Robert Crane - Omega

“How do you do this?” he moaned as I ran a hand over his chest, causing him to tingle.

I could feel what he felt as I did it. “Dreamwalking is part of my metahuman abilities,” I said, kissing him on the neck and sending him into ecstasy. “You know that.”

“Yeah, but I get the feeling that the other people you’ve talked to in your dreams didn’t get this…” He shuddered, his mouth opened slightly and he let out short, gasping breaths, “…sensation from being in a dream with you.”

“True,” I said, and kissed him on the bicep, causing him to sigh loudly. “But that’s because with them, I was insubstantial; a ghost without touch.” I felt myself fade into a shadow, as though I had become blurry, and I passed through him, reappearing at his back, where I planted a series of slow kisses and a caress along his shoulder, causing him to shudder. “I’m only real in your dreams.”

“I’m…not complaining. But you seem pretty real when I’m awake, too.”

“Yeah, but you can’t touch me there. Not like this. Not like here. I wish we could…” I ran a hand over his shoulder.

“This is working plenty well enough for me,” he said and moaned again as I traced my fingers along his spine. “This is unlike anything I’ve ever…it’s just…so good.”

I smiled and kissed him again, back in front of him now. I looked into his eyes through the haze of the dreamwalk, and I paused. His eyes were normally perfect, creamy brown, like the color of sugared and creamed coffee. “What?” he moaned as I hesitated, and he pushed himself against me again, brushing against my skin, and he sighed, a little noise of ecstasy. I held fast, though, unmoving, as he moaned in pleasure from the feel of my skin against his in this dream world, and he dissolved into the sounds of a man deeply, totally satisfied.

I held back though, frozen, unable to move, locked into the dream and the horror of thoughts I couldn’t—wouldn’t—share with him.

His brown eyes were gone, replaced with blue—bright, crystalline, cerulean—exactly like the ones I saw when I looked in the mirror every morning.

I walked into Ariadne’s office at the crack of nine the next morning to find her already behind her desk, a file in her hands, her reading glasses on. She wore them infrequently, only when she was actually reading, and as soon as I appeared at the door she hurried to put them back in her desk drawer, laying the file down in front of her.

“Why do you do that?” I asked as I flopped down in the chair across from her.

“Do what?” she asked, almost looking innocent.

“Put away your glasses when someone comes into the room?” I nodded at the drawer to her side where she had stowed them. “Everyone knows you wear glasses when you read.”

“I…” She paused, as though thinking about it. “I don’t know, actually. Just one of those things I’ve never given any thought to. Vanity, I suppose.”

“But you don’t wear make-up and you don’t worry about how you dress…?”

I watched her face sag a little, before she formed a tight smile. “What can I do for you, Sienna?”

“I’m here for the interrogation. I thought I was gonna play bad cop, worse cop, with Fries this morning.”

“Not ‘til eleven,” she said, picking up the file and opening her desk drawer again. She slid her glasses on and looked at me over the half-lenses. “I do have something you can do until then, though.”

“Oh?” I perked up. “I hope it involves beating someone up. Because I like to play to my strengths, you know. Also, physics. I’m good at math.”

“Not physics, nor beating people up. You’re behind on your quarterly physical exams,” she said, running a finger over the file as she read along with it. “You need to see Dr. Sessions.”

“I’ll get around to that one of these days,” I said.

“You’ll go today, right now, if you want to continue to be cleared for duty.” She looked up and found me with her gaze, more severe than usual. “This isn’t negotiable, and it isn’t just for you; we expand our knowledge base about metas from these exams, so help us out, will you?”

“O-kaaay,” I said, dragging out the last syllable. “But only because you asked me nicely.”

“Thank you,” she said as I made my way to the door. “And Sienna?” She looked up at me as I turned around at the door. “Try not to kill Fries. Now that he’s here, we want him alive.”

“You sure? Because you told me if I felt in peril, I could kill, so it might be that he gets a little smart-mouthed with me and I feel threatened—”

“No.”

“What if I didn’t kill him, maybe just took a spleen or something?”

“No.”

“But it’d grow back!”

She shook her head. “Take it easy on him. It’s an interrogation. You’re there to extract information, not his gallbladder.”

“The gallbladder would be easier. Maybe less messy, too.”

“Parks is an expert interrogator,” she said. “Follow his lead. You’re only there as a counterpoint, watch him work. This isn’t a one-time interrogation so don’t be surprised if you don’t get much in the way of results. We have him now, there’s no reason to get impatient when he’s not going anywhere.”

“Yeah, yeah.”

I made my way across the campus. I was successful at suppressing the thought in the back of my mind about Zack’s eyes turning into my own during our dream rendezvous last night. After all, it was just a dream. I toyed with the idea of bringing it up to Dr. Sessions, but he knew so little about succubi I doubted it would be of any use to me, though he was certain to fawn over it like he did any other piece of irrelevant but interesting data.

The cool air was comfortable against my skin; I preferred the chill of autumn now that it was here, because I didn’t look so out of place walking the campus in long sleeves, long pants, gloves and a coat as I did in the summertime. Talk about stares, especially when I went to the mall. Just as well, the skin on my legs and arms was beyond pale; I might as well have been a vampire. Well, not exactly like one. At least not the ones I’d seen.

A pile of leaves had blown into the small entry alcove to the rebuilt science building. It was different than it had been before Aleksandr Gavrikov had blown it up; the old building was brick, a 1970s facade and an interior not much more updated. Now it was all new and modern concrete, a more rounded profile instead of the square, blocky facility it had been before. I wondered how much of the Directorate had been destroyed and rebuilt since I had arrived. The proportion was not in my favor, whatever it was.

I knocked at the door to Dr. Sessions’ office. The doctor looked up from his desk at my arrival, his bald head shining by the light of a lamp that was lit on his desk. He looked at me through his overlarge glasses, taking a moment to readjust them. “Oh, Sienna. Good.” He blinked a few times, and then stood up, hitting his knee on the underside of his desk. I watched him cringe. “Ouch. If you’ll come with me.” He gestured toward the hall as he limped his way past me.

I followed him past the new drywall panels, and the glass windows that looked into the various labs. There were a few men and women in white coats working within them, messing around with who-knows-what as I walked by. We stopped at a room with a wooden door and he opened it for me. I shrugged and walked in. “Gown on the back of the door,” he said. “I’ll be back in a few minutes.”

“Doc, is this really necessary?” I looked at him with constrained irritation. “Dr. Perugini has told you I’m healthy after conducting a physical, I feel fine—”

“Research, Sienna,” he said with a suppressed smile that tightened the lines around his eyes. “We understand so very little about how metahuman abilities work, frankly, so it’s important to take every opportunity to further our understanding. I promise I’ll make it as quick as possible.”