Omega(44)

                “Oh, good,” Dr. Perugini said, looking up at us, her olive skin flushed as I arrived at Kat’s bedside, a snarl posed on her lips. “I didn’t mean to interrupt your personal conversation with my tedious medical report about the people who were injured on your mission.” She smiled, her every word a dagger. “Scott will be fine. Katrina appears to be fine, physically. They’ll both awaken in the next few hours, I expect. Katrina did some preliminary healing at the scene, yes?”

                “Yes,” I answered, looking down at Kat’s face, which was drawn, almost as platinum as her hair.

                “That saved us from serious problems, especially with Scott,” Perugini said, a clipboard positioned in front of her. “I can tell from the damage that his injuries were much more severe, that they have been healed considerably. Without that, he would likely have died.”

                “He saved my life,” I said, looking back to where Scott lay on the bed. “Saved me from getting hit, pushed me down and blocked me with his body.” I shook my head. “That was a complete cluster—”

                “And you were in charge?” Perugini eyed me accusingly.

                “In charge, yes,” I said. “In control of the situation—sadly, not.”

                “And whose fault is that?” she asked with more than a little accusation.



                             “What happened?” I heard a faint, groggy voice. I looked down to see Kat staring up at us, her curled blond hair lank and hanging loose around her face. Her eyes were open but only barely, the green of her irises peeking out at us from behind heavy lids. “Sienna?” She said my name as if trying to drag it out of herself.

                “I’m here,” I said, and started to reach for her hand, but hesitated when I remembered how dirty my glove was. I only froze for a second and then I took hold of her hand and picked it up. “You’re gonna be fine, Kat. We’re back at the Directorate. What do you remember?”

                “Directorate?” Kat asked, blinking at me. “What happened?”

                “We were on a mission,” I said. “In Des Moines. We were supposed to keep an eye on an Omega safe house, and things went wrong. You saved us, Kat—you healed Scott and the others, kept them from dying.”

                “Scott?” She scrunched her eyes at me. “I saved him?”

                “You did,” I said. “He’s going to be just fine.”

                “Oh.” She seemed to nod, but her eyes were distant, far away, glazed over. They came sharply back into focus, and found mine, and she squinted as she concentrated, trying to speak again. “Who is Scott?”





9.



                Interlude

                Des Moines, Iowa



                Red and blue lights flashed in the Iowa night, casting their colors over the street. The streetlamps were out, and he was left to wonder if they had functioned in the first place. The house in front of him was blocked off by a line of police cars and officers, all of them out of their vehicles—and buzzing around like little bees, he thought. The news vans were out as well, and they were worse than bees—they were like flies that gathered around manure in a pasture, always gravitating toward the largest pile.

                Residents were out, the damp street showing the reflected red and blue, the same refracting off the faces of the men, women and children who were on the scene with him, the crowd that had gathered in their heavy coats, trying to put anything between them and the cold autumn night. The wind picked up but didn’t blow the leaves the way it had in Minnesota only a few days earlier; here, everything was damp, weighed down by the wetness of a rain that must have passed in the morning but failed to dry under the cold grey sky. The smell of it was still in the air.