Rouge (39 page)

It was then that Hunter
realized she couldn’t do it. She wasn’t prepared to battle Joshua with a power,
much less a power that could overcome her flames. He was her kryptonite and she
couldn’t fight him properly without a strategy. All she had was fury, and that
was never enough.

But her mistake was not
believing she could run. She was weak without the heat and from being knocked
around. Her real mistake was turning her back on him. As she crawled to her
feet and made to run for the main road, Joshua came up behind her, snatched her
by the ankle and pulled.

“No!” she screamed as he
yanked her to her feet and wrapped his frozen arm around her body. Hunter
wriggled furiously, pushing the heat through her skin, but all it did was
sizzle. He was as cold as a block of ice.

“
Shh
,”
he cooed, his grip tightening. “It will be over soon.”

She shook her hands, trying
to summon even a spark, but nothing came as Joshua lifted the object that had
rolled toward the gutter and stabbed it into her neck.

She gasped, her vision
became blurry, and the last thing she remembered as every muscle in her body
collapsed was Joshua’s chuckle and the terrible sensation of cold water
coursing through her bloodstream, washing the heat away.

She was drowning, clawing through the
deep, cold, endless water. Panic consumed her and warmth no longer existed.
Air,
she thought desperately.
I… need…

“Hunter,” called a voice
from the darkness. It was soft, mellow and familiar. Eli.

She tried to speak, but a
hand was wrapped around her throat, constricting her breath. She reached up
slowly in the water and realized there was nothing holding her. The water was
growing thicker and slowly freezing around her as if she were turning to ice.
She opened her eyes but they were blurry.

All she wanted was to call
out to Eli, but nothing but a scream of bubbles fell out. She was fading, her
lungs were burning in pain, her throat felt as if it was being grinded with
sandpaper and her eyes were slowly closing…

“Hunter, wake up.”

This voice wasn’t Eli’s, and
a pain so severe struck her that she gasped as if the breath was knocked out of
her.

Breath.
Air.

Hunter’s eyes snapped open
and she was awake, no longer drowning. But her situation hadn’t improved to
that in her dream. She couldn’t move at all for her body was covered in ice. She
was shivering, sitting upright in a chair, a dark, dimly lit room stretched
before her.

Her head was swimming, but
she needed to get out. Joshua had clearly brought her there for a reason, or
else he would have killed her there in the alley. The thought was so
frightening that Hunter wanted to shake her head, get back to reality and
figure a way out.

But a way out of what? It
felt as if her whole body was frozen, and minimal movement was possible. She
bent her head slowly down, wincing with each crackle the ice covering her made.
At first she thought she was wearing an ice suit and knew it would be easy to
burn through it. But her eyes fell upon small blue tubes connected to her arms,
twisting around each other and disappearing behind the chair. She felt no pain,
yet they were either taking blood from her or injecting something into her
system.

Hunter began to breathe
quicker. She couldn’t move, she couldn’t speak. Her throat was as dry as a
desert and she was colder than she’d ever been. Somehow, Joshua had trapped the
cold inside her body so she couldn’t move, much less summon even the slightest
flame.

Then she heard footsteps.
Someone was approaching from the dark space that looked much smaller than what
it probably was. Her heart thumped painfully in her chest and she wished it
didn’t hurt to think about Eli. She needed courage, and she had no strength
left to find it.

“According to the laws of
Physics,” came Joshua’s sharp tone and he stepped out of the shadows into the
light shining from the swaying globe high above, wearing a neat white shirt and
gray pants. There were scorch marks on his arms and face, which gave her the
slightest ounce of satisfaction. “What we consider cold, in fact, is actually
the absence of heat.” Joshua strolled confidently up to her chair and twisted
one of the chords injected into her arms, pushing it further in. It should have
hurt, but Hunter felt nothing except the uncomfortable feeling of more ice
being forced inside her. “Anything is able to be studied as long as it transmits
energy,” he continued. “Absolute zero is the total absence of heat, but cold
does not exist. What we have done is create a term to describe how we feel if
we don't have body heat or we are not hot.” Joshua came into her vision again,
his face so close to hers it was all she could see. “Are you cold yet Hunter?”
he asked softly, a smile so alien across his lips that a flashback from her
childhood sent Hunter into a silent panic attack. Joshua wore the same
psychotic smile as he did now. He stared down at her as she lay on a steel
table in the lab. She was a young girl, naïve and trusting, as Joshua prodded
her with scientific machines. He was the face of her nightmares. How had she
not realized?

Because Joshua was a
friend to you.
Despite
everything he’d done to her, all the times he’d forced her to train and keep
her secret hidden and isolate herself, Hunter still loved Joshua. He had always
been there for her when her parents weren’t. He had provided for her and
sheltered her from the cruel world outside her school.

Which was why she couldn’t
understand his complete lack of humanity. There was no plausible reason, and no
way of forgiveness. Despite what their relationship used to be, Joshua was a
different man to her now. He was an enemy, evil in its purest form.

I’m sorry about Joshua. I
had no control over him. He’s a different person, frantic, sometimes even
psychotic.
Her mother’s
words were like the missing piece to the puzzle. He wasn’t Joshua at all
anymore. She saw it in his eyes.

He was Iceman.

“Albert Einstein was
iconic,” Joshua continued. “But what he failed to uncover about the absence of
heat…. is how deadly the cold really is.” He bent down with both hands on
either side of her chair and leaned in so all she could see was the bitter
color of his pale eyes. “You would know, wouldn’t you Hunter?”

“You killed him,” she
muttered, wishing she could shout it. But her lips wouldn’t move more than a
centimeter.

