Of Royal Descent (18 page)

I stared at the beige wall.  For the moment, my pain had subsided.  I wasn't tired, I'd just woken up.  No tears were forthcoming now that my pity party had come to a close.  There was no one to talk to.  I might have considered self-stimulation
, had I not just finished.  I smacked my lips together, partly out of boredom and partly to break the silence. 
Oh God, was this what I had to look forward to?  And Bradbury said this would stretch out for two weeks?  Awesome.

I rolled back to face the night stand and found the television remote.  I had my choice of three stations:  news, news, or an infomercial. 
Would it kill someone to install HBO?
  I turned the television back off.

My stomach growled
, and I realized I had not eaten anything all day.  I looked around for the time.  An analog clock hung on the wall and told me it was almost 5:30.  The refrigerator looked inviting, but it was too far away. 
Might as well give my surveillance squad something to do
, I thought as I waved at the camera.

Stephen pushed open the door a minute later
, and I wondered if he had been specifically assigned to me. 

"Yes, Mr. Hawthorne?"

"I'm starving.  Would it be possible to eat?"

"Of course.
  What would you like?"

Hmmm.
  "I want a pizza smothered in every type of meat option there is and Mountain Dew."

"I'll make the order," Stephen said, turning to leave.

"Oh, and what are my chances of getting an Xbox in here?"

Stephen smiled.  "They're pretty good.  Let me see what I can do."

I patiently waited forty minutes and was rewarded with Stephen hauling in my requests - one meat-laden pizza, one cold two-liter of Mountain Dew, and one Xbox system. 

He displayed the games he had procured for me with pride. 
Grand Theft Auto IV, Madden NFL 09, Call of Duty: Black Ops
.  I stared at Stephen. 

"Are you kidding me?  You brought me a zombie game?"

Stephen looked panicked.  "It's very popular, Mr. Hawthorne," he stammered.

"Give me my pizza and set up the console," I snapped.

Twenty minutes later, Stephen and I had finished off the last of the pizza and were deeply involved in the committing of larceny and reckless driving.  Every now and then, I would have to stop long enough to press my narcotic button, and I would pass the controller for Stephen to take over.

I got the feeling that Stephen wasn't necessarily an evil guy.  He just had the misfortune of working for an evil boss.  I was the one dying
, and yet I couldn't help feeling sorry for him.

"So what's this
surprise
Bradbury has planned for me?  Is it painful?" I asked while I repositioned myself on the edge of the bed.

Stephen was focused on navigating the streets of downtown on the TV. 
"Uh, no.  He's giving your girlfriend a promotion."

"
What!?
" I practically shrieked, causing Stephen to crash.  He paused the game.  "What are you talking about?"  I demanded.

Stephen cringed under the intense scrutiny.  "Well, I mean, Addy
- she's always worked upstairs with the rehab patients.  Now that you're down here, Edgar is going to offer her a position downstairs as your personal nurse."

My head began to swim. 
Addy worked here.  Addy worked here where they were keeping me and my family hostage.  And Bradbury knew about our date.
  I shook my head in disbelief.

"How long has she worked here?" I asked, unable to keep the sting of betrayal out of my voice.

"A few years," Stephen answered, turning his attention back to the game.  "Kind of surprised she didn't mention it."

I felt like a fool.  All this time, Addy had been another employee here
- just like the ones who had taken part in the unethical testing of my body.  I'd been falling in love with her, and how had she really been feeling about me?  Had it all been part of a grand scheme to get me here?  She had seemed so sincere.  There had to be an explanation, there just had to be. 

The pilot light of hope my mother had been a
ble to ignite within me was flickering, dangerously close to being doused altogether.

I looked at the clock.  It was 7:10.

"What time does she come in?" I asked nervously.

Part of me was scared to see her.  I didn't want my sixth sense to proclaim her guilty of the heinous crimes of secrecy and possible coercion that somehow led me here.  And part of me thrilled at the thought of seeing her
again.  Maybe I was getting worked up over nothing. 
There could be a totally plausible explanation
.

"Night shift comes in at seven," Stephen answered, weaving his torso in sync with his stolen vehicle on the screen.

"Dude, thanks for the console, but you gotta go," I said, easing myself back to the top of the bed so that I could lie flat.  I deployed another round of sweet deliciousness into my blood stream.

