Arclight. Josin L McQuein
Both men shuck their jackets and remove their gloves.
“You need these, Doc?”
“They’re active.” Dr. Wolff bites the words, bitter like a sour lemon. “Use the incinerator downstairs.”
Down? The only stairs I’ve ever seen take workmen to the roof so they can replace lightbulbs. All that’s under the Arclight is dirt.
Mr. Pace sprints toward the medicine room with the bin held at arm’s length.
Dr. Wolff turns the light over Trey’s bed on so high it bounces back off his skin with a pale violet glow, then snaps a breathing mask over his nose and mouth and turns on the pump beside his bed so it fills with medical smoke.
“Portman, your hand,” Lt. Sykes says. Surprise makes the nasal whine to his voice worse. “You’re cut.”
The other man, Portman, glances down at the hand he was using to steady Trey’s arm, raising it toward the light. A scrape stretches across his palm, below the thumb. The skin’s red and irritated in the center, but nothing serious. Around the scrape, a sooty black halo traces the shape.
“You must’ve ripped a glove,” Lt. Sykes says.
“Secondary transfer,” Portman argues, trying to wipe the halo away, but the stain sticks fast. “Doc . . .”
“They’re not in the tissue, yet.” Dr. Wolff rounds Trey’s bed.
“Do something!” Portman screams, grating his skin with his fingernails.
“Don’t!” Dr. Wolff grabs his hand and holds on tight. “Speed your heart and you’ll spread them faster. I need a tourniquet.”
Lt. Sykes rips off his belt, one-handed.
“Keep your other hand clear, or we’ll end up with cross-contamination,” Dr. Wolff warns as he ties off Portman’s hand at the wrist.
They’ve completely forgotten about Trey. None of them are watching when foam starts forming under his breather and the convulsions start again.
I’m out of my hiding place and beside the bed, and I don’t even remember moving.
“Doctor Wolff!” I don’t decide to shout either, but that’s how it happens. “Trey . . . calm down.” I try patting his shoulder, but he seizes up off the bed with the slightest touch. “Trey!”
“Elias, we need you!” Dr. Wolff leaves Portman to Lt. Sykes and returns to Trey’s bedside. Mr. Pace finally reappears from the back room—he’s not happy to see me.
“You can yell at me later, Mr. Pace. Trey’s dying!”
All I can think about is how Anne-Marie will look when she finds out her brother’s dead because of me, too. She’ll hate me; I won’t have anyone left.
“He’s not dying,” Dr. Wolff argues. “The Fade carry a contagion. It was on the bush that cut him. His body’s fighting it.”
He slides his hand beneath the mattress of Trey’s bed, retrieving a cuff he uses to strap Trey’s leg down. Mr. Pace does the same on the other side. They bind Trey’s hands, careful of his forearm.
Trey’s burn begins to weep a slow-moving ooze. Dr. Wolff reaches for a metal bowl off the counter, positioning Trey’s arm over it to catch the runoff. By the time it’s done, there’s about an inch-deep puddle of murky glop mixed with blood in the tray. Dr. Wolff lights a wooden dowel on fire and tosses it into the . . . whatever it is that came out of Trey’s body. It burns quicker than paper, igniting in a brilliant emerald flash that leaves only fine black powder and the scent of decay.
“He’ll be fine,” Dr. Wolff says. “Once it’s burned out, it becomes inert.”
I turn my head back to where Lt. Sykes is still holding on to Portman’s translucent, bloodless hand. If feelings have colors, I’ve just turned chartreuse.
“Stay clear,” Dr. Wolff says to me.
While I watch, he heats a long, flat blade. When it’s glowing, Lt. Sykes and Mr. Pace hold Portman tightly by his shoulders, forcing him down into a chair. Portman wraps his feet around the chair’s legs. He bites down on the towel they put in his mouth, so when he screams, it comes out muffled. All the fingers on the hand with no tourniquet flex, bending back against their joints from the agony of being branded. His feet pound in place along the slick tile, gaining just enough traction to tip his chair. The tendons in his neck pull taut; his eyes pop. And he keeps on screaming.
Dr. Wolff watches the clock with one hand in the air, counting down, and drops it when he says, “That’s enough, let him go.”
Portman slumps, shaking, in the chair. Dr. Wolff pulls the blade away, takes the towel from Portman’s mouth, and uses it to brush new black ash from his hand into another tray.
“Only skin contact,” he says. “It didn’t go deep.”
They all relax like they didn’t just sear a man’s palm with a knife. Lt. Sykes helps Portman to a bed, fitting him with his own mask and light, while Dr. Wolff carts both bins of black ash to the back room. Mr. Pace comes for me.
“I’m sorry,” I say automatically. “I was worried about Trey. Anne-Marie—”
“Does not need to know about this.”
“But—”
“Marina, we don’t tell you not to do things and not to go places because we’re horrible. We’re trying to keep you safe, so what you saw doesn’t become a necessity for more people. If you constantly do the opposite of what you’re told, it’s harder for us to do that. Go to first meal and let us handle this. There’s no need to mention the Fade at all. It would just worry people.”
“But what about Anne-Marie and her mom?”
“I’m going to tell Dominique myself. Annie can wait, but I promise she’ll be told.”
“Thanks, Mr. Pace,” I say. “And I really am sorry.”
“Stop apologizing and start paying attention.” He taps my forehead with his finger. “Now get out of here before I decide to tell Honoria you were prowling around where you weren’t supposed to be, again.”
That’s all the motivation I need. One run in with Honoria’s enough for the day. I leave Trey to our teacher, and start the walk down the brown line to the Common Hall. Halfway there, I remember that Trey’s catastrophe wasn’t the only one I’d witnessed in the hospital. Not only do I have to get through first meal with Anne-Marie, but I have to face Tobin, too.
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