Winter Fire

Ch. 63 [Technology And Discovery]

Winter Fire
Ch. 63
Technology And Discovery

His nails dug into my wrist. I grit my teeth as I stumbled after him in the dark. The corridor was pitch black, but he'd only taken me a little way before he pushed open a door and tossed me inside. My knees hit the cold concrete floor. The lights flickered on above me. They rimmed the ceiling, dim and red. I lifted my head and my blood ran ice cold. Behind me the door clicked shut. He said nothing.

He'd brought me to some kind of laboratory. There was a chair with restraints, attached to so many machines and wires I couldn't keep track. Behind it was a wall of electronics, but these electronics weren't like any I'd ever seen before. The wires were tubes of a luminescent blue liquid and the screens were pools of the same liquid. Crystals spotted every contraption and the whole room glittered with the red light. It shimmered over the screens like a sheen of fresh blood.

It was a science fiction nightmare.

"What is this?" I breathed.

He grabbed my arm and jerked me to my feet. I pushed away from him, but he forced me into the chair and clamped the restraints around my forearms. Fear settled into my bones and I struggled to escape the restraints, keeping my eyes locked on him. He walked around me to the electronics and slid his fingers over one of the screens. Strange characters I'd never seen before rose up through the liquid, but he operated it so fast I only caught a brief glimpse of them before they vanished. The liquid began to glow brighter and I could see it start to move through the tubes. The crystals lit up dark green and several began to spin. A sound almost like the quiet rush of a river rung through the room.

"What are you doing?" I asked, breathless.

He made no appearance he'd heard me. One of the machines attached to the chair lit up and it began to move towards me. I leaned away from it and my breath hitched. The arms of the machine lifted and another restraint clapped around my upper arm. A needle slid out of one of the compartments and I exhaled sharply.

"What are you doing?!" I cried. "Stop! Stop--don't--" The needle pierced the flesh of my inner elbow and I shrieked. Tears pricked my eyes. I watched as my blood flowed into the needle and into the machine.

I flinched violently when his cold hands pulled my hair away from my neck and settled it over my shoulder. I couldn't hold in the quiet whimper as his thumbs brushed away my tears.

"Shh," He murmured. "You're safe here."

I pulled at the restraints. His fingers tightened on my shoulder.

"Relax." His breath tickled my ear.

"Why are you doing this?" I breathed.

He moved away, back to the screen. It was quickly flooding with my blood. His hand flicked through a screen on another device and the needle extracted from my arm. All but one restraint released. I twisted around to watch him, running my fingers over my arm. Blood welled up from the wound and trickled down my arm. I balled up the hem of my shirt and pressed it into my elbow. I watched him out of the corner of my eye. It looked like the screen was zooming in on my blood, like a microscope, but with the kind of definition that wasn't possible. Then something that looked an awful lot like a DNA strand rose up.

"What is that?" I whispered.

A smile curled over his lips. "It's exactly what you think it is."

"I don't--"

He turned to me and I looked away quickly. I couldn't bear to face those black soulless eyes.

"You can't remember, but not long ago I told you that you weren't like the other compatibles." He said lowly.