Stephen jumped up and turned off the system.  "That's cool.  I get it.  Anything you need before I go?"

I shook my head, causing another swirl of agony.  I pressed the trigger for more drugs, but nothing happened. 
I guess that's the lock out Bradbury warned me about
, I thought.

Stephen pivoted on his heel and exited the room.

I was still trying to rein in my volatile emotions a few minutes later when Addy walked through the door.  I'd had no time to respond.  She came running to me and buried her face in my neck, sobbing.  I was racked with pain, but I didn't care.  My third eye had immediately given me the thumbs up that Addy was to be trusted.  I held her close, and she eased herself to lie down beside me.  She continued to cry, and I rested my cheek on the top of her head.

"Don't cry, sweetheart," I said, brushing her hair back from her face.  This she responded to by increasing the volume and speed of her tears.  I couldn't help but wonder if she wept because I was dying or because I wasn't going to stay dead.

Eventually, her sobs faded into sniffles, and she rose from my chest to look down at me.  She placed her palm on my cheek and raked her thumb across my bottom lip. 

"Oh, Doyle," she said, as another round of tears threatened to spill over.

I pulled her hand to my mouth and kissed her palm.  "It's okay, Addy.  Please don't cry." 

"How is your pain?" she asked.

"Bearable.”

She moved to check the settings on my magic pain dispenser
, and though she looked distressed, she refrained from comment.

"Addy, I need to know how much you know."

She took a deep breath before letting it go.  "Not a lot.  And what I do know was thrown at me.  Until I came into work tonight, I never even knew this floor existed."

"Then let me start at the beginning," I said, taking her hand and guiding her back to bed.

16

A
ddy sat quietly while I explained everything Bradbury had related to me and what I had been through since arriving at the clinic.  She didn't scream, she didn't cry, and she rarely made eye contact with me.  I had no idea what she was thinking.  When I reached the end of my narrative, she stood to examine my analgesic pump for the second time.

"In the last two hours, you've been through enough morphine to last three adult men three days post-op after major surgery.  I don't understand how you're conscious right now or even still alive.  How is your pain now?  Did Edgar say anything about how high I'm allowed to set the pump?"

I furrowed my brow.  This wasn't quite the reaction I had been expecting.

She approached the bedside.  "Lay back, I want to look at what's under these bandages," she said, bringing up her arm in an attempt to remove one of the many gauze pads adhered to my body.

I grabbed her wrist.  "Don't you have anything to say about what I've just told you?"  I stared up at her and saw her eyes glistening with unshed tears.

"If I don't see your wounds, then I can't do my job," she choked out.

"I don't care about my wounds; I care about what you're thinking.  Not as my nurse, but as my girlfriend," I said sternly.

She sucked in a breath.  "As your
girlfriend
, Doyle, I'm very close to slipping into a state of shock.  I know this isn't about me, and I know this makes me sound incredibly selfish, but if I could just have one hour to focus on doing my job, I will be free to be your girlfriend for the rest of the night, okay?"

I released her wrist
, and she walked over to the kitchenette.  She withdrew various medical supplies from one of the cabinets and returned to my bedside.  Now armed with the tools of her profession, she set about removing my old dressings and reapplying new ones.  She began with the largest bandage, directly in the center of my chest.  I gazed intently into her face and saw her blanch when she got her first look at the wound.  She recovered quickly, and her hands moved proficiently over my flesh. 

I
pressed my narcotic button and let the morphine do its job.  Addy glanced at me but almost immediately returned her attention back to my chest.  When she had finished, she moved along to the next invasive testing site and repeated the steps.  In this way she worked until she had finished with my chest, stomach, and both arms.  The silence was driving me insane.

"So, do you ever talk to your patients?"  I asked with no venom to my voice.

A hint of a smile played at her mouth.  "Usually, I do.  But there's an unspoken code between nurses.  In this line of work, there are generally two types of patients we speak to as little as possible:  those that are a pain in the ass and those that grab your ass."

I smiled.  "Which one am I?"

Addy beamed down her radiant smile at me.  "Well, you haven't made one single pass at me, so I'll let you do the math."

I brought my left hand up to grab her b
ottom, but she swiftly side-stepped me.  "Mr. Hawthorne, I am appalled!  That is inappropriate behavior." she scolded playfully.