“Yes,” he sighed sadly. “I’m
truly sorry about that Hunter, but you know the reason why.”

What reason could
possibly justify what you’ve done?!

Joshua squatted again, his
fingers curling around her frozen hands. “I did it because I wanted to protect
you.”

She groaned angrily as he
turned away, so livid that her frustration turned into strength and the ice
began to crack. Joshua twisted and frowned.
So his restraints are already
beginning to fail?
She found some pleasure in his surprise.

“You’ve got some fight in
you, Hunter,” he muttered, shaking his head and disappearing behind her. “Just
like your mother. All these months of seeing your powers develop before my own
eyes have given me the key to controlling the fire for you, of keeping it
contained. I’ve been working on this machine for a month now.” The sound of
metal clanking came from behind her. “The more you try to move, the more pain
you will feel when the ice stops moving through your blood.”

Hunter heard him twist some
sort of gauge and then something was hissing, as though air was being released
from a pressure container. She tensed as a new flow of ice was pushed through
the tubes into her veins. She could feel it creeping through her, contaminating
her, taking away her air.

But the machine had a flaw.
No matter how much ice Joshua forced into her body, it could never completely suffocate
the flame. Hunter sensed, in the very depths of her core, that the embers still
remained. She could keep the fire alight - maybe even burn through the ice - if
only she could unleash the flame, release it from the icy cage squeezing
further towards her core.

“There,” he said and came
back into her vision. “That should keep the damn flames inside you.”

“Where are we?” she hissed
through cracked lips.

“A shipping warehouse near
our apartment building,” he said. “All of my equipment comes through here, and
the laboratory was not a suitable place for us to have this discussion. I
didn’t want any Agents listening in on us.” He paused, studying her. “You know
you look exactly like your mother in that dress. She always looked good in
white. She had hair exactly like yours after the fire that killed Leo. But she
tried getting rid of it. Dye wouldn’t work. Want to know why?”

Hunter didn’t answer.

“Because the fire inside
her, inside
you
, was too strong. That’s why she died giving birth to
you. You
burned her insides on the way out.”

Hunter screamed, but only a
small, hoarse whimper escaped her mouth. Tears of pain and fury and frustration
ran down her face, freezing even before they made it to her chin.

“Oh Hunter, don’t cry.”
False sympathy exuded from him. “You never knew her anyway. Yes, she loved you
more than anything in the world. She gave you everything and left no room in
her heart for me. But I’ll tell you something your mother missed out on,” he
bent closer to her, his pale eyes sparkling. “After she died, you and I got to
have a little bonding time down in the lab.”

Another burst of heat sprang
from within her. Angry, burning heat boiling in her core and growing larger
with every word Joshua spoke. But this time, she kept it within her and forced
herself not to react. He would insert more ice into her the second she tried to
struggle. She had to keep it contained, as much as it hurt.

“I found your little floppy
disc last week.” His tone was sad, as though she’d disappointed him. “Your mother
really was afraid of me towards the end. I had a feeling she suspected
something was up with me. See I really was changing Hunter. And I don’t regret
it. I’m a scientist, for Christ’s sake! I’d just made the biggest scientific
discovery of the century in that mountain, I had to do something about it. I
couldn’t let Lizzie or you have all the fun. I was so intrigued by the
chemicals of our powers that I brought you to the lab and ran some of my own
little tests on you. You don’t remember though, do you? You were young Hunter,
and very vulnerable. I decided to erase our sessions from your memory because I
didn’t want them to have any effect on you, traumatically of course. I needed
you to stay strong and not break down.”

Hunter wanted to scream in
rage. She wanted to shriek curses at him and wrap her hands around his throat,
to watch him writhe in a ball of flames. But she could hardly say a thing.

“You bastard,” she managed
to mutter. The fire was building inside of her, and the minute it reached her exterior
the ice would visibly melt. She had to keep him talking. “All that talk about
keeping your powers secret… was all bullshit, wasn’t it? You’re a killer, and
soon everyone… will know about it.”

For the first time, Hunter
saw real pain in Joshua’s eyes. She hadn’t seen any sign of the real Joshua in
days. “You and I are more alike than you realize,” he said. She wanted to
scoff, but couldn’t push enough air out. “I, too, have difficulty keeping my
powers controlled. When I tried to recreate your powers… the solution was
incorrect. Instead of injecting fire into my blood system, it had the opposite
effect. And some other baggage. The cold has latched itself to me over the
years. It… it took over.” Joshua looked at the floor and stopped talking.
Hunter had been concentrating on building the heat, but his moment of weakness
compelled her. She watched him, suddenly vulnerable, the image of a broken man.
 

A small, insignificant
amount of pity - even understanding - tried to tug at her heart’s emotions. If
she’d ever hurt Eli because of losing control like she had in the alley with
the homeless men, she would feel exactly as Joshua did.
Maybe the guilt
finally drove him loopy.

But then Joshua’s cold blue
eyes met hers and her pitying feelings vanished. There was no love there at
all.

“Your power is deadly
Hunter.” His tone was just as chilling as the blue ice infecting her blood.

“You’re no different,” she
muttered and took a deep breath, channeling heat into her hands. The ice began
to melt, dripping from the arm of the chair onto the floor. Her fingers were
unfrozen, but still numb.
Keep him distracted,
she told herself,
you
have to get out of this. Keep him talking.
“Where’s Jack?”

Joshua spun on his heels,
grinning from ear to ear. “Funny you should ask.”

He strolled to his left,
disappearing into the dark shadows. She heard him take several more steps and
then a loud crash echoed distantly. Her heart leapt. There was a muffled scream
and the sound of chains jingling.