This side of the SSS compound had always been quiet. Everywhere else was filled with comic book geeks and soldiers and scientists, and now the new arrivals. No one came down to Ward E, where they stored the old projects and things they kept for emergencies.
That was where his father had been for seven months now, on the verge of death. They were fussing upstairs over some twelve-year-old girl who'd been poisoned, completely unaware of the life still hanging on the line far below them.
Chevie stood over the body of his dying father, angry at himself for not finding the cure.
Until now, that is. He held in his hands a stone Joshua had called Ravenadium. Joshua didn't see him slip his hand into his pocket in the chaos of the hospital room and disappear with the stone.
When Hunter went back for Ravenadium, Chevie knew there was something special about it. Joshua clung to it in the jet and gave Chevie a look that confirmed his suspicions; this stone was worth risking lives over. It had to have some kind of power, and that would ultimately help him save his father.
Alistair once warned Chevie not to use his power for evil. Chevie listened. It might've taken him a while to accept his responsibility, but when his father sacrificed himself to give Chevie freedom from ICE, he had to find a way to repay him.
"I'm going to heal you Dad," he said while he pulled the rolling trolley of instruments under the light and sat down beside his father's twitching body. "This substance will make you better."
Chevie's enhanced intelligence made it easy for him to calculate the most appropriate way to open the stone, extract the substance and inject it into his father's blood. Chevie and Mark had been observing his father's illness over the past few months. When Alistair was let go from ICE for helping Chevie escape, he didn't realize his body had been infected by Feucotetanus. Only it wasn't the same as the homeless man in the hospital, Mark had said. He'd not seen this type of illness before. It had the symptoms of pneumonia, but he'd said Alistair would have been dead by now. He was fighting the illness. Something in his blood was counter-reacting to the poison.
I could be wrong, but this stone has to have something to do with the way we all have powers. Chevie held the stone and looked for some kind of crevice. And as he did, he heard whispers. Whispers that spoke his name. Chills went down his spine. The stone was talking to him, calling out to his soul as though he was connected to it.
Chevie knew he was close. He held the stone, using a tiny drill to pierce a hole in the surface. It was a delicate piece of work, but he had to be quick.
Moments later, someone thumped against the door and when he looked behind him, he saw Joshua and Mark's face in the frosted glass window. He'd disabled the coded panel and locked the door. No one could get in, unless by force.
He pushed harder on the stone.
"Chevie, open this door NOW!" yelled Mark.
"I have to save him!" he shouted back.
"Chevie listen to me," said Joshua, "What you're about to do could have serious consequences. If your father's genetic spiral is closed, his body won't react to the Ravenadium."
"What are you talking about?"
"It only works on certain people with a specific genetic code. Unless I test your father's DNA first, we don't know what this could do to him."
His heart beat faster. It has to work, he doesn't have long!
"Plus you're wasting our only-"
Chevie was so panicked that his hands fumbled with the stone and it slipped from his grasp, rolling off the table and onto the ground where it cracked open and spilled liquid lava across the linoleum floor of the hospital room.
Chevie's world stopped. He stared at the bright substance, listening to the strange voice that whispered to him. He suddenly felt as though every hair on his skin was standing up and he was under the control of some form of electricity. The lava bubbled, wiggling back and forth across the ground, looking for something – or someone – to feed on. Chevie was so fascinated that he didn't hear a crackling coming from the door until it burst open in a spray of ice and Mark and Joshua fell into the room. The moment they saw the puddle of lava on the floor, they both froze.
"Chevie, what is that?" asked Mark.
"That's Ravenadium," Joshua whispered. The look on his face told Chevie he'd done something he shouldn't have. But it was too late now.