Rouge (31 page)

It was given to you for a
purpose,
Hunter’s
mother had said in the letter.
It will lead you to greatness.

With a glance at the firemen
scrambling to unroll the hose, Hunter ducked under the barricade. She had only
a moment to catch onto Eli’s green gaze. A connection so real struck her, she
almost froze up in shock. He knew, even before she flipped her black hood over
her hair in an attempt to hide her identity. He knew.

I’m sorry,
she mouthed and turned and ran straight
for the door.

“Hey!” One of the policemen
had seen her, and some of the onlookers began to shout, but Hunter didn’t care.
She knew what none of these people had any clue about: that to Hunter, the
restaurant was simply a house of cards on the verge of being knocked down with
so much as a breath of air.

The moment Hunter passed
through the front door, it was as if she’d stepped into another dimension. The
fire roared around her, snaking between her limbs and gripping her tight. The
heat was immense, but it was somehow comforting for her, as if this fire was
her friend. A brief flash of a distant memory brought her back to the past, a
time she couldn’t remember, where she lay on a steel table encased in flames.
She shook herself back to the present.
Focus Hunter, lives are at stake
here.

The restaurant would have
seemed larger, had the roof not crumbled in and chairs and tables burning to a
crisp not blocked her path. She craned her neck, searching for any sign of
life. It occurred to her that perhaps she was too late. Perhaps the fire was
too deadly for anyone to have survived it.

Hunter shielded her eyes
from the smoke and breathed in deeply. It amazed her that although there was no
oxygen in the air, she could still breathe as though she were outside.

“Hello?” she shouted and
jumped when a table beside her fell in on itself. “Is anyone in here?!”

Focusing all her energy on
keeping still and searching through the blaze for any sound at all aside from
the crumpling restaurant, Hunter’s heart leapt when the faintest of screams
reached her ears.

She moved further inside the
restaurant. The cries were coming from what she assumed was the kitchen. Hunter
pushed through a fallen bench and over the counter into the back room. It was
clear the fire had started here; the room was ablaze and black with charcoal.
The screaming was coming from a steel door at the back of the room, and she ran
without thinking through the fire towards the freezer door that had been bolted
shut.

“Help!” someone screamed and
pounded on the door.

Hunter looked at the latch
and realized it was padlocked.
Someone locked her in here.
Hunter didn’t
have time to question why and grasped the padlock, hotter than a stoker, and
felt it start to melt between her fingers. In a matter of moments, the padlock
was no more than liquid metal that dribbled like wax to the floor. She shook
her wrist and yanked open the freezer door.

A burst of cold air collided
with the flames surrounding Hunter and she was caught amidst a raging war of
fire and ice. She threw herself inside the freezer, cold air hissing over her
skin. When she turned, she saw a young girl gaping at her with mascara running
down her face and her skin tinted blue. She shook from head to toe.

The girl didn’t speak. She
simply gazed at Hunter.

“Are you okay?”

She shook her head, gaping
like a fish out of water. “How did you-”

“There’s no time,” she
snapped and they moved to the door. “We have to get out of here. The place is
burning to the ground. Is there a back way out?”

The girl nodded vigorously.
“Y-yes, to the left,” she managed to chatter. Hunter wished she still had her jacket
on to warm the girl up, but her clothes had been burnt to a crisp. She barely
wore half her jeans and T-shirt. Holes showed her bare skin, making her look
like some sort of savage.

Hunter scoured the freezer
for some sort of oxygen device. Part of Joshua’s training consisted of
mountainous piles of research on fires. Hunter knew that most people who died
in fires lost the oxygen to breathe before they burned to death. Unfortunately,
there was nothing in the freezer that she could find. Hunter only hoped that
the fire had diminished in the kitchen and the girl’s cold body was enough to
protect her from the heat. 

She was watching Hunter
closely, her arms clasped tightly across her chest. “
Wh
-what
are you doing?”

“Nothing. What’s your name?”

“K-Kate. What’s y-yours?”

“I’m Hunter,” she said
automatically. Then she realized she’d just given this girl her identity.
If
we ever make it out, Kate and I will be having a chat.
But right now, there
were more pressing matters. “I’m gonna get you out of here,” she said. “Do you
trust me?”

Kate nodded, the tears on
her cheeks turning into icicles.

“Good. Now let’s go.”

Without hesitation, Hunter
threw open the freezer door.

