Wolf Heart

Chapter 41

JAMES

Raucous noises rocked through his eardrums while he laid in the soft embrace of blankets with his head propped up with the pillows. His lungs burned every time he took a breath. In and out. On the I-Screen when he took a painful peek, the last reports of the Eastpoint Massacre. Every death reported, save his own. Everyone gone, except for him and Meryn. He groaned into the pillow at the voiceless reporter. He switched his attention to the window, where a group of kids hollered and bounced along the path into the city, with Starcross netbats strapped to their backs. He scowled and tucked his cheek deeper into the pillow while one boy pushed the other with a booming laugh which echoed Jon's.

Everything muted to a monochrome gradient — without brightness and meaning, lost of a focal point to show off the subject of a picture. He sighed and winced into the bed, where his temples seared with embers and he sank deeper into the endless torment. It's almost time for her to come in and try to convince me to take that dumb medicine... Autumn wasted at his fingertips, never brought back by someone's supposed relief. He glared outside the window where the kids disappeared into the city.

Orange hues bled across the sky, and he shivered at the smog fluttering over the city to capture the smoke.

Hours turned to ash, and voices sounded below. One of them, Mrs. Falae's.

He couldn't bring himself to investigate, couldn't care enough for curiosity. He wasn't even sure how long he laid there in bed. Fury stewed his insides, so he rolled over onto his stomach to quench the pointlessness. He breathed once more, but it immolated his throat. He buried his face in the pillow, a part of him longing to be smothered by ash and trees. Every picture burnt, gone.

It doesn't matter...

He closed his eyes, but no sooner had he lost himself, footsteps came up the stairs and broke him out of his stupor. He shifted on his side to investigate the commotion, and groaned when Mrs. Falae opened the door. "What now?" he asked and rested on his back.

"I said we're going to get some medicine into you," she said calmly.

His frustration twisted the campfire into his mind at her cool inflection. Nothing cracked the frozen facade. He sat out of the mattress when she revealed his old bookbag, and she moved for the other corner of the room, where his netbat clattered against the wall and drawers when she rifled through it. Flames scorched his heart when she brought out the datacam Rayan got for his star day, along with the I-Pen he found no strength to hold.

He choked his bedsheets. "What am I supposed to do with those?"

Mrs. Falae put a golden capsule on his bedstand. "It's all your things. I thought you'd want them returned to you."

"I don't want them anymore. You can throw them away." James turned his back to her. Why does it matter? I can't freeze time.

Mrs. Falae sighed but left the datacam and notepad on the bedstand. Her fingers wrapped around the Medis capsule. "James," she said. "You can't stay in this room forever."

"Why not?"

"It's not helping you."

"Nothing will help me!" James leaped out of bed to confront her, but his chest burned. "I don't want help. I don't want your help!" Rage threw itself into the side of his skulls and set the room alight in a sheet of ash. "What? You expect me to walk around Odaport with no idea where I'm going? Or go back to school? I don't want help because no one helped all those people at Eastpoint! All those defenses the Sanctum sent — all those soldiers they overwhelmed our town with, it didn't mean shit!"

Her expression never broke. "I was not suggesting either of those things... and some things are out of our control."

"Well, this isn't out of my control." He pushed the golden capsule off the bedstand, where it hit the ground at her feet and headed for his chair by the window. "I can still refuse."