Consuming Fire

Chapter 15

Hunter sat alone in her cell, thinking of nothing she hadn't thought of a thousand times already in her darkness. She heard horrible silence, endless and empty of Will. She didn't want to believe he was dead yet, not until she saw with her own eyes the way she saw Eli's body on the floor of room 23. So she waited.

The hardest part about waiting was not being able to see him. Usually when a person waits to hear if their loved one is alive or dead, they are in a hospital, free to visit and say a proper last goodbyes. But there was no doctor there to deliver the news that Will would be alright. There was no way she could hold his hand and feel his warmth, or see his gaze upon hers with eyes that never let go of her heart. They had so much more to experience together, a relationship birthed in loneliness and a dark room with candles burning. It needed something else, something more to make it a love that could not be broken by pain or suffering. She wasn't ready to let go of Will the way she knew she had to let go of Eli. This death was different.

Amidst the silence, there came a scuffle outside her cell. Hunter frowned, wiping tears from her cheeks and listened to light footsteps. It sounded like a child.

"Who's there?" one of the mutants called through their cell, making her flinch in fright. Hunter closed her eyes, imagining hands reaching out between the bars. She'd heard this mutant's voice a few times before, but had never seen him. In her first few days imprisoned in the Death Caves, Hunter watched some of them be dragged from their cells: an older woman with ratted brown hair covered in rags; a skinny man hunched over and silent; a young woman with two heads like a Siamese twin. The girl in the white, tattered dress with the burns passed her once. Hunter probably looked almost exactly the same as her now — empty and sad.

"Hunter?" called a child's voice.

The sound of her name echoing in the darkness made all of her muscles freeze in place.

That voice sounds so familiar.

She crawled to her feet and wobbled across the dirt to the cell door. Through the window, she saw someone hurriedly peering inside each cell. She was a young girl with black hair and dark clothes. Her head turned towards Hunter, and in the light, her pale face and sparkling eyes showed.

Ryo.

I'm dreaming, she thought instantly and her heart dropped into her stomach. Of course it wasn't real. Disappointed, Hunter closed her eyes and walked back to the wall of her cell.

"Hunter?" called Ryo again. "Are you in here?"

Ignore it. Ignore the hallucination and torture of Dr. Wolfe.

"Will? I'm here to rescue you!"

He's dead. He's gone.

Hunter sat down by the wall where her imprint was worn into the ground. She covered her ears and tried to block out Ryo's distant pleads for her, telling her she was there to be rescued, that there wasn't much time, that she'd gone through hell to get there, that Joshua trained her to-

Wait.

Joshua?

Hunter's eyes snapped open. She practically tripped to her door and thrust both her arms through the bars.

"Ryo!"

The girl came running to her. She grasped both of Hunter's hands and clenched them tight. The touch sent magnetic shocks through Hunter's body. It was real. She couldn't believe it was real. Ryo's face, so filled with relief, looked tired and worn, but that didn't matter. She'd come back for them.

"Thank God!" Ryo exclaimed. "I'm going to teleport you out of here."

Hunter wasn't sure she heard her correctly. Her mouth formed no words. She blinked over and over to try and make sense of Ryo's presence.