Felixentric

Scene 36

What was that noise? "Hello?" It was his own groan.

"Felix," a harsh whisper. "Felix." Harsher. "Wake up!"

"Mmmhhkmm. I'm... hello..." He opened one eyes to fluorescent lights.

"We need to get out of here. We have to get out, now."

The other eye came slowly, but only then did he hear how terrified her voice was.

"Ryan?" He sat up and this time he could feel that his limbs were free. He was free! He looked around to see a prison cell, grey walls, the flickering lights like they were in a basement somewhere far underground. He was inside of the cell.

And the voice wasn't Ryan's.

"Felix!" In a cage right next to Felix's, Janette was pressing herself against the bars. There was a chain around one of her legs that connected her to the wall behind them.

The next thing Felix noticed was that someone had changed him out of his sweater and into a white, short sleeved shirt. But it was too cold in the room for short sleeves. "Weren't you just trying to kill me?!" He sat straight, hearing a chain of his own scraping against the floor as he did so.

Janette had mist in her eyes. "It wasn't me."

"They cloned you?"

"No-. I mean, it was me, but something's happened."

He gestured around the laboratory setting. "Evidently."

"No, I just. I woke up down here last night and they've been doing things to my head. They've been playing with my blood samples and throwing impulses through my nerves. I just can't... I can think for myself and move freely, but it's. I just-."

"Are you being possessed by a demon?"

"I... I don't know. It feels like there's another person in here - in this cage with me, at all times, but-. I just don't know, okay?"

"So... Yes?"

"I think they've managed to control my mind, but make me feel like it's my own doing. Like I want to."

"Janette, what-."

"We have to get out. I can't eat another person's soul. I cannot hold another man up by his throat. I almost killed you and Quinn and-."

"Eating souls?" His heart drained of all its blood. "Eating. Souls?" Chills were shooting down his spine, the thoughts of his more savage ancestors coming to mind. He recalled the first time his grandfather brought one home to show them how to accurately prepare a meal. Dad tried stopping him by explaining, "Things are different than they were when you were a kid." Hale looked like he was going to puke. Felix already had.

"Don't you feel bad about it?" Hale asked Grandfather. "You're killing someone, just like us." Grandfather took it as if they were trying to explain that men could get pregnant. The older generations... they didn't agree with the Ruby-Hohl boys, and they weren't just being stubborn. They didn't think it was real to live without human souls.

"Yeah..." Janette's voice stuttered. He could see that she was shaking. Every time Felix opened his eyes, the room got colder. Was that Hen's big plan? To freeze them to death, after everything they'd been through?

Janette's words flit through him again. Had she said something about... "Quinn? Where's Quinn?" He looked around, eyes flitting back and forth and back again, but there were only two cells. It was only them.

"I don't know."

"You don't know what they did to him?"

"I only know so as much as you do. We're in the same boat, Felix."