The heat hit her like the
burst of a sandstorm wind, blinding them both and causing Kate to scream and
stumble back. But the warmth filled Hunter, overpowering the cold behind her
and helping her breath well again. She didn’t have time to wonder what would
happen to Kate, because it was this or freezing to death, and Hunter didn’t
like the sound of that at all. She stepped into the burning kitchen, pulling
Kate along with her.

“Where’s the exit?!” she
shouted, but Kate was unresponsive. She was coughing violently and shaking in
the impossible heat.

Hunter’s heart rate
accelerated.
I have to get her out of here before she suffocates.
Wrapping
herself over Kate like a shield, she directed the heat away from them and
pushed the girl to the floor where oxygen was more likely to flow. Kate
practically collapsed, bent over with heaving coughs, and Hunter gazed in panic
at the burning restaurant.
How are we going to get out of here?

And in that moment, as if
God had heard her desperate prayer, part of the roof to their left collapsed in
an earth-shattering crunch. Concrete rained down upon them, smothering the
fire. Hunter didn’t have time to dive out the way, and the two of them were
covered in debris. Pain shot through her shoulder. For a moment, Hunter
wondered if she was stuck, but found the strength to pry herself out of the
wreckage and search for Kate.

“Kate!” 

When the air cleared, she
could just vaguely see the outline of the blonde girl lying covered in slabs of
concrete behind her. She was grazed badly and a large chunk covered her leg.
Hunter pulled herself together, ignoring the flames that stuck to her as if
feeding on the energy radiating from her skin and used her last ounce of
strength to pry the girl from beneath the rubble.
I should get a medal for
this.
Hunter nearly cried out in pain as she lifted Kate by her arms and
struggled over the unstable ground to the hole in the wall made by the fire.
She could sense fresh air, the coolness of an alleyway that hardly saw
sunlight, and the unmistakable sound of sirens that meant safety. As Hunter
climbed over the jagged steps leading to the alleyway behind the restaurant –
dragging Kate with her – she looked up at the cloudy blue sky and breathed a
sigh of relief. She had done it. She’d saved another life.

Gently lowering Kate to the
concrete against the curb, Hunter saw two figures running towards her.

“Over here!” She waved her
right arm that wasn’t aching, and soon two men wearing a uniform just like
Kate’s sprinted up to them.

“Is she alive?” asked the
larger man. He puffed as though the smoke had consumed him. “She looks dead to
me.”

Hunter bent down and pressed
two fingers to her neck, satisfied her vitals were still active. “She’ll be
fine. But we need to get her-”

“Holy shit, look at your
arm!” The other guy, scrawny with large round glasses, pointed shakily at
Hunter’s left shoulder. When Hunter looked down, she saw a shard of glass the
size of a phone sticking into her skin, blood spilling out from it, and paled.
It
must’ve happened in the explosion,
she thought. The two employees were both
staring at her in complete horror and Hunter reached up to her arm, gripped the
glass and sucked in a breath.
Oh God...
she counted to three before
wrenching the shard from her arm. Pain sliced through her and she cried out,
covered the wound with her hand and told herself to breathe properly. She could
feel the hot blood oozing through her fingers.

“H-how did you get out of
there?” the fat one stammered.

“We saw you... you ran in
there like ten minutes ago!” said the nerd unbelievingly.

“Are you like some superhero
or something?”

Hunter stared, trying to
disguise her fear with frustration at their obvious stupidity. “Could you stop
asking ridiculous questions and
help
this girl?”

“Yeah, right-”

“Sorry.”

“Thank you,” she sighed,
sweat pouring down her face and neck.

“But seriously, how’d you do
that?” asked the large one as he and the other employee took Kate’s arms and
lifted her to her feet.

“Don’t you know anything
about fire safety?” she babbled. “Find the air pockets, stay low, cover
yourself from the heat.”

“Well, you failed at the cover
part.” The nerdy guy raised his eyebrows at her body.

“Just carry her, would you?”

With Hunter’s weak
assistance, they carried Kate to the front of the building where they were
bombarded by firemen and paramedics. Hunter watched them take Kate in their
arms and carry her to a stretcher. Satisfied that she was safe now, she turned
and looked around for Eli with her hand still holding the deep cut on her upper
arm.

It was then that she
realized the entire crowd of onlookers were staring at her. They whispered,
pointed, even smiled and waved at her. The moment was so surreal, Hunter felt
as though she were a ghost, or watching the scene of a movie. Her heart
thudded, but there was nothing she could do.

