Rouge (13 page)

Joshua let out a long sigh
and stumbled towards her. She took a step back until she hit one of the steel
tables.

“My research,” he said. He
didn’t slur his words like she expected.

“What the hell is with all
these pictures, huh?” she shouted. “How long has this been here for? Is this
where you’ve been sneaking off to all the time, piecing my life together like
it’s some sort of experiment? What’s happening to me Joshua, and don’t you dare
lie to me!”

He flinched at the growl in
her tone and tried to put a hand on her shoulder. She shrugged it away.

“Hunter please sit down,” he
urged, indicating to one of the desk chairs. “I’ll explain everything.”

Hunter met his gaze and
frowned. “I don’t believe you.”

“Hunter, would you
please
sit down?” His voice was soft, both hands raised.
Why is he talking to
me like I’m an
unhinged bank robber holding a gun to his head?

Hunter was scared. She had
no idea why she felt as though her body might explode with anger. She could
feel the sweat seeping down her back and her hands shook. She wanted to scream
at Joshua, to demand he tell her the truth and force it out of him, but after a
moment, Hunter chose to obey. It took every ounce of self-control she had to
sit down and listen. The look of relief on Joshua’s face made her wonder why he
was so nervous.

What’s wrong with me?

Hunter gripped her hands
together between her legs, clenching them so tightly her nails were surely
drawing blood. She didn’t owe it to Joshua to stay quiet and be patient; she
deserved the right to unleash her rage on his entire laboratory. But there was
something in his eyes – something truly terrified – that made her shut up and
be still.

Finally, Joshua spoke.

“You have a fire inside of
you Hunter. And I’m not talking about an emotional fire. I’m talking about a
real flame. A supernatural flame.”

Hunter almost couldn’t
speak. “What?”

Joshua was struggling for
words, the right words. “The other night when we were having that argument, did
you feel rage inside of you?”

“Yes.”

“Was it intense? Did it boil
up inside of you? Did you feel hot?”

“Yes.”

“That fire on the stove was
no accident,” he said, grasping her hands, a mix of excitement and pain blazing
inside his eyes. “That was
you.
”

“That’s impossible,” she
whispered.

Joshua’s smile stretched.
“Oh, far from it.”

“I don’t understand,” she
muttered through clenched teeth. “Are you saying that I have some kind of…
superpower?”

“Put simply… yes.”

Hunter chocked back giggles.
She covered her mouth, but it didn’t stop them bubbling through. “That’s the
stupidest thing I’ve ever heard.”

Joshua stood and walked over
to one of his desks where he began riffling through his notes. “The night of
the fire was the night you were conceived. Your mother had come home from work
after treating a patient who died on the operating table. He’d taken insubordinate
amounts of a rare drug straight into his blood system. He was epileptic, and
suffered major blood loss before his body had a seizure. The drug was highly
contagious, and during the procedure in which Liz struggled to revive him, some
of his blood mixed with hers. The drug passed from the man to your mother.”

“That Swedish drug?” Hunter
asked, flicking her thumb at the article on the corkboard. “The same one that’s
written on that file in our freezer?”

He stopped searching and
frowned at her. “You know about Feucotetanus?”

“What is it, a type of
snake?”

“No, it’s Spanish,” he
replied. “And it’s pronounced
fe
-
yo
-co.
”

“Uh, me no
comprehede
,” she snapped.
Wow, humor. Brilliant Hunter.

“
Feuco
means ‘fire’.” Joshua’s voice was becoming more animated and hurried by the
minute. “The name of this drug is an implication of its symptoms: it passes
fire into your system as a disease. But after much research, I discovered that
the drug was not a disease, per say, but a counter-reaction for fire. It
removes
the fuel, protecting the body from any burns.”

“That doesn’t make any
sense. If this drug makes people immune to fire, why doesn’t the world know
about it? Why haven’t these Swedish people sold it for billions of
dollars?” 

“Because the Swedish people
didn’t know that was its function. They were going to sell it to the American
army, and that would have been a disaster purely because the Americans would
never let it go. But the Swedes were clueless.” He shuffled forward on the
chair and used hand gestures to explain. “You need the fuel to create the fire.
Do you know what the three elements of the fire tetrahedron are Hunter?”

“Heat, fuel and oxygen,” she
said.

“Exactly. When combined and
kept consistent with the sustaining chemical reaction, they create a flame.
When you have fire, you have heat – usually provided by a match or lighter –
oxygen – which is naturally occurring in the air around us – and something to
fuel it. It could be wood, paper, cloth, anything really. Metals such as
magnesium, sodium, titanium and more are also flammable, but... you don’t need
to know that.” He hurried on the moment a
you’re-rambling-about-science-shit-I-don’t-get look appeared across her face.
“Your father and I had just returned from an expedition in Cuba that night.”

“As in Cuba, where we went
when I was eight?”

He nodded. “The very same.
We had discovered a volcanic stone neither of us had ever seen before from the
mountains.  Your mother and father - being the passionate couple that they
were - start to... well...”

Hunter didn’t need to see
Joshua blushing to know what he was referring to. “Yeah
yeah
,
I get it!”

“While they were... doing
the dirty, this stone somehow cracked open on its own, spilling lava across the
floor. I believe your mother triggered it.”

“How?”

“This stone reacted to the
drug in your mother’s system. When she touched it, it became incredibly hot.
Things like passion and anger awake the substance inside it. When your mother
and father were making love, the lava inside the stone was drawn to her. Once
it touched her skin, it ignited a dangerous flame and caused the entire
apartment to burn. Except your mother, who was immune to it.”

“I’m sorry,
what?
My
mother was immune to fire? So she didn’t die in the apartment with Dad?”