"I beg your pardon.  I don't know what came over me," I said with my best attempt at mock seriousness.

Addy stepped back up to the bed.  "I still need to do your legs," she said, fighting back a smile.

I feigned shock.  "Are you telling me I need to drop my pants?"

She bit her bottom lip, and my libido shoved my playful side out of the driver's seat.  I might have been dying, but I wasn't dead yet.

"I suppose I am," she said, smi
rking down at me.

This time when the warmth spread through me, it wasn't from the morphine.  "Well now, that all depends.  Are you asking me as my nurse or as my girlfriend?"

She brought her hand to the waist of my clinic-issued pajama pants, and I sucked in air.  The tips of her fingers dipped just below the waistband.  I squirmed, but not from pain.

"I'm asking as your nurse, but if you're very good, your girlfriend will come back to reward you," she said in a breathy whisper.

I removed my pants quickly, letting them fall to the floor.  The comforter still remained intact, covering the bottom half of my body.  She smiled and walked to the end of the bed, taking her supplies with her. 

Pulling back the bottom of the blanket, she exposed my legs up to my knees.  Once again,
the process of wound care began.  When she had finished, she sat beside me on the bed and slowly pushed the blanket up further.  She came to the bandage that covered the incision made by the man wanting muscle tissue.  Tenderly, she dressed that bandage also. 

She had now changed every bandage on me
, and her hour of being my nurse was up.  The blanket lay so that only my groin was covered.  She stretched out beside me in the bed. and propping herself up on her forearms, she kissed me.  Heat rushed in every direction as her tongue slid over mine.  I braced myself for the blinding white light, but it never came.  My sixth sense lazily pushed a thought into my mind.  What had Bradbury said? 
Right now, in the first shade, you pose zero threat.
  Did that mean I also posed no threat to Addy?

I wove my hands through her hai
r, pushing her mouth up so I had access to her neck.  A violent flash of pain gripped me, and I hit the pain button.  Addy tried to shift her weight from me, but I held her in place with my other hand.

"Doyle, you're in pain," she said, once again attempting to withdraw her body from mine.

"If only you knew how much," I smiled into her ear.  "I'm willing to beg."

I pulled back enough to see her smile
, and from the corner of my eye, I caught the camera on the ceiling panning slightly to the left.  I let my head fall back against the pillow while I experienced a variety of emotions, mostly rage.

Addy looked at me, confused.  I sighed and ran my hand through her hair, tucking it behind her ear.

"I forgot about the camera," I said apologetically.

She turned to look behind her.  When she faced me again, she shrugged her shoulders and smiled.  "I'm sure we could work something out with proper blanket placement."

My body screamed to take her up on her offer, but my head refused.  I wasn't willing to share any part of Addy with anyone else, voyeuristic freaks especially included.  I couldn't promise her no one would walk in on us or that the blanket wouldn't slip. 

"I can't, I'm sorry."

I shifted her weight to bring her down beside me and pulled the blanket to cover us both.  My naked body entwined around her scrubs, and we lied there, staring at each other for some time.

"Are you afraid?" asked Addy quietly.  I assumed she was referring to
my dying, or possibly the third shade.

"What I'm most afraid of is hurting you," I answered honestly.

"I never feel safer than I do when I'm with you."

"Maybe right now, but one day soon, I'll change.  And I don't know how much of me will remain.  The selfish part of me wants you to stay with me always, but I know I shouldn't."

"Don't talk like that Doyle.  I'm not going anywhere," she reassured me.

"What kind of life is that for you?  You're young and beautiful.  You can't spend the rest of your life with a caged animal who may or may not ever be able to control himself.  We'll never be able to date.  Sex isn't ever going to be an option as long I'm here, which is probably going to be until the end of time.  I wouldn't blame you if you ran out of here screaming."

"Would you leave me if the situation was reversed?”

“No,” I answered honestly. 
Leaving her would not have been an option, I knew.  I was tied to her, comfortably so, on a level I could not explain. 

My right hand
traced invisible patterns on the small of her back, underneath her scrubs, and she closed her eyes.

“It’s like I only feel alive when I’m with you
– like I’ve been waiting my entire life for the moment we met.  So I don’t care what happens, I will not leave.”

