I wake up in a familiar room with white walls, white ceiling, white lights, white sheets … white everywhere, still I feel the darkness, right behind my eyes, beckoning, calling me back. I wonder why I’m still here. Why surrender isn’t working.
I’m alone, curled on my side on a stiff, hospital-style bed. I’ve been here before when I first found out Symbiots have accelerated healing powers.
The Tank. I’m back. Go figure. Yippee.
There’s a tube connected to a needle in my arm. I yank it out and let it fall to the floor. Dark blood beads in the crook of my elbow and I watch it, absently, until images from a living nightmare spring into my mind. I shut my eyes and curl up even tighter, ready to try again.
C’mon. Take me away. I dare you.
“Been waiting for that sedative to wear off,” a voice says behind me.
My eyes spring open. I roll over slowly, almost without meaning to.
James is sitting by my bedside, the too-white, fluorescent lights reflecting on his shaved head, hurting my eyes. I squint. He wears clean clothes: jeans and a black t-shirt with the “IgNiTe and FiGhT” logo on the breast pocket.
“Sedative,” I repeat without enough breath to even make it a question.
“Something Kristen formulated to help Symbiots in times of … duress. It keeps the mind clear, so the agent can’t take advantage of the situation.”
So that’s why I’m still here.
“Bummer,” I say.
James frowns and pushes to the edge of his chair. “You can’t be thinking about …” He starts but can’t finish. He takes a moment to consider. “Marci, there’s still much to fight for.” His tone is tired, but there’s great conviction in his stormy, gray eyes. He truly believes this.
“Maybe for you. Though I doubt it. I think you’re just lying to yourself. It’s a hopeless battle. We’ve lost. Too little, too late. They’re everywhere. My head won’t stop buzzing, no matter where the hell I go. So let me be or give me some more of that sedative.”
“We can’t give up. There’s always hope. Kristen is working day and night to find a vaccine and maybe a cure.”
Maybe a cure, an idea that used to give me the hope he talks about, except that was …
Before.
My cynicism is such that it even gives me the will to laugh, even if in a dry, throaty way. “We’ve already failed.”
“We’ll only fail if we stop fighting,” James counters.
“Bullshit! We fail even when we fight. The way I failed him, because this thing in my head took over when he needed me most.”
I suddenly realize that I’m sitting up in bed, face hot, throat torn open, eyes melting into tears I didn’t invite. James is telling me to calm down, to breathe, to get a grip before I end up shadowed, imprisoned in my own brain without the use of my body and any of my senses.
Ha. Bring it on. I deserve it. My life is pointless as it is.
“He needed me and something that is NOT me chose to play the superhero for the wrong person. He was all I had left and now he’s gone he’s gone he’s gone.”
“They will pay for it, Marci. I will make sure they do. He was just a boy. He was brave and wanted to fight, but he—”
“Shut up!” I can’t take James’s anger, his empty words. “Shut up!”
Something that James pulls out of his back pocket pricks my arm. In an instant, the ache in the middle of my chest goes numb. My hysteria dies with it. I blink several times, look up at James who takes me by the shoulders and gently lays me back down.
“Rest, Marci. It’ll help you find the strength you need.”
My arms and legs feel like remote appendages with uncertain functions. James brushes hair off my forehead and kisses me above my right eyebrow.
I grind my teeth and, as I slip into oblivious sleep, I curse the pity in his gaze.
* * *
“You woke me up for this?” I say in a groggy tone.
“Your mother will need you now more than ever,” Kristen says again. She’s standing by the foot of my bed, her previously pristine, high-end haircut looking anything but. I bet she’d kill for an appointment with a pair of sharp scissors. The circles around her eyes are so huge that, for a moment, I try to make myself believe James has been beating her. Fat chance.
“Don’t pretend you know anything about my life, lady. You didn’t want us to be together. You’re probably happy he’s … he’s dead. Now you don’t have to worry about our relationship endangering our little Symbiot secret. Now I’m not a risk to IgNiTe and they don’t have to know there are freaks in their ranks, especially when their supreme leader, James ‘Flash’ McCray, is one of them. You’re a hypocrite. Do you think I’m blind and didn’t see there’s something between you two?”
Dr. Kristen Albright is the master of cool. She doesn’t even flinch and, to her credit, doesn’t try to deny anything.
“Xave was a good boy.” Her green eyes are steady and full of sadness. “He didn’t deserve to die.”
My throat falls in the grip of a giant hand, and I hate her, hate her because she has no right to make me feel anything but contempt for her presence here.
“I got to know him while he was here,” she says. “He wouldn’t want you to waste your life like—”
“Oh great! Now you’re presuming to know what he would want. You know what? Just leave. Go to the hair salon or something.”
“What a waste!” She walks to the side and drops a syringe on the end table. “Here you go. There’s plenty more where that came from, in case you’re planning to run from your problems forever,” and with that she walks out.
I would curse at her, but, for that, I’d have to care. I don’t. She means absolutely nothing to me, except as my drug peddler, I guess. I grab the syringe, uncap it and stick the needle in my arm. Numbness spreads through my mind and body like a gift from some chemist god.