Where is Eli?

A paramedic’s hand rested on
her back and turned her around.

“Miss? You need to come with
us.” He began guiding her towards another ambulance.

“I’m fine, it’s just a
scratch...”

“Take your hand away,” he
ordered, and she obeyed. Quickly, he snatched some gauze from his medical bag
and clamped it against the wound. “You’ll need stitches, and you have a lump on
your forehead as well.” He waved a bright flashlight across both her eyes. “Do
you feel dizzy?”

“Um...” She couldn’t think
straight, and did feel dizzy, but she wasn’t going to tell him that. “No, I
need to find my friend. He’s-”

“Miss, we need to get you to
the hospital.” The paramedic urged her to duck into the back of an ambulance.

“No please, I’m fine. I’m
fine!” she shouted. “Where’s Kate...”

Everything was mayhem.
Police lights flashed red and blue. The crowd was shouting, pointing at her,
calling a name that wasn’t her own. They were clapping. The paramedic was
asking her questions that went in one ear and out the other, covering her mouth
with an oxygen mask, sticking needles in her arm. Pain shot through her, but it
wasn’t from the needle, it was from her head.
This is wrong,
she thought
to herself, allowing him to lie her on her side while the ambulance doors were
closing in on her.
This is wrong, this is wrong, I shouldn’t be here, I
should hide, no one can know. Where is Eli? Is Kate okay? What will Joshua say?
What would my mother say? Oh shit, oh shit, oh shit!

Then a hand covered hers
and, through drooping eyelids, she looked up into the stoic face of Eli who sat
beside her. A thousand mixed feelings flashed across his eyes, but they passed
just as quickly as they came. She wanted to say she was sorry, that she could
explain, but her eyes wouldn’t stay open. They fell shut, and in the loud,
black noise of the world she heard him speak before there was silence.

“I’m here...” he whispered.
“I’m here.”

The familiar strange, plastic smell of
the hospital filled Hunter as she awoke. She became aware of the sounds of patting
footsteps outside the room, the distant beeping of a heart rate monitor and
hospital beds being wheeled through the corridor. Hunter wriggled her fingers
and found feeling in them. She saw flashes of the fire in the restaurant, of
dragging Kate out of the building, of pulling the huge shard of glass from her
shoulder and of Eli’s unbelieving expression before darkness closed in on her
and the ambulance and the world went away.

Hunter opened her eyes and
found herself in a room much like Miss Smart’s. She lay in a bed on the left
side, a window open on her right, another empty bed opposite her. Beside her,
asleep in the chair, was not Eli. It was Joshua.

His pale blue shirt was
crinkled, rolled up at the sleeves. A throw rug much like the one tucked under
her arms lay across his legs. He was deeply asleep, breathing heavily.
Peaceful.

But no matter how normal he
may have appeared, Joshua was a completely different man now. After everything
they’d been through, Joshua hadn’t let her down. He had promised to protect
her, to train her, to be by her side. And he had kept that promise. She
understood why he needed to keep her powers a secret. Yet after watching the
film her mother had left, her heart pounded in fear every time she looked at
him. Her mother had spoken of ‘strange things’ and ‘odd behavior’. She had
never seen him act this way before. Had she been oblivious to it her entire
life, or was it only just becoming clear?

Clear was not the right
word, however, because the video raised even more questions than she had
originally begun with.

Hunter sat up in her bed and
instantly regretted it. Her head throbbed and the deep cut in her arm shot pain
through her upper body. The bed creaked loudly at her movement and Joshua
snapped awake.

“Hunter-” He dove for her
hand, his blue eyes wide in panic, but she pulled away from him against her
pillow, ignoring the pain it caused her. “Hunter, are you alright?”

She didn’t know how to talk
to him. He was the same person - physically - that she’d lived with all her
life. Same raven-black hair, same unusually pale eyes and skin, same
sophisticated and lanky posture. But he didn’t feel like a friend to her
anymore. He felt like a stranger.

“Where’s Eli?” she asked,
her voice hoarse. She wanted him to be beside her, holding her hand, but would
it still be the same? He knew about her powers now. She’d seen it in his loving
green eyes before she ran into the building, and when he’d told her he would
stay with her in the ambulance before she fell into unconsciousness. She was
afraid to face him, but at the same time she needed his company. “I have to see
Eli.”

