by D. N. Hoxa
“Who’s free? We need the paperwork for the fire spirit procedure,” Terrin said reluctantly.
“Oh?” The woman raised her brows at me. “For her?”
I almost rolled my eyes. “Yes, for her.”
“Sit.” She nodded at the three metal chairs in front of her desk. Ugh. Why hadn’t the man been free? Maybe he was, but he said nothing as he analyzed me with a mischievous grin on his face.
Maybe the woman was better, anyway.
“The whole package, please, Mavis,” Terrin said when he sat beside me. Not wanting to stare, I focused on the shelf and the folders behind the woman’s back. They were all marked with seven figure numbers. I had no idea what any of them meant.
“Even the testing?” Mavis asked, arching a thin brow at me. She was judging me, and she didn’t even try to hide it.
“Yep. The whole deal,” Terrin said, slamming his hands on his knees as if to tell her to hurry up. Mavis either didn’t get the hint, or she didn’t care.
Slow as a turtle, she began to type something on her keyboard. I was dying to see the screen of her computer.
“Do you have any ID on you?” Mavis asked.
“Check your email. Ross sent you everything you need,” Terrin said.
“Where did you get my ID? And how did those conductors know…” about my parents, I wanted to say, but the newspapers were public domain. If I could find them, so could they, probably much easier than me.
“We have access to the Government’s database,” was Terrin’s answer.
“Do they know about it?” Because it didn’t look like they did.
“Yes,” Terrin said. “And no.”
“Silence, please. I have to focus,” Mavis said, looking at both Terrin and me like we were first graders and we’d spoken without the teacher’s permission.
With his hand in front of his mouth, Terrin covered his smile. I lowered my head and looked at my fingernails, hoping this would be over quickly.
It was, eventually—an hour and a half later.
***
“This is the non-disclosure form.”
“This is the informed consent form.”
“And the risk disclosure. You sure you don’t want to read this one?”
“This is the consent to begin the procedure without the required testing and analysis.”
“And finally, the death agreement.”
I looked at Terrin. Death agreement?
“All of these pretty much state that you know what you’re doing, you’re doing it of your own free will, you don’t want to go through the lab procedure, and that you’re aware of the risks. Also, if you die, that’s on you,” he summed it up.
Thinking about it was going to get me nowhere, especially with Mavis breathing down my neck as she showed me all the places I needed to sign. Swallowing loudly, I took the black pen from her hand and I put my name on about fifteen pages. By the time I was done, my hand was numb, and so was the rest of my body.
“How are you feeling?” Terrin asked me when we walked out of the office. Mavis didn’t even bother to say bye or good luck as she handed me a copy of all the documents—which Terrin took to hold for me—and she put her own copies in a white folder.
“Like I’m going to die soon.” It might have come off as a joke, but it wasn’t. It was the most honest truth I’d given them.
At least the voice in my head had stopped telling me to run, so there was that.
“I’ve got a good feeling about this,” Terrin said, nodding excitedly. “Otherwise I wouldn’t have even told you about it.”
“I signed the form that said I knew exactly what I was getting into,” I said when I saw the five people in the training room again. Without realizing it, I’d walked to the middle of the room, my eyes stuck on their faces, though they were doing nothing but standing in a circle, talking and laughing together. The fire man had put a grey shirt on, but it did nothing to hide his muscles. He was standing with his back turned to me and I was dying to see his face.
“I have no idea what a salamander really is,” I confessed. Maybe now was not the best time to talk about it, since it was a done deal, but I couldn’t help wanting to know. I never said I was smart, or that I didn’t rush into things, because I did. All the freaking time.
“A salamander is a fire spirit,” said Terrin as he came to stand beside me. He, too, was looking at the people behind the glass. “They are very rarely born that way, at least in the last few decades, but those that make it through the procedure are really something. If you want, we can take you through everything first—”
“No, no. There’s no time,” I said reluctantly. “Is he one of them?” I nodded at the man with the grey shirt on.
“He is,” Terrin said. “He’s basically a fire elemental. I can’t tell you how it works other than they’re able to produce and manipulate fire with the power of their mind and body, but I can tell you it’s fucking amazing to watch.”
That brought a smile to my face because I agreed. I’d seen that man and the flames dancing on the skin of his arms, and though, at the time, I’d thought it was just my imagination, it had been fucking amazing to watch, too.
“We should get going,” Terrin said.
I’d been hoping that the man would turn around and look at me again—I really wanted to see his eyes from up close—but he never did. With a nod, I turned around and followed Terrin inside the door without a sign. It led us to a room with fourteen white desks and metal chairs. Nobody was in there. Across from the door was a glass box seemingly coming out of the wall. In there was a large wooden desk, and Ross was sitting behind it talking to a man dressed in a white robe.
With every step we took toward them, I felt weaker and weaker, my heartbeat slower and slower. I wondered if it was going to stop altogether before I even made it to the procedure.
“I haven’t gotten the approval yet,” Ross was saying to the other guy when we walked into his office. When he saw us, he paled even more.
“Everything okay?” Terrin asked.
