Robert Crane - Omega

I stared at the back of Bjorn’s head. The man’s head was turned, looking back at Old Man Winter, and just far enough that I could see the edge of his eye under his heavy, Cro-Magnon brow. “No,” I breathed, “not like that. Not him, not anyone. I just…I can’t.”

He didn’t even flinch. “Your mother would.”

I, however, did flinch. “I’m not her.” There was a pause. “We can find out another way. He’ll talk.” I drew a deep breath and stood, coming up to my full height. “We’ll break him.”

Old Man Winter closed his eyes, as though pondering something, and then opened them again, now impassive. “You are correct. We will break him.” I felt the temperature in the room plunge, this time no product of my imagination. My skin, once clammy, felt ice form along the wet dampness of it, the freeze crawling up around me as a winter frost manifested before my eyes.

Old Man Winter’s hand glowed where it lay on Bjorn’s shoulder, and a thin sheet of ice was forming around it. It grew thicker, denser, as I watched astonished, the frost crept down Bjorn’s arm to mid-humerus and beyond. Bjorn let out a cry, followed by a sustained scream. “Oh, yes,” Old Man Winter said, removing his fingers from Bjorn’s arm as the air in front of his mouth formed a cloud that was visible against his thick, black wool coat. “He will break.”

With a subtle move, Old Man Winter brought his fingers back down in an open-handed slap that sent a cracking noise echoing through the room. Bjorn’s entire hand dissolved into shards of ice and cascaded to the floor in a pile, no more substantial than a mound of discarded snow. “If it takes losing every limb he has…he will break. And if that fails…” Old Man Winter placed his hand on Bjorn’s chin and held it up, looking into his eyes. “Then we will wait until tomorrow, when he has regrown his limbs…and begin again.”

I was out the door before I realized I was walking, my key card granting me exit. I put my back against the wall in the hallway and listened, but heard nothing from inside, nor in the hall save for the vent fans and my own heavy breathing, sharp, punctuated with a gasp every few minutes as I tried to hold in strong emotion.

The door opened quietly a few minutes later and I averted my eyes to keep from looking inside, and whatever was left of Bjorn. When I glanced, unable to control the instinct to look, Old Man Winter obstructed my view until the door was closed. “You don’t approve of my methods,” he said, stating the bloody obvious.

“You tortured him.”

“He would kill anyone who got in the way of capturing you, harm you in any way it took to get what he wanted.” Old Man Winter made no apologies as he stood there before me. He stood just as tall as he had in the room, just as imposing. “Why would I do any less to protect you from them?”

“They’re a joke,” I said, almost expelling the words as a breath. “Everything they’ve sent, we’ve beaten. To cave to their tactics, to drop to their level—”

“They will beat us, regardless of level, if we refuse to do what it takes to get to the truth of what they are planning,” he said, and I caught heat in his words for the first time. “You wish to believe foolishly that no matter what comes, you can simply overcome through some sense of unlimited potential or magical destiny, but that is folly. Your life hangs in the balance.” I could hear an urgency from him I’d never heard before, a stirring in his words that hinted at something darker, something deeper. “Omega and all hell that follows is inching closer by the day, and we have little time to prepare you for the role you will take when it comes.” He drew up again and hesitated, and I saw a hint of sadness. “I won’t always be around to protect you—to do what you will not. Soon you will have to do these things for yourself, to be ready to take your place—”

“Are you leaving?” I asked, not sure how to respond, and not even sure why I was cutting him off. He stared coolly back at me. “Checking out? Bailing in the middle of the fight?”

“I am one of the oldest metahumans on the planet,” Old Man Winter said, and the tiredness in his voice made it fact more than any of the words did. “I have seen much, done much, endured much. My power fades, even now, from a battle I fought over a hundred years ago that scarred me and left me weaker than anyone knows.” The glisten in the blue of his irises was unmistakable. “Even still, Omega fears me.” The frosty sensation grew in the room, as though his skin were growing cold and infecting the air around him. “When the day comes that they find me—and find me they shall, sooner or later—I will be the first to fall.” His eyes glistened ever brighter. “But not the last, unless you are prepared to do whatever is necessary to fight the battle that they will not expect you to fight. Unless you are ready to do whatever it takes to win, to protect the metas and humans of the Directorate.”

He moved his hand to my shoulder, a heavy, leaden weight, but the way he did it was unlike how he had touched Bjorn. “It is much responsibility I place on your shoulders, I know. The weight of the world, perhaps, it feels to you. But I do this because you…are the only one who can bear it. There is no other.” His shoulders were slumped now, his black coat billowing around them as though there were extra space, and the shadows from the fluorescent lights on his face made it seem like he was gaunter, bonier, more shadowed and skeletal than he had ever looked before. Like death, frozen and forbidding, as though he were already dead, as though it had settled on him down to the bones, and he simply had yet to stop moving.

“Do you think they’ll be coming soon? For you, I mean?” When I asked, I sounded like a scared little girl.

“I have no idea.” I heard him breathe again, back to life. “This Operation Stanchion is concerning…to see them moving resources toward us and not know their specific aim.” He grew quiet for a moment. “You must prepare. You must ready yourself for what is to come. To turn blindly away from this or to trust fate to be kind is a fool’s lot, and yields a fool’s results.” His voice grew hard like iron as he stood again. “And you are no fool.” He turned and walked toward the end of the hall, leaving me behind.

I felt pitiful, scared, feeling the true dread of Omega, of what was coming, in a way that I hadn’t since the arrival of Wolfe had forced me to hide in a cell here in the basement, hoping he would eventually leave town, leave me alone. Henderschott hadn’t scared me, not really. He had hurt me once or twice, but not enough to drive the fear into me the way Wolfe had. Same with the vampires they sent, and Mormont, whom they turned from the Directorate’s service. None of them scared me like Wolfe did, none of them hurt me like Wolfe did.

Except Fries. That little rodent. Exempting Wolfe, they couldn’t beat me in a fight, not even with Bjorn, who was a bruiser. But Fries came at me sideways, touching on all my insecurities at a time when I was vulnerable. Then he betrayed me and twisted the knife, the snake. The hallway seemed narrower now, the air thicker, and the chill had left with Old Man Winter. I started toward the stairs, the beige walls blurring together. Now they were after me again, maybe after Old Man Winter, too. If they wanted to topple the Directorate, knocking over Old Man Winter seemed like it would be the way to go about it. Who’d step up after him? I liked Ariadne, but I got the sense that she relied on him to do more than was obvious on the surface.

My legs carried me up the stairs, through the lobby and out the door. I hit the crisp air and took a breath. All the feelings of confinement began to fade, that tightness in my chest as if I couldn’t breathe for what I had to contemplate. Breaking a man’s arm off out of fear for what was to come, for what he knew but wasn’t telling…I don’t know that I would have had it in me to harm even Bjorn in such a way.