Robert Crane - Untouched

He nodded slowly. “It’s up to you whether you connect with people or not. And I hate to break it to you, but your own little world is not the center of the universe.”

I cocked my head at him and shot him a “duh” look. “Thanks, Galileo. You’re a little late to the party on that one. And not fashionably so, like…party’s over, GTFO. I figured it out, thanks.”

“How?” He took a step closer to me, reminding me for some reason of Gavrikov as he took the first steps toward Kat.

“It was Aleksandr,” I said, thinking about it. “He lived over a hundred years with his flames up all the time, by choice, ever since…whatever happened with his sister. He chose to live that way, isolated, alone. I think…” I felt the loneliness creep over me, the walls start to rise, and pushed them away, “…I would give anything to be able to take the barriers down and just live. And I can do that for most of them.” I held up my hands, uselessly, showing him the gloves once more, the things that separated me from everyone. “All but one, anyway. It’s not normal, but it’s all I can do—”

He interrupted me by taking two strides to close the distance between us and before I could say anything his arms wrapped around my back, enveloping me, and he pressed his lips to mine. My eyes closed; the touch was magnificent, warm and sweet, and he pulled away just as I felt the first stirrings of my power start to work. I took a breath and opened my eyes, and his were staring back at me, brown and big and with his smile reflected in them. He had a really nice smile.

He didn’t say anything else, just pulled away, leaving me speechless, standing there with my wet hair, and walked to the door. “See you tomorrow,” he said, and the door shut before I could answer.

I sat across from Old Man Winter, playing the staring game. Oddly, my eyes didn’t seem to burn this time, so I just kept going.

Ariadne was there, of course. “We’ve already gotten M-Squad’s report and spoken with Scott and Kat, so we have a general idea of how everything went, for the most part. Zack said that Henderschott showed up?” She flipped through the file in her hands as if looking for confirmation.

“Yeah. He had the campus under surveillance and picked us up as we left. He must have followed us all the way to the IDS tower, because I saw the cable truck he was driving pass us as we went into the lobby. Didn’t really put it together until he hit me, but that’s the only way it could have happened unless someone tipped him off we were going to be there.”

Ariadne closed the file. “Makes sense. Would you like to explain your actions?”

I was still locked on Old Man Winter’s ice blue eyes. “Which ones?”

Ariadne coughed. “Taking two untrained metas and yourself into combat with not one, but two, extremely deadly foes, stealing a Directorate car, assaulting our guards, interfering in our efforts to contain the situation—”

“Your containment strategy sucked,” I said, still not breaking my gaze away. Ariadne’s jaw dropped and she took a step back. Old Man Winter didn’t look away from my gaze. “It would have resulted in about a million deaths; the crosswinds on top of the tower made a clean shot against Gavrikov near impossible without a stable platform to shoot from. Hell, I’m amazed Parks even hit him.”

“And your plan was better?” she said with an air of snottiness. “Byerly almost got burned to death, Forrest was cornered—”

“But I saved her,” I said.

“—Zack jumped from a helicopter, injuring himself, and Clary ended up going through the roof—”

“That was his own fault, you can’t blame me for Clary being stupid.”

“And then there’s you.” She came around and sat on the edge of the desk, just to the side of my staring contest with Old Man Winter. “You disobeyed our explicit commands and substituted your own judgment for ours.”

“You’re right,” I said, firm. “Based on my experience with Gavrikov, I handled the situation as I thought best. None of the rest of you knew him personally or knew what to expect from him. Don’t put me in a position where I have to watch countless people die. Let me take the responsibility a thousand times before you hand it off to someone else who will screw it up. I won’t stand by and take dumb orders. I did what I thought—what I knew was right. And if you expect anything less from me as an agent or a retriever or a whatever you wanted me to do, you need to find someone else for the job.”

There was a freezing effect in the room, as though all particle motion had halted, and Ariadne spoke first. “I’m sorry, what?”

I still didn’t look away from Old Man Winter. “The job offer you extended. If it’s off the table in the wake of this incident, I understand. But I figured you ought to know that if it was still open, that I’m not some brainless shell that you get to use just for my powers.”

Ariadne shifted from where she was sitting on the desk. “I…don’t think we would ever expect anything less than your full opinion at any time. And…” She looked to Old Man Winter, who finally broke his gaze away from me to look to her. I mentally declared victory and pumped my fist. They pretended not to notice. She turned back after a look was shared between them. “The offer is still on the table.”

“Then you have a trainee,” I said. “And I have a signing bonus, I believe.” I looked at her. “Do I get paid with checks or cash? Because I don’t have a bank account. Yet.”

“I’ll…have someone cut you a check,” she said, standing. “I’m sure we can find someone to take you into town to make banking arrangements.”

“I’d like to go to the mall.” I stood. “I need some clothes.” I pulled on the shoulder of the black turtleneck, the thousandth I’d worn since arriving at the Directorate. “Nothing personal, but I’m kind of sick of wearing black all the time. Who does that?”

She nodded. “Anything else?”

I thought for a moment and remembered something. “One last thing. Henderschott, before he died—”

“Ah, yes.” Ariadne opened the file. “Rather spectacular, that. A 57-storey plunge to the street?” She looked away from the photograph I could see in the folder. “Not a pleasant way to go, especially when strapped into a tin can as he was.”

“He said something before he died, about his employer.” The silence in the room became oppressive in an instant. Old Man Winter seemed to perk up and Ariadne had a wide-eyed look on her face. “He said they’d keep coming after me. I asked him who, and he gave me their name—Omega.” I looked at the two of them as they exchanged a look. “That mean anything to you?”

“No,” Ariadne said after appearing to consider it for a moment. “So we have a name for this new threat—”

Old Man Winter cut her off. “No. Not a new threat at all. Not Omega.” His blue eyes glowed, shining in the dimness of the tinted office. “An old one, rather. A very, very old one.” The office was warm enough, and I was already wearing my coat. But the way he said it, the timbre of his voice, the delivery—gave me a very real shudder that was absolutely unrelated to the cold.

It was a Monday, I think. I let the nice agent (he didn’t sneer or get pissy at all with me, a rarity for people from the Directorate in my experience) drive me to the bank. They were very pleasant and understanding, having had a long relationship with the Directorate, and so I opened an account and the money was in it within just a few minutes. Which was fortunate, because I didn’t have a driver’s license. Somehow, Ariadne had gotten copies of my Social Security Card and Birth Certificate, which made things easier.