Rouge

Rouge - Chapter Thirty-Eight

She was drowning, clawing through the deep, cold, endless water. Panic consumed her and warmth no longer existed. Air, she thought desperately. I … need …

“Hunter,” called a voice from the darkness. It was soft, mellow and familiar. Eli.

She tried to speak but a hand was wrapped around her throat, constricting her breath. She reached up slowly in the water and realized there was nothing holding her. The water was growing thicker and slowly freezing around her as if she were turning to ice. She opened her eyes but they were blurry.

All she wanted was to call out to Eli, but nothing but a scream of bubbles fell out. She was fading, her lungs were burning in pain, her throat felt as if it was being grinded with sandpaper and her eyes were slowly closing.

“Hunter, wake up.”

This voice wasn’t Eli’s. A pain so severe struck her that she gasped as if the breath was knocked out of her.

Breath. Air.

Hunter’s eyes snapped open and she was awake, no longer drowning. But her situation hadn’t improved to that in her dream. She couldn’t move at all for her body was covered in ice. She was shivering, sitting upright in a chair, a dark, dimly lit room stretched before her.

Her head was swimming, but she needed to get out. Joshua had clearly brought her there for a reason or else he would have killed her in the alley. The thought was so frightening that Hunter wanted to shake her head, get back to reality and figure a way out.

But a way out of what? It felt as if her whole body was frozen, and minimal movement was possible. She bent her head slowly down, wincing with each crackle the ice covering her made. At first she thought she was wearing an ice suit and knew it would be easy to burn through it. But her eyes fell upon small blue tubes connected to her arms, twisting around each other and disappearing behind the chair. She felt no pain, yet they were either taking blood from her or injecting something into her system.

Hunter began to breathe quicker. She couldn’t move, she couldn’t speak. Her throat was as dry as a desert and she was colder than she’d ever been. Somehow, Joshua had trapped the cold inside her body so she couldn’t move, much less summon even the slightest flame.

Then she heard footsteps. Someone was approaching from the dark space that looked much smaller than what it probably was. Her heart thumped painfully in her chest and she wished it didn’t hurt to think about Eli. She needed courage, and she had no strength left to find it.

“According to the laws of Physics,” came Joshua’s sharp tone and he stepped out of the shadows into the light shining from the swaying globe high above, wearing a neat white shirt and gray pants. There were scorch marks on his arms and face, which gave her the slightest ounce of satisfaction. “What we consider cold, in fact, is actually the absence of heat.” Joshua strolled confidently up to her chair and twisted one of the chords injected into her arms, pushing it further in. It should have hurt, but Hunter felt nothing except the uncomfortable sensation of more ice being forced inside her. “Anything is able to be studied as long as it transmits energy,” he continued. “Absolute zero is the total absence of heat, but cold does not exist. What we have done is create a term to describe how we feel if we don't have body heat or we are not hot.” Joshua came into her vision again, his face so close to hers it was all she could see. “Are you cold yet Hunter?” he asked softly, a smile so alien across his lips that a flashback from her childhood sent Hunter into a silent panic attack. Joshua wore the same psychotic smile as he did now. He stared down at her as she lay on a steel table in the lab. She was a young girl, naïve and trusting, as Joshua prodded her with scientific machines. He was the face of her nightmares. How had she not realized?