Robert Crane - Omega

“Your gun,” Zack said and pointed.

I looked down to where he had pointed, to the holster under my arm, and I pulled out my pistol. The barrel was bent at a ten-degree angle, either from one of the times I was hit or one of my landings. “Damn. I liked this one, too.”

“You didn’t use it?” Zack asked.

I looked at the black finish. “No. I didn’t even draw it. Guess I was too focused on subduing the prisoner.”

Zack raised an eyebrow. “People tend to get pretty subdued when you put a few bullets in them, especially if they’re a meta and can heal from that sort of thing.”

I slid the wrecked gun back in the holster. “They also tend to die sometimes, in case you don’t remember that certain girl—”

“Andromeda?” Zack’s mood shifted. “Kinda hard to forget.”

“Yeah.” I tried to think of something happier. “Oh. I saw Dr. Sessions earlier today. He’s discovered something…interesting.”

“Oh?” Zack’s face locked into a grimace. “What’s that? A new way for you to kill people?”

“Ah, no. The opposite, actually.” I smiled at him. “He can manufacture a suit for you that will allow you to touch my skin.”

“A suit?” A raised eyebrow again. “Like with a tie?” He tugged at the bottom edge of his coat.

“No, like…” I eased closer to him, and stopped when I realized I was covered in dust. “Like a plastic one that adheres to your body. Like…skintight.”

He frowned, his brow crumpling. “Like spandex? So I can dress like a superhero?”

“No,” I said. “Like…skintight thin latex. So you can…touch me.”

There was a moment’s quite pause, the only sound coming from the beeping of Reed’s pulse-oxygen monitor. “I can already do that,” Zack said, breaking into a smile. “In dreams.”

“Yeah,” I said, “but this way you could touch me in real life. And in every way .” I raised my eyebrows at him, trying to be suggestive.

“You mean like…” He froze, as if it was almost computing, then his eyes got wide. “Oh. Skin tight, totally skin tight, and form fitting.” He looked pensive. “How do I get into something like that?”

I thought about it for a beat. “I don’t know, maybe it comes in pieces? Or maybe it’s like a jumpsuit with a zipper on the back. I don’t really know and I don’t care that much, either, as long as it works. It means we could actually…” I awkwardly started to place a dirty glove on his shoulder and then stopped myself. “Sleep together.”

“We’ve slept together before,” he said, keeping his voice low and looking over toward Dr. Perugini, who was still working on Kat. “And I kinda like what we’re doing now, with the dreams. It’s a pretty amazing feeling. I think it may be better than the real thing and I never thought I’d say that about…uh…that.”

“Well, I’m glad it’s good for you,” I said, trying to stay on the side of the line of sheer irritation I was feeling, “but it’s not really all that…for me, if you know what I mean. And I’m a little worried about that power of mine. We don’t know how it’s supposed to work. I doubt the main application is getting my boyfriend off without touching him.”

“Why not?” he asked. “Maybe it’s an adaptation to allow a succubus to keep a mate without being able to touch them.”

“I kinda doubt that,” I said. “In my experience, my powers are seldom that innocuous.”

“If you’re done with your little make out session,” Dr. Perugini said from beside Kat’s bed, “I can talk to you now.”

“Just tell me what you want me to do and I’ll do it.” Zack placed both his hands on my arms and kissed my forehead. “If you tell me to get the suit, I’ll get it and we can—”

“Well, since you’re so excited about it,” I said, almost snapping. “Forget it, we’ll talk about it later.”

“I’m sorry,” Zack said, and I saw the genuine contrition in his eyes. “I guess I just thought we had a good thing going on with the dreams—”

“ You had a good thing going with the dreams,” I said, and my voice rose higher than I intended it to before I lowered it. “Personally, I’d still like to be able to touch my boyfriend, to feel him against me, really against me, without having to dream it.”

He nodded and I saw a little retreat from him. “Okay. I’ll talk to Sessions.”

“Try and muster some enthusiasm about it or let’s not even bother.”

“No, really,” he said. “I just felt…intimate with you already. I’m sorry.”

“Let’s talk about it later.” I started toward Dr. Perugini.

“Oh, good,” Dr. Perugini said, looking up at us, her olive skin flushed as I arrived at Kat’s bedside, a snarl posed on her lips. “I didn’t mean to interrupt your personal conversation with my tedious medical report about the people who were injured on your mission.” She smiled, her every word a dagger. “Scott will be fine. Katrina appears to be fine, physically. They’ll both awaken in the next few hours, I expect. Katrina did some preliminary healing at the scene, yes?”

“Yes,” I answered, looking down at Kat’s face, which was drawn, almost as platinum as her hair.

“That saved us from serious problems, especially with Scott,” Perugini said, a clipboard positioned in front of her. “I can tell from the damage that his injuries were much more severe, that they have been healed considerably. Without that, he would likely have died.”

“He saved my life,” I said, looking back to where Scott lay on the bed. “Saved me from getting hit, pushed me down and blocked me with his body.” I shook my head. “That was a complete cluster—”

“And you were in charge?” Perugini eyed me accusingly.

“In charge, yes,” I said. “In control of the situation—sadly, not.”

“And whose fault is that?” she asked with more than a little accusation.

“What happened?” I heard a faint, groggy voice. I looked down to see Kat staring up at us, her curled blond hair lank and hanging loose around her face. Her eyes were open but only barely, the green of her irises peeking out at us from behind heavy lids. “Sienna?” She said my name as if trying to drag it out of herself.

“I’m here,” I said, and started to reach for her hand, but hesitated when I remembered how dirty my glove was. I only froze for a second and then I took hold of her hand and picked it up. “You’re gonna be fine, Kat. We’re back at the Directorate. What do you remember?”

“Directorate?” Kat asked, blinking at me. “What happened?”

“We were on a mission,” I said. “In Des Moines. We were supposed to keep an eye on an Omega safe house, and things went wrong. You saved us, Kat—you healed Scott and the others, kept them from dying.”

“Scott?” She scrunched her eyes at me. “I saved him?”

“You did,” I said. “He’s going to be just fine.”

“Oh.” She seemed to nod, but her eyes were distant, far away, glazed over. They came sharply back into focus, and found mine, and she squinted as she concentrated, trying to speak again. “Who is Scott?”

Red and blue lights flashed in the Iowa night, casting their colors over the street. The streetlamps were out, and he was left to wonder if they had functioned in the first place. The house in front of him was blocked off by a line of police cars and officers, all of them out of their vehicles— and buzzing around like little bees , he thought. The news vans were out as well, and they were worse than bees—they were like flies that gathered around manure in a pasture, always gravitating toward the largest pile.