Robert Crane - Untouched

“And a fine strategy that would be,” I said, suppressing all my smartass instincts for the sake of my penance, “but may I suggest one that’s got a better chance of success?”

He drew up to his full height, arms folded in front of him and said, “I’m listening.” His posture said he was not, but I was desperate enough to try anyway.

“The thing you have to understand about Gavrikov is that he thinks Kat is a clone of his sister,” I started.

“Why the hell would he think that?”

“Because she actually is his sister,” I said, “and don’t interrupt me. He feels guilty because he thinks she died or something, back in the early 1900s, and the only thing he cares about is giving her spiritual successor a chance at freedom.” I paused, taking a breath. He looked at me with less rage, but also a look that told me he didn’t totally understand. “Because he thinks the Directorate is keeping her imprisoned here.”

He frowned. “They are.”

“Yeah, but not totally,” I said. “I mean, if she really wanted to, she could probably get out—speaking from personal experience.”

He looked at me with skepticism. “I have my doubts. Kat doesn’t strike me as much of a fighter.”

“Doesn’t matter. Anyway, if she’s with me, he won’t go nuclear because he doesn’t want to hurt her. That gives me a chance to neutralize him without anyone having to get hurt. I can bring Kat back here, safe and sound, and keep Gavrikov down.” I stared him in the eyes. “You know I can.”

He blinked, then his eyes clouded with suspicion. “Why are you telling me this?”

I took a deep breath. “Because I don’t know how to drive. And I don’t exactly know where I’d be going. And Kat…well…” I hesitated. “I don’t think she’s going to come willingly just on my say so.”

He held his hand up to his head. “So you want my help convincing her, too?”

“I do. I really, really do.” I added a note of pleading to my voice. “Look, if we leave this up to the so-called pros, I don’t know how it’s going to turn out, but I suspect bad. Really bad. And I mean, yeah, we could hide here, we’re probably safe from the blast radius, but…” I didn’t know what else to say.

Scott Byerly just stared at me, with those eyes, those cool blue eyes. “One question. If you answer it honestly, I’m in.”

I smacked my lips. Why did my mouth always dry out at dramatic moments? “What is it?”

He stared so hard I almost felt his gaze burn through me. “Why are you doing this?”

It felt like he’d wound up a swing with a sword and punched it straight through the middle of me. “You know why,” I said, my mouth even drier than it had been a moment earlier.

He shook his head, impassive. “I really don’t. Why?”

“Because…” I swallowed, trying to get the taste of ashes out of my mouth. I felt like I could taste them, like I had been on the main street in Glencoe after the detonation, and it reminded me of blood. Blood in my mouth, from fighting with Wolfe. “Because the last time someone super-powerful held people hostage I let the clock tick down and a lot of people died.” My hand came up, brushing the hair out of my eyes where the wind had tossed it. “I felt helpless, weak, like I couldn’t do anything. I can’t ever undo the consequences of my inaction. But this…” I tightened my hand into a fist in front of me, “putting down Gavrikov…this I can do.”

He looked left, then right, then back at me. “I’d shake hands with you, but I know what that would do to me. I’m in. Let’s go get Kat.”

We took out the guards with minimal effort. We did it fast because I was afraid Old Man Winter would get wise to our idea and send M-Squad to protect Kat. Fortunately, he must have had them working on the plan to take out Gavrikov, because there was no siren, no klaxon as the last guard slipped from my grasp, unconscious. I cracked the knuckles of my right hand, the one that had been burned off just yesterday.

Scott raised an eyebrow at me. “Feeling okay?”

“Better than him.” I picked up the card key looped to the guard’s belt and ran it through the reader on Kat’s door. It slid open and she jumped up from the bed, looking a bit haggard. Her hair was tangled, as though it hadn’t been washed for a few days, and she wore a tank top and sweatpants. I started to crack wise about the way she looked but remembered a similar visit I had in this room from Zack and wisely shut my mouth. “Check out time,” I said, drawing a look of surprise from her.

“What are you doing here?” She looked to Scott. “Both of you.”

“He was coming to visit,” I chucked a thumb to indicate him. “I was coming to give you a choice. Did they explain why you’re down here?”

She nodded. “The man who blew up the science building thinks I’m his sister, and he’s after me.”

“I’m told you actually are his sister,” I said, “but the point is, he doesn’t want to hurt you. He thinks you’re being imprisoned and he wants you set free.”

She looked around her gilded cage, with its wide-screen TV and luxurious private bathroom. “Um, I am being imprisoned.”

“Perfect, let’s escape,” I said and started to turn.

“Wait!” The alarm was urgent in her voice. “I don’t want to go to him, either!”

“He’s going to blow up the city of Minneapolis if we don’t turn you loose and bring you to him. He already blew up a town west of here to prove he’d do it.” Scott delivered the news I didn’t want to.

I watched Kat as she took it in. She was always pretty; enough to make me jealous, at least. She was like the cheerleader everybody loved because she was just so sweet and perky and innocent. Even despite her somewhat unwashed appearance, she was still pretty. That annoyed me.

But I watched her face crumple as Scott’s news hit her. Her green eyes lost their glow immediately, turned hollow. Her face fell, her eyes dropped to the floor and her shoulders slumped. She took a step back, staggered, as if she had been punched in the stomach, and she dropped back to the bed. When her voice came, it was no more than a whisper. “He did that…? For me? Because…because of me?” She looked younger than eighteen years old, and as I watched the emotions played across her fine features like the ravages of age. I felt a tightness inside that I didn’t really care to explain. It was all too familiar.

“He’s going to blow up Minneapolis if we don’t get you to him.” Scott closed the distance between them and knelt down. “But it’s okay. Sienna and I will protect you from him.” He looked at me. “He doesn’t want to hurt you, Kat. Sienna can take him out; you’ve seen what she can do.” He smiled. “And you know what I can do. He’s not going to try and hurt you, but even if he did, we can protect you—we can stop him.”

“I…I don’t want to go.” Her words were choked. “I don’t want anybody to die, but I…I don’t want to go.”

“It’ll be okay,” he said. I watched her eyes; the soothing wasn’t working. “We can stop it.”

“It may not be okay.” I said the words before I could stop myself, drawing a startled look from her and a venomous one from him. “Aleksandr Gavrikov just killed thousands of people to convince us to bring you to him.” I took a deep breath, and watched the horror in her eyes. “He’s a monster in his way, but I know him—or rather, I’ve gotten to know him. You’re the only thing that matters to him. He thinks you’re caged, tortured, and he wants you free. There’s something in the past between the two of you that happened that he desperately wants to make amends for. I think he needs you to forgive him for something. It’s all he cares about.”