“Great.” Henrick grunts. “A Capture with Bob as a partner? He’s a freaking one-eyed skitzo. Alice wants to make my life a living hell and I don’t know why.”
Alice is our seer in charge of assigning Captures. “Must be your natural charm.” I say.
“That’s rich, coming from you.”
I chuckle, glad I had gotten a rise out of him.
“All I’m saying is that you guys always get to do the fun stuff.” he mumbles. “Beatrice always picks you two to heal. And when does anyone get more than one mission a month? Hell… I barely get three Missions a year.”
“What can I say, we’re the best.” I say. Henrick mocks what I say in a sing-songy immature voice, and then goes back to musing over his piece of paper. Truth is, I don’t envy him. At least not until I look down at my own paper and I notice the location of our Mission.
My stomach drops.
“What is it?” Henrick asks, noticing the change in my expression.
I swallow, keeping quiet.
“The Mission is at the Medical Center in Queen Anne.” Kismet says after she leans over and reads our paper. I look up at her, and she bites her lip. Henrick frowns, not understanding.
I look down at the digital watch on my wrist that Kismet had stolen from an electronic shop and gifted me for my birthday. It’s 10:34pm. I take a deep breath and rub my face with my hands. “All right then.” I say, standing up and leaving my plate half-full. Suddenly I’ve lost my appetite. “Let’s go.”
The Mission
I loathe hospitals.
They bring back memories of my old life, the one I had before my powers manifested themselves. I stare at the entrance of the Medical Center, recalling the endless visits to my father, the tubes he was constantly connected to, his raspy breathing and the effort he made to talk to us.
I remember the anger—an anger so intense the psychiatrist my mother made me see back then thought that I, a twelve-year-old boy, was deeply depressed and suicidal. That was bullshit. I got real quiet back then, that’s true. But I never wanted to kill myself. I wanted to kill my dad. I was so angry that he wasn’t strong enough to fight the disease that had consumed him for the last year and a half that I sometimes wished he would just up and die already, and put the rest of us out of our misery.
I remember the way my mom would start crying when we arrived at the hospital, which made my little sister cry, too. I can’t really remember what any of them look like, though. They’re like a dream that has slowly faded away.
Memories come rushing back to me as I stand in front of the hospital doors.
I remember walking into my dad’s room ten years ago and seeing him lying there, a shadow of the man he once was, his breathing ragged and labored. The breathing of a dying man. Suddenly, the anger I felt at him dissipated. My heart broke, and all the pain and confusion and resentment inside me was replaced with love for my dad, a love so pure I have not felt anything like it ever since—the closest I’ve come to it is what I feel for Kismet.
I don’t know why it happened specifically at that moment, or whether, in some crazy way, it had something to do with the love I felt.
My head started to swim, and I became dizzy. Something inside of me itched terribly, like a festering internal wound of some sort. My surroundings became distorted, and the faces of my family seemed to melt slowly in the artificial light, making them look grotesque, surreal.
The love I felt a moment ago was replaced by panic, and, on instinct, I shut my eyes tight.
Instead of darkness, there was a bright, golden light filling my eyelids. I put my hands over my face, but the light didn’t go away. I screamed, but I couldn’t hear my own voice. The feeling grew within me, and I staggered back, falling to the floor. Finally my eyes burst open, and the power inside me poured out like a waterfall.
As if pulled by some magnetic force, my dad’s eyes locked on mine, and the golden light rolled out and crashed into my father’s body, enveloping him entirely. Wave after wave of golden light went into him, and I felt myself getting lighter and freer, as if I didn’t have a body. When I felt I had nothing more to give, I closed my eyes, and this time there was total darkness.
For a moment, I think this is it, whatever got into me is over. I prayed to God for it to be over.
And then it got worse.
I felt the void inside me expanding, threatening to make me disappear.
I remember it like it happened yesterday.
