“They will beat us, regardless of level, if we refuse to do what it takes to get to the truth of what they are planning,” he said, and I caught heat in his words for the first time. “You wish to believe foolishly that no matter what comes, you can simply overcome through some sense of unlimited potential or magical destiny, but that is folly. Your life hangs in the balance.” I could hear an urgency from him I’d never heard before, a stirring in his words that hinted at something darker, something deeper. “Omega and all hell that follows is inching closer by the day, and we have little time to prepare you for the role you will take when it comes.” He drew up again and hesitated, and I saw a hint of sadness. “I won’t always be around to protect you—to do what you will not. Soon you will have to do these things for yourself, to be ready to take your place—”
“Are you leaving?” I asked, not sure how to respond, and not even sure why I was cutting him off. He stared coolly back at me. “Checking out? Bailing in the middle of the fight?”
“I am one of the oldest metahumans on the planet,” Old Man Winter said, and the tiredness in his voice made it fact more than any of the words did. “I have seen much, done much, endured much. My power fades, even now, from a battle I fought over a hundred years ago that scarred me and left me weaker than anyone knows.” The glisten in the blue of his irises was unmistakable. “Even still, Omega fears me.” The frosty sensation grew in the room, as though his skin were growing cold and infecting the air around him. “When the day comes that they find me—and find me they shall, sooner or later—I will be the first to fall.” His eyes glistened ever brighter. “But not the last, unless you are prepared to do whatever is necessary to fight the battle that they will not expect you to fight. Unless you are ready to do whatever it takes to win, to protect the metas and humans of the Directorate.”
He moved his hand to my shoulder, a heavy, leaden weight, but the way he did it was unlike how he had touched Bjorn. “It is much responsibility I place on your shoulders, I know. The weight of the world, perhaps, it feels to you. But I do this because you…are the only one who can bear it. There is no other.” His shoulders were slumped now, his black coat billowing around them as though there were extra space, and the shadows from the fluorescent lights on his face made it seem like he was gaunter, bonier, more shadowed and skeletal than he had ever looked before. Like death, frozen and forbidding, as though he were already dead, as though it had settled on him down to the bones, and he simply had yet to stop moving.
“Do you think they’ll be coming soon? For you, I mean?” When I asked, I sounded like a scared little girl.
“I have no idea.” I heard him breathe again, back to life. “This Operation Stanchion is concerning…to see them moving resources toward us and not know their specific aim.” He grew quiet for a moment. “You must prepare. You must ready yourself for what is to come. To turn blindly away from this or to trust fate to be kind is a fool’s lot, and yields a fool’s results.” His voice grew hard like iron as he stood again. “And you are no fool.” He turned and walked toward the end of the hall, leaving me behind.
I felt pitiful, scared, feeling the true dread of Omega, of what was coming, in a way that I hadn’t since the arrival of Wolfe had forced me to hide in a cell here in the basement, hoping he would eventually leave town, leave me alone. Henderschott hadn’t scared me, not really. He had hurt me once or twice, but not enough to drive the fear into me the way Wolfe had. Same with the vampires they sent, and Mormont, whom they turned from the Directorate’s service. None of them scared me like Wolfe did, none of them hurt me like Wolfe did.
Except Fries. That little rodent. Exempting Wolfe, they couldn’t beat me in a fight, not even with Bjorn, who was a bruiser. But Fries came at me sideways, touching on all my insecurities at a time when I was vulnerable. Then he betrayed me and twisted the knife, the snake. The hallway seemed narrower now, the air thicker, and the chill had left with Old Man Winter. I started toward the stairs, the beige walls blurring together. Now they were after me again, maybe after Old Man Winter, too. If they wanted to topple the Directorate, knocking over Old Man Winter seemed like it would be the way to go about it. Who’d step up after him? I liked Ariadne, but I got the sense that she relied on him to do more than was obvious on the surface.
My legs carried me up the stairs, through the lobby and out the door. I hit the crisp air and took a breath. All the feelings of confinement began to fade, that tightness in my chest as if I couldn’t breathe for what I had to contemplate. Breaking a man’s arm off out of fear for what was to come, for what he knew but wasn’t telling…I don’t know that I would have had it in me to harm even Bjorn in such a way.
But I didn’t know that it was totally wrong, either. Not when we were dealing with the same people who sent Wolfe, the man who tried his best to rape and torture me. It sounded as though Bjorn was cut from the same cloth.
I cut across the campus on the way back to the dormitory; heading to the training room was my first instinct, but I couldn’t bring myself to do it. I needed quiet. Operation Stanchion bothered me. Who named their little plans in such a grandiose and evil way? A stanchion was just a pillar, after all, a post, and what did that have to do with me? Or did it refer to Old Man Winter, the pillar of the Directorate?
The leaves were packed to the ground, and a frost had come with morning, turning everything a silvery, shimmering white when the sun hit it. The blades of grass crunched under my boots in a way that was almost alien to me, so different from their sweet give in summer. The frost was in the air, too, crowding into my sinuses and nose, freezing the little hairs inside. It was bitter—too bitter by far for October.
The entry to the dormitory was quiet; the younger students were in their classes. It wasn’t close to lunchtime with the bustle of all the administrative employees coming to the cafeteria in droves. I wondered how much they knew about what we did here. There were hundreds of employees, after all, and most of them lived off-campus. I doubted most of them even worked with the metas, which left me curious. There was a divide between the admin and school business, I knew that, and I supposed a person could even work in the administration building without ever knowing that the kids at the school had anything different about them; it wasn’t as if any of them had scales, or had snakes growing out of their shoulders, or anything like that. The most bizarre thing on campus was Clary, and that had more to do with his personality than his power, except when he shifted his skin.
On the other hand, seeing Eve Kappler flying past a window might be a hint that something was not quite what it seemed on campus.
I inserted my key card in the elevator and rode up to the third floor. When I arrived, I stepped off and walked down the white hall, noticing a few potted trees that hadn’t been there before. Decoration to brighten up the dull landscape with winter coming, I supposed.
I paused as I reached my door. The one next to mine, the one that belonged to Kat, was open, the card reader’s bar an angry red, and a buzzing noise coming from it, the quiet sound of low-voltage electricity arcing. I walked toward it tentatively, the thought that I might be walking into trouble only a faint idea in my mind. I lay my hand on the door, which was half open, and I could see the light flooding in from the windows. It was a sunny day and the room was lit like mine, bright and pleasant. I took a quiet step inside, then another. The living room and kitchen were silent, nothing moving as I came around the wall and got a full look.
Kat’s furniture was roughly the same as mine and in the same layout. All her appliances were Directorate standard, though again, she had taken some effort to spruce up the walls with the posters I didn’t care for. I heard a faint scratching from the bedroom, and I walked through the middle of the apartment on my way to the bedroom door, which was drawn at a forty-five degree angle.