Family

Chapter 6

The room seemed to freeze around me, the life drained out of it like air all exhaled in one great breath. I didn’t want to look up at any of them, but when I did, I saw Ariadne staring at me in numbest shock, her mouth open and trying to move, caught comically agape. Zollers cleared his throat and looked away, which was, I think, the worst reaction of them all. I heard Kurt snort on the bed behind Zollers, but I didn’t much care about him.

“What…” Ariadne stumbled over her attempt to speak, then recovered, her face going through several changes of expression. “What were you…” Her eyes rolled back, like she was trying to recall something, and I saw her white-knuckle the railing of my bed, before she finally managed a full sentence. “What…was he doing there?”

“Waiting for me,” I said. I caught a hint of disappointment from Zollers, though he hid it well. “He was an incubus, and so he could – we could—”

“I don’t need to hear any more,” Ariadne said, waving a hand in front of me to cut me off. “I’m going to send our staff investigator to debrief you. He’s going to start putting together a picture of what you know about Omega, and how this happened.”

“If I may,” Old Man Winter said, in a tone that let us know he wasn’t so much asking for permission to interject as he was warning everyone else to shut up. “While this…Omega operative may have gotten access to your cell phone, it was not the cause of our recent setbacks. The ambush of our agents was in motion prior to your call with Ariadne, and the battle in Kansas was already underway.” He looked at me, boring into my eyes. “You are not responsible for this. The fault rests with someone else.”

Ariadne seemed to think about this for a moment. “Very well. They couldn’t have gotten the data from her phone. I still want our investigator to talk to you about this – this – this—” She stopped, closed her eyes, and exhaled. “All right.” She shook her head again. “Anything else, tell the investigator. His name is Michael Mormont.” She shook her head and turned to leave.

Old Man Winter waited, still staring me down, but after another moment he broke off and followed her. He stopped at the door and turned. “You saw your mother.”

“I did,” I said, afraid to meet his eyes. Why did I feel this overwhelming sense of shame? Probably because I got suckered by an Omega operative who damned near got me to lose my virginity to him less than twenty-four hours before he beat the hell out of me.

“Did she say anything?” he asked. “Anything of consequence?” His hand was on the door, on the metal frame around it, and I saw a small sheen of ice spreading out on the steel in a light spiderweb pattern, radiating out from his hand across the metal wall.

“No,” I said. “Just told me I’d screwed up and that I’d screw up again.” I clenched my fist and felt pain shoot through my arm where I’d been shot. “Just like always,” I whispered.

Old Man Winter nodded. “She has always been…a hard woman. My chosen surname is Winter,” he said, with the slightest smile, “but she is the very definition of it – harsh, unrelenting, unforgiving.”

“You used to work with her at the Agency?” I asked, referring to the government-controlled precursor to the Directorate. No one had ever really explained to me what happened to the Agency, other than that it was destroyed.

“Our paths would cross occasionally. She was an agent, one of the best. I was in…administration. I knew her only in passing.”

“What happened?” I asked, in genuine wonder. “What happened when the Agency was destroyed? Why did she flee, give up her name and everything and hide for almost two decades?”

“Fear, I would think,” Old Man Winter said, possibly breaking some kind of personal record for number of consecutive sentences in a row. “Fear for you and your safety. It is a dangerous world for metas.” His eyes narrowed. “And especially for a succubus.”

I opened my mouth to ask another question about the Agency and its destruction, but as though he sensed he didn’t want to answer it, he left, the doors sliding shut behind him. “What was that supposed to mean?” I asked Zollers, who chewed his lip as he watched Old Man Winter leave.

“I don’t know. Not being a meta myself, I suppose I’m not down with the lingo.”

“‘Down with the lingo’?” I asked. “Did you really just talk like a geek fanboy?”

“Naw,” he said, “that was totally street.” He paused, tried to keep a straight face, and then smiled. “The street where the comic shop is located, anyway. So…” he said, “I need to talk to you.”

“Why?” I asked, distracted, staring at the doors that Old Man Winter had just walked out of. “Did I do something wrong?” I asked mockingly.

“Sounds like,” Zollers replied, “but that’s not why I want to talk to you. Standard Directorate procedure after you’ve been through a firefight. Gotta make sure you’re not suffering from Post Traumatic Stress Disorder.”

“I’m suffering from multiple gunshot wounds,” I said. “I’m suffering from a lack of answers and an abundance of questions—”

“Something I’m sure you’ve never dealt with ever, at any point in your life.”

I let that hang in the air for a second, then blew air out of my lips and shook my head, only mildly amused. “You know me too well, Doctor.”

“I try,” he said. “You could make it easier, though. Come see me when you get out. And you know.” He looked at me with a narrowed, piercing gaze that was coupled with a knowing smile to devastating effect. “If you don’t, I will hunt you down.”

“I’ve been made aware of that before, yes.”

“All right, then,” he said with a nod, then hesitated, as though he remembered or realized something. He looked at me somewhat tenderly, then nodded again and walked out, his posture stiff. I started to ask him what that was about, but shrugged. We all act a little weird sometimes.

As the doors shut, I heard movement to my left and turned to look. Reed was still asleep in the corner of the medical unit closest to Dr. Perugini’s office, but there was motion in the bed next to him.

It was Zack. His eyes were open and fixed on me, and his face was crumpled in a way that caused my heart to drop in my chest. His lips were twisted, eyes squinting, emotion plastered over every inch of his handsome face, and I had another jolt of realization – he had been listening when I told the others about James, about what I had done.

“I’m sorry,” I said. He didn’t reply. He just shook his head, bowing it down. After a moment he looked back at me in silent accusation, then closed his eyes and rolled over, giving me nothing but a view of his back.