Robert Crane - Omega

There was a pause in the conversation. “Erich Winter lives up to his name. His coldly analytical nature, his refusal to budge, like a frosted hinge…you were never going to receive the results you were looking for by simply doing things the way they told you to. Anyone who was close to the situation would have said so…and this is the problem with your advisors…they are too young, too unfamiliar with the old ways to deal with the old ones, who are more myth and legend to them than real.”

There was a flat pause and the old man looked up at the greying sky, at the impending approach of winter itself, of the trees, now nearly naked on either side of the boulevard he was driving on. “Stanchion is mine, my operation. I will show you. Tomorrow, we move. Tomorrow, everything falls into place. I will call you after it is done, and we will talk. I will fix this intractable mess that your young minds have created for you.

“And after that, Erich Winter will no longer be a problem.”

“So this is Eleanor Madigan,” Old Man Winter said in a low, rumbling tone, the glass between her in the interrogation room and the eight of us watching feeling far too thin for a woman who could cast lightning. She sat on a metal chair, her legs and those of the chair resting in a children’s wading pool filled halfway with water.

“I wouldn’t advise using ice on her.” I said, “I don’t think it would end well for you, more like an AC/DC song.”

“AC/DC?” Reed asked, turning to me.

“Thunderstruck,” Clary said, mumbling. “Good one, Sienna.”

“Her talents do not concern me,” Old Man Winter said. “Keeping her in a pool of water should nullify her powers.”

“Is that an old trick for dealing with Thor-types, sir?” Bastian asked.

“No,” Old Man Winter replied, a glint of amusement in his eyes. “I saw it on an episode of Heroes .” There was a pause, as though someone had thrown a grenade in the middle of us and we were all waiting for it to explode.

“Oh, wow,” I said into the tension. “Was that a joke?”

Old Man Winter’s voice scratched as he replied. “Yes. Do none of you recognize one when you hear it?”

I looked around; taking the temperature of the room, I felt one thing and one thing only—discomfort. “From you, no.”

“What’s to stop her from turning the chair over?” Bastian asked.

“Clary will assist in the interrogation,” Old Man Winter said; whether he was ignoring Bastian or simply felt that was answer enough was anyone’s guess. “While he and I are speaking with Madigan, Parks and Bastian will again have a conversation with Bjorn, and Sienna and Eve will speak to Fries.” Old Man Winter turned from facing Madigan to look at all of us, a wintery glow of blue in his frosty eyes. “They will be moving soon. I will have names. I will have times, locations…whatever they know, I want it.”

“Did Bjorn talk?” I asked as Old Man Winter began to turn away. “After you broke his arm off, and whatever else you did to him?”

There was a pause, and I got the sense everyone else was waiting, the same as I was, to see if he answered. “No,” he said finally. “But that does not mean he will not say more now.” He walked out the door, Clary at his heels, and a moment later we saw him enter the chamber that held Madigan.

“He thinks the clock is winding down,” Ariadne said after Old Man Winter had begun to speak to Eleanor. “He thinks they’ll be getting cocky now, that some unstoppable hammerblow is about to rain down on our heads.”

“We’ve captured three of them now,” Eve said, a certain lazy, I-don’t-care-ness to her tone. “You’d think they’d be losing some of that arrogance.”

I thought for a moment about Eleanor, when we were talking during the fight in the hotel. “Hmm,” I said aloud, drawing Reed’s eye, and then Ariadne’s.

“What?” Ariadne asked.

“When I fought Eleanor,” I said, “she didn’t seem all that concerned about being blindsided by four Directorate agents. She even sat there and monologued until I attacked her. That’s either some deep arrogance or—”

“Or they’re playing at something else, something that would instill a serious overconfidence,” Reed said. A beep came from his pocket and he pulled his cell phone, looking at the screen. “‘Call home.’ Be back in a few.” He made a move toward the exit and disappeared into the hall.

I watched as Old Man Winter asked Eleanor why she was in Minnesota. The English woman did not answer, did not even deign to acknowledge him, and I watched him gesture for Clary. Clary’s skin turned black as rubber, and he stepped into the wading pool and positioned himself behind her, his wrist across her neck, holding her face in place and forcing her to look up at Old Man Winter.

“Enough of these childish games,” Eve said, tapping me on the shoulder. “Let us speak with your incubus.”

“Excuse me?” I said icily. “He’s not ‘mine’.”

Eve rolled her eyes to the side, as though annoyed at my daring to speak back to her. “Let us speak with this little man whom you almost let into your scheide and drag the truth from his lips, all right?”

“Well, when you put it that way…”

As we left, Ariadne was activating the monitor for Fries’ chamber. Bastian and Parks followed a few paces behind us, entering the room across the hall from Ariadne’s. As near as I could tell, Ariadne was going to be watching three interrogations at once, which I did not envy, especially considering the one involving Clary and Old Man Winter was fairly certain to degenerate into something I wouldn’t care to watch.

The door slid open with Eve’s key card and we found Fries sitting at a table in the middle of the room. He went from sullen to all smiles, as cheerful a transformation as I’d ever seen a person make in two seconds.

“Who just shot a ray of sunshine up your ass?” I asked as Eve slid into the chair across from him.

“You are such a colorful person,” he said. “It makes me glad I didn’t kill you in Eagle River.”

“Not for lack of trying.” I said, “The only reason you didn’t is because you got your ass kicked by girls. Twice.”

“Yeah, well,” he shrugged. “One of them is dead, and the other might as well be. I’d tell you that your aunt is a real piece of work, but you already know that.” He laughed, an empty one. “She is seriously damaged goods.”

“Said the black hole to the kettle.” I folded my arms. “Got anything to tell us, James? Because, otherwise, I’ve got better things to do, like filing my nails.”

“You should try doing your hair,” he said with a nod that almost caused me to subconsciously reach up; I’d forgotten that Eleanor had run ten thousand volts through me. I probably looked like Lady Frankenstein.

“Can I beat him unconscious now?” Eve asked me, ignoring Fries completely.

“I have no objection.” I really didn’t.

“Your hospitality is lacking around here,” Fries said as Eve stood and circled around the table toward him.

“Gloves,” Eve said to me, and I puzzled at what she meant for a second before nodding, taking off my gloves, and placing them into her outstretched hand. She slid them on, one by one, and I heard the sound of leather stretching. “You have small, girlish hands,” she said, but I didn’t really hear any judgment in the way she said it.

“Isn’t that the way you like them?” Fries asked, smiling sweetly at Eve.

“It is,” she said, smiling back, from just over him. “It really is.” The first punch didn’t so much knock him over as flatten him like a wrecking ball hitting a small building. His chair skittered across the floor and hit the wall, making a gawdawful racket. Fries hit the ground sideways, head bouncing of the tile floor with a terrible crack, his hands still cuffed behind him.