yank the wheel out of Scott’s hands so I could put us into the ditch and end all of our suffering. I had mentally checked out of Clary’s stories throughout the whole ride, until they all blended together. The parts I remembered involved a grain silo, three heifers and an old Cadillac. For all I knew, they were all from the same story.

“We’re almost there,” Scott said with a note of hope. “GPS says it’s off the next exit.”

“Thank God,” said Kat and Reed in perfect harmony. I was thinking it.

“You know, this reminds me of this one time when—”

“Hey, Clary,” Scott said, raising his voice to talk over Clyde. “Can you do me a favor and start booting up the computer?”

“Yeah, sure,” Clary said, and after a moment, he spoke again. “Say, you weren’t telling me to boot up the computer because you’re sick of hearing me tell stories, are you? Because I figured none of you were talking because you thought they were interesting.”

“If you could just go ahead and start it up—” Scott began.

“You really didn’t think that, didn’t you?” Clary said, and I could hear the rising disbelief. “Y’all are assholes. At least when Bastian and Parks want me to shut up, they come out and say it.”

“Shut up, Clary,” Reed said, his arms folded in front of him.

“Hey, you can’t talk to me like that, Alpha dog.”

“Sure I can, Beta dog,” Reed said. “Pretty sure I just did, in fact. What are you so pissed about? You told me to come out and say it, so I did.”

“Yeah, like an hour late.”

“More like four hours,” Scott said from the driver’s seat.

I felt Clary seething behind me as Scott took us off the exit ramp and into a neighborhood that didn’t look that different from the one I had lived in back in Minneapolis; tall oaks jutting skyward around us, red leaves falling and clogging the gutters, filling the channels on both sides of the street. The houses were older but not in bad shape, for the most part. Some were stucco, some siding, with the occasional brick facade just to break up the monotony. The lawns were all beginning to turn brown, the cool weather leeching the lively green from them as a signal that vitality and warmth were retreating for the season.

Older cars were parallel parked at the sides of the streets. The houses were built high off the road on either side of us. They had no front yards to speak of; instead a concrete terrace came four feet above the sidewalk, with a staircase in front of each house that led up to front porches. The whole place had the feel of a valley, with the houses overlooking the street.