Soulless The Girl in the Box - By Robert J. Crane Page 0,2

hour before this, full tilt. I was tired; my legs hurt, my lungs hurt, and I was cranky. “But the way the three of us are gasping for air, a tractor trailer could sneak up on us and we wouldn’t know it until we felt the treads on our backs.”

“I’m exhausted.” Kat stood up straight and her hair hung in strings over her shoulders as she joined us in looking around. “I’m in no condition for a fight; I’m not sure they’re paying me enough for this.”

Scott shot her a half-smile. “You don’t think it’s worth it to be the next generation of M-Squad recruits?”

“Not sure I wanna be an M-Squad anything,” Kat said under her breath.

I had been offered a position as a trainee with the Directorate, an organization that helps track and police metahumans – metas – like me. They hoped to position me to help their agents in hunting down dangerous metas. Shortly after I’d gotten an offer, so had Scott and Kat. Their offers might have had something to do with the fact that the three of us almost single-handedly stopped a very dangerous meta who had threatened to blow up Minneapolis. I thought it was a signal that the Directorate was looking to expand their reach because of some growing threats.

“So are we gonna keep moving or wh—” Kat got cut off mid-sentence as something hit her from behind. I saw a flash of white fur, heard the WHUMP! as she went down, her hair a solid streak of blond. I was already in motion. My foot lashed out at the ball of white as she hit the ground, her shriek drowned out and muffled. I missed clean; the creature that attacked her rolled through and landed on all fours, ready to strike. I was off balance and it was impossibly fast. I stared at it, the red eyes of a wolf glaring back at me as I tried to recapture my footing.

It was long, bigger than the dogs I had seen, and the fur was stark white, the faintest reminder of the last winter, when snow blanketed the ground in the same shade. I saw it tense, watched it shift weight from its hind legs to its front as it moved to pounce again. I had no easy defense; my leg was almost down when it left the ground and I flinched, already anticipating the pain as I saw it leap, mouth open and focused on my neck.

A solid wall of water hit the animal, causing it to yelp and hurtle sideways, knocked off course by the pressure of the blast. It slammed into a tree trunk and I lunged, foot extended in a running jump sidekick. I aimed at the neck, hoping to put the beast out of the fight. When I was a foot away from my target the hair changed color, shifting in a ripple down the fur like the summer wind had stirred it, and as it went brown the neck grew wider and longer and the shape of the creature began to change.

It stood on its hind legs, leaving all fours behind as its limbs grew longer, paws sprouting long claws. My foot hit it behind the shoulder and I heard bones cracking; a roar came from the mouth of what was now a bear. The brown mass twisted and batted at me with a paw and I dived, trying to avoid the swipe. I felt one claw hit me, raking behind my ear and drawing blood.

“Let’s coordinate our attack,” Scott said from my left, loosing a stream of water that missed the bear wide.

I ignored him as I rolled to my feet, already in a defensive stance. The bear reared up on its hind legs, standing an easy four or five feet taller than me. I glared at it, my hands raised, ready to try and counter whatever it tried. “You got blood in my hair.”

The bear cocked its head at me, distracted, for just a second. Long enough for the blast of water to knock it over again, taking it off its hind legs and down to all fours.

“I had him!” I said. A hot flush of irritation ran through me as I watched the bear stagger from the stream.

Scott had both hands out, the air around him shimmering as he drained the humidity from it. It was Minnesota in July; he had plenty to work with. A jet of liquid shot from his fingertips in a