I was hungry for life, only I didn’t know it back then. “What is happening to me?” I yelled. This time, I heard myself. I also heard my little sister’s sobs. I somehow knew that if I opened my eyes again, something terrible would happen.
Instinct overpowered me, urging me to get away from my family. I took a few blind steps toward the hospital hallway and fell down on my knees. Unable to hold it in any longer, I wrenched my eyes open. Fortunately for me, there was a nurse right in front. Things didn’t end so well for her, though.
We made eye contact, and the same golden light from before poured out of my eyes and into hers. Only now, instead of saving, it ravaged. The nurse looked at me for a few seconds, pursing her lips as if she had just swallowed something very sour, and then her face went blank. Her body fell to the floor with a weak, cynical thud. She looked like she just fainted… but I knew she was dead, and I knew it is me who killed her. She became my first victim—my first kill. The only innocent kill that goes unpunished.
But I didn’t have any time to wallow in guilt, because a moment later, an indecent amount of pleasure rippled through my body, and I fell to the floor as well, gasping and moaning, completely overcome and oblivious to my surroundings.
I was just a kid back then. I hadn’t had sex or anything like it, but if I had, I would’ve compared what I was feeling to having a full body orgasm—sweetly and deeply agonizing, completely intolerable.
A few seconds later, two skinny guys with dark hair and brown eyes stormed through the hospital hall and bashed me in the head with a bat, technically ending the first sensual experience I’d ever had. Everything went dark. When I awoke, I was in Agartha. My new life began.
I never saw my family again.
“Are you sure you can do this?” Kismet says, putting a hand on my shoulder and bringing me back to the present moment. I take a deep breath and nod.
“I have to. It’s my turn to heal.”
“I’ll be beside you all the way.”
I smile at her and take a step forward, walking through the doors into the white, fluorescent hell. There are nurses walking to and fro through the hospital’s lobby and people with sad, tired faces sitting in the padded chairs. One woman is biting her fingernails, lines of worry etched into her face. Our eyes make contact for a second before she looks away. The faint smell of citrus-scented cleaning solution reaches my nose. I grab Kismet’s hand and squeeze it.
“What floor is it?” I ask her under my breath.
“The paper said second floor,” she says. “Here, I’ll lead you.” She takes my hand and walks toward the elevators, pressing the button to go up. A man in a white robe stands next to us, waiting for the elevator as well. I tense. After everything that happened to my father and me in this hospital, I fucking hate doctors with the scorching ire of a thousand suns.
Maybe if they weren’t so incompetent and had saved my father in time, my powers would never have manifested, and my life would have been completely different.
Guess I’ll never know.
“Remember to breathe.” Kismet whispers in my ear. I let out a huge breath of air, only then realizing I was holding it in, and run my hand through my hair, trying to relax. The elevator doors open and we walk in. The doctor presses the third-floor button, and Kismet presses the second. The elevator goes up, and we get out on the second floor.
“The room is 212,” Kismet says. “It’s a woman, cancer. Last stages of it, from what Beatrice wrote.”
“Of course it’s cancer,” I mumble under my br
eath. “Our specialty.”
Cancer is a parasite. It eats you from the inside out until there’s nothing left to eat. Some forms of sickness—like Parkinson’s or Alzheimer’s—are caused by the deterioration of the brain or body. Those are so easy to heal I could do it with my eyes closed. Well, not technically with my eyes closed, but you get the idea.
But not cancer. Cancer is a living thing. An impostor. Some of our people have fainted and gone into comas after strenuous battle with this impostor, and once you go into a coma, if you don’t wake up in the next few weeks, it’s adios amigo for you. We just don’t have the resources for keeping comatose people alive.
But Kismet and I handle it well enough. I hang on to this thought and breathe in deeply. We’re the best at what we do, and I can’t let this woman die.
“Wait for me here.” I say.
Kismet nods. “I’ll keep watch.”
