Robert Crane - Untouched

I couldn’t take my eyes off Dr. Sessions. “I don’t know,” I lied, far too nimbly. “Is…is he going to be okay?”

“Does he LOOK like he’s going to be okay?” Dr. Perugini nearly screamed the reply, her distress increasing the potency of her accent. “I need…” Her head spun around until it alighted on Kat Forrest, who was standing in a nearby knot of metas in nothing but a tank top and briefs. “You.”

The delicate, gushing girl who I had met earlier in the cafeteria stepped forward, tentative. She shook from the cold, and her breath came out in great clouds as she walked in halting steps toward where Dr. Perugini waited for her. “He doesn’t have all night!” Perugini snapped and Kat quickened her pace, dropping to her knees in the snow. She reached out, her hands curled up tight to ward against the cold. She unfurled them, bringing them to Sessions’ face. I may have imagined it, but it seemed like the snow was melting around her legs.

Her hands were on his face, the soft light of the overhead lamps illuminating the nighttime scene. He moaned when she first brushed his cheek, then again when her fingers anchored around his cheeks. The charred and blackened flesh seemed to grow redder around where her hands rested and Sessions grunted in pain. Then he started to scream.

I made a move forward, shrugging off Ariadne as she grasped at me. I felt a hand land on my shoulder and I started to turn and attack, but as I moved to do so, the hands released me and I was left staring at Scott Byerly, his hands raised as he took a step back. “Watch,” he said.

I did. Sessions was still crying out—in pain, I thought—until I looked back and saw that around her hands, fresh skin was springing up on his face, replacing the cracked and blackened with new, pink flesh. It spread out in an effect that rippled over his visible skin. New hairs sprang from his once bald head and his shrieks became a low moan then ceased. His head dropped to the ground and he let out a long, deep exhalation.

“Pulse returning to normal,” Dr. Perugini said, her stethoscope on his chest. “He’s in stable condition.” She snapped her fingers and someone slid a stretcher and a backboard into the snow next to Sessions and they started to load him onto it.

“How did she do that?” I asked, low, but loud enough to be heard.

Scott Byerly was the one who answered. “She’s a Persephone-type. She can give life with a touch.”

“Give life?” I stared at the girl, still on her knees in the snow, which had indeed melted around her legs, brown grass visible against the tan skin of her thighs. I looked closer; blades of grass were turning green and waving against her sun-kissed skin, and it wasn’t my imagination. It was almost as if they were trying to touch her. “Persephone was the Greek goddess of seasons. She couldn’t give life to people, just to plants.”

He shrugged. “I said Persephone-type, not Persephone herself. It’s based on myth and legend, after all.” He stared me down, and I saw a hint of a smile poke at the corners of his lips. “What are you?”

I looked away, back to Kat, who was sitting on the ground, resting, her eyes closed, gold hair flowing around her face, which was red from exertion. She looked at peace, and she sank back, laying flat on the ground, embraced by the patch of green in the midst of all the snow. Her breath was still coming in and out with regular certainty, the steaming heat of it boldly visible against the bright lights surrounding us. I saw the calm around her, watched the grass play at her fingers, touching it, tickling it, and I felt a surge of envy.

They were carrying Dr. Sessions away now, away from her, the girl who had given him life, returned it to him with her very hands. I looked back at Scott Byerly, and his eyebrow was raised in expectation. “Me?” I asked, and I felt hollow inside, empty of everything, even Wolfe. “I’m her opposite—everything that she isn’t.” My jaw hardened. “I’m death.”

I didn’t sleep for the rest of the night. I’d left Scott Byerly and his stupid question behind with my cryptic answer, not even bothering to gauge his reaction. Well, maybe just a little. His face scrunched up as I was turning from him. I can’t say that was satisfying, but it was better than stopping to explain the literal truth I had told him.

I am death. My touch brings it. Where Kat Forrest was a tanned, lovely, blond-haired princess of life, I was a dark-haired, pale-skinned angel of death. Her green eyes represented life; my bluer ones represented winter and the end of that life.

Worse than the nasty comparisons that witnessing Kat’s power had spawned in me were the questions. What was I doing outside when the building had exploded? Why couldn’t I remember it? Why was the flaming lunatic so thankful to me?

When I returned to my dorm room, I had to take another shower. The fall and the fire had done a number on me. No one had asked, probably because they hadn’t seen, but my leather gloves had burned to my skin on the back of my hands. I ripped them off, the leather shredding and pulling the flesh in patches. I let them bleed out in the shower, the diluted red standing out against the cream-colored tiles that surrounded the drain. I watched the little stream of maroon as it came in streaks, circling the inevitable.

My hands still itched by the time I was done, along with a few places on my chest and legs where the same thing had happened. Good thing the Directorate seemed to have their finances in order, I reflected as I tossed my previously new outfit in the garbage. I was going to cost them a lot of money if I kept ruining clothes at the pace I was going.

The bruise on my cheek from earlier was gone, I saw as I looked in the mirror. One plus was that since I had awoken in the field, Wolfe hadn’t made a peep. I wondered if he was sleeping. Or maybe the explosion scared him into a kennel in my mind.

I returned to my room and stared out the window for the rest of the night. I had a very, very nasty suspicion about how things had unfolded the night before, based partially on my dreams and partially on the fact that Wolfe had very much wanted to get Gavrikov out of his cage. He should have been overjoyed, swinging from the metaphorical rafters in my head at the fact that it happened, but he was dead quiet instead.

Not good.

The sun rose without me seeing it, once more hidden behind the clouds. I was disgusted enough that if I could have somehow wished myself to Tahiti and left this awful city behind, I would have. Actually, that might not have entirely been because of the sun.

A note was slid under my door shortly after sunrise, suggesting I attend a meeting with Ariadne and Old Man Winter in his office at 9 A.M. I shrugged when I saw it, trying to play cool in case there were cameras watching, but inwardly I trembled. Did he know? Could he know? What had I done?

I skipped breakfast. My stomach was tied in knots anyway; why bother to give it something else to bitch about? I walked to the HQ building when it got close to time. The air was crisp—actually, I’m romanticizing, it was still brutally cold, just like every day since I left my house. Tahiti was sounding better and better. There was still a smell of burning in the air and when I passed in sight of the science building, my suspicions were confirmed—it was still smoking. The smell it gave off was acrid and awful and stuck in my nose, tormenting me even once I was inside Headquarters.

I knocked somewhat tepidly on Old Man Winter’s door. I was early, and a sizable part of me (all of me, if we’re being honest) hoped he wasn’t around. It opened to reveal Ariadne, her usual smile forced across her face. “You’ll have to forgive us,” she said as she ushered me to a seat, “It’s been a busy night and we haven’t had much time to prepare for this meeting.”