He hadn’t. “Urgh, Joshua!”
Abandoning the trolley, she raced back to the out-of-season isle where Joshua had started pulling out all the snow globes, shaking them all, making sure each one was glittering with falling snow. She knew that everyone in the store was staring at him as though he were mental. Hunter saw it as OCD. He sometimes did it at home, particularly when work stressed him out.
“Come on,” she urged and placed the snow globe on the conveyor belt where she began piling things behind it. The checkout chick with frizzy red hair chewed her gum and gave Joshua a look that said he shouldn’t be allowed out in public. Hunter wanted to slap her, but then she looked at Joshua and wondered if maybe she should slap him instead.
She snatched Joshua’s wallet from his hand. He continued to stare at the snow globe in his hand as the last flakes floated to the bottom. Then he shook it again.
Note to self: never go food shopping with Joshua. Ever again.
That night, after Joshua baked the frozen lasagna and Hunter spent almost two hours typing up an essay due Friday, one of Joshua’s colleagues from the university – who was also a part-time kitchen hardware installer – arrived to fix the stove and spend some quality time with Joshua. Hunter laughed loudly when he dropped the six-pack of beers on the kitchen counter and turned away before Joshua could scowl at her.
“What?”
“Nothing,” she muttered. I just can’t picture you cracking open a can and talking football with Barry Sanders.
“You might want to go up to your room Hunter, we’re going to be fairly busy here,” said Joshua.
“Got much work at that old restaurant, Hunter?” asked Barry. He was a plump guy with rat-colored hair and a toothy smile. Always the joker, as Joshua would say. Hunter couldn’t imagine how Joshua ever became friends with someone so jolly, because Joshua didn’t have any friends. She often wondered if Barry just felt sorry for him. He was always trying to bring Joshua out to a game or a bar. Joshua almost always declined. He said Barry did too much ‘talking’.
“Couple of shifts a week,” she said. “I’ll leave you to your… guy thing.”
“Catch ya,” Barry waved.
“Yeah…” Hunter chuckled to herself as she passed the stairs and locked herself in her bedroom. She ran to her bedside table and checked her phone; still no message from Eli.
Hunter busied herself with college research – which quickly turned into browsing used car websites for any sign of the classic car she wanted – and waited for Eli to call. As she moved on to cleaning up her room, she turned up the music to drown out the sound of a drill in the kitchen and wondered when she’d become this sappy teenager waiting by the phone for a guy to call.
As she threw her work jeans across the room towards the closet, her half-empty pack of cigarettes spilled out onto the floor. That’s what I need. A little pick me up.
Stooping for the box, Hunter took a lighter out of her school bag and ran over to her window. Joshua didn’t know about her nasty habit, but she had no idea what his reaction would be if he did.
Hunter started smoking after the rumor. She couldn’t remember how it happened, but the cigarettes had a strangely soothing effect on her. The feel of the smoke as it blew through her lungs never made her cough. Leaning out of her eight-story window, listening to the city sounds, Hunter inhaled the cigarette and felt herself become warm inside, her nervousness floating away in the pale puff of smoke.
Hours later when the apartment was quiet again, Hunter went into the kitchen to make a cup of coffee. The house was dark. She groped around for the light when she stubbed her toe hard on something leaning against the island in the middle.
“Shit!” she hissed, turning on the electricity, hopping on one foot and glaring at Barry’s toolbox in the middle of the floor. “What the hell is that doing there?”
Her throbbing toe wouldn’t calm down, so she limped to the fridge and bent before the freezer. All of Joshua’s frozen goods were in boxes, and to get to the frozen peas or anything else that might diminish the pain, she had to rummage right down the bottom. Cold air blew up in her face and her hands were already stiffening.
It wasn’t until she lifted a tray of fish sticks that she found something strange buried beneath a blanket of icicles. She pried the file wrapped in a plastic sheet from the very bottom of the freezer and moved into the light so she could see. Brushing away the icicles, she stared at the thick folder packed with papers and labeled with one simple word written across the lip in bold black:
Feucotetanus.
