Robert Crane - Untouched

“I don’t know,” I said. “Why am I bothering to answer your sick ass?”

Hard to resist the Wolfe, isn’t it?

“Don’t think that just because you’re in my head that you have any idea what I think.” There was a flicker of movement outside, and Wolfe didn’t bother answering.

A helicopter descended. I recognized the type, my photographic memory reconciling what I was seeing with what I had seen in movies. It was a Black Hawk, and I could see the doors open as they descended. I saw a figure emerge, hanging out the door while waiting for the helicopter to touch down, a figure that was shorter than Old Man Winter by a lot. It was all I needed to see, and I had grabbed my coat and was slinging it on as I ran out the door.

Zack had returned.

I barely remembered to put my boots on before I was off and running. On the way out of the dormitory building I felt the cold air slap me in the face, but I didn’t care.

Little doll seems very happy to see the flimsy agent. Wolfe wonders if she knows how useless the little man is to her, he breaks so easy, he would burn if she touched him…

“Shut up,” I said as my feet found the path and I loped along, barely keeping myself from dropping to all fours the way Wolfe’s instincts were compelling me to. “I’m not a dog,” I snapped to the voice in my head. “I can’t run on my hands and feet the way you can—could.”

But it would be so good to see you on hands and knees again… A wave of revulsion washed over me and I tried to ignore it as I cut through the wintery air. Why is this little man so important to make you run out in the middle of the night?

“He’s not…” I stopped talking when I realized I was giving the psycho in my head more fodder for taunting me. Besides, why was I running to see Zack? When last we had parted, it had been after he had extracted a promise from me to not go after Wolfe, a promise I had broken. Afterward, I had spent some time examining my thinking behind that promise and found it lacking; I believed I made it because Zack was hot. Tall, with tousled hair, brown eyes and in amazing shape. Downside: I suspected he was spying on me for Old Man Winter and Ariadne.

At that moment, I didn’t care. Of all the people I had met since leaving my house, Zack was the one I felt most connected to. After he left, things around the Directorate got much worse and—I hated to admit it—I missed having someone to talk to who was close to my own age. It’s not like I had a ton of time to get used to it before he left, but still…I missed him. I felt a tingle of amusement that I knew came from Wolfe, and wished, not for the first time, that I could mentally slap the hell out of him.

I covered the ground between the dorm and the helipad quickly, arriving just after the helicopter set down. None of the observers noticed me as I slipped up behind them and I felt a thrill of predatory success as I stared at their backs and realized I could kill every last one of them.

I would have been disturbed by that, but Wolfe’s thoughts were bleeding into mine with such regularity that unless he “spoke” in my head, I couldn’t be sure whether it genuinely came from me.

I lurked behind them, and saw Ariadne say something to Dr. Perugini that caused Old Man Winter to look back at them both. “He was stable for transit,” Ariadne said, then the rotors cut out her next words before I caught a few more, “…amazed they were able to catch him, really.” Old Man Winter looked past Ariadne and noticed me. He stared, his eyes into mine, before nodding in acknowledgment. He spoke, something low, but loud enough that those around him heard it and looked, each of them finding me in turn.

I moved forward to join them, figuring that lurking in the shadows was a pointless game. I saw Zack, dressed in a paramilitary uniform, olive green overalls with a tactical vest, a submachine gun slung under his arm, and a headset covering his ears. He stepped down and tossed the headset back into the chopper. I could see him saying something to the figures inside.

He turned and strode across the pad to Old Man Winter. I half-expected him to salute, as though I were watching a war movie, but he leaned in and whispered something to his boss. While he did so, others were stepping out of the Black Hawk, four of them, in quick fashion. M-Squad, I figured.

A stir of interest from Wolfe kept me watching them rather than Zack. The first one off the chopper was a man. He had a jaw that looked like it had been carved from an iron bar. It extended down, giving him the look of someone who perpetually stuck his chin out. His skin was dark, his hair black and short, military-style, stubble on the sides and just a patch of black on top. I couldn’t tell what color eyes he had because of the dark, but they were moving fast and they were focused. They found me in the dark, surveyed me—not in the dirty way Wolfe had, but as a potential opponent.

The next off the Black Hawk was a woman. Her hair was short, blond, cropped in one of those boyish, pixie styles of someone who has no time and no interest in impressing anyone with it. Her facial structure was pronounced, Nordic, but her skin was tanned. She saw me, too, and watched me for long enough to do an assessment of her own. She was so severe, I wondered if she ever smiled.

The third off the chopper was a man with long, gray hair and a beard that matched it. The rotor blades stirred his silver locks, blowing them into his eyes, but it didn’t seem to distract him. He gave me the same once-over as the others and halted by the door to the chopper.

The last guy off surprised me. I’m not going to mince words: he was fat. Not the size of a house or anything, but he was a big boy. The others were muscular, but his belly hung out under his fatigues. He was laughing about something as his feet hit the ground, but none of his teammates were laughing with him. His grin was not a happy one; for some reason I got a little dash of an unsettling feeling from looking at him.

He reached into the chopper and pulled something out, slinging it over his shoulder to carry. It was a tube, about six feet long, a couple feet wide and a foot deep. It reminded me of an oversized coffin at first glance.

Actually, it reminded me of the box my mother used to put me in, but smaller and more compact.

The big guy joined his comrades and the four of them walked across the helipad as the Black Hawk spun up the rotors and lifted back into the air. I turned my attention to Old Man Winter, who had finished his conversation with Zack.

Zack moved to talk to Kurt. The two of them were partners the day they came to collect me from my house. I didn’t know if they still worked together, because they’d had something of a falling out after Kurt tried to hit me at one point. I wasn’t sure if Zack knew what had happened since then, but I doubt he’d be excited to know that his partner had driven me to an encounter with Wolfe.

I caught a subtle look as he was talking to Kurt. He held eye contact for just a second longer than he had to, and I saw a smile.

Ariadne broke away from the crowd and walked over to me. “You should be sleeping,” she said, resting a careful, gloved hand on my shoulder.

“Am I not allowed to be here?” My words came out more bitter than I had intended. I thought that was because of Wolfe’s influence, but given my past history with Ariadne, there was a strong possibility that it was all me.

“No,” she said, remaining cool in spite of my acrid tone, “I just meant that I assumed you would be resting.”

“I heal fast.” I looked past her, trying to catch Zack’s eye again. “I’ve rested enough, anyway.” That was more defensive.