Robert Crane - Omega

I slipped a foot behind the potted plant while she was talking, and sent it at her face with a kick. I heard the crack of thunder, saw the lightning hit the clay and refract as I charged behind it. It shattered inches from her face as her fist intercepted it and I adjusted to keep from colliding with the punch she had intended for the pot. I felt a burst of wind propel me forward, my brother giving me a helpful shove that accelerated me through the clods of dirt, blowing the plant out of my way and allowing me to deliver a punch to Eleanor Madigan’s lip. I watched it split with impact, and I followed it with another as I caught my footing, hammering her with a blow that cocked her head to the side.

I heard movement behind me—Eve and Bastian. I dodged to the side as I heard the crackle of electricity shoot through the air I had been occupying only a second earlier. Eve’s net didn’t miss this time, hitting Madigan in the chest and making a latticework of light from the middle of her thighs to the top of her neck. One hand was caught facing the ground, the other sideways, and I saw the glow as she summoned electricity to her. I stepped forward and cracked her twice on the jaw, watching her eyes roll back, knocking her out cold.

“Tough bitch,” Eve said, and whipped another net at her, this one wrapping around her face, setting it aglow and trapping her hair against the lines of it. I could see a closed eye through the gaps.

“Wow,” Reed said. “I’d never dealt with a Thor-type before. Crazy. Lightning bolts and everything.”

“Yeah,” I said, rubbing my knuckles where I had struck her, “but she’s no Chris Hemsworth.”

The elevator next to us dinged and sent me scrambling. I wondered very briefly if I’d have to take the memory out of a passing civilian when they saw what had happened, but felt a dash of relief when Clary and Parks stepped out.

“What the hell happened here?” Parks asked.

“A clean takedown,” Reed answered. “Minus, y’know, the clean part.”

“We need to get her out of here,” Bastian said. “Clary, you’re gonna want to go to rock-form everywhere but your head. Make it look casual, like you’re wearing gloves—but keep her away from your flesh. She’s a Thor-type, and if you let her touch you, you’re gonna wish you hadn’t.”

Clary nodded, ripping away the netting that Eve had used to restrain Madigan. Madigan didn’t even twitch as Clary freed her, the nets blinking out of existence as Clary ripped through each fiber. As he picked her up, I caught a glimpse of rocky skin under his t-shirt collar, and he readjusted her to walk her in front of him in a way that could possibly be described as making her look like she might be conscious and being walked out. If you didn’t look too closely. And you were an idiot.

“We need to move,”‘ Parks said. “Folks in the lobby were asking questions about the noise when we came up. Doubtful this will stay quiet for long.”

“FBI IDs out,” Bastian said. “Let’s not go mugging for the surveillance cameras, though.”

We moved toward the nearest stairwell, Bastian at the fore with Eve behind him, Reed at my shoulder. We cleared each floor quickly, passing a few confused hotel guests as we descended, not saying anything. Bastian waved his badge at them as we passed, running interference, saying, “Please stand clear, folks, we have a dangerous fugitive here.”

When we hit the lobby, Bastian hurried to the front desk. Dressed as he was, in a suit, he pulled his ID and warned the clerks what was coming.

“I was sure one of us was going to go off the walkway at some point,” Reed confided in me as we passed the front desk. “I mean, we fight in an open-air courtyard hotel and no one goes over the balcony?”

“I was sure it’d be you,” I said as the first chill of the outside air hit me, wind blowing my hair back. I felt the tickle of static electricity run through my hair and I wondered how long I’d be dealing with the aftershocks (ha ha) of Eleanor’s attack.

“Well, at least I’d have been able to pull a soft landing,” Reed said as we approached the van. I heard tires squeal as a Cadillac wandered into the wrong lane as it was exiting the parking lot and almost got hit by an airport shuttle. “Geez. Some people shouldn’t drive.”

“Nice to know you weren’t worried about it being me to go over the edge,” I said, stepping into the back of the van after Clary.

“I would have cushioned your fall.”

“How are we gonna keep her contained on the ride home?” Parks asked. “Have her sit on Clary’s lap the whole way?”

There was a moment of perplexed silence that ended as Bastian shut one side of the rear doors. “Yep,” he said. “Clary…sit her on your lap and stay in a rubberized form.”

“What did the poor woman do to deserve that?” Eve asked, sotto voce. We all heard it anyway and Clary changed his skin to black rubber before any hint of blush or emotion made it to his cheeks.

“Just keep her subdued,” Bastian said, and I saw no further movement from Clary. He was still, arms clamped around Madigan’s limp body, as the van started up and we pulled out onto the road, the miles ticking by and no one speaking, as though Madigan were not unconscious, electricity still filling the air around us.

“Yes, they caught her,” the old man said into the phone. He swerved the big Cadillac to avoid a shuttle bus pulling into the parking lot, causing the shuttle to squeal its tires. He looked into the rearview mirror and saw the procession, the four members of M-Squad, the young man from Alpha—and her.

“I have her in sight right now,” he said into the phone, watching her dark hair, a little frizzy , bob up and down as she hurried across the parking lot toward the Directorate van. “She is…shorter than I expected.” At that moment, she looked up at the car, and he felt almost as though she were looking at him through the rearview mirror, as though a sort of current were between them, and he pressed the pedal, accelerating out of the parking lot. As he turned, his eyes followed her, still making her getaway with her comrades. “Pretty, in her own sort of way. She has a focused air about her, her mind on the things she has to accomplish. Her will is strong, I can tell you that much. I can feel it from here.”

He waited as he drove, passing a freeway onramp that was grey, dull, and overdone—just like everything else in America. “I don’t know how much of a problem her will presents,” he said, answering the question asked on the other end of the phone. “I am merely informing you that she seems to possess a mind of her own, that she is no simple dullard as easily manipulated as the goon in Iowa whom I set upon a different path. He will wake up in twenty years as an electrician and never know that I steered him from his life of crime, because he has all the self-awareness of a microwave dinner. She, on the other hand…her mind is firm in its decisions. All I can do for one such as that is begin to stir the waters of uncertainty.”

He pulled the car onto the freeway. “We will be prepared by tomorrow to finish this.”

He waited, listening, though he wanted more than anything to interrupt, to assure the man on the other end of the line that, in fact, he was wrong, but one simply did not do that to one’s boss, not in Omega. The fastest way to the gallows , he thought, and listened to the prattle, waiting for his opportunity to talk. “Yes,” he said at last, when the rhetorical question was asked, “but this is simply a choice. I know you had high hopes that they would step aside after we wiped out their human agents.” He let a smile split his lips. “No, you know I didn’t agree with that operation, and clearly it did not bear the fruit that your advisors told you it would. Because they do not know Erich Winter, his stubborn resolution.”