What the hell is this doing in the freezer?
Hunter pulled up a stool over the kitchen bench and opened the file. It was filled with Joshua’s reports and calculations, most of which looked like gibberish to her. One word, however, stood out like a hobo in a Tiffany store:
Fire.
Connected to a string of mathematical numbers and symbols by an equals sign, the word was scribbled down the bottom of one page with question marks all around it.
Hunter peered upstairs at the dark corridor to Joshua’s room and prayed he was asleep, or maybe out with Barry. I knew he was lying to me, she fumed, ignoring her throbbing toe. He’s been researching that freak fire on the stove.
Hunter scanned more of the papers, occasionally recognizing words and equations, only to find herself even more confused as to what it all meant. Words like ‘disease’ and ‘immune’ and ‘tetrahedron’ were easily comprehendible, but Joshua’s handwriting was so jumbled that she would have to study the work for hours before she could piece it together.
Frustration filled Hunter as she flicked through the file, so much so that she became hot. Beads of sweat began to drip down her face and she wiped them away, determined to stay focused. She had to know what Joshua was hiding, and what it had to do with her.
This is bullshit, none of this makes sense!
Hunter snapped the file shut and something silver slipped out of it. She bent and retrieved a frozen metallic key card from her cold kitchen floor. Only it wasn’t for their apartment.
A shiny number 57 gleamed in the top right corner of the key card.
Hunter suddenly found herself grinning. Oh, this is just too easy. Her throbbing toe forgotten, Hunter scooped the file up in her arms and slipped out the apartment door.
eleven
Hunter felt as if her entire life were leading up to this moment. She knew there was something amiss. Joshua’s secret file and mysterious room key proved that theory. As she left the apartment and took the stairs down to level five, she felt jittery all over.
What if something awful lay in wait? What if she wasn’t ready to know the truth? Or worse, what if it changed nothing? What if the room belonged to someone Joshua was seeing and she made everything awkward by walking into a stranger’s apartment? What if it was a room for Joshua’s pleasure, something twisted like-?
Hunter bent over the last few stairs and gagged. The thought was too disgusting to process. Oh God, please don’t let it be a Red Room of Pain!
The feeling of dreaming hit Hunter as she stared at the fifth corridor. Soon, she found herself standing before room 57 and could hardly contain her beating heart. Inside this room was either the answer to all her questions or a truth she’d rather not uncover. Perhaps it was both.
Regardless, Hunter couldn’t go back to the vast emptiness of her life. She would hate herself for not finding the answer, even if it tipped her whole world upside down.
With shaky hands, Hunter slid the key card into the lock and opened the apartment door.
She found herself inside a regular apartment. A couch here and a coffee table there. Completely boring and lifeless. It was obvious no one lived there, even if it was filled with furniture. Was this where Joshua came to meet mysterious women? Hunter strolled across the room and checked the bedroom. This, too, was empty and smelled of rotting carpet. She sat down on the bed and a cloud of dust leapt into the air. Nope, definitely an empty apartment. No one’s used
this bed in years. She choked a little and went back into the living room. There was nothing inside the refrigerator. The television wouldn’t even turn on. What was the point in a completely useless apartment with no working appliances?
Before Hunter gave up, she caught sight of a few photo frames on the fireplace mantel. She gently touched a photo of her mother on a beach, probably in Cuba where Joshua owned a shack. She’d never seen this photo before. Her heart thumping, Hunter lifted the photo and wished she could remember her mother. Her stomach was quite large; she would have been pregnant. Hunter went to put the photo back when she spotted a small lever where the frame had been.
Frowning, she closed her hands around it and pulled. A loud and startling creak caused her to lose her grip on the frame. As she fumbled with it, the fireplace swung mechanically inwards, revealing a steel door behind it lit by a fluorescent tube above. To the left, a bright coded keypad blinked ‘Alarm Activated’.
