When All is Null and Void

Chapter Nineteen

Titus wondered if she was even talking to him anymore; she wasn;t looking at him, and her voice was quiet, pensive. He ducked his head anyways, so she wouldn't see the truth in his gaze. She couldn't know this had been brought on by his near murder. Titus had kept the dead Timewalker's ring in the small pocket of his jeans.

"I'm going to show you the hospital for our Timewalkers with Void sickness." Rounding the table, she grabbed Titus' bicep. "We can't do anything but ease their pain, and most of them..." she trailed off.

A hospital? Why had he never heard about this? "Why isn't Natalee there?"

"You'll see." As the world bent around them, anxiety prickled in his gut. A hospital of people like the one who'd attacked him the other day. If he weren't passing through the Void, he might have shivered.

On the other side, when the pressure of the Void had passed, and Rhea released him, Titus laughed. They'd Hopped to a building deeply familiar to Titus. Recessed lighting offered illumination in muted, gold tones. A fireplace blazed in the corner, like it had when Titus was little and they came here on vacation. That had been before his dad died.

"This—" Titus began.

"We're in the Appalachians," she said. "This used to be the ski lodge, but I purchased it eight years ago. When Timewalkers started to contract Void sickness, we brought them here." She started up the staircase and Titus followed. "It's away from other people, and we're essentially just waiting to produce a cure." When they pushed through the double doors at the top of the stairs, they entered a scene incongruous with the last.Where the lobby had been comfortable, vacation calm, this was all bright lights and medical equipment.

Gone were the gentle cracklings of wood in a hearth. Grunts and angry shouts, shrieks and shrill laughter assaulted Titus. Only one door of perhaps fifty was ajar, and the cacophony streaming through the other, closed doors gripped Titus' core. He glanced at his mom who seemed to be studying his reaction. He immediately stilled the shaking that had begun in his chest, raising his shoulders. "Ringlock doesn't work the same for the Voidsick." Her lips were tightened over her teeth before she went on. "Removing their ring... it's signing a death sentence."

Titus didn't nod along. He knew this, of course, but hearing it sent his stomach trembling again. Had he killed someone?

Self-defense, Titus told himself. It was self-defense.

"How many are here?" he muttered. His voice was almost lost amidst the shouting and screaming; his confidence had been stolen, harvested by the sick Timewalkers for their own agonized shouting.

"Nearly a hundred."

Titus couldn't keep his jaw from going slack. In the two years he'd been helping close the Void leaks, he hadn't met a single infected Timewalker. He'd been too shaken by the encounter last night to take it in. Some other Timewalker could end up like this. Shame sliced through his gut.

"Titus?" They'd walked by the one open door in the hallway. Inside a man was tied to the bed, thrashing and gnashing his teeth together as a nurse attempted to administer something intravenously. The Timewalker's head snapped to Titus and locked on with a palpable, burning rage. "Are you okay?" His mom's cool touch on the back of his arm shocked him.

"He's tied down." Sadness was a fine brush again Titus, even as his heart thundered.

Rhea nodded. "He has to be. They've been reduced to nothing more than animals, but they're still people at the core." Rare were the times Rhea James became emotional, but looking into her eyes now, Titus saw welling tears.

Titus looked into his mom's misty eyes. The nurse had succeeded in injecting the man with whatever had been in the needle. He slowly calmed, but before he could drift off, his gaze turned to Titus once more. He spoke through shattered vocal cords. "Murderer. Killer of the consumed."