“She better not see any of you again, Charlie.” My mother’s voice was hard, sharp as glass, and unforgiving. “If she sees so much as an eyelash of yours, you won’t have time to blink before I drain you into nothingness.” Charlie stiffened but did not turn back at my mother’s threat.
I watched her leave, the doors swinging shut behind her, and then turned to my mother to find her looking at me, her face the same mask of fearful indifference that she wore when talking to my aunt. “Mom,” I croaked. She took a few steps toward me, then stopped at my side. I looked up and saw she was using the console next to me. “Mom?”
“It looks like you haven’t been following the rules,” she said, voice hollow. “You’re not in the house, you’re not wearing gloves, a coat.” Her gaze hardened on me, leaning against the railing. “Actually, it looks like you’re wearing hardly anything.” My mouth opened and I tried to say something, but nothing came out. “You’re a Directorate Agent now, you’re living on your own and you’ve had a boyfriend.” Her eyes narrowed and focused in on mine. “Yeah, I heard about that. You’re a big girl, in other words. Big enough to deal with the consequences of your own mistakes.”
She knelt next to me, her face hovering a foot away from mine. “You’re going to make more mistakes, I know it. But that’s your problem.” She stood. “Not mine. Not anymore. Time to grow up.” She punched a button on the console and a deep rumbling filled the entire room. She turned her back on me and started to walk away.
“Mom, wait!” I tried to use the railing to stand again, pulling myself up. “Wait!” I slumped, putting all my weight on the console as the rumbling noise that filled the room centered on the middle of the platform. A cylinder rose up, sliding through the hole, black, sleek metal that extended six feet above the platform before it stopped moving. “Mom? Help me,” I said, my words coming out in a tumble, desperation lacing every one of them. “Help me, please, Mom.”
She didn’t stop, didn’t turn around, didn’t even slow her walk as she moved toward the doors I had entered through. “I just did.”
The doors swung shut behind her.
Chapter 22
“God, am I glad she’s gone.” The voice was solid, strong, and so damned alarming. I turned my head to see James pushing himself up onto all fours. “Both of them, actually.” He shook his head as he got to his feet. “Now…” His face was bloody, his nose a shattered mess with a hole in it, crimson running down his cheeks and lips. “Where were we?”
Something clicked in the cylinder in front of me, and a hissing sound came as it seemed to depressurize, fissures appearing in the surface of it. I watched James, whose eyes widened when he saw it, and his face snapped back to me. “Dammit, I guess I’ll have to make this quick—”
The cylinder opened, a door sliding back, light shining out of it in a pale yellow across the platform. A face appeared first, followed by the rest of a body. James didn’t watch, he didn’t delay: he came right at me and I reached out to grab hold of him, struggling as he pushed me to the ground, his hands trying to grip my neck. “Stop fighting me!” he raged, forcing my arms down. “This will all be over in a few seconds.”
“That’s what you tell all the girls.” I rocked my hips to dislodge him, but to no avail. I was too weary, too beaten. Everything hurt, every part of me now, and what didn’t hurt just felt weary. All I wanted was to sleep, to not be a big girl, to just be back home with Mom and not have to worry about any of this—
A screech came from behind James and he paused, a look of panic crossing his wrecked face. “Uh oh,” was all he had time to say before a woman came out of the cylinder, her eyes tightly shut, a scream on her lips. She was staggering, naked, trying to catch her breath, her dirty brown hair tangled in wet ringlets around her shoulders. Her eyes opened and caught sight of him and me, on the ground, and she screamed again, this time not from fear but rage, and she attacked him, her hand coming down in a hard swipe that caught him by surprise and sent him flying over the edge of the railing, down into the darkness below.
I turned my gaze from where he had fallen to her, glowing brown eyes giving me a sense of deep unease. I had no defense against what she’d done to him; I only hoped that if she sent me over the edge I’d be able to land 1) softly and 2) on him, because I didn’t know if I could take any more pummeling.
“Are you okay?” she asked in a throaty voice, a little hoarse, like she hadn’t used it in a long time.
I flinched at the sound of her voice, mostly because I was expecting an attack instead. “Do…do I look okay?”
The naked girl studied me, her eyes assessing. “Not really.”
I worked my way to sitting again. “Who are you?”
She looked lost in thought, far away, drifting, and I almost thought maybe she’d passed out on her feet, as though the trauma of being released from a big black cylinder was too much for her. She paused, looked across the room, then turned back to me, still almost uncertain. “Andromeda,” she said finally. “My name is Andromeda.”
I heard voices, raised, from behind me, and crooked my head to look. Andromeda tensed, as though she were ready for battle. The doors on the far end of the room burst open and Reed and Scott came through them, followed by two guys in tactical vests carrying submachine guns. Neither wore masks, and I knew them instantly. One was Kurt, the other was Zack.
“Sienna!” It was Scott who shouted, his hands pointed at Andromeda, who pointed her hands back at him. “We thought you were dead.”
Reed matched Scott’s position, though his expression was a bit more wary. Both Kurt and Zack had their weapons pointed, and I held up my hand to stop them, and felt myself sag against the railing as they came onto the platform. “Me? Not so much. Everybody calm down,” I said. “This is Andromeda.” She looked at me, then at them, and began to relax. “Andromeda, this is…everybody.”
Scott inched his way around the platform, still keeping his hands up, eyes fixed on her, though they looked down more than once to take in her nakedness. “So Andromeda is not a project…it’s a person?”
She cocked her head at him, her pale skin giving off a briny smell, now that she was closer to me. “Perhaps it’s both.”
“We don’t exactly have the perimeter secure here,” Kurt said, scanning the room. “We need to find what we’re here for and leave.”
“She’s it, I think.” I said this as Zack made his way forward, easing past Andromeda, and grasped me under the arms to help me stand. “She’s the reason we’re here; though I’m not sure how much she can tell us about Omega.”
Her eyes followed mine, and I caught a hint of deep intelligence in them. “Everything,” she said. “I can tell you everything about Omega. Who they are, where they started, why they’re here and what they’re after.”
“Then we need to get her out of here,” Scott said. “Back the way we came?”
“No,” Andromeda said. “This way.” She looked at me. “Let me help.” She put her hand on me and I started to protest, but something in her eyes silenced me. Her hand was on mine, and a second passed, then five, and nothing happened.
“What…are you?” I asked, staring back at her.
Her eyes glowed and I felt strength course through me as she pulled me along, almost effortless. “Something new. I am a sacrifice made by Omega to bring about change.”
“Oh, good, cryptic,” Scott murmured from behind me. “You’ll get along well with Old Man Winter.”
“Are you all right?” Zack whispered next to me, trying to keep up as Andromeda pulled me along. I noticed that all my pain had receded; the wounds were still there, but they seemed not to hurt.