Robert Crane - Untouched

“All right,” Zack said. “Now we can put all that unpleasantness behind us.” He looked at me, the satisfaction disappearing from his face. “Right?”

I thought about arguing, but what was the point? Byerly couldn’t have hated me any more than I had hated myself when he’d written it. “Sure,” I said. “Bygones and forgetting and all that.” I picked up the burrito from my plate. The smell of beans, rice and chicken wafted up to me, tempered with the tang of the salsa and guacamole.

“What did you talk with Old Man Winter and Ariadne about?” Zack asked just as I was taking my first bite.

I finished chewing before I answered. “How did you know about that?”

“I went to see Ariadne this morning and the secretary told me she was in a meeting with the two of you and couldn’t be disturbed.” He took a sip of the water sitting in front of him.

“History of metas, remember?” The burrito was slippery in my gloves and Byerly was giving me a funny look as the salsa dribbled down the leather and onto my sleeve. I dropped the burrito and wiped at it with a napkin.

“Uh huh.” He chewed as he answered, kind of skeptical. Hannegan still hadn’t looked at me and Kat hadn’t taken her eyes off me yet. I wanted to knock her chair over with her still in it. Or maybe Wolfe did. No, it was probably me. “You guys talk about anything else?”

I remembered the compensation sheet, tucked away in my coat pocket. “Yeah,” I said. “A couple things.”

“They offered you a job, didn’t they?” This came from Hannegan, who had stopped eating and was frozen with a taco halfway to his mouth.

“Yeah.” I felt myself flush. “So?”

“Doing what?” Scott Byerly did a flush of his own, his ruddy complexion suddenly redder.

“As an agent?” Zack was looking at me in wonderment. “A retriever?” He looked down at my side and my eyes followed him a moment later. His hand was already in motion and he snatched the compensation sheet from where it was dangling out of my pocket. I didn’t try to stop him, and he stared at it, eyes narrowed as he focused, Hannegan leaning over his shoulder. “Wait, this isn’t an organizational chart…this is…this is…whoa.” Zack’s jaw dropped and he looked at Hannegan in near-astonishment. “I don’t get paid that much. Do you?”

“Hell, no,” Kurt said, scowling. “And I’m near the top of the pay scale!”

“But at the bottom of their estimation, apparently,” I said and ripped the paper out of Zack’s hands.

There was an eerie quiet around the table that lasted almost five seconds before Scott Byerly spoke. “Can I see that?”

I let out a small noise of exasperation and thrust it at him. “Sure. Why not?”

Kat Forrest looked over his shoulder as he looked down the page. “Wow,” she said. “They must think you’re really powerful to offer you so much.”

“I’d offer you more to leave,” Hannegan said under his breath.

“This is…” Byerly blinked a few times in rapid succession and then handed the page back to me. “A very nice offer. I wish I’d gotten one.” I saw his jaw tighten as he said it.

“The day will come, my friend,” Zack said. “Probably soon, in fact—” A low buzzing filled the air and he reached down, pulling out his cell phone and studying the screen. He looked to Kurt. “Ariadne wants to see us.”

Kurt paused in eating, his mouth full. “Now?” Flecks of half-chewed food rained onto the table and I looked away.

“When was the last time she made an appointment to see the low-paid help?” Zack stood and pulled his coat off the back of his chair. “Yes, now.” He looked back at the three of us still seated. “You guys take it easy.” Hannegan followed him out, a taco clenched in his chubby fists.

“Congratulations on your offer,” Kat said, her eyes shining. “That’s really amazing. Not too many metas get asked to go through the training program. You should be proud.”

“Why?” I took a bite of my burrito and then wiped my glove on a napkin. “I didn’t do anything except be born a meta.”

“Well, you killed that psychopath.” Her smile glittered like a spotlight shining directly in my eyes, annoying me.

“Yeah, you did,” Byerly said, then leaned closer. “How did you do that, by the way?”

I felt still, as though a great slab of ice had frozen everything inside me. “I told you—I’m death.”

“What does that mean?” He leaned even closer, almost whispering. “You’re an efficient killer? You’re super strong?”

I felt an ugly thread tug at me inside, felt Wolfe doing something, though I couldn’t tell what. I ignored him. “It’s none of your business.”

“Are you a human time bomb? Like the guy that blew up the science labs?” Byerly kept pressing, and I could feel the warmth of his breath on my cheek, he was so close—too close. “Can you throw energy or maybe—”

“What I can do—” I started to scoot my chair away from him but he landed his hand on my arm, stopping me. “If you really want to see, just keep your hand where it is. If you don’t, move it.”

“Maybe I want to know.” His eyes were focused, boring in on me and I saw something else in them, an intensity.

“Scott, let her go—” Kat’s plea went ignored.

My glove was already off. Wolfe had moved my hand without me even knowing it and it was on Scott’s cheek. He started to recoil, but I anchored my thumb and forefinger, gripping him on the neck. Not hard enough to choke him, but enough to let him know I had a good hold on him. His eyes widened in surprise, then narrowed in anger, and he brought a hand around, maybe instinctively, to hit me. I knocked it aside and jerked him to his feet.

I saw the anger vanish, replaced with creases in his forehead from the first stirrings of pain. “Ouch,” he breathed, consternation knitting his brows together. “Ow…oh…” He sucked in a sharp breath and grunted. After another second he let out a squeal that drew even more attention from those around us and then he let out an earsplitting, agonized scream that started a scramble for the cafeteria door, people falling over each other to get the hell out of there.

“Put him down!” Kat was on her feet, shouting at me. I strained, trying to regain control of my hand, but Wolfe was in charge, holding the rest of me still. I lifted Scott Byerly off his feet and he shuddered in the air, convulsing, his eyes rolling back in his head. I looked on, horrified, unable to stop it.

I felt a blow land on the back of my head and I flew forward, releasing my grasp on Byerly. I plowed through three tables, heard some things break that sounded like it could have been me or the furniture, I wasn’t sure which. I came to rest twenty feet away from where I had started, a medley of other peoples’ lunches smeared on my clothes. Kat was already at Scott’s side and Clyde Clary stood not far away, his lips twisted in an amused smile. “Clyde,” I said, using my sleeve to mop some blood from the back of my head where he’d hit me.

“Girl, ain’t no one calls me Clyde,” his pudgy face went angry quickly.

“I think I just did.” I stood up. “But if you’d prefer, I could just call you fatass prick—”

He charged at me, broad shoulders flashing underneath his shirt, the skin around his neck rippling, turning into something different. It looked like metal in the brief glimpse I got before he put his shoulder down and stormed at me. He moved fast, especially for such a big guy.

I grabbed the nearest table, heavy and metal, and heaved it at him. It spun, hit him in the face and ricocheted off at high velocity, flying through one of the upper windows of the cafeteria. He moved off his course not even a millimeter, his head now the same dull metal that I had seen beneath his shirt. I dodged out of the way just in time as he shredded the tables behind me, shards of them flying through the air.