Robert Crane - Untouched

He stared down at me with those intense, blue eyes, and I swore I could see a hint of fire deep within them. “Yes. Now can I come in?”

I took a few steps back trying to get away from him, but Gavrikov took it as a sign to enter. He closed the door after checking the hallway again. He pressed his back to the door after shutting it. He was haggard, his face pale, the coloring washed out. Big beads of sweat ran down his forehead and he was breathing heavily.

I didn’t want to ask, but I did it anyway. “Are you all right?” The backs of my thighs felt the soft impact of the edge of the bed; I could not retreat any farther without making it obvious.

“What?” His accent was more pronounced and he blinked a few times, as though his eyes were hurting him. “Oh. I have not been…” He stared down at his hands, as if seeing them for the first time. “It has been very long since I last quenched the fire.” He took another deep breath. “I don’t think I’ve done it since…” He looked up, concentrating as if trying to recall. “Not for over a hundred years.”

“Uh…how do you eat?” My brain screamed at me for my stupidity, asking him dumb questions when I should be jumping out the window, running far, far away from the man who blew up an entire building last night.

“I don’t,” he said with a grim smile. “When I am afire, I don’t need to eat, I subsist on air—it keeps the flames burning.”

“Oh.” I pondered that. “You don’t like being human?”

He looked down at his hands again. “Flesh is easily hurt. Not so with flame; it can be elusive, unquenchable—and it feels no pain.”

“Ah,” I said, still feeling dumb. “So…what do you want to talk about?”

“Have a seat,” he offered. I don’t know why, but I sat down on the bed. If he burst into flames, it wasn’t likely to matter whether I was standing or not. He walked past me to the window and looked out. “I have to thank you again for freeing me.” He looked out through the glass, then to either side as if he were trying to find curtains.

I shook my head when he turned back to me. “The glass is mirrored. No one outside can see us.”

His hand touched the window and he looked at it, curious. “So many differences since I was a child. We did not even have windows in the house I grew up in.”

“Yeah, me neither, for all intents and purposes,” I said, drawing a surprised look from him. “I had a somewhat unconventional childhood.”

“Unconventional.” He nodded and half-smiled. “I like that. I had an unconventional childhood as well.”

“So.” I felt a little awkward, and I still wondered why he was here. “Mr. Gavrikov—

“Please,” he said with a wince. “Call me Aleksandr.”

“Well, I was trying to be a little more formal—”

“I hate that name. “ His mouth was a thin line. “I am only Aleksandr.”

“Okay.” The awkwardness did not abate. “Why are you here?”

He kept his distance, walking over to the desk and the computer that I had yet to use. He pulled out the chair and tentatively sat down in it. He was still sweating profusely and I wondered if he was suffering some sort of withdrawal from not using his power or if he was simply nervous. “Your Directorate—”

“Let me stop you right there,” I said, drawing a look of curiosity from him. “They’re not mine. I’ve only been here a couple weeks, and mostly because I have nowhere else to go since that psychotic Wolfe,” I felt him stir inside but he kept blissfully silent, “was chasing me down.”

“Wolfe?” He squinted at me. “You drew the ire of the beast and yet live?”

“Drew his ire?” I snorted. “I drew more than that.”

“No matter,” he said with a wave of his hand. “I have heard the legend of this beast. Help me and I will kill him for you.”

“Too late. I already killed him.”

I watched Aleksandr’s face drop, a hint of disbelief permeating his clenched expression. “You killed him?” He pointed his finger at me. “You? You did this…by yourself?”

“I—” I tried to find an easy way to explain but failed. “Yes, I did.”

“Very impressive.” He nodded. “It explains why you were able to help me escape the lab. But I still need your help to free another.”

“Um…free them from what?” I tried not to overly worry about it, but I suspected that my potential new bosses here at the Directorate would be less than pleased that I had helped Gavrikov escape. I suspected they’d be even more peeved if I helped him break someone else out. As if having Wolfe running through my head wasn’t a bad enough mark on an employment application.

“The Directorate has imprisoned someone at their Arizona facility.” He took a deep breath. “Someone I must help.”

“Umm, I don’t think I’d be able to help you with that,” I said. “First of all, I don’t know where that is; second, I have zero pull with this organization.” I laughed under my breath, but it died after a second when I caught sight of his face. “Truth is, I’ve done a few things here that would be likely to land me in their jail before too much longer.”

“I need help,” he said again, this time almost pleading. “I don’t care if it costs my life, I must get this person out of their hands.”

“I can sorta understand that. Who is it?”

“My sister, Klementina.” He took a deep breath. “Only…it is not her.”

I let the air hang with silence while I tried to digest that. “I’m sorry…what? It’s your sister…but it’s not?”

He stood suddenly and his breathing was heavier. His eyes moved left and right, and he twitched. “My sister died in 1908.”

I started to wonder if I was dreaming, because of the surreal nature of the conversation. Then I remembered that I could talk to people in my dreams, and wondered if me being dead was a simpler explanation. My head hurt, mostly from being confused. “So they imprisoned her corpse?”

“No.” He stood and started to pace, his agitation becoming greater as he went. I could have sworn I saw thin drifts of smoke waft from him. “She died…but somehow they brought her back. Except it is not her, because she does not remember anything.”

“Like a clone?” I know my eyes were wide, and I was trying not to do anything to set him off, but by this point I was fairly sure he was crazier than I was. And with a psycho nutter in my head, I was probably pretty crazy by any objective measure.

He snapped his finger at me. “Yes! A clone. I worked for…an organization. After a time, I heard rumors that they were working on something. Something for me, as a gift—they wanted my loyalty, to buy it forever. But the facility at which they were working on this gift was lost to an attack by your Directorate. So I went there. I found the scientists that have taken over, but they have no answers for me. All the research was moved when the Directorate took over the facility, and now all that is left are files, some videos. I see her in the records, her face, Klementina’s. Somehow they brought her back, but the Directorate took her away with the other research subjects and sent her to Arizona.”

I had a sudden, annoying suspicion that sent my skin to tingling. “Describe her for me.”

“She was tall, with long blond hair, and green eyes. When I saw her last, her skin was tanned from working our farm. In the pictures I saw, she is still so.” He halted in his description and anguish flowed across his features. “Please. You must help me. I have to tell her—” He choked on the words. “I have to make it right.”

“Hrm.” I thought of Kat Forrest, our new arrival from Arizona, and wondered about the likelihood that Old Man Winter would have had her brought up here, thinking that he was about to capture Gavrikov. “Did she have any powers? You know, like you?”