As I wait for the world to blink out I wonder who they’ll send next, because this is definitely a pattern.
* * *
I laugh, really laugh.
They’ve sent Aydan. Aydan of all people. He’s even wearing that stupid, white lab coat which now has his name stitched across the front pocket: Aydan Varone. The arrogant dick. He’s standing at the foot of the bed, in the exact place where Kristen stood just hours ago, or maybe it was days or weeks. Who knows? Who cares?
If I’d had to guess who would be next, I would have said Clark, but, for all I know, he’s in the next room, lying on a bed like mine, struck by the same realization as me: none of this matters.
Fighting or not fighting, both amount to the same.
“Save it,” I say. “Whatever you’ve come here to say, just shove it.”
“Classy.” One of his dark eyebrows arches against his pale skin.
“Give me the syringe and get the hell out of here.”
“This?” He pulls it out of his lab coat pocket and holds it up for me to see.
My limbs ache at the sight of it. I crave the numbness, the oblivion its contents will bring.
He uncaps it and pushes the plunger in one swift motion. Clear liquid squirts into the air. I sit bolt upright and watch the sedative form a momentary arch, then spill down onto the floor. He gives the plunger one last push to make sure all the liquid is out, then throws the syringe over his shoulder with a wicked glint of satisfaction in his black eyes.
“There,” he says, “you can lick it off the floor if you want it that badly.”
My upper lip twitches. Hatred seethes in my chest, tries to push its way into my unwavering stare. I’m imagining his heart in my hand, between my fingers, beating his useless life away, one thump at a time. Suddenly, red flashes in front of my eyes, a confusing network of tissue and bones, the inner working of a body. A throbbing heart! Primal fear seizes me. I pull back, shut myself to my despicable impulse.
Aydan flinches and takes a step back, eyes open wide, betraying surprise for just a moment. His mouth opens to take a deep inhale. He makes a fist and pounds his chest with it, a quick, jump-starting type motion.
He clears his throat. “Well, I guess the saying ‘if looks could kill’ becomes a reality with you. Nice. If you were to use that skill against your enemies, that is.”
I shake my head—denying my murderous instinct and wondering why my skill has come to me at this moment. I am not in imminent danger, even if I’m in the worst kind of pain imaginable and Aydan is pouring acid into the wide-open wounds. Maybe I just hate him that much.
He moves closer to the bed, his legs almost touching the foot of the mattress. He should be scared of me, running for the door, but he only looks disgusted.
“They sent me here to talk sense into you.” There’s a mocking quality behind his words, as if he thinks I wouldn’t know sense if it bit me in the ass.
He looks longingly toward the door, the desire for escape written all over his face. “I’m surprised that, with all that’s going on, they still give a damn.” His depthless gaze returns to me. “Because I sure don’t. There are too many people who need saving to worry about someone who’s too weak to fight.”
Aydan pauses as if to let that sink in, then continues, “James is under the delusional impression that you can help IgNiTe, that you can help save our city. But he couldn’t be further from the truth. You’re wasting everyone’s valuable time here. He doesn’t want to accept you’re too self-absorbed in your own misery. How could you save others, if you won’t even save yourself? I don’t know what makes him think you’re worth keeping around.”
He pauses and waits for me to say something, but my lungs are in hyperdrive. If I could, I would shout, curse at him, but I can’t. Oxygen is shocking me, too much, too fast.
“At a loss for words?” he asks, his expression arrogant, perfect to cast in stone for posterity, if he was as important as he thinks he is. “Well, that has to be a first.”
His eyebrows go up, giving me another chance to say something. Only curse words come to mind, nothing logical. Nothing.
“You’re mute because you know I’m right. If you don’t get your act together, all you are is a waste of good space and even better time.”
A vein throbs on his temple, blue-green behind his white skin.
“You’re not the only one in pain,” he continues. “You’re not the only one who’s lost somebody. In order to get out of this one, we need to be the strongest we can be. Weak people are of no use to IgNiTe, to Seattle, to the world. It is survival of the fittest, after all. Humanity and altruism only exist when there’s a Starbucks around the corner. When the world becomes a jungle, the weak fall through the cracks.”
My throat works. My lips move.
“What?” Aydan asks. “Did you say something? Speak up if you wanna be heard.”
“I am not weak!” I shout.
Aydan opens his mouth to say something. He looks ready to tear into me, to tell me how worthless I am, how he would rather be picking his nose than be here talking to me. But he stops. For a moment, he seems to ponder what to say. His face relaxes. All the fight goes out of it and morphs into something that, if I didn’t know better, I’d call kindness.
He walks around the bed and stands next to it. His inscrutable eyes reveal nothing. His face is back to the usual mask of conceit and self-importance. He lifts a hand as if to touch mine. I pull away. His fingers twitch, then still as he presses them against the edge of the mattress.
Jaw clenched, he leans forward ever so slightly.
“Prove me wrong, then,” he says and walks out of the room.