Dawn of Fog and Glass

Chapter Twenty-Three (Part Two): Dawn of Fog and Glass

The music faded away long ago, replaced only by the papery crinkle of his sheets whenever one of us moves. We lie on our sides, facing each other. Still. His face is half-strewn in shadows, blurry when this close. He examines my face as much as I examine his. Neither of us speaks.

His hand goes up to my cheek, fingers resting just above my jaw, touch cool and patient. The corners of his lips lift. My jaw tingles where his fingers touch it, a soft reminder of his lips there only minutes earlier. On my cheek, my neck, my ear, my collarbone. And mine on his.

I rest my hand on top of his, our fingers just barely locked together.

"Dominic?"

He hums in question, half-distracted.

I gently peel his fingers off, and shift my position onto my elbow. "Do you think Harlow died in that tunnel?"

His fingers stiffen, and his movements stop. He inhales. Exhales. All as if through a constrictive cage around his chest.

"Dom?" I whisper again.

"I don't know, Arden," he admits. His fingers, now without something to hold, begin fidgeting with the sheets. "I don't trust much of what Headmaster tells us, to be honest. I've heard three different stories about how she died, until eventually the guards decided to go with the story that the tunnel she created collapsed on her. So, no, I don't think she's dead."

His eyes flick up to the window across from us, casting a thin, luminescent light onto the floor. The moon is barely visible through the Fog outside, although that must be what creates these silvery rays swimming through the window. It looks cold out there.

"But I don't think she escaped, either." He shakes his head, and pinches the bridge of his nose. "If she escaped, we would know. She would be doing something about it, starting a riot to get all us out too. And I think...God, I shouldn't be telling you this."

I open my mouth, but close it again. If I stay quiet, he might feel more obliged to carry on.

"Um, so you might have heard Headmaster or the guards telling you about this exclusive section? It's called...what euphemism did they use again, the 'special treatment section'?"

"Special care unit," I fill in. Something thuds loudly in my chest, its pulse echoing in my ears. All this time, and I never really questioned that unit. Even when I first got here and questioned everything in sight. Even now. I just forgot about it, let it slide by.

When I arrived, Headmaster spent little time introducing me to this unfamiliar world, dropping countless names and terms I'd never heard. Hydrokinetic. Silver cases and green cases. Random, irrelevant statistics.

But he said something about a 'special care unit', how a quarter of all non-dormant pyrokinetics ended up there.

Because that's where the black cases go. The ones they can't control.

"You think Harlow is still here?"

He nods. "I think they told us she died because they knew that all her fans would go looking for her if they knew she was in special care."

And if someone could reach her...

"Arden, stop. I know that face."

"But what if we..."

He raises an eyebrow in quiet judgment, silencing me before I can go on.

He's right, of course. As always. If we so much as tried to find the special care unit, the security would likely be much more severe. Worse guards. I wouldn't be surprised if they hurt any outsiders who tried to get in. Maybe they'd punish anyone who broke in by keeping them there with all the uncontrollable black cases.