73
Two men in hazmat suits rushed to Edmund and lifted him by his arms to drag him to a decontamination suite. They stood under a spray on the way in then, once inside, they got his suit off and went to work spraying him down.
One ran a Geiger counter over him then pointed it to the wicked looking burns on his face. It remained relatively silent. The men looked at each other and sagged with relief.
“Thank god!” Heller said.
Arnd, one of the day-shift control center technicians, looked closer at the burns. “They’re fading!”Exclusive content from NôvelDrama.Org.
“What?” Heller said as he leaned closer to catch the last of the terrible burn marks dissipate. Edmund’s slightly pocked skin looked as normal as it had been.
“What’s going on in there?” Karl’s voice boomed through the intercom.
“Edmund’s burns are gone!” Heller said.
“Gone? What do you mean gone! How bad were they?” Karl asked.
Heller and Arnd looked at each other.
“The entire left side of his face looked like it was going to peel off. Now it’s- fine,” Arnd answered.
“You two, leave the room. Now!” Karl insisted. Arnd was already moving, but Heller saw Edmund’s eyes begin to flutter, and a cold shock went through his body. Instinctively, he rushed for the door.
Heller was a little embarrassed to find himself pushing Arnd out the door before slamming it closed and locking it.
“What was that about?” Arnd asked him, but Heller could only shake his head and gesture to the window looking into the room. They took their helmets off.
Karl entered from the control room and headed straight over to the window. “Did either of you touch Edmund directly, skin to skin?”
The two men shook their heads and looked at Karl with concerned expressions.
“We don’t know what that thing in the pool is but Edmund may have biological contamination. We’ve called the CDC as well as other agencies. Anyone we could think of that might give us some answers while keeping a lid on this. We don’t need a public panic on our hands.” They looked through the window, Karl and Arnd right next to the glass, but Heller stepped back slightly as a shiver ran down his spine. He didn’t share his observations with his colleagues.
They’d see soon enough.
-=-
“FUCK! WHAT? WHAT HAPPENED TO THE LIGHTS!?!?” Edmund cried out as he stumbled around in the decontamination suite. Ripples seemed to bounce off every surface in the room, and everything painted in reds with hot spots of white here and there and splashes of black in the corners of the room.
“Edmund!”
He jumped as the sound leapt at him from his left and bounced around the room. He followed the ripples with his eyes, watching as they bounced off surfaces and dissipated.
He recognized the voice. “Karl?” he asked and was surprised to see the sound of his voice project away from him as waves to hit the wall and scatter.
“Yes, it’s Karl. Are you ok? How are you feeling?”
He looked around and found the source of Karl’s voice. There was a speaker mounted up on the wall. He walked closer and put out his hand. He reached the wall and felt glass under his fingers.
“What’s wrong with his eyes?” another voice yelped.
“Who’s that?” Edmund asked.
“… that was Arnd. Can you see us?” Karl’s voice asked gently.
“See you? No, where are you?” Edmund asked, beginning to panic.
“We’re on the other side of the window, right in front of you!” Arnd’s voice blurted.
Edmund stood before the window running his fingers over it. He could feel the glass, but he couldn’t see through it. In a moment of inspiration, he clapped his hands together and ‘saw’ the boundaries of the window, the wall before him, and the door just to the right. He walked to it unerringly and grasped the release handle to find it was locked. He made his way back to the window.
“Edmund, how do you feel?” Karl’s voice asked again.
“Scared. Freaked out! Why can’t I see through the glass?”
“He found the door handle quick enough,” Arnd’s voice muttered.
“Why am I locked in?” Edmund called out.
“We have to have a doctor confirm you are ok. Standard protocol. Do you remember the explosion?” Karl’s voice asked.
He nodded and put his hands carefully on the left side of his face. When he didn’t feel any damage, he smiled in relief. “It doesn’t feel injured now. I feel fine.”
“Your face had terrible burns, but the wounds just faded away,” Arnd’s voice called out.
His fingers went back to his cheek as he frowned. He wished he could see it. He held his hand out in front of this face and sighed. He saw something! Quietly humming, he was able to ‘see’ his hand in the waves of sound. With the softer sound, he found he could make out extremely high detail, right down to the fine hairs on the back of his hand
“What are you doing?” Karl’s voice again.
He looked ahead at the window where Karl was presumably watching him. He grinned crookedly. “I can see sound.” He felt a little light headed after making that discovery. “I think I’m going to go lie down.”
He turned and clapped his hands together, sending out a wave of sound. The room’s layout displayed before him, so he turned towards the bed, walked straight to it and dropped himself on it. Maybe if he just got a little sleep, his eyes would cooperate again.