I let go of her hand and walk over to room 212, softly turning the doorknob and opening the door. It’s dark inside. I walk in slowly, my footfalls barely making a noise, and close the door behind me.
“Nurse?” A tired, wispy voice says from the bed. I fumble for the light switch on the wall and turn it on. A skinny, frail-looking woman with patches of blondish-gray hair on her otherwise bald head is lying on the hospital bed. She’s so small and weak, I get the feeling she could disintegrate into ash any second. Her eyes are dull and colorless, and her lips are thin and parched. Her skin is blotchy and yellowish.
She doesn’t have much time. I freeze when I see all the tubes she’s connected to.
It’s just like dad.
“You’re not the nurse.” She scrunches up her face, the deep lines and crevices on her paper-thin skin getting even more pronounced.
“No, I’m not,” I say, my voice calm. “But I’m here to help you.” I take a tentative step forward. To my relief, she doesn’t scream for help. She just closes her eyes and lets out a tired sigh. I stand next to her bed, looking down at her. She passes a dry tongue over her lips and squints up at me, as if the light behind me is blinding her.
“Are you here to take me away?”
A small smile spreads over my lips. She thinks I’m the grim reaper.
Lady, you have no idea.
“Not today,” I whisper, and will the power within me to rise out of its stupor. The waves of warmth flow back and forth through my body, malleable and contained, like a caged tiger.
I close my eyes and see the golden light grow inside my eyelids. My heart beats rapidly, the familiar rush of adrenaline coursing through my veins. When I can’t contain it any longer, I open my eyes and release the full extent of my power upon her.
Her eyes widen in terror. I see my own reflection in her dilated pupils. My eyes are glowing, fierce and strong, like the rays of the midday sun. And then I begin to feel her—I feel her fear and her long-forgotten desire to live, and her bridled curiosity at who I am. I feel her kindness, her goodness, her love.
I begin to see faces swirl in front of me, faces I don’t recognize but that I know mean something to her. A smiling girl, and a shaggy-looking man with long hair and dark eyes. The woman moves her lips silently, and I know she’s seeing the same thing I am.
Then I hit something. A big blob of darkness and rot. Just what I was looking for. This is it, the cancer. The leech that’s sucking out her life. I push my golden light into it, but it’s not enough. The thing is pissed off as hell. It was this close to claiming its victim.
I feel a drop of cold sweat run down my back as the nausea hits me. I’m forced to grab the bed railings for support. I open myself up, willing to give it my all, everything that I have, for this dying woman whom I’ve never met. Because she’s pure, and loves her family, and it’s not fair the cancer is eating her up like this.
I save her… because I can.
I let myself go, letting the power take control. For a brief moment, I forget who I am. I’m not sure if I am the woman lying in bed looking up at an angel bathed in golden light, or the guy giving everything that he has to save her from the darkness that’s finally releasing its grasp.
Finally, the darkness lets go. I think it wails, but I could be imagining it. Cancer doesn’t wail, does it? Then it disintegrates, back into the void it came from. Back into nothingness… gone.
I’m forced back into my body violently, getting the wind knocked out of me. I gasp for air and clutch at my stomach, but my eyes don’t leave the woman.
She arches her back and inhales with a hiss, and then slowly, very slowly, relaxes back onto the bed. Her pupils retract as she looks away before closing her eyes and sighing heavily.
That is it.
She’s cured.
I let out a giant breath and sit down on the linoleum floor.
She falls asleep, like all humans do after we heal them. The sedative aspect of our power puts them to rest momentarily. She will wake up sooner or later and find herself alone in the room, believing this was all a dream.
But as the days go by, she’ll notice she’s feeling better. Hair will start to grow back on her head, her skin tone will even out, light will come back into her eyes. Then her doctors will give her the good news, thinking it a miracle, and she’ll believe them, thanking her her lucky stars or her guardian angel for a second chance at life.
And I’ll remember her, and be happy because of what I did.
But meanwhile, I’m dangerously hungry.
