Robert Crane - Untouched

I took a deep breath, and swung the door open.

Dr. Zollers rose to meet me when I entered the room and to his credit didn’t blink at the sight of my torn clothing. I had expected one of those long fainting couches, facing away from the practitioner. Instead, I was surprised to find a few comfortable chairs and an office that was set up more like a living room. A couch sat in front of me, a full sized one, and three chairs sat across from it, with a coffee table in the middle. Sitting in one of the chairs was a shorter man with dark skin that spoke of his African heritage, a goatee, and eyes that glittered as though he knew the punch line to a joke he hadn’t shared yet.

“Howdy,” he said, not extending a hand, keeping them both clasped on the armrests of his seat. The faint smile he wore went well with his eyes, and he inclined his head in greeting. “It’s my very great pleasure to meet you, Sienna.”

“The feeling is…” I hesitated, and knew I was letting loose a little too much sarcasm, “…mutual.”

“I kinda doubt that.” He sat back down and pointed at the couch. “Have a seat.”

“Right here?” I pointed to the couch he indicated.

“Wherever,” he said with a slight shrug. Then, as if sensing that my immediate thought was that the bed back in my room seemed like a good option, he added, “In the office.”

I snapped my fingers theatrically. “Damn.” I sat on the couch and stared at him. He stared back, still wearing that smile.

“So. What do you want to talk about?”

“Oh, I don’t know. How about the season the Vikings are having?”

He raised an eyebrow. “You a sports fan?”

“Nah. I just thought it’d be more fun than what Ariadne wants us to talk about.”

“What do you think Ariadne wants us to talk about?” He gave me a shrewd look.

“This is gonna be a brutally long session if all you do is ask me questions every time I say things.” My eyes searched the walls for a clock.

“Why would you think that all I would do is ask questions?” His smile got broader. “Talk about anything you’d like, we’ll go from there.”

“Let’s talk about the Directorate. How long have you been here?”

He thought about it for a beat. “About three years.”

“How many doctors do they have on staff here? I mean, Perugini, Sessions, you…do they have a full-time herpetologist too?”

He nodded without any hint of levity. “For the reptile metas, sure.” After a moment in which I was sure he was dead serious, he laughed. “Kidding. I don’t know. I pay less attention to their staffing than I do to their staff.”

“And your job is to help them…” I tried to find a phrase that would fit and be insulting, but I failed, “…psychologically decompress?”

“That’s a part of what I do,” he said, his voice smooth. “Agents get put in stressful situations, they may have to use violence in their work, and it’s something that stays with them. Also, the metas we have here sometimes go through a rough transition. Though,” he said with a sense of irony, “usually not quite as rough as what’s happened to you.”

“I was gonna ask how you manage to keep any of them here if what happened to me was normal.”

“You probably know this, but what happened to you was not ‘normal,’” he said. “I’ve counseled a lot of metas who have come here after realizing that they won’t be able to fit in with their former lives the way they thought they could before. None of them have been attacked the way you were—hunted by a psychotic super-meta who wanted to capture you.”

“Kill me,” I said in a whisper. “He wanted to kill me. But not right away.”

He gave me a tight smile. “I heard, but it’d be indelicate of me to bring it up first. Still, I guess that makes you unique.”

“I’d settle for less unique. It’s probably less painful.”

“But you don’t get to choose, do you?” He leaned forward in his chair. “You’re a succubus, the first of your kind of meta that the Directorate has seen. Top of the power scale when it comes to your strength and speed, and you’ve been granted a different power than someone who could, say, affect the temperature in the room or breathe life into the dead or put someone to sleep with a song.”

“Different.” I squirmed on the couch, feeling a sudden desire to burrow into it, away from this conversation. “That’s one way to put it.”

“How would you put it?” The way he asked it was so smooth, so empathetic, that it touched a nerve in me and I didn’t try to dodge, I just answered.

“I would say…” I took a deep breath. “That I’ve been disconnected from people my whole life. First, because I was locked in a house with my mother, and now because I can’t touch anybody without killing them. That I’m doomed to go through life untouched, like a porcelain figurine set up on a high shelf, so fragile it might break if anyone were to take it out.” I tasted bitterness in my mouth. “Except I’m not the one that’s fragile. Everyone else is.”

He stared at me and then nodded, real slow. “I can see how you’d feel that way.” He paused, as though steeling himself. “Can I ask about your mother?”

“She’s missing.”

“That’s not what I was gonna ask.” He didn’t look away, even though I did. “If this is too deep for the first time we’ve talked, go ahead and stop me, okay? But I’ve heard rumors, and I’m wondering if they’re true. Did your mother beat you? Lock you in metal coffin?”

“Yes,” I said in a muted whisper, “that is too deep.”

“Okay.” He nodded, picking up a notebook and a pen. “How about this? Let’s go back to what you want to talk about.”

“Um. All right.” I thought about it. “Do you have to report everything I say to Ariadne and Old Man Winter?”

He smiled, but it was overly cool. “Professionally, that would be unethical. You and I are stepping into the territory of doctor and patient, which means that there’s confidentiality that extends to whatever we discuss in the course of that relationship. So, no—I’m not reporting to the higher-ups on what we talk about here, unless what we talk about here crosses the line—”

“Into something dangerous?” I asked, an odd sense of numbness falling upon me. “Into something threatening?”

“Exactly. Ariadne and Mr. Winter want to make sure that you’re mentally healthy.” His eyes were focused on me, but not in the uncomfortable way that Old Man Winter did. They were warm, and knowing, and that was why I couldn’t meet them. “I don’t think I’m revealing any big secrets when I say they have high hopes for you. The Directorate may be one of the only places you can safely exercise your powers in the world, that could give you a path, and some meaning if you wanted it.”

“They want me to join M-Squad.” I said it while looking at the laces of my shoes, studying a little piece of snow that had caught on the edge of the rubber sole and hadn’t quite melted yet.

“They see a path there for you.” He looked down at the notebook. “They see a natural fit with what your mother used to do in the old days for the Agency. From what I’ve heard, you have a certain fearless quality and tenacity that would serve you well in a variety of walks of life.”

My mouth felt dry. “What if I don’t know what walk of life I want to tread?”

He paused before answering. “Then I’d say you’re probably an eighteen-year-old.”

“I’m seventeen.”

He laughed, a low, quiet one that actually brought a smile to my face. “From what I’ve heard, you have a lot of confidence—a lot of brass, I’d say—in standing up to adults who seem like authority figures. Not mouthy, pointless defiance. Rebellion is a natural teenage quality, but most teens are not gonna confront a guy like Erich Winter about much of anything.”