The New Generation

Chapter Five - The Blood of the Hounds

Chapter Five- Blood of the Hounds

Wake up. C'mon. You gotta wake up. Raymond tried to lift his hands up, but it felt as if his limbs weighed more than one of those huge animals called elephants that went extinct fifty years ago. He tried to pry his eyes open, but he barely had enough energy for that. He was floating and nothing could bring him back down. I don't want to wake up. Please don't make me.

Wake up.

If I wake up there will be pain.

What is pain, Ray? You can handle it. Own that pain. Make it yours.

Memories like fragments of shrapnel began assembling in his mind, and piercing the little peace he had obtained during sleep. Cold. So cold. Raymond thought that the ice box would kill him, or he had hoped that it would kill him at least. But the scientists weren't that stupid. What he and Allie did was unprecedented. The scientists had clearly underestimated their combined powers. If they chose to kill two of their most valuable experiments they would have a major setback, and probably get in trouble with the bosses. Punishment by torture was less problematic. What the scientists failed to take into account was the fact that Ray and Allie could care less whether they lived or died. They wanted revenge and they didn't care if they died in the process.

Raymond remembered losing feeling in his hands and feet first. The numbness was nothing compared to the immediate sharp pain of the ice water being dumped on his head and slowly filling the tiny plexiglass chamber. At first it had no water in it, but the glass still felt cool to the touch. It wasn't like the cool relief he felt when Allie iced his burned hands. The cold creeped through his limbs, under his flesh, and eventually made its way into his lungs. It was such a deep, unforgiving pain. The cold had a mind of its own, and Ray imagined that it was after him. He remembered taking small shallow breaths and drifting off.

Ray observed the room he was in at present. He had never been in this wing of the facility. He had been in the infirmary, and it looked nothing like this. The walls were clean and white, there was a working heart monitor beside him, and an IV drip. He tried to sit upright, but when he did the heart monitor spiked, and he felt pain ignite in all of his joints and every individual spinal column. The beeping of the machine was enough to give him a headache for eternity.

"Gah!"

He heard someone enter the room. "I really advise against any sudden movement," said an unfamiliar, deep voice. "You have suffered from several third degree burns, two fractured ribs, and to top it all off hypothermia. I'm not sure how you got the hypothermia, but I'm a little impressed to say the least. You've been asleep for, two? Three weeks?"

The man had a dark complexion with lines creasing his face and a thick black moustache. He ran a hand through his salt and pepper hair and read off several more medical terms that Raymond was unfamiliar with.

"To be perfectly honest, you should be dead. Your burns at the time were open and susceptible to infection, and your body temperature was close to 54 degrees fahrenheit. You should have froze to death. And the funniest part is, we cannot explain how or why you're still alive. So count your lucky stars," he said. When the doctor finished talking he just stood at the end of the bed and stared at Ray intently as if expecting him to reply.

"Do you remember me?" he finally said after the awkward silence.

Ray raised his eyebrows in confusion. He had never seen this man before in his entire life, Ray was not one to forget a face, especially the face of one of his doctors. They all were put on his mental hit list for when he finally burns the facility down.