“I’ll explain that in a
moment,” Joshua assured her. Hunter opened her mouth to argue but he whipped up
a hand and she fell immediately silent. His face had turned suddenly more pale
than usual and his eyes were swimming with a painful memory. “You’re with me so
far, yes Hunter?”

Feeling as though she was
having a particularly detailed nightmare, Hunter struggled to understand what
he was telling her. “How is it possible that
volcanic lava
has the power
to crawl from the floor, up onto a mattress and start a fire? Is it magic
lava?”

Joshua’s eyes practically
glittered in anticipation. “Close. I’ve studied it for many years now. In fact,
I have several samples in that glass tank over there.”

Hunter glanced at the
buzzing blue cage filled with plants. “I thought you were growing marijuana.”

He snickered. “No. The
substance we found is not of this world. It is completely unique. It is also
living.
”

“What? Joshua, this is
getting so farfetched I don’t even know if I believe you anymore.”

“Hunter listen to me. I can
prove it all later, but you need to understand how this happened. It is
something of a scientific breakthrough.”

“Yeah,” she snorted.
“Something like that.”

Hunter still couldn’t wrap
her head around it.
There has to be some sort of logical explanation for
those fires, not this alien-rock-super-drug theory of Joshua’s. He’s far more
loopy than I thought.

“This volcanic stone reacted
to the Feucotetanus drug in your mother’s system. I believe it actually
soaked
into your mother’s skin. When combined at the exact time your mother… um…
felt very passionate, fire exploded from her body. The drug made her immune to
flames. The lava created fire. That was the moment you were conceived, and so
your DNA was comprised almost entirely of this drug and this rare volcanic
substance. You not only have these powers, you were
made
from them.”

“I was… what?” Hunter was
grateful she was sitting down, because suddenly the room around her began to
blur.
Oh God… I’m going to pass out…

“Hunter?” Joshua ran to her
side and gripped her shoulders. “Stay with me. Breathe.”

“I just can’t-” The words in
her mind started to meld together like alphabet soup as she stared at her knees
quivering on the chair. “Joshua, how? Where did this stone come from?”

Joshua rubbed a hand down
his face and shrugged. “I have no idea. I’ve never been able to locate its
origin. I just know where to find it.” He hurried over to the glass tank and
flicked a switch on a stainless-steel keypad on the wall. The entire tank
steamed as though it were either very hot or very cold inside, and the lid
raised like the boot of a car. Joshua reached in, dug around the marijuana
plants and came out with a little black rock. “I’ve frozen them. They are used
to the impossible heat of the volcanic mountain, so I believe this way I can
preserve their biology and keep them from creating mischief at the same time.
Here-” he placed the rock in her hand and took a few steps back. “Watch.”

“Joshua, what-”

Her next question froze
halfway out of her mouth when the stone in her hands began to buzz. It was only
very slightly, but Hunter felt it nonetheless. Her heart was thumping harder than
a drum as the stone of about the size of a tennis ball and the color of the
night sky slowly grew warmer in her grasp.

“How is it doing that?”

Joshua beamed like a
Cheshire cat. “It’s you. I said the stone is used to its natural habitat. Your
body is volcanic in itself Hunter. The moment this substance recognizes the
heat in you, as it did your mother the night of the fire, it starts to grow
warmer until it is so hot that a normal human being would not be able to touch
it. Like now, for instance.”

“It’s not hot at all,” said
Hunter. She liked the warmth of the stone and the way it felt in her hands.

Still smiling, Joshua
snatched a thin black remote from a plastic box on his desk and directed it at
the stone. After the device powered up, it began to beep and buzz like static
from a radio. Numbers flickered across the screen and a colorful graph depicted
levels of heat like waves on a balmy ocean.

“252 Fahrenheit, and rising.
That’s way above boiling point. And you’re holding it.”

Hunter gazed at the stone
and noticed an odd glow emitted from cracks in the surface.
Am I doing this?
Panicking, she raced to the glass tank and practically threw the stone back
into the mix of dirt, plants and stones alike. Joshua gasped at her to be
careful and hurriedly closed the lid, attacking the buttons on the wall. As the
stone rolled into a nook between the glass and other foliage, other stones
started to emit the same glow as the first. Then, cool steam like liquid
nitrogen encased the tank and they were no longer visible.

Hunter found herself pacing
and running her hands through her hair, which didn’t seem to help in the
slightest.

“So the fire on the stove,
that was me?” she whispered.

“Yes. It was a moment of
heated anger. You reacted naturally, and the fire was released.”

“Naturally?” she squeaked. “
Naturally?
I’m immune to flames and I can make fire out of nothing because my mother
was infested by a Swedish drug and a supernatural lava creature and you think
that’s
natural?
”
Her voice
shook as she spoke the words aloud in an almost giddy tone.

“Well, no, but-”

“There’s no toxic waste or
radioactive spiders thrown into this twisted mix, right?”

Joshua rolled his eyes and
ignored the comment. “The fire reacts upon your emotions Hunter. The other
night was the first time you triggered your powers with
real
anger. But
you mustn’t let yourself lose control of your emotions around others, or become
too passionate like your mother, or-”

“What happened to my
mother?”

Joshua froze. He looked down
at the steel floor of the lab and scratched the back of his neck. “Uh…”

“Tell me Joshua. For
Christ’s sake, tell me the
truth
this time.”

When Joshua lifted his eyes
and met hers, they were filled with tears. “She died giving birth to you.”

Hunter was too stunned to
breathe. “How?”

He wiped his hand over his
mouth and said, “Before I tell you this Hunter, please understand that what
happened was in no way your fault. Your growth inside the womb couldn’t be
monitored, nor could the power of the fire. At the time, I had no idea what that
rock contained and how completely alive it was. Please, don’t be alarmed.”