Free Embers & Ice (Rouge) by Isabella Modra

spine. He would surely cry out in agony, but his throat was so dry that
only a gasp escaped.
    Wait
a minute. Did I just gasp? Am I breathing? Is this still death?
    Eli
listened, his body throbbing with pain as though he were bleeding through his
skin, and prayed for release. He much preferred lying in cold blackness than
this new writhing. Perhaps he didn’t get a choice, and he was already in hell.
Stars of red danced in the blackness, making his head throb. After a few more
moments, the pain started to dissipate and Eli almost smiled. Well, that
wasn’t so bad. Actually, that wasn’t terrible at all. Hell is quite nice and
warm if you-
    Eli
stopped thinking at once when he noticed something strange through the
darkness. A light was blinking just out of reach, very soft and in the shape of
a… wait, a human? There was a man, but Eli couldn’t make out a proper form or
even a face. And it flickered, like a candle about to burn out.
    Eli
lifted a shaking hand and reached out to the man when a shocking jolt exploded
in his chest. Suddenly Eli was gasping for breath as if he’d just surfaced from
the bottom of the ocean. White light blazed around him and he blinked – yes,
blinked – against the rays that threatened to blind him. His chest ached, his
body stung like sunburn and his throat begged for water. But despite the agony,
he was alive. And being alive was better than ten years of torture in whatever
hellish place he’d been lying in.
    For
a moment, nothing but the sound of his thumping heart could be heard. Eli
heaved in air and waited for his hearing and sight to return. Shapes danced
around him like alien blobs from his comic books. He heard a woman’s voice,
then a man’s voice, and it was all he could do not to squeal in delight.
    Finally
the pain subsided and a tube-like object was placed in his mouth. Blissful
water dribbled down his throat and he coughed and spluttered in his haste to
consume it. Get me to a lake, I’ll drink it all, he thought . The
tube was taken from him and an eerie voice said, “More later.”
    Eli’s
vision came back slowly and the blurred shapes fused together into actual
objects. The first thing he noticed was that the blinding white light came from
everywhere he looked. He was in a small room made of some kind of shiny steel,
with fluorescent tubes lining the walls and ceilings. Strange technology
surrounded him; machines he’d never seen before with complicated dials and
wires and blinking lights. He lay on a frozen steel table encased in some kind
of clear sheet attached to more tubes. Eli forced himself into a sitting
position and bravely looked down at his body.
    Oh
thank God, he breathed in relief. I still have legs. I
thought they’d been ripped off.
    He
wore a thin white hospital gown, and the rest of his body was flawlessly pale.
Usually this would alarm Eli – who was used to the olive tone of his skin – but
he was too thankful that his body was all in one piece to care.
    “Eli?”
    The
soft voice of a woman startled him and Eli’s head whipped to the left where two
people stood guardedly watching. The woman was younger than the man, with brown
wavy hair and eyes wide and concerned. She bit the corner of her lip nervously
and moved an inch closer to the man. He didn’t seem to notice.
    The
person beside her was tall and quite thin, wearing a creased, buttoned-down
shirt. He had hair as black as a raven, slicked back like a Hollywood actor.
His eyes were so pale, they were almost frightening. He had sharp bone
structure and a cautious expression.
    They
were both watching him as though they expected him to explode, but Eli wasn’t
even sure he had a voice at all.
    The
woman tried again. “How do you feel Eli?”
    He
said nothing, his mind completely jumbled. Am I in a hospital?
    “How
did you feel?” the man asked the woman and she shot him a harsh glance.
    “I
felt like I’d been thrown into an icebox and chartered off to Japan, no thanks
to you.” She