Phoenix

Orphanage

Ash woke, spread starfish—head throbbing, throat aching, neck forming a crooked angle on a lumpy pillow. Bright white halogens burnt imprints in her eyes and the plastic-coated bed-sheet crackled as she tried to sit up. Her left forearm throbbed and she looked down to see the pointy end of a drip disappearing into her vein. On her other arm, the dull pressure of an inflatable cuff monitored her blood pressure.

She struggled into a sitting position and looked around. The room was small: door to the right, window to the left, the latter covered with venetians. She smelled pine disinfectant and pomegranate hand soap. She was in the orphanage sick bay.

The nurse bustled over and pushed Ash back into the pillow with a latex-gloved hand. "Easy, girl," she said. "You were severely dehydrated." She studied Ash from behind her glasses, eyes narrowing. "You're lucky you made it back to the orphanage before you passed out."

Ash's mind chewed over this statement. How had she made it back to the orphanage? The last thing she remembered was fighting the gangly orphan in the alley, kicking him in the groin and feeling his pulse between her fingers.

She froze.

His pulse.

Her fingers.

It all came back in an electrifying jolt that made her sit up again. Everything from the deadpan expression in his eyes, to the glittering runnels of flames, to the grotesque man in the cloak who had seen it all. She'd killed the boy in the alley. That much was certain. But the flames? They'd been caused by something else—a gas leak, a freak explosion, a lighting strike—something completely beyond her control.

Right?

She closed her eyes as she remembered the strange feeling in her chest and the hot tingling sensation that ran down her arms before bursting from her fingertips in a bright blue explosion. It was as though she'd conjured the flames herself, created them in her mind, then released them on the boy with the precision of a struck match. But that was impossible. Completely and utterly insane. Nobody could 'magic' flames like that. The notion was so ridiculous, she almost laughed.

She shook her head and focused on the problem of the boy. She'd murdered him and there was a very high chance that the nurse knew, that the orphanage knew, that she was in very big trouble.

She glanced to her right, balking when she saw the door was blocked by a formidable guard with a downwards sloping mouth and sculptured crew cut. A heavy duty torch dangled from his belt, banishing all thoughts of escape. She knew from experience how easily the battery end could double as a baton and she didn't want to be on the receiving end of its painful blow. As her blood pressure went skyward, the machine next to her beeped a warning and the nurse turned around. She studied Ash over the top of her owlish glasses.

"Is everything alright, girl?" Her tone was plain, enquiring, not filled with disgust or fear as one would expect from someone speaking to a murderer.

Ash considered the woman. Perhaps she didn't know what had happened in the alleyway. Perhaps no one did. Perhaps the grotesque stranger hadn't turned her in. Perhaps, just perhaps, she'd gotten away with murder. She steadied her voice to hide her discomfort. "Yes." Everything's fine.

The nurse continued to look at her for a moment longer, before shrugging and checking her clipboard. "Well then, there's nothing more I can do for you." She pulled the inflatable cuff off Ash's right arm and carefully withdrew the needle from the left, elevating it while she taped a small bandage over the tiny seeping hole. "Keep up your fluids. No strenuous activity."

Ash ran her fingers along the bandage, grazing the bright red scratches left by sharpened fingernails of the gangly orphan. She froze—Evidence—and jerked the sleeve of her orange jumpsuit down to hide them. Thankfully, the nurse didn't seem to notice and continued making notes on her clipboard.