Rouge

Rouge - Epilogue

The laboratory was a complete mess. The majority of the filing cabinet contents lay spilled across the steel floors. His desk was littered with every kind of geological device he owned. Water bottles and dishes and off-smelling food packets were scattered on the shelves next to pages of information with ugly brown stains. Among this chaotic clutter, Joshua sat cross-legged on the floor. He rocked back and forth, his hair in disarray, his shirt crinkled and unbuttoned. He gazed at the pages spread before him as though the answers might finally jump out and slap him in the face. Someone had to slap him, or he might lose his mind.

“How?” he whispered, raking his hands through his greasy hair. “How did she do it?”

For days now, Joshua had nearly driven himself crazy as he searched through every page of information he’d ever collected. He went through his notes on Hunter’s powers, on Liz’s powers and even his own powers. But no matter how hard he worked, he could not understand why the ice seized control of him so easily, and the fire bowed to Hunter.

I have something you don’t.

“What?!” he screamed at the empty room. He slapped his forehead with the palm of his hand at least ten times, the pain doing nothing for his poor, befuddled mind. “What do you have?”

No sound remained but the gentle humming from the glass tank in the corner. He hadn’t heard from Hunter. She didn’t return to the apartment. He wasn’t even sure if she found Jack when she walked away from him in the warehouse. But so long as she was out there, she was in danger. He had to do something about that eventually, but right now he needed to know how she had overcome the fire within her so suddenly.

For years, Joshua struggled with the cold devil in his soul, and still he let it control him. He had hurt her more than anyone, when all he wanted was to keep her safe. Joshua’s eyes welled with tears and he covered his face in his hands.

Hunter knew he’d killed Eli. She was splitting with rage, and at one point he truly believed she lost herself to the fire and she would find revenge and end him. But then the roof collapsed and it started raining and something in her changed. She was herself again. But how?

Joshua couldn’t possibly figure out the answer on his own. It was neither scientific nor logical. He needed someone who knew the truth, someone who had the research. Someone smart.

With shaking hands, Joshua got to his feet and stepped carelessly over the papers to where the filing cabinet stood against the far back wall. The top left draw was already open, so he stuck his hand inside and pressed a four-digit code on the back panel. After a moment there was an electronic beep and the cabinet was sliding gently sideways for him.

Joshua stared at the steel door, at the glass window the size of a hat and the foggy mist that surrounded its fringes. He swung open the freezer door. As the cool air blasted over him, he relaxed a little. At least here, he was at a regular body temperature.

The door swung shut and silence suffocated him. Only the consistent puff of air coming from the two machines before him resounded in his ears.

Joshua had made many mistakes in his lifetime. Most of them were parental. He wasn’t exactly the greatest role model, nor did he ever win Dad-of-the-year. But one thing Joshua prided himself most, above anything, was his persistence. He spent his entire life taking care of Hunter, devoting his time and energy into raising her in an environment without harsh testing and probing from the public. Only when the ice took over did he ever experiment on her, and that was when she was a little girl.

The ice had made a dramatic reappearance just recently. It was the night Hunter ran away, when she killed the homeless man. Joshua was alone in the lab when the Iceman – a blue figure of himself that he imagined to make listening to the voice in his mind a little easier to visualize – returned to him like a ghost from the past. Joshua tried to force it back inside him, but he was so filled with other emotions like worry and fear for Hunter that he had no strength to fight it. Since then, the Iceman was always present, talking to him, convincing him to do what was necessary to keep Hunter safe.

Now, the Iceman stood on the other side of the small freezer, his arms crossed and a crooked, gleeful smile on his lips. You screwed up, he said. The voice echoed inside Joshua’s mind.

Joshua ignored the Iceman, but he knew he was right. He had screwed up big time. And the only way to fix his mess was to bring them back.

Slowly, Joshua approached the left steel table and reached out shakily, touching the tip of a frozen hand. Joshua gazed down at Miss Smart, deep in a coma and frozen at sub-zero temperatures. She was alive – he hoped – but there was a chance she’d have some sort of brain damage if he woke her. She looked close to death when he went to the hospital to kill her. Not only did her relief surprise him, but the look in her eyes before he put her to sleep reminded him of Liz. He couldn’t do it. He couldn’t be that person. No matter what the Iceman said, he couldn’t kill her.

You’re weak, said the Iceman. You should have ended it. Now you’ve got this to deal with when Hunter is out there, trapped, the Agents closing in. They’ll take her away and you’re crying like a baby in your little ice box.

He let out an exhausted, exasperated sigh and pinched the bridge of his nose. Something Liz once said to him leapt from a memory inside his mind as though she were whispering it to him. Make the right choice now, she said, when it counts.

Joshua nodded slowly, ran a hand through his hair and made his decision. After all, there was really no other choice in the matter.

Are you serious? The Iceman shook his head slowly. You’re actually going to wake them up instead of finding Hunter first?

“Miss Smart will get Hunter to forgive me,” Joshua said softly. “All will be as it was.”

The Iceman pointed a bright blue finger at the other body. And the kid?

Joshua lifted the silver chain with the fragile symbol for fire made from his very own minerals and dangled it before his eyes. He could still remember the moment Liz forced the gift for her baby daughter into his cold hands just seconds before she died.

“Yes,” he whispered. “I’ll have to wake Eli as well.”