Embers & Ice

Chapter Forty-Two

She dreamed it was raining. The water was crystal clean and perfectly cooled and it hammered down upon her hard and heavy. But, like everything good in life, it never lasted. As soon as the rain was done and the blackness cleared and Hunter woke up in a dimly lit room, she felt the pain as though she was being burnt all over again.

Hunter didn’t know where she was. It was white and cold like the institution, but she wasn’t in a cell or a surgery room. Then suddenly, she remembered: This was the infirmary where she visited Will a day ago. Her bed had a plastic mattress and metal bars on the side. Thin curtains were pulled across both ends and directly opposite her was an identical empty bed. She could hear soft voices from somewhere in the room, and they echoed.

As soon as she tried to move, she let out a shriek of pain. Her entire body was heavy and thickly coated in bandages. Someone heard her cries and a moment later, a nurse was fussing over her, telling her to relax and take deep breaths and try not to move. Hunter was so confused and she tried to speak, but the woman inserted a tube into her mouth and trickled cold water down her throat. Hunter swallowed it greedily and almost choked.

“There there dear,” said the woman. Her face was becoming clearer now. She was old with saggy skin and frizzy gray hair twisted in a bun on top of her head. Her eyes were kind but blank, like a ghost. Perhaps she is a ghost, Hunter thought. “Everything will be alright. You’ve been unconscious for a day and a half now, but your skin is patching up quite nicely. I’m pleased to tell you that it won’t be a matter of days until you’re up and healthy again.”

Hunter didn’t care about that; all she wanted was more water. “Please…” she breathed.

The nurse smiled and fed her more. As she did, she kept talking, telling her it would be alright and the world was all sunshine and lollypops. The whole charade was far too forced for Hunter to believe. She expected Dr. Wolfe to arrive any second now to gloat of his successes.

But it wasn’t Dr. Wolfe who arrived. It was Dr. Rosenthal.

That night, he came to visit her. She was drifting in and out of sleep. The infirmary had grown darker and someone down the way was snoring. She heard his footsteps and saw him appear at the end of the bed. He looked almost as worse as she imagined herself to be.

After a moment in which he leaned on the post at the end of her bed and stared in the dim light from the back of the room, Dr. Rosenthal shook his head and wiped a finger under his eye.

“Joshua would kill me… if he saw I’d let this happen to you,” he muttered. She could have sworn his old voice broke in a sob.

Hunter wished she could see him clearer, even sit up and comfort him if that’s what he needed, but she literally could not move on the bed.

“Dr. Rosenthal, it’s not your fault,” she croaked. “It’s that bastard Dr. Wolfe who did this.”

“I know,” he replied. “I’ve tried to put an end to it, but it’s like provoking a serpent; I’ve only made him angrier and more reckless. These demonstrations, they’re not for our benefit. They’re for his. He wants to feel in control, to show off. And those new scientists, they’re… they’re afraid of him.”

“So the recruitment isn’t going so well then?”

Dr. Rosenthal removed his glasses and wiped them on his coat as he took a seat in the chair beside her bed. Painfully, Hunter turned her head to face him.

“Not at all. That scare in Death Cave 1 had most of them running for the hills.”

Hunter’s heart started pounding. “Wh… what scare?”