Omega: the Sequel

Chapter Five

Josh’s hand grabbed the back of my shirt, pulling me back into my chair. I hadn’t even realized I was beginning to rise out of it. Shutting up, I looked brazenly at Young’s frozen face as he stared at me with fury in his eyes. “Learn to keep your mouth shut once in a while,” Josh said to me out of the side of his mouth, which I thought was a bit rich, seeing as this was usually him in situations like such.

“You are dismissed,” Young gritted out. “Until I can figure out what to do with you.”

We rose as one, me with my hands and jaw clenched, Josh with a forcedly casual look on his face, Pierre with that same lack of expression. I jostled my chair aside, stalking to the door and shoving it open, and then, with one foot in the hallway, I heard Young’s voice once more from behind me: “LaPointe, if you will stay behind a moment, please…”

I froze, my head swiveling to look at Pierre. For the last week, he had been mostly silent, white-faced and wan-looking even as his health began to get better, according to the doctors. I had been unable to get much out of him regarding what had happened; he obviously didn’t want to talk about it, and who could blame him? After three days in the hospital and several more of rest, he looked much better than when I had first seen him, though his appetite was still bad and there were dark circles under his eyes.

Now he had stopped dead halfway to the door, still facing us as his eyes flickered slightly – the most surprise he seemed capable of showing. Then his face seemed to harden as he looked between Josh and me, his jaw clenching and unclenching as we stared at him before he turned to face the director of Delta. Young was sitting with a beatific look on his face – which made me ten times more suspicious – but there was a keen spark in his eyes as he looked at Pierre.

“You are dismissed, von Shauff, Steiner,” he said pleasurably. “LaPointe, if you will please sit once more…” He gestured to the chairs, and after a pause, Pierre sat stiffly, not even glancing at me as he did so. Confused, I looked to Josh, who shrugged with a blank look, and then back at the director, who gave us a no-nonsense look that warned us to get lost.

In silence, Josh and I strode out of the room, and I slammed the door behind me before falling against the wall next to it and staring at my best friend. “What the heck was that about?” I demanded, and he shrugged again, moving to my side so that we couldn’t be seen by Young.

“Like I’m supposed to know?” He began pulling something out of his pockets, untangling strings. “I gotta say, though, something weird’s going on with Pierre…Young is acting strange, and Pierre, and…well, everyone. Wulf doesn’t know,” he added, catching the look on my face. “He says he’s not high enough up there on the totem pole to know these confidential things. But he thinks there’s something weird going on, too.”

I frowned. It was obvious that Josh hero-worshipped Wulf, even though he would never admit to it, and the frustration in his eyes was evident at his lack of knowledge. I didn’t know everything he had been through during his time in France, but he seemed to be more in the Delta loop than I was, especially seeing as I had basically been out of service for the past two months. For some reason, that bothered me.

Without a word, Josh handed me one half of the device he had taken from his pocket: a set of earphones that were unlike most you could buy at Radio Shack, seeing as they could be used to listen through walls. I slipped my end into my ear, and Josh pressed the input-tip against the wall. There was a brief moment of stifled noise and static, and then their voices came through to us clearly.