“Okay,” she muttered aloud. “Shit just got technical.”
Hunter liked to think she knew Joshua better than anyone in the entire world. After finding this secret lab he’d hidden from her for God only knows how long, she began to feel doubt squirm inside her. But aside from his brilliant mind and vast knowledge of science, Joshua wasn’t as complicated as many would think. In fact, when it came down to the personal, Joshua was an open book.
She approached the keypad and thought hard. Dates… it’s gotta be a date. Joshua wouldn’t use anything random, he’s not that smart.
Hunter typed in Joshua’s birthday. She jumped when it beeped in a dull tone and the blue screen read ‘Access Denied’. Too obvious Hunter. Swallowing hard, she tried her birthday. Again, she was wrong.
“Come on. What is the most important thing in Joshua’s life?”
It came to her suddenly when the light flashed across the photo still standing on the mantle over the fireplace that protected this room. Her mother’s smiling face still stared at her. Not what is, what was. Mom.
Hunter typed in Liz’s birthday. Instantly there was a chirpy beep and the alarm deactivated. The steel wall grinded like a sliding door to the left with a gentle hiss and a dark space stretched before her.
Her mind felt blank as she held the chilly file close to her chest and edged inside the room. She fumbled along the wall for the light switch and her hands came upon a cold panel. When the electricity blinked on, Hunter gazed upon what could only be described as a laboratory, and not at all like the kind in her chemistry class at school. This lab was high-tech, X-men-style. Silver metal tables lined the walls and the neon lights shone down on medical equipment more modern than anything Hunter had ever seen in her life. On her left beside the desks was a giant glass tank filled with familiar-looking plants and rocks. As she gazed open-mouthed at the lab, a giant filing cabinet on the far wall caught her eye. Ignoring everything else, she crossed to the other side, her breath coming out in wisps of air. The lab was colder than Joshua’s bedroom.
This is definitely his place, she thought with a shiver.
But alas, the filing cabinet was locked. Hunter groaned in frustration, spinning and scanning the desks for a set of keys. She opened cupboards to reveal more experimental equipment and supplies and things you would likely find in a doctor’s office. The desks were covered in papers packed with the same jumble as the file she’d found in the freezer. Hunter turned and leant against the desk, raking her fingers through her hair. How was she supposed to understand any of this?
That’s when her eyes caught sight of what was on the opposite wall. A corkboard hung between two tables, decked out with maps of mountain ranges, photographs, scribbles and equations all crisscrossing like the pieces of a murder. Except it wasn’t a dead body she was looking at; it was her mother.
“Oh my God.”
She slowly approached the wall. Her trembling fingers traced the line of her mother’s face. Beneath these were pictures of Hunter, from as young as a baby all the way up to her eighteenth birthday four months ago. The same chaotic equations were tacked around them: geological terms with arrows connecting images of rock formations and volcanic eruptions were striking and bold against the calm glossy photos. Hunter’s scientific mind recognized some words – Cryonics, where have I seen that word before? – but even she couldn’t decipher her connection to any of it.
Confused and splitting with rage, Hunter hated herself for not being able to understand what was right in front of her. She hated Joshua too, for lying to her. Worst of all, she hated herself for being so stupid.
Several newspaper articles were tacked in the top left corner. She strained to read the title of a fire in an apartment downtown. When the names of her parents leapt out of the paper, Hunter found herself becoming instantly hot. The date was January the 26th, 1994. Wait… that’s eight months before my birthday. Another title caught her attention, blaring the words ‘SWEDISH LABORATORY DESTROYED: FEUCOTETANUS NO MORE’.
Tearing the paper from the board, Hunter scanned through the article and gazed at the image of a dark building with charcoal smoke rising high into the air. Snow layered the ground around it. ‘A Swedish Government laboratory was frozen and destroyed… all data lost… Feucotetanus was to be used in conjunction with American Special Forces…’ Hunter shook her head and pinned the article back on the board, her frustration mounting. What does all this mean?
