Robert Crane - Untouched

“No,” he said with a shake of his head. “She was kind, and gentle. When father would—” He looked away. “She would come to me, try to soothe my injuries.”

“Uh huh. So would you say she had a,” I swallowed, “healing touch?”

“I suppose you could say that.” He paced back to the window. “I owe her…an apology. I failed the Klementina that was my sister.” He whirled to face me and all I could see was the resolve on his face. “I owe her—this shade of her, at least—freedom. I must get her free.”

“I can appreciate that you have,” I scoured my mind, “unfinished business or a debt or whatever. But, um…when I said healing touch, I meant literally.” He looked at me in confusion. “Can her hands heal wounds, grow flowers, stuff like that?”

His brow was furrowed. “I—”

For the second time since I’d been here, the giant window that ran across the entire wall behind my bed exploded inward. I dropped, using the bed for cover as glass flew over my head and I felt a blast of heat from where Aleksandr had been standing. I poked my head back up and found Clary, skin turned into some dark rock, stepping through the window. Behind him I saw the outlines of Parks, Bastian and Kappler, lurking about a hundred feet away. Gavrikov was already covered in flame again, hovering about a foot off the ground. The influx of outside air had turned the room a frigid cold in seconds.

“We went all the way down to Fairmont tracking you,” Clary said as he dropped onto the floor, shaking the room. “Found your handiwork. Blowing up a propane truck, Gavrikov? Not cool.” Clary hesitated and his voice turned gleeful. “Actually, I bet it was cool to watch when it happened, but now it’s just a big damned smoking crater and a hell of a lot of lanes of I-90 that ain’t gonna be open again for a longass while. And that poor trucker’s family—”

Aleksandr didn’t let him finish his sentence. He heaved two enormous fireballs at Clary, one of which burned the big man’s clothing off, exposing a chest of blackened stone. “I liked that shirt,” he said, staring down. “You better not—” Gavrikov fired two more blasts at him, each worse than the last. I felt the air turn superheated around me and closed my eyes to protect them from the intensity of it. Every single bit of the flame that Aleksandr had thrown at him had bounced off, hitting the walls of my dormitory room. The drywall had begun to blaze in four places and the carpet was beginning to catch fire.

“You’re gonna burn the girl’s stuff up, Gavrikov!” Clary shouted at him.

I was coughing, but I managed to get out, “I don’t own much of anything.”

“Well you’re gonna burn the girl up, and she’s already hot enough without your help!”

I was crawling toward the exit to keep that from happening, although I did blanch at Clary’s comment. I heard a fire alarm klaxon start wailing and then the sprinklers activated, and suddenly I was no longer hot but now cold again as the chill water soaked me through my already damaged clothing. I stopped at the door and used the wall as an aide to pull myself up. There was smoke billowed at the ceiling, but Gavrikov and Clary were already outside. Kappler, Bastian and Parks were circling them, but keeping their distance.

I watched them out the window. Gavrikov was throwing fire at Clary ineffectually. Clary advanced on Aleksandr but every time he would get close, Gavrikov would fly away and hurl another burst at him, with an occasional shot toward the other three to keep them at bay.

“Aleksandr,” I called, staggering to the window. By now, the sprinkler system had almost extinguished the flames in my room and the carpet was sodden, squishing underfoot with every step. “He’s invulnerable to your attacks! Get out of here before they capture you!”

With that, Parks, Kappler and Bastian, all three of their heads swiveled toward me, as if seeing a new threat for the first time. “I’m not getting involved in this,” I told them, hands raised, as I stepped over the window ledge and into the snow. “Just hate to see him get overmatched and pummeled.”

As I stepped out, I saw a ring of black-clad agents in the distance, along with Old Man Winter and Ariadne. They were far enough away that I could only distinguish them by Ariadne’s red hair and Old Man Winter’s staggering height. It occurred to me that they either saw Gavrikov enter my room through a security camera and figured out who he was or else they were listening and/or watching my room.

Gavrikov floated away, drawing Clary charging after him. He reached a distance away from me and then with a flash of heat and light he shot back toward me, stopping a foot or so away. “Will you help me?” His voice was different now, laced with a kind of crackling heat, something that sounded far different from human.

“I…” I stopped and looked around, the agents closing in, ringing us. Gavrikov turned and saw them and he burned brighter, as though ready to explode. “No! Wait!” He turned back to me, his head whipping around, the fire burning brighter. I held out my hand. “I’ll help you, but you can’t hurt them! Please! Just go for now, come find me when things have calmed down, I’ll…” I looked at the agents charging closer, Old Man Winter with them.

The air grew colder; I could feel it because I was soaked from the sprinklers and I felt ice start to form on the outside layer of my clothing. “Go!” I said. “Get out of here!”

He looked around once more and the heat blazed hotter around him. A short blast of fire filled the air in front of me, knocking me backward over the window frame. I landed on my back with a wet splash in my room, a stinging pain in the hand I had held out which quickly moved down my wrist and stayed there. My head ached from the landing. I saw a streak of fire trace across the sky like an angry star, flaring in the night until it disappeared.

Faces appeared above me, and I didn’t feel like I could fight my way through all of them or adequately run, so I just lay there. Clary was the first to climb into my room, followed by the rest of M-Squad, then a few agents, all wearing their tactical gear and black masks. One of them pulled his off; it was Zack. He shook his head at me in deep disappointment.

“Yeah, I know. Save it,” I said, feeling surprisingly weak. His disappointment changed in an instant, into something more approaching horror. His mouth was open, his normally handsome face twisted in disgust. “What?”

“Sienna,” he gasped as Old Man Winter appeared in view above me with the others. “Your hand.”

I looked down at my hand, the one I had extended toward Gavrikov, but it had nearly vanished, all the way to the wrist. There was no flesh, no muscle, no connective tissue left—only bone, scorched, blackened and bare.

They took me to the medical unit, where no one spoke to me, not even Dr. Perugini. The rest of them were just quiet, but Perugini was irritable and glared at me constantly, in addition to giving me the silent treatment. She injected something into my other arm and I didn’t stop her, mostly because M-Squad was standing around watching me. Before my eyelids fluttered and I drifted off, I reflected that I wouldn’t be surprised if I woke up in a confinement cell. Whenever they allowed me to wake up.

I came to still in a bed in the medical unit. The room was dark, and there was not a sign of anyone else, even in the dim light. A machine to my right was beeping every few seconds. My hand hurt, which was funny because it wasn’t there the last time I checked. My mouth was dry and my arms were restrained, a large steel bar locked into place across my upper body and another at my waist. My hands were pinned beneath them so that I couldn’t even get enough leverage to move them a half inch. My right hand, the one that was missing, was encased in a box of some kind, but it was difficult to see with the bar across my abdomen.