“Everything is not okay,” the other man said, without even looking at me. He had one hand on his hip and the other pulled into a fist, on Ross’s desk, as if he wanted to slam it really badly. His brown eyes were full of anger and his thin lips turned completely downward. “I was asked to prepare for the fire spirit procedure. I have. All the chemicals that we use, the spells and the potions have an expiration hour. We can’t wait for more than thirty minutes after exposing any of them to air, as we have. Because we were asked to prepare for the fire spirit procedure!”
“Calm down, Palmer,” Ross said with a sigh.
“If you knew what we go through to prepare all those things, you wouldn’t tell me to calm down,” Palmer hissed, a blue vein popping out on his forehead.
“We’re done with the paperwork,” Terrin said. I felt completely invisible.
“Look, I sent the request almost two hours ago, but I haven’t gotten the official approval yet. I can’t just give the green light without it,” Ross said, and he sounded a bit scared, too.
“Have they ever turned down a request like this before?” Terrin asked.
“Never. We have only a handful of candidates in a decade as it is,” Ross mumbled.
“So, let’s do it! It’s not like they’re going to come here and see for themselves when the procedure happens. When you send them the report, just pick a time after they send the approval,” Terrin said. I didn’t get why he was so excited. I really didn’t. Maybe because he wasn’t going to potentially die in the next few hours?
“I don’t know,” Ross whispered, rubbing the back of his neck.
“If we don’t do this now, it cannot be done until at least tomorrow,” Palmer said.
“Oh, no, no. Tomorrow is too late.” Luke’s days were numbered, literally, and each one counted.
“Why did you put everything in place, Palmer?” Ross cried.
“Because you asked for it!” the man hissed. He was so
mad, I was sure that if I touched his skin, he’d be burning hot.
“Let’s go for it, Ross. What’s the worst that could happen?” Terrin said.
Uh…I end up dead? Of course, I didn’t say it because then they’d know just how terrified I really was, and I didn’t want that. Nobody wanted that.
“If they don’t approve it…” Ross started and his voice trailed off.
“You said it yourself, they’re not going to deny it,” Terrin said.
With a sigh, Ross rested his forehead on his desk. “Fine. Do it.”
Just like that, Palmer’s face broke into a smile that took ten years off him. Me? I almost peed my pants.
“Alright!” cheered Palmer. “Let’s do this!” How I wished I could borrow some of that energy of his.
“Good call,” Palmer said to Ross, looking at him with his chin raised as if he was still mad, before he turned toward the door. “Follow me, girl.”
Holy cow, this was really happening.
“I’ll be right behind you,” Terrin whispered, and with a nod, we followed Palmer out of the office.
“Hey, Nova,” Ross called. I only turned to look at him. “Good luck.”
For some reason, those two words filled my eyes with tears and I barely saw Palmer’s white mantel as he led us out of the office and down the long corridor next to the training hall.
Chapter Eight
The room they took me to was dark for a change. Too dark. The steel double door opened with a whoosh when Palmer scanned his ID on the panel next to them. Inside, four more people with white mantels worked on a machine the size of a large car. The ceiling was wide and a thick cylinder connected its highest point to the white bed on our left, atop three stairs. Across from it was another glass box, much like Ross’s office, only this one was five times its size. To my horror, I could see Penelope Dixon, Gordon Reeve, Ross and Cecilia Chambers sitting comfortably and looking out at me.
“There’s no need to panic now,” Terrin said. “I’ll be right there, watching you.” He nodded at the box where the rest of my audience was.
“I don’t want to do this.” The words slipped my mouth before I could control them. I regretted them.
But did I?
“It’s okay to be scared,” Terrin said. “But you’re going to do fine, trust me. Just think about all the things you’ll be able to do when this is over.” With his hands on my shoulders, he shook me a little.
I wanted to smile for his sake, to tell him that I couldn’t wait to do this, but I couldn’t make myself utter the words. Before I could say anything else, a young man with a white robe came by my side.
“If you’re ready,” he said with a nod.
“Good luck,” Terrin said, smiling brightly. “See you on the other side.” With a wink, he turned around and ran out the room.
Fuck, fuck, fuck. I stared at the doors long after they closed behind Terrin. What had he done to open them? What could I do to open them.
No! I shouted at myself. You will not run away.
I would not run away. Luke was in a coma—that’s all I needed to remind myself. He was already half dead, and the only way to bring him back was this.
“Miss Vaughn?” the man said.
Taking in a shaky breath, I followed him.
He took me up the three stairs and to the bed in the middle of a round glass floor panel. The cylinder that went all the way to the roof—and probably out of it, too—had six hooks close to the bed’s pillow, and copper wires were attached to the ends of them.
“Please lie down,” the young man said, holding his folded hands in front of him with a weird smile on his face, as if he couldn’t wait to see what happened next.
“Do I need to take anything off?” I mumbled. I was wearing a black tank top with the name of the club I worked in written in white all over the back, and my favorite skinny jeans.
“No. All we need to access is your veins,” he said.
My veins. Why the hell did that sound so creepy?
