Embers & Ice (Rouge) Read Online Free Page B

“I tried everything I could to bring you back. Your body is
functioning. If you feel like yourself, then I’ve done my job.”
    She
dipped a sharp nod. For a moment he saw something like relief in her eyes. Then
she fixed him with a small smirk and said, “I look forward to hearing how
exactly you managed to pull this off, by the way.”
    “I’ll
get right on it.” He turned back to the door.
    “Wait,
one more thing. Where is Hunter?”
    An
ache far worse than his throbbing head burst inside Joshua’s chest at the very
mention of her name. He couldn’t bring himself to answer. After punching in the
code, he hurried into the safety of his mold-smelling apartment room, away from
Jennifer Smart’s questions that felt like a stake through his heart.

 
    FIVE
     
    The
only downside to being woken from a cold slumber with a shot of B-12 was that,
after the energy started to fade, things came back to Hunter worse than they
were before. Fortunately she was so distracted by her surroundings that the
aching grip of fear and loss was momentarily forgotten.
    The
inside of her prison was exactly how she expected it to be: still the same
milky-gray walls, blinking fluorescent lights and claustrophobic feel, as if
she were buried hundreds of feet below the earth.
    The
guards marched her down a corridor lined with cells just like her own – all
empty with their blue blankets folded perfectly at the end of the mattress –
and took a cement flight of stairs down to the floor beneath. There, they faced
another corridor. The stairs took them down again and Hunter wondered how she’d
ever find her way back to her cell without feeling as if she were in some sort
of dream.
    At
the bottom of the stairs were two doors. The guard with the tattoo who led the
way opened the right and stepped back to let Hunter inside. She had only a
moment to catch her heart that leapt into her throat at the sounds of mumbled
voices in an echoed room before she was shoved inside.
    Dizziness
overcame her for a moment as the giant space almost swallowed her whole. She
blinked in the bright lights, the buzzing of voices and the clatter of plates
on steel tables.
    She
was in a room bigger than the gymnasium at her old school. Like everything
else, it was blindingly white. Tables spaced throughout the room were mostly
occupied. On the left was a cafeteria where people were lining up to collect
breakfast on little plastic trays. They, too, wore white jumpsuits.
    Hunter
peered around and caught some of them staring. They were all of different ages
and race, some angry and some curious. What they had in common, however, was a
look of sickness and defeat. It made Hunter want to retch.
    The
two guards that escorted her stalked off after the tattooed guard clicked his
fingers and shoved her towards the cafeteria line. Hunter noticed other guards
in the same tight suits stationed like palace soldiers around the room, their
feet parted and their hands firmly clasped together.
    “I’m
not hungry,” Hunter said to the tattooed man. She lined up behind a girl who
could be no older than eight or nine with ratted blond hair.
    The
guard chuckled. “You’ll need it. There’ll be no more of those energy shots for
you, so how else will you get out of bed in the morning?”
    “I
won’t,” she hissed through her teeth. They were clenched tighter than her fists
at her side.
    “You
will,” he said back just as harshly and left her in the line.
    Hunter
stared at the crowded room and wished she could shut her eyes and make it go
away. Suddenly, her cell didn’t seem so bad anymore compared to the looks she
was getting from almost every other child in the room. She should be used to it
after years of torment from her peers at school. But this time was different.
She was the new girl now. She had no powers and no charisma. She probably
looked like she’d been left out to dry in the desert. Not to mention her
detached emotional stability.
    She
couldn’t hide. She could