Embers & Ice

Prologue

Due to popular demand, here is book 2 in the continuing story of a girl named Hunter Harrison, sometimes known as Rouge....

Everyone is wrong about hell.

They think it is buried thousands of feet below the earth, a dungeon of demons and iron gates and endless, burning flames. If that were the case, hell wouldn't be so bad for me. It'd just be like having a vacation and picking the wrong hotel. If hell is really as hot as they say, then they haven't met me.

But this place I'm in is not warm. This prison is cold. And I have never known such cold.

It is emptier than a chasm between two canyons, where only the wind blows harsh and bitter. It is lonelier than a single iceberg bobbing on the deep, blue waters. This cold is so dark and endless that I've begun to wonder whether warmth exists any longer. Is there still a fire burning within me? Where is the flame? Where is the passion and fury and love when all I feel now is this hollow, bottomless, sickening, inescapable cold?

That's when I know I've arrived in hell.

I am lying on a mattress thinner than a slice of bread and splashed with stains. The mattress is placed upon a single bench just wide enough for me to lie on my back and long enough for my feet to hang over the edge, tucked tightly beneath a blanket that I'm sure couldn't keep even the devil warm. Around me is a cell no bigger than an average bathroom. It's the color of tea with too much milk. Paint crumbles from the walls and large cracks in the cement floor spider out around me like channels in the Amazon River. The only part of the cell that looks even remotely modern is the toilet beside my head and the giant glass wall at my feet that doubles as a cell door. If I sit up now, I can see a corridor outside running left and right and an empty cell opposite mine. Identical.

It's dark now. Not that I would know, since I have no windows. But the lights are off.

A part of me wants to get up. To start smashing things. To find an escape. But I can't move at all. My limbs have turned to jelly. I'm tired, I ache, and in my mind, all see is Eli.

As I drift in and out of sleep, I wonder if this place is a part of my nightmares. Perhaps I am so consumed by grief and bitterness that I've somehow retreated into my own conscience and this is all a front for my harsh reality. Because surely I would have been more careful in the outside world and kept hidden from the Agents. Surely I wasn't so blinded by the pain of losing the only person in this world who calmed the fire. If I had been more careful, maybe I wouldn't have managed to get myself captured and thrown in this prison worse than hell. In hell, at least I'd be warm. Here, there is nothing but cold.

The soft hiss of my glass door sliding open wakes me from my thoughts, but I'm too terrified to roll over. Several footsteps on the linoleum floors pad towards me and hands remove the sheet from my body. The sleeve of my white jumpsuit is yanked up and a sting in the crook of my elbow makes me gasp. I flip over and blink at the bright lights from outside my cell. Is it day now?

I see three men standing before me. They look the same in this bright light; all wearing white with blurred faces and no eyes. They look at me like I'm a piece of science, like a solution in a test tube or a fungus sample in a petrie dish.

There are people out there who would want to do you harm if they knew what kind of power you possessed, Joshua once said to me. What would he think of me now? Would he care? Would he be worried? Or would he just laugh with that sadistic chuckle I still can't erase from my mind and tell me I'm a stupid girl, that I brought it on myself?

Whatever the men in the white uniforms have injected into my blood works fast. My heart begins to pound. A new kind of energy ignites in me as hands haul me to my feet where I waver unsteadily and my vision finally clears.

I stand between two men who appear rather like guards or orderlies; stoic and emotionless. A thirty-something guard leans against my doorway. He is tanned with wispy brown hair that droops over blue eyes. On his neck I see a tattoo of a weeping angel with wings that curl around his throat.

"Time for breakfast," he says and his mouth curves into a smile.

"What did you inject in me?" My voice is a low croak.

"B-12. We give it to all the newcomers who don't have the drive to get up. It gives you just enough energy to walk to the breakfast hall and join the others."

"Others? What others?"

He turns in the doorway, his eyes glimmering with a secret I am most likely about to uncover. "The others like you, Fire Girl. You're not in Kansas anymore." He chuckles as he leads the way.

I should have argued or hit someone or unleashed the anger inside me in the form of a deadly flame. But I can't, and for two reasons.

One; the fire is caged inside me. I feel panic rise as I summon the flames and push with all my might to release them, to form a ball of fire and hurl it at these men who grip me tightly. But it won't break through my skin. I look down and notice a silver band around my wrist. It glows blue around the edge, and black veins spider out beneath my skin, as if the accessory is poisoning me. The cold sensation comes from more than the chilly air around me; it is ice, seeping through the fire, dousing it down to dying embers. I know without having to guess that this restraint has stripped me of my powers.

And two; I have no idea what kind of trouble I'd be in if I disobeyed this man. I have to be smart, to wait until I know more about my prison before I stand up and fight.

So I let them lead me out of my cell and deeper into imprisonment, where I would dine with other mutants like me.