Nodding and swallowing the large lump that had formed in my throat, I somehow convinced myself to lie down on the white bed. What was the worst that could happen?
“Am I going to feel anything?” I asked the boy as he nodded at someone standing by the machinery with lots of buttons and levers.
“Unlikely,” was all he said, then something moved under the bed. Before I knew it, he was locking thick cuffs around my ankles.
I sat up so fast, the whole room spun. “What are you doing?”
“We need to make sure that you don’t move, Miss Vaughn. It’s for your own protection,” he said. “The procedure cannot begin if you aren’t secured.”
Biting my tongue until I tasted blood, I laid back down again and closed my eyes. That didn’t help, though, because I could feel the cold cuffs around my knees, thighs, waist, arms and wrists.
The darkness behind my closed lids relaxed me a bit. If I didn’t see, how could I be afraid?
Here’s how: by feeling the sharp needle going into my right arm. It hurt so much, my whole body burned.
“This is the anesthesia, Miss Vaughn.” I recognized Palmer’s voice, but I didn’t dare open my eyes yet. “It’s not strong, so you won’t be unconscious, but you won’t feel anything.”
I did feel something. The second needle that went into my arm hurt even more. “I felt that!” I cried.
“Give it some time to work,” said Palmer, but it didn’t work, because a second later, a needle went into my left arm, too, and it hurt like hell.
“What the hell are you doing?” I hissed and my eyes popped open. I couldn’t move a single inch. Suddenly, there was not enough air in the room. My lungs were tightening and my throat swallowing. Panic made me see everything with a red hue to it.
“We’re getting you ready,” Palmer said as he watched two others put some more needles into my veins, then put the tubes tied to them into the copper strings of the huge cylinder right above my head. “There’s no need to worry, Miss Vaughn. It will be over quickly.”
“Just do it,” I hissed through gritted teeth and focused on the cylinder. It was huge and spotless, almost like it had never been touched by a human hand before. Or an impari hand.
God, what the hell was I doing? Did I really believe in anything they said? A mage, a salamander—a freaking vampire? How could any of this be true?
“Please count backward from ten,” Palmer said. “Starting now.”
Ten, nine, eight, seven…what if I was in some sort of a mad house and I was letting lunatics do experiments on me?…six, five, four…and what if all of it was true and I was going to die soon?…three, two…my eyes squeezed shut. Dead or alive, I was going to see Luke soon, and that was all that mattered.
One.
Chapter Nine
It started like a tickling at first. Cold tickling in my veins, going fast up my arms.
Was I supposed to feel that?
I did, and the farther up my body it went, the more it started to burn.
Stop, stop, stop! I shouted in my mind, but it didn’t. It just grew hotter and hotter.
A scream bubbled in my throat but opening my mouth was impossible. It felt like lava was being shoved into my veins and I tried to pull my arms free but the cuffs they’d put all over me made it impossible to move even a single inch.
I shouldn’t have done this. Regret poured into me, but it did nothing to ease the burning in every cell of my body. Even the tears coming out my eyes were warm, close to a boiling point.
The whole world stood to attention as whatever they put inside me tore me apart, piece by piece. Air barely made it into my lungs, and when it did, it only let me focus on the burning pain more.
I saw no way out of it, and for the first time in my life, I wished to die with all my heart. My skull split in two as another wave of lava was pushed up my veins, drenching every dry part of me in wild flames until I was nothing but ashes.
The torture lasted for hours in my mind. My body no
longer felt like my own. The skin above my flesh had melted and I was dripping all over the floor. That’s the image my mind conjured as I gritted my teeth and begged for whoever would listen to just let me scream. Just let me cry out. Do anything at all to ease the pain, even for a little bit.
Someone must have heard me, because a long while later, the tears falling down my eyes no longer felt like they were boiling. My skin no longer felt like it was melting.
The lava had stopped pouring into my veins.
Opening my eyes was still unimaginable to me, but I took in a deep breath and the air didn’t burn my lungs. The need to cry was more overwhelming than ever now.
“Miss Vaughn, can you hear me?”
I could hear the words, but they sounded like they were coming from a tube.
“Open your eyes, please.” The voice belonged to Palmer.
But I didn’t want to open my eyes. I just wanted to stay like that forever until my body was dead and withered, and the memory of that fiery horror disappeared from the universe forever.
“Miss Vaughn, you need to open your eyes,” he insisted, and if I wasn’t mistaken, he was smiling.
Smiling was good, wasn’t it? It meant nothing had gone wrong.
Was it possible? Was the fire I’d felt in my veins now mine?
Luke’s smile came into my mind, and like every other time, it brought with it a wave of strength that reached deep into my bones. The only thing stronger than the lava.
It took a lot of effort to open my eyes, but I managed somewhere on the twentieth try. Palmer’s face loomed above me. I was right, he was smiling. He was showing me all of his teeth.
“Miss Vaughn, so good to see you again,” he said. “You did it. It’s over.”
Over?
No, it wasn’t over. It would never be over. The memory of the torture was forever imprinted in my memories and I’d have it with me until the day I died.
