Heaven Gilded Zarcroft Hybrid

Eight

An icy blue light flickered on above me, revealing matte steel walls and a floor. The air smelled of disinfectant wipes and soap. My body tingled like static beneath my skin. A thin, white comforter covered my body.

A mounted TV played on the wall to my right. Some kind of cartoon. The words garbled in my ears. Wasn't English, Spanish, or anything I could recognize. I was in a bed—a hospital bed. I gripped the black sheets beneath me. My fingers moved fine.

I didn't want to sit up. If it was a hospital, they'd probably tell me to stay put.

I looked over to my left. Two beds sat against the wall over. Sitting up in both of them were Jamie and Dorothy, dressed in the same clothes from before, though very disheveled. Their clothes were dulled from the rain.

I sprang up.

"Dori!" I exclaimed. "Jamie!"

I jumped out of the bed, flinging half the covers on the floor. I ran over and pulled Dorothy into my arms. Tears trickled down my cheeks.

"I thought you weren't gonna make it," I whispered in her hair. "You sounded so scared."

I let go, looked over at Jamie. A shaky grin crossed his face, and he waved at me.

"Hey, Jackson," he said, his voice shivering. "Wow... You look great. In a healthy way."

I dried my eyes with my sleeve.

"Me and Jamie passed out, then we ended up here." Dorothy sniffled. "But I saw you climbing up before that. We woke up here, and we saw you were sleeping, too. So we just put two and two together..."

"Are you guys, alright?" I asked. "Did you get hurt?"

"I got winded, but I'm fine," she said. "Besides some bruising... Hey, you aren't wearing your glasses."

I touched my face and patted myself down. "You're right. Must've fell off."

"Where's Theo?" Jamie asked. "I didn't see him since... whatever just happened."

"No clue. Maybe he's in another room."

I looked around. An indigo glass door with no handle stood beside my bed that I somehow missed. Next to it hung an array of colored buttons with symbols on them. Above was a small OLED screen with moving text—text that I couldn't read.

"Where are we?" I looked back at them.

"I dunno, but their TV sucks," Jamie said. "We've been watching this cartoon for hours. The remote doesn't even work."

"Hours?"

I looked across the room. The cartoon on the TV continued to play. I had never seen it before. It looked like a rerun of something from decades ago.

A muffled knock hit the door. The tinted distortion of the glass muddied the person behind it. They knocked again. I walked over and looked over the button pad. That had to be a way to open it. Before I could press it, the door slid open, disappearing inside the door frame with a beep.

Behind it was an exhausted teenage boy in all black leather, jeans, and ornate sandals. Around my age, maybe. His sharp, golden eyes lingered on my face, like he was making sure I was an actual person.

Setleger? he asked. His accent was a mix of every European language and yet none at all. Maybe Irish? Russian? I don't know, Urdu? The pronunciation was too scrambled for me to even guess.

"Sorry, I don't understand," I said. "I speak English."

Then I realized. Folded on the guy's back were two massive black wings! And those weren't crazy boots. From the bottoms of his frayed jeans were velvet black crow feet. Or human feet with hard, black skin and talons. My mind wrestled with where the human leg ended and the bird part began. I pointed to his feet, but he guided my hand back to my side.