There was a creak behind her and Hunter whirled to see Joshua, his slick hair askew and reeking of beer. He didn’t seem surprised to see her, but there was guilt clouding his eyes.
Hunter brushed away a tear on her cheek and glared. “What is this?”
Joshua let out a long sigh and stumbled towards her. She took a step back until she hit one of the steel tables.
“My research,” he said. He didn’t slur his words like she expected.
“What the hell is with all these pictures, huh?” she shouted. “How long has this been here for? Is this where you’ve been sneaking off to all the time, piecing my life together like it’s some sort of experiment? What’s happening to me Joshua, and don’t you dare lie to me!”
He flinched at the growl in her tone and tried to put a hand on her shoulder. She shrugged it away.
“Hunter please sit down,” he urged, indicating to one of the desk chairs. “I’ll explain everything.”
Hunter met his gaze and frowned. “I don’t believe you.”
“Hunter, would you please sit down?” His voice was soft, both hands raised. Why is he talking to me like I’m an unhinged bank robber holding a gun to his head?
Hunter was scared. She had no idea why she felt as though her body might explode with anger. She could feel the sweat seeping down her back and her hands shook. She wanted to scream at Joshua, to demand he tell her the truth and force it out of him, but after a moment, Hunter chose to obey. It took every ounce of self-control she had to sit down and listen. The look of relief on Joshua’s face made her wonder why he was so nervous.
What’s wrong with me?
Hunter gripped her hands together between her legs, clenching them so tightly her nails were surely drawing blood. She didn’t owe it to Joshua to stay quiet and be patient; she deserved the right to unleash her rage on his entire laboratory. But there was something in his eyes – something truly terrified – that made her shut up and be still.
Finally, Joshua spoke.
“You have a fire inside of you Hunter. And I’m not talking about an emotional fire. I’m talking about a real flame. A supernatural flame.”
Hunter almost couldn’t speak. “What?”
Joshua was struggling for words, the right words. “The other night when we were having that argument, did you feel rage inside of you?”
“Yes.”
“Was it intense? Did it boil up inside of you? Did you feel hot?”
“Yes.”
“That fire on the stove was no accident,” he said, grasping her hands, a mix of excitement and pain blazing inside his eyes. “That was you
.”
“That’s impossible,” she whispered.
Joshua’s smile stretched. “Oh, far from it.”
“I don’t understand,” she muttered through clenched teeth. “Are you saying that I have some kind of… superpower?”
“Put simply… yes.”
Hunter chocked back giggles. She covered her mouth, but it didn’t stop them bubbling through. “That’s the stupidest thing I’ve ever heard.”
Joshua stood and walked over to one of his desks where he began riffling through his notes. “The night of the fire was the night you were conceived. Your mother had come home from work after treating a patient who died on the operating table. He’d taken insubordinate amounts of a rare drug straight into his blood system. He was epileptic, and suffered major blood loss before his body had a seizure. The drug was highly contagious, and during the procedure in which Liz struggled to revive him, some of his blood mixed with hers. The drug passed from the man to your mother.”
“That Swedish drug?” Hunter asked, flicking her thumb at the article on the corkboard. “The same one that’s written on that file in our freezer?”
He stopped searching and frowned at her. “You know about Feucotetanus?”
“What is it, a type of snake?”
“No, it’s Spanish,” he replied. “And it’s pronounced fe-yo-co.”
“Uh, me no comprehede,” she snapped. Wow, humor. Brilliant Hunter.
“Feuco means ‘fire’.” Joshua’s voice was becoming more animated and hurried by the minute. “The name of this drug is an implication of its symptoms: it passes fire into your system as a disease. But after much research, I discovered that the drug was not a disease, per say, but a counter-reaction for fire. It removes the fuel, protecting the body from any burns.”
“That doesn’t make any sense. If this drug makes people immune to fire, why doesn’t the world know about it? Why haven’t these Swedish people sold it for billions of dollars?”
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