Omega (10 page)

“Status report,” I said after a few minutes of silence.

There was a hesitation, then Clary spoke. “You talking to me?”

“No, I’m talking to the four unconscious people. Use your head, Clary! Of course I’m talking to you.”

“Umm,” he withered under my glare. “Scott’s still bleeding, but not as bad. Reed’s out and his face looks like someone took a brick to it.” He frowned. “What happened to him, anyway?”

“Someone took a brick to his face,” I said, clenching my jaw. “What about our friend from Omega?”

“Oh, yeah, he ain’t movin’.” Clary’s voice revealed a hint of self-satisfaction. “I got him trussed up real good, three sets of our heavy handcuffs on his wrists, two on his ankles, and one holding it all together like that plastic thingy they use on six-packs.”

“How’s Kat?”

“She looks like she ain’t been out in the sun for about a hundred years,” Clary said, no trace of irony. “But she’s breathing and all, seems all right. I pinched her on the tit and she didn’t move, though, so I think she might be out pretty hard.”

I let that settle for a second. “You did...what?”

“Well, I—”

“Never mind. Keep your damned hands off her, Clary, and see if you can find a way to call the Directorate.”

He was silent for a moment. “Maybe a pay phone?”

I thought about that. “Do you know the number?”

“No. It’s in my cell phone—”

I sighed, but not really at him. The sad truth was, I knew the number, but I was still working through things in my head. “Is Kat all right? Still breathing?”

“Yep.” I heard a silence for a beat. “She’s definitely still breathing and all. Feels nice and warm.”

I turned my head at a snap to look at what he was doing and found him with a hand on her chest. “Clary, you pervert! Hands off!”

“I was checking her pulse!”

“Her pulse is way north of where you were checking for it!”

“I was trying to see if I could feel her heartbeat, you know, close to the heart itself, because it would be stronger there, right?”

“Never mind,” I said. “No one’s in critical condition. They’ll all survive...so let’s just drive. Really fast. We’ll stop in a few minutes and change the license plates and then we’ll just haul ass to get home.” I bit my lower lip. “And hopefully everything will work out.”

8.

We pulled through the gates of the Directorate a few hours later. The ride had been quiet, the opposite of the trip down, Clary keeping himself silent. Our prisoner did not awaken, nor did any of our other passengers. When we stopped, I did a quick check of Reed and Scott. My brother’s face was a mess, but had already started to heal because of his meta abilities and what Kat had done with her powers. Scott, on the other hand, was pale from what I assumed to be extreme blood loss. He’d started to regain his color by the time we were pulling up to the gates, but I wasn’t terribly eager to hear Dr. Perugini’s assessment of what had happened (or Old Man Winter’s, come to think of it, or Ariadne’s).

We pulled up to the front of headquarters and I found Ariadne waiting for us. As I stepped out, her jaw dropped and she rushed forward. “What happened to you?”

“Clary,” I said through gritted teeth. I wasn’t over it yet. “We’ve got wounded—Kat, Scott and Reed—but we also have a prisoner.” I opened the back doors to the van. “Can you get Dr. Perugini out here?”

She nodded sharply, her phone already in her hand. “Isabella,” she said. “Get to the front of HQ, we’ve got wounded.” I heard the soft beep as she cut the connection. A cool wind picked up as I opened the back doors to the van and Ariadne let out a gasp as she looked inside. “What the hell happened? Why didn’t you call?”

“No phones,” I said. “And I didn’t want to slow down. We had to leave Iowa in a hurry.”

I heard doors opening behind me as Perugini came rushing out of the building, rolling a gurney covered in white sheets. Her lab coat matched the sheets perfectly, as though she were a part of the gurney herself. “What the hell...happened here?”

“I led a mission,” I said tightly, “and Clary came along.”

Clary stepped down from the back of the van, pulling Reed out and setting him on the gurney. “It was an accident, I swear.”

“It was a...” I held my tongue. “...Charlie Foxtrot. I’ll carry Scott, you get Kat.”

“Done and done,” he said with a little too much enthusiasm.

“Cancel that,” I said. “I’ll get Kat.” I lifted her up in my arms, trying to cradle her so that her thin neck didn’t bob. “What do we do about the prisoner?”

“I’ll get him,” Clary said with muffled disappointment. “You want him in the cell block, Ariadne?”

“Yes,” Ariadne said, a little pale. “That’ll be fine. What a catastrophe.”

“They’ll be okay,” I said.