I awakened the tiger, and it demands life for life. I close my eyes, my head swimming. This has taken more out of me than I had expected. I stand up, steady myself on the wall, and take a few deep breaths. My body aches. I know my eyes are glowing. They have to be if I’m this hungry, so I keep them half-closed and stare at the floor, shutting off the light and opening the door to walk out of the room.
Kismet runs up to me. “Daniel, you’re pale.”
“She was very sick.”
“You don’t have to explain.” She grabs my arm and leads me down the halllway and then takes a right, opening the door that leads to the stairs. “We can’t risk using an elevator right now that might be full of people.” She runs down the stairs, dragging me along with her. I stumble and trip over my feet several times. I curse at myself, and Kismet slows down a bit. I feel empty, hollow, suffocated. Purple blotches appear in my eyesight, and even though I’ve never fainted before, I can tell I’m about to beat it.
“Your eyes are glowing,” she says, her breath short. “Think you can make it back in time?” She says, repeating what I asked her a couple of nights ago when it was she who had just healed someone and in need of life-force, quick.
“I have to, Kismet.” I straighten myself out and take deep breaths. I clench my fists, feeling the urgency to take life accumulating in my chest and fighting it, fighting it the best I can. “I have no choice.”
“But you could fall into a coma, Daniel. I’m sure this one time…”
“No,” I say softly.
“Daniel, you can’t faint,” Kismet says, a faint sheen of tears covering her eyes. “I’m sure our superiors would understand—”
“I said NO!” I yell this time, punching the wall and feeling the skin break over my knuckles. “I don’t have the energy to track down a criminal and take his life. And I’m not pulling a Benedict, so you can stop trying to convince me.”
She purses her lips. “Let’s go, then.” She says, the concern she felt for me a moment ago erased from her face and replaced with a grim determination. “You don’t have much time.”
We run down the stairs until we reach the main floor. I put a trembling hand up to my forehead and look down, shading my eyes from the few humans we encounter taking the stairs. We reach the ground floor and walk out in a hurry, the mechanical hospital doors slowly opening to release us into the night.
All of a sudden, I hear the noise of an approaching ambulance, tires screeching on the pavement. It brakes abruptly in front of the hospital entrance. I hear the patter of footsteps as the
paramedics scramble out of the ambulance. Kismet gasps.
“What is it?” I ask through gritted teeth. I’m getting dizzier by the second, the purple blotches in my vision getting bigger.
Kismet stammers, unable to speak.
“For fucks’s sake, Kismet!” I say through gritted teeth, still shading my eyes with my hand. “What’s going on?”
“So much… blood…” she blurts out. I hear a child crying, wailing inconsolably.
Don’t look up; don’t look up; don’t look up…
“My son!” a woman screams. “Please save him; he can’t die!”
“I’m going to have to ask you to step aside, ma’am.” A man’s voice says firmly.
“The bastard got him! He can’t die; please don’t let him die!” The boy wails again, but his cries are fainter this time. He’s losing life.
“We’re doing everything we possibly can.” The man says, and the woman screams like a banshee.
“Daniel, we have to go.” Kismet tugs at my sleeve, but I can’t move. I can’t move. There’s a child bleeding to death just steps away from me… My hunger subsides for a fraction of a second, and then the irresistible urge to heal comes over me again.
It makes no sense.
But damn it, I’m sure as hell not going to argue with it now. I hesitate a fraction of a moment, debating whether I trust myself enough to recognize this urge for what it really is. I decide I do.
I take my hand away from my eyes, and a sense of relief floods over me. My eyes graze over the ambulance and the paramedics and the woman with wild eyes. She’s tearing her hair out while a man tries to hold her back. But it’s not them I’m looking for.
I find the boy. He is being wheeled in to the hospital on a stretcher, and there’s a deep gash on the side of his head. He’s losing blood quickly; there’s no time to waste.
The Sun Child (The Sun Child Saga Book 1) Page 7