Against my better judgment, I breathed a sigh of relief.  For as long as Addy wanted me, I would endeavor to be worth having.  I might not have any control over shading back and forth from rotting, blue creature to walking, humanoid corpse, but I was going to be the best damn boyfriend she ever had.

The steady, light rhythm of my fingertips on her skin relaxed me as much as it did her.  I soon found my eyelids growing heavy.

"Sleep, Doyle.  I'll stay with you," Addy whispered.

I closed my eyes, and the nightmares of the day faded into the background.  There was only Addy and my lantern of hope.

* * *

When I awoke the next morning, I found I was in a considerable amount of pain from not pushing my pharmaceutical relief button throughout the night.  Addy was up and sitting in a chair at the foot of the bed.

"Good morning," she said as I instilled a round of morphine into my bloodstream. 

"Good morning," I smiled.  "Been up long?"

"Maybe an hour."

I attempted to roll to a sitting position, and Addy rushed to help me.  There was a noise at the door, followed by Bradbury’s entrance. 

"Hope you're well rested.  We have an eventful day planned," he said, walking toward the bed and handing me a plate of food.  I wanted to throw it in his face
but my stomach growled, and I begrudgingly accepted it.  Addy sat beside me on the bed while I ate my scrambled eggs and pancakes.  Bradbury assumed her previous seat at the foot of my bed.

"I trust you kids got along well enough last night?" he asked in his cheerful manner.

"What?  Haven't had a chance to check your perv cam yet?" I said between mouthfuls.

"Oh dear, terribly sorry for the inconvenience.
  But we must maintain a constant visual of all subjects."

Addy hadn't replied to Bradbury, but she held her head high, looking him dead in the eye.

"Today, in light of our agreement Doyle, we are going to try something new."

"Oh goody.
  I was afraid you had forgotten about me," I said flatly.

"Usually we wait until the third shad
e before formal family introductions are concluded."

Scrambled eggs lodged in my throat.

"But you did say
any
test, did you not?"

I swallowed.  I would not give Bradbury the satisfaction of knowing the terror that coursed through me.

I rolled my eyes.  "Am I allowed to eat first?" I said as if I had no other pressing thoughts.

"Of course.
  And you may want get dressed as well.  I don't know for sure, but I suspect the others would take nudity as a sign of disrespect."

Now he had my full attention. 
"Others?"

Bradbury smiled.  "I'm referring to the royals, of course."

I shook my head.  How much more of my own situation did I have yet to learn?  I was having a hard enough time processing the avalanche of information that had already been dumped on me.

At seeing my expression, Bradbury continued.  "Have we not discussed the royals?"  He looked sincerely confused.

"Ah, well, it's quite simple.  The term
royals
is how we refer to those in the third shade.  The nickname caught on a long time ago.  Their blood, you see, is blue - as in blue bloods, as in royals.  It's also a fitting name in regard to how the MZs obey them."

I stared at Bradbury.  "And an MZ would be?"

"There is so much to learn in the beginning.  I forget how overwhelming it can be.  MZ stands for
mindless zombie.
  For lack of a better name, this is what the weakened-strained virus recipients are known as."

"So there are two distinct classes of monsters being held in the underbelly of this clinic? 
Awesome."

"Is this going to put Doyle in danger?" asked Addy calmly, though I could feel the fear emanating out from her.

"Well, that's just it, isn't it?  We don't know," Bradbury said, rising from his seat.  "Once the second and third shades are triggered, royals are driven by their darkest desires.  It's possible they will be able to sense Doyle is turning into one of their own, and nothing of note will occur.  Or, they may see Doyle as something to eat, something to kill, or something to mate with."

"WHAT?!"
Addy and I said in unison.

Bradbury chuckled, "Not all royals are male.  We do have one female in the colony
, and she is every bit as driven by lust as her male cohorts."

"This is wrong.  This is disgusting and immoral!" Addy spat.

"Oh dear.  I was hoping having you as Doyle's nurse would only serve to comfort him, not impede our research.  Doyle seems happy to have you here.  It would be a shame if you would have to leave."

Bradbury's threat hung suspended in the air.  I couldn't speak for Addy, but I was well aware he was threatening her life, not her job.  My teeth clenched
, and I longed for the power of the third shade.  With it, I would have killed him there, in that instant, without a single word between us.