“Oh, are you a doctor now?” Perugini said from where she stood over Reed. Her dark skin was flushed red in the lamplight. “No? Then shut up and carry them in while I do my work. Come back for the other one.”

I nodded and started toward the entrance when the door opened again and Zack emerged with Kurt Hannegan. Zack saw me and his face pinched in concern. “What happened to you?” he asked as he approached, his suit flapping in the wind. “You look like you got rolled in dough.”

“Here,” I said and handed Kat to him. He took up her weight, cradling her in his arms like a baby. “I’m going to carry Scott.” I turned back to the van, where Clary was lifting our prisoner over his head, carrying him on his shoulders in a bowed shape. I picked up Scott in my arms and tossed him over a shoulder with as much care as I could. “Clary, get that man to the cell block and don’t let him out of the restraints once you’re there. Let him sleep like that; he’s too strong to let loose.”

Clary nodded as we entered the marbled lobby, the black stone flecked with white that didn’t even show in the dim light. All the recessed lighting had dimmed for the night and Clary made his way toward the stairs, evading the beams shining down from overhead as though he were trying to stay to the shadows.

“I want a full debriefing when you’re done seeing to them,” Ariadne said. “The Director will want to be informed.”

“I’ll be there once I finish dropping them off,” I told her. “Give me about ten minutes?”

She nodded and disappeared toward the elevator banks while we filed down a long, narrow hallway.

“Good to see you,” I said to Zack, and got a tight smile in return. “How was your day?”

“Not as exciting as yours, I’m guessing,” he said with aplomb, repositioning Kat in his arms. “What happened on your mission?” There was a clatter as Perugini rolled the gurney down the hall ahead of us, hitting the small grooves where the tile separated from the carpeted areas.

“We destroyed the Omega safe house.”

“Uh...weren’t you supposed to surveil it?” Zack asked, his face contorting as though he were trying to find a diplomatic way to ask the question that was on his mind.

“Clary,” I said simply as we walked through the doors of the medical unit. I set Scott on a bed, being as careful with him as possible. “He decided to walk up and knock on the door.”

“And then what happened?” Zack asked, laying Kat on the next bed over from Scott.

“Then Clary go boom,” I said, brushing Scott’s curly locks off his forehead. There were some scabbed-over cuts still there. “Our prisoner answered the door by blasting it off its hinges. He’s quite strong, that one.”

“What is he?” Zack asked, lifting the rail on the edge of Kat’s bed into the locked position to keep her from rolling out.

“Clary? An idiot.” I lifted the rail on Scott’s bed and started to adjust it to sit him up at a forty-five degree angle. “As for the meta we picked up at the Omega safe house, I have no idea what type. He didn’t really show any other abilities that I noticed other than an uncanny knack for destroying everything around him.” I frowned. “Is there a nuclear bomb type?”

“Yeah. Aleksandr Gavrikov,” Zack said with amusement. “No fire, though, right?”

“No fire,” I said, as he made his way around the bed and over to me. “Just a lot of property damage that resulted in a house caving in.”

Zack brushed his fingers over my forehead. “Did you get hurt?”

“Not bad,” I said, and ran my fingers through my hair. They came back coated in white dust, and I coughed involuntarily. “I did inhale a few rooms worth of plaster, though, so if I spit out a whole wall later tonight, you’ll know why.”

“I can’t believe Ariadne sent Clary with you,” Zack said, stroking my hair, brushing the dust out of it. “Everyone knows that guy is an idiot.”

“A useful idiot at times, though,” I said.

“You’re not mad at him?” Zack looked inquiring.

“Oh, I’m super pissed,” I said. “I’m thinking about killing him, actually, and I don’t tend to think about that, ever.” Zack raised an eyebrow. “Not seriously,” I added. “But it would be satisfying to smack him around for a while.” I nodded. “And I did, actually. I think we understand each other now.”

Zack looked at me, wide eyed. “You...smacked Clary around? Like, really did?”

“Yeah. Like, I really did. And we’re good now.”

“And he didn’t...splatter you all over a wall?”

I slapped his shoulder lightly. “He’s scared of me. We’re good.”

Zack thought about it for a moment and gave a slight shrug. “I don’t blame him.”

“Would you two please take your pitiful necking activities out of my medical unit?” Dr. Perugini bustled over. “There are sick people here, and if I have to listen to any more of your banter, I will be one of them.”

“You’ve got a great bedside manner, Doc,” I said with a smile. “Did you learn that when you worked for La Cosa Nostra?”

“Oh, you are thinking you are funny!” She jabbed a finger at me as she prodded at Scott with her stethoscope. “But let me tell you something, the disasters you bring me are not funny, they are sad.”

