Robert Crane - Untouched

It smarted. Enough to bring that curious burning to my eyes, the one I wished I could disavow. I hate crying, and I wasn’t going to do it in front of an enemy. Not that I had many friends at this point. Or ever. “Yes, I have had a miserable time. And you don’t hear me griping about it.”

“No, not griping,” she said, almost as if she were agreeing. “Moping. Sulking. Stewing, I think they call it also? You are a girl, about to be a woman, yet you act like a child.”

“Act like a child?” I almost choked on it. “I’ve had all these things—”

“Happen to you, yes, such miseries, I already acknowledged.” She folded her arms. “So sad, no one in the history of the world has ever been through any worse.”

“Been through?” I almost choked on my own words. “How about ‘still going through’. They’re still after me, the people who sent Wolfe—I still have him hanging around in my brain—”

“You are not the first to go through that, either.” She shrugged, as though it was a matter of little consequence. “You’re hardly the first succubus. They made it through somehow, so will you muddle through—if you ever decide to stop moping.”

“You know, I think after all I’ve been through, I’m entitled to a little— ”

“No, you’re not.” She cut me off. “You’re not entitled to a damned thing. This is where Ariadne and Old Man Winter make their mistake with you. Yes, you have had a hard life up to when you left your house, being locked in, boxed up, crated, whatever you want to call it. You leave your house, all hell breaks loose and worse. All this is true. You have had very bad things happen to you, no denying. But you take responsibility for the things you shouldn’t and take no responsibility for the things you should.” She threw her arms up in the air. “You will be a bitter, pathetic shell of a person if you continue down this path.”

“Well, awesome.” My words were acid. “Because I’ve always aspired to be like you.”

A self-satisfied smile made its way across her face. “I hurt your little fragile ego, so you lash out. Very mature.”

“Yeah.” I tasted bile in the back of my mouth. “Well, I’d call you old school but you’re really just old. Die already.”

Her hand came down and slammed the bed and I jerked back, reacting to the idea that she might actually hit me. “At some point you have to accept some responsibility for your actions. Not Wolfe’s. He killed all those people, not you. If you blame yourself for those, you are stupid. But now you want to blame Wolfe for some things you control. It’s not always him that lands you in trouble. Bad things happen to all of us. You cannot control bad things that happen to you any more than you can control the weather. It’s less about the things that happen and more about how you react to them.”

She turned away and stalked back to her office. “Or you can sit here in your little pity party and let whatever life you could have pass you by—be a vegetable of sorriness, feeling bad for yourself, curl up in a little ball and waste away, waiting for momma to come find you and hoping those people you didn’t even see die will somehow vanish from your conscience.”

“Why do you care?” I snapped it at her, trying to find some way past her infuriating facade. “I’m just another patient, another pound of flesh for you to minister to. Why does it matter?”

She stopped at the door to her office, put her hand on the frame and rested on it for a split second before turning back to me. There was emotion peeking through from behind a wall, some reservoir of feeling that I couldn’t see the depth of. “Me? I don’t care what you do, whether it’s waste away in a little ball of sadness or become a useful, productive, happy member of society. Neither one matters to me.” She pointed at me. “But if you’re going to do the former, at least leave so I don’t have to watch you throw your life away?” She smiled all too sweetly. “Okay? You can go now.” She turned and I heard her office door shut softly and her blinds closed a minute later.

I pulled the IV out my arm and slapped some gauze on it, along with some medical tape. I didn’t see Dr. Perugini, but the blinds in her office moved a few times. She was watching, I knew it. I stormed out in my outfit, burnt and haggard once more. I didn’t even want to know how much of a mess my hair was, but I saw it anyway in my reflection on the metal wall.

I rode the elevator to the top floor and found the offices abandoned. I could see out the windows that darkness had fallen. A clock nearby told me it was the middle of the night. Old Man Winter and Ariadne were not in their offices, which were both were locked.

I walked out the door to the Headquarters building and found myself in the middle of a light snowstorm. Again. I kicked a trash can savagely, sending it hurtling across a snowfield. I started back toward the dormitory building at a brisk walk, as though I could exorcise the demons of Perugini’s words by walking them off.

I was already in the building and almost to my door when I remembered that Gavrikov had burned my room. I stopped outside the door, which had caution tape across it and gave it a gentle push. It swung open and I found the space covered from the outside by several tarps. The broken glass was gone from the floor, as were the carpets, leaving bare concrete.

The room was frigid and the furniture was all gone—desk, bed, everything. The walls had already been replaced, the scorch marks gone, vanished with the addition of fresh drywall. It hadn’t been painted yet, giving the place the smell of a construction site.

I walked into the closet and found the clothes were missing. I smiled as I wondered if the Directorate had finally run out of jeans and turtlenecks in my size. My smile vanished when I realized that would bode ill for me; my current outfit was scorched, stunk of acrid smoke and was missing a sleeve.

I heard the scrape of a footstep on the concrete and all my amusement vanished as I sprung to attention. I stood in the darkness of the closet and heard someone walk to the door, opening it wide to let light from the hallways outside my room filter in. “You were supposed to come see me.” Dr. Zollers stood in the doorway, leaning against the frame in the way of a man who’d been awakened from a deep slumber and might return to it while standing there.

“Dr. Perugini called you?” I took a step toward him and he nodded. “I thought maybe it could wait until tomorrow.”

“Well, that was dumb,” he said and turned, then gestured for me to follow him. “Let’s go.”

I went with him, out of the dormitory building, back to his office. He didn’t talk the whole way there and I started to wonder why, but when we got to his office, he poured a cup of coffee and gestured for me to sit. He yawned, took a big swig of his mug and cracked a smile. “Much better.” He pointed to his cup. “Want some?”

“No, I had a bad experience with coffee.” He looked at me quizzically. “I tried to drink it with meatloaf. It was my first time with both of those things, so…” I shrugged.

“All right, so let’s talk.” He put his mug down and picked up his notebook, all business. “You’ve got a maniac in your head.”

“Plus Wolfe,” I said with a smile.

“Clever. How’s it feel?”

“Being clever? Damned good. It’s my only vice.” I grinned, then turned more serious when he didn’t smile back. “He mostly just talked, until recently. Smarted off and whatnot. Told me a couple things—like where his lair was, who the man behind the armor was.”

“When did you figure out that he could hijack your body?” He was already writing feverishly, but paused to look up when he asked the question.