“He went home,” said Joshua.
“He was with you all night, but when I arrived he said he needed to leave.
Hunter-” Joshua’s eyes sparked menacingly. “-What the
hell
were you
thinking?”

Hunter ripped at the IV cord
connected to her hand. “I was thinking that I had to save them. Now I’m
thinking I want to get away from you.”

“Hunter stop,” he clamped a
hand down on hers. His skin was ice cold. “You’ve had a serious concussion. You
need to rest.”

“What I
need
and what
I want have always been completely different Joshua. But for once I’m not going
to listen to you and what you think is best for me. I’m listening to my own
head from now on.”

Joshua looked callously down
at her. “Hunter, if you’d have listened to me in the first place, then you
wouldn’t be injured. You wouldn’t have a lot of
other
problems to deal
with either...”

Hunter sucked in a breath.
“What does that mean?”

Joshua wordlessly reached
for the remote on the television and turned it on. “The news have been playing
this on a loop all day,” he said through clenched teeth.

“Five people were killed
tonight in a deadly fire that devoured a local restaurant downtown,” said a
woman in a smart suit directly to the camera as she sat comfortably in the news
room. “The fire began inside the restaurant where sources say a stove exploded
and no one was able to tame the blaze. The damage is worth over half a million
dollars. But not all hope was lost. Several witnesses claimed to have seen a
young girl with red hair run into the building as it was on fire.”

I so should have made a
costume before I started parading around New York saving people.
She bit down hard on her lip. So much
blood pumped through her body that the lump on her forehead throbbed. Joshua
was completely stiff beside her, but this couldn’t be the first time he’d seen
the report.

“She then emerged from the
rear carrying a waitress across her shoulder,” the reporter continued. “In the
midst of a tragic evening, a heroic story has brought hope to New York. And the
question many are asking is who is this red-headed heroine, and how did she do
it? One thing’s for sure: with an identity like that it won’t be hard to spot
this scarlet heroine, and we hope to see more of her saving lives in our city.”
Her faux smile faded and she became somber as she announced the next headline.

Joshua switched the
television off and silence fell, sucking at her soul. For the first time in a
long time, Hunter couldn’t find the flames inside her to warm the chill that
spread inside her body.

Joshua wouldn’t meet her
gaze. “The nurse said your identity has been kept completely private. News
crews followed the ambulance to this hospital. They know you’re here, but
they’re not allowed in. Everyone’s been talking about the red-haired girl.
Hunter-” He leaned in closer, his face a mask of seriousness. “We need to leave
New York. The Agents, they’ll know you’re here. You’re a sitting duck.”

“No,” she snapped,
surprising herself. “I’m not hiding Joshua.”

“You don’t understand.
People know who you are now. The Agents will come looking for you.”

“Let them,” she snapped
stubbornly, even if fear was setting up camp inside her soul. “I don’t care.”
The
only thing I care about is seeing Eli.

She threw the rugs off her
body and looked down at her battered and bruised skin under the thin hospital
robe.
Well that’s attractive,
her snarky conscience droned.

Joshua took hold of her
uninjured shoulder and met her eyes. There was real terror in his expression,
clouded by anger.

“I won’t let you throw your
life away Hunter. I promised to protect you, and I won’t break that promise.”

“Protect me from what
Joshua? From the public? Well guess what, they know! Everyone knows now!” She
tried pushing him away, but he wouldn’t budge. “I might as well walk into that
news room and declare it was me. Maybe I’ll even set myself alight to prove it.
Point is, the secret is out.”

Joshua’s face paled more so,
as if hearing it from her made the fact cemented in stone. “I’m not worried
about the public Hunter. I’m talking about the men who
hunt
people like
you.”

“What do you mean? You said
there is no one else like me out there.”

“I lied,” he snapped.

“Oh, shocker!”

Joshua ignored her. “I can still
keep you hidden. We can change your hair color and we can move away from New
York. Maybe we can stay in Cuba at-”

“I’m not running away
Joshua!” she screamed at him. A nurse came running into the room and the both
of them looked away from each other.

“Hunter,” said the woman,
her dark ponytail whipping back and forth as she cast furtive glances at
Joshua. She urged Hunter with strong hands back into the bed. “Please you need
to rest.”

“I’m fine.”

“You don’t look it. You suffered
a nasty hit to the head, and your stitches have come undone.”

Hunter glanced down at her
shoulder and realized she was right. Fresh blood was leaking through her
bandages.