-=-
Karl, Arnd, and Heller watched Edmund walk unerringly back to the bed. Karl turned off the intercom and looked to the others.
“He can see sound?” Arnd asked incredulously.
“You saw his eyes. They’re just dark red orbs. No iris. No pupil. Just red. He shouldn’t be able to see anything, yet we saw him navigate the room without any trouble. He can see, somehow.” He turned his head towards Heller who hadn’t said a thing since leaving Edmund in the room. “You’re very quiet.”
Heller jumped slightly. “Hmmm! Oh, I- I’m at a loss for words. I’ve never seen anything like it. I… don’t know what to think.”
“Think what you like but keep your mouth shut. That order comes from the top,” Karl said with a frown. “Can you watch him until I can find someone to relieve you?” Heller nodded. Karl glanced back in the window and headed back to the control room with Arnd at his heels.
Heller walked back to the window and watched Edmund sleeping. He felt a little better knowing the man couldn’t see through the glass.
When he’d first seen the red eyes, he’d almost lost his shit. Old tales his grandpa used to tell him about a race of beings that hunted his people on moonless nights. Then Edmund admitted to seeing sound.
Fuck.
Something very big was happening. Heller felt it in his bones. Edmund was Human through and through or had been. Now he was something else. Heller had to get word to the Hidden Race Council the moment he got free from work. There were protocols for emergency contact.
He just never imagined that in his lifetime he’d have to invoke them.
Henry had the blinds of his office closed, and his head was resting on his desk when Marisa found him the next morning.
“You ok, Henry?” she asked softly.
“please… stop yelling,” he whimpered.
“That bad, huh? Did you take anything for it?” she whispered.
“I- uh- didn’t have anything at home. I haven’t gotten around to stocking the bathroom medicine cabinet,” he sighed.
“Oh, Henry. I’ll get you something,” she whispered as she slipped away. Moments later she returned with a large bottle of water and three pills. He eyed them. “Take these and drink all of the water.”
He did as he was told then smiled fondly at Marisa. “I’d say you were an angel if I didn’t already know you’re a Succub-”
BEEEEEEEEEP!
The shrill alarm tone screeched loudly from the ceiling intercom speaker.
Henry’s eyes closed slowly as the noise bounced off every pain receptor in his body. He raised his hands in surrender. “I’m sorry,” he whimpered, and the tone ended.
“That’s the first time I’ve heard you slip,” Marisa said softly with a sympathetic wince.
He nodded then settled his head back onto his desk.
“I’ll give you an hour then you have to be in the executive meeting.”
“Thank you,” he breathed then let his mind slide away from the pain.
-=-
Queen Mab was breathtakingly beautiful, but it was a beauty that Henry had difficulty appreciating. Some were drawn like a moth to a flame, but Henry had witnessed the madness lurking just below that thin veneer and wanted nothing to do with her. Unfortunately, he needed her to give him a new human disguise. He was in Ireland as her guest, had been for weeks, waiting for her team of mages to gather and prepare. It’d been days since the last arrival was introduced to him and he sat through yet another interview so they could understand their patient.
Between all of these interviews, he’d had to be available to entertain Mab’s whims. Activities ranged from tea parties, formal wear ballroom dances, to a drunken orgy to rival the mad parties of Dionysus himself, according to Mab. He managed to avoid having sex with any of the participants at the orgy thrown in his honor. The Queen was not pleased. In her rage, she may or may not have murdered the two female servants wearing glamors to appear as Fauns.
Their faces flashed in his mind causing him to cry out in despair.
“Henry! Wake up!”
He returned to the present feeling Marisa’s soft hand resting on his shoulder, gently nudging him to wakefulness. He reached up to place his hand over hers. It always made him feel better to touch her hand.
“Dreaming again? The same?” she asked gently.
He pushed himself up to rest back against his chair and closed his eyes. “No… it was earlier on the trip this time.”
Marisa ran her fingers through his thick, soft hair and enjoyed the sensation. Henry smiled and relaxed as she touched him. When she reluctantly pulled her fingers free, he made a little involuntary sound of disappointment. She grinned at him.
“It’s time to go downstairs to the executive meeting. You don’t want to be late for your first one. You know how Mother gets when she’s made to wait,” Marisa said with a smile.
Henry blushed as the first thought that came to his mind was Camila pouncing on him for a feeding the first time they’d been alone after he’d returned from Ireland. He squirmed at the memory.
He stood and disconnected his laptop from its docking station and smiled at Marisa as she walked back to her desk.
He took the elevator all the way to the basement as VRL had completed the renovations on the old server room. They had a brand new executive boardroom where the old servers once suffered in the depths of the building. He couldn’t help but think of the space as a dungeon for torturing servers. It made his skin crawl to think of their old setup.