“Will everyone be all right?” I asked.

“Does it look like I have examined everyone yet?” She wagged her finger at me again. “Your brother is fine. Cosmetic damage will heal in the next day or so, but he doesn’t look so pretty until then.” She looked down at Scott. “What happened to this one?”

“Internal and external bleeding,” I said. “Will he be all right?”

“Away from me,” she said, waving me off. “Go to the corner, neck for a few minutes, then come back when I am done.”

“How about your office?” I asked. “We could—”

“Away!” She flailed an arm at me.

“She seems more uptight than usual,” Zack said as we made our way over to Reed’s bed. “Seriously, though, physical stuff aside, how are you holding up?”

“I’ll be all right once I get a shower and...” I let my voice trail off as I pulled my jacket off. It was ruined, the black leather torn in several places. “Bleh. I should have known better than to wear something I actually liked on a mission.”

“Your gun,” Zack said and pointed.

I looked down to where he had pointed, to the holster under my arm, and I pulled out my pistol. The barrel was bent at a ten-degree angle, either from one of the times I was hit or one of my landings. “Damn. I liked this one, too.”

“You didn’t use it?” Zack asked.

I looked at the black finish. “No. I didn’t even draw it. Guess I was too focused on subduing the prisoner.”

Zack raised an eyebrow. “People tend to get pretty subdued when you put a few bullets in them, especially if they’re a meta and can heal from that sort of thing.”

I slid the wrecked gun back in the holster. “They also tend to die sometimes, in case you don’t remember that certain girl—”

“Andromeda?” Zack’s mood shifted. “Kinda hard to forget.”

“Yeah.” I tried to think of something happier. “Oh. I saw Dr. Sessions earlier today. He’s discovered something...interesting.”

“Oh?” Zack’s face locked into a grimace. “What’s that? A new way for you to kill people?”

“Ah, no. The opposite, actually.” I smiled at him. “He can manufacture a suit for you that will allow you to touch my skin.”

“A suit?” A raised eyebrow again. “Like with a tie?” He tugged at the bottom edge of his coat.

“No, like...” I eased closer to him, and stopped when I realized I was covered in dust. “Like a plastic one that adheres to your body. Like...skintight.”

He frowned, his brow crumpling. “Like spandex? So I can dress like a superhero?”

“No,” I said. “Like...skintight thin latex. So you can...touch me.”

There was a moment’s quite pause, the only sound coming from the beeping of Reed’s pulse-oxygen monitor. “I can already do that,” Zack said, breaking into a smile. “In dreams.”

“Yeah,” I said, “but this way you could touch me in real life. And in
every way
.” I raised my eyebrows at him, trying to be suggestive.

“You mean like...” He froze, as if it was almost computing, then his eyes got wide. “Oh. Skin tight, totally skin tight, and form fitting.” He looked pensive. “How do I get into something like that?”

I thought about it for a beat. “I don’t know, maybe it comes in pieces? Or maybe it’s like a jumpsuit with a zipper on the back. I don’t really know and I don’t care that much, either, as long as it works. It means we could actually...” I awkwardly started to place a dirty glove on his shoulder and then stopped myself. “Sleep together.”

“We’ve slept together before,” he said, keeping his voice low and looking over toward Dr. Perugini, who was still working on Kat. “And I kinda like what we’re doing now, with the dreams. It’s a pretty amazing feeling. I think it may be better than the real thing and I never thought I’d say that about...uh...that.”

“Well, I’m glad it’s good for you,” I said, trying to stay on the side of the line of sheer irritation I was feeling, “but it’s not really all that...for me, if you know what I mean. And I’m a little worried about that power of mine. We don’t know how it’s supposed to work. I doubt the main application is getting my boyfriend off without touching him.”

“Why not?” he asked. “Maybe it’s an adaptation to allow a succubus to keep a mate without being able to touch them.”

“I kinda doubt that,” I said. “In my experience, my powers are seldom that innocuous.”

“If you’re done with your little make out session,” Dr. Perugini said from beside Kat’s bed, “I can talk to you now.”

“Just tell me what you want me to do and I’ll do it.” Zack placed both his hands on my arms and kissed my forehead. “If you tell me to get the suit, I’ll get it and we can—”

“Well, since you’re so excited about it,” I said, almost snapping. “Forget it, we’ll talk about it later.”

“I’m sorry,” Zack said, and I saw the genuine contrition in his eyes. “I guess I just thought we had a good thing going on with the dreams—”