“I want to go home.”

“I’ll take you back when
you’re better,” said Joshua.

“No,” she snapped, her eyes
a burning orange. The fire glowed inside her. Joshua flinched in surprise, but
the nurse saw nothing. She was already removing Hunter’s bandages and mopping
up the blood. “Home to Eli’s.”

Joshua stared at the floor
for a long time. The nurse’s lips pursed tight, her eyes glued down. Then
Joshua spoke, and his usually controlled voice wavered.

“I’m not giving you a choice
this time Hunter,” he said softly. “You’re coming home with me so I can watch
you. So you’ll stop acting like a ridiculously rebellious teenager with special
powers, flouncing about the streets like some heroic vigilante.”

Hunter felt her blood boil
and thought of a billion things she would love to do to the man beside her.
Like burn off his tongue so he couldn’t lie to her anymore and spit out garbage
like his Protection Program speech.

“I haven’t been there for
you Hunter like I promised. Not on a personal level. But I swear that you’ll
get better, and that all of this will go away. You can forget Eli and being the
hero.” He made a simple nod to the nurse, who turned to her IV and stuck
something in it. Hunter was too fixed with rage to notice, but immediately
began to feel drowsy.

He’s drugging me.

“No!” She tried to rip the
needle from her arm but the nurse kept her back. Despite her height, she was
weirdly strong.

“I’m doing what’s best for
you Hunter. I’m taking you away from it all.” He turned to the nurse. “Do
what’s necessary to keep her here.”

“Joshua, please...”

“I will protect you,
Hunter,” he said, the words echoing all around her. “I will protect you... I
will protect you...”

Hunter’s eyes drooped shut.

She dreamed of Eli. He lay on a simple
white bed, his skin pale and blue, his lips frozen, his whole body stiff.
Hunter wanted to run to him, the fire roaring inside of her. She could save
him, but something stopped her.

Then Joshua’s face loomed
before her view and a scream fell out of her mouth. He was laughing, softly but
manically. His pale blue eyes mirrored those she dreamed of as a child, the
same eyes that frightened her into waking up in a sweat. Those eyes froze the
fire inside of her, and her heart slowed.

“I will kill him,” Joshua
said, and the words echoed just as his other promise had, only this time it
sent chills rippling through her. “I will kill him... I will kill him...”

No... not Eli... NO!

“Hunter, wake up!”

Someone was hissing right by
her ear and gentle hands nudged her. She awoke in the same hospital bed,
scratchy sheets pulled tight under her arms the way she imagined her mother
would tuck her in as a child. This time, she felt far groggier. Her eyes hardly
opened, tense under her eyebrows and very dry.

“Hunter, it’s me,” said the
same voice.

It was dark in the room when
she finally managed to see. Her head lulled to the side and there stood a
stocky, dark-haired shadow. His hand nudged her again.

“Jack?” she croaked. “What
are you doing?”

“I’m here to bust you out,”
Jack muttered, stepping into the light so his brown eyes gleamed. He shoved
away the IV chord that was dripping on his shoes. “The nurse is talking with
some guy about putting you into some sort of coma.”

“What?” she hissed. “Where’s
Joshua?”

“Who?”

“Joshua, my… never mind.”
Her head throbbed hard as she made to sit up, but the rattling of chains and
something clamped around her wrists held her down. Hunter frowned through the
hazy darkness and saw a flash of silver.

Oh hell no
.
He actually handcuffed me to the
bed!

Fire burst inside her, and
she let it. The effects of the drug that still swarmed inside her put up a good
fight, but pure rage took over. Hunter’s whole body protested in pain, as if
the medication meant to keep her unconscious in that horrific nightmare. How
did the hospital allow this kind of treatment?

“Is that even legal?” she
hissed, jiggling her wrists. “And did you say they were going to put me in a
coma
?”

Jack was ducking around the
dark room, flipping up her rug and opening the cupboards under the sink.
“Definitely not. But we can talk about it outside. Right now I need to find
those keys…”

Hunter lay back and let the
fire fill her. She could feel it snaking through her veins, red hot and burning
for revenge. When she looked down at her arms, they were glowing orange as they
always did when she used her powers. It looked like lava seeping down a
charcoal volcano through the cracks. Warmth spread through her and she forced
it into her hands. The cuffs began to melt. The fringes of the bed caught fire,
but she put that out as quickly as it took for the handcuffs to melt right off
her wrists.