“How long do you think this’ll take Felix?” Amy asked, her voice still cold. I’d had to force her to even think about letting him help her. It had been three days since the warehouse and she still wasn’t fully recovered from the silver bullet, two of which she’d spent lying dead in our room with a knife in her heart. Reviving her had been so surreal, not at all like it felt when I revived.
“That all depends on how much metal you want to remain in your bloodstream, dear.” Felix was nothing like he’d been the first time I saw him. He was just as cold as Amy was, and I got the feeling he might have actually made things worse had both Dante and Hope not insisted he help. “The filtering process is slow and the more you fight it the harder it will be.”
I hadn’t expected Dante’s request for the bullets to have anything to do with Amy. Apparently Dante had given them to Felix to analyze and create a solution for Amy, and the odd case anyone in the house was ever shot with one again. Felix’s solution was a complex looking machine that looked like it pumped the blood through it and filtered out the silver then returned it to the body. I’d heard of people doing something similar when donating blood plasma. I imagined this would be much more painful.
“Just stick the needles in and turn the stupid machine on.” Amy held out both arms and Felix stuck a needle attached to a tube in each. Each tube led to a different end of the machine, which looked oddly like an old timey cash register, and held out a small capsule for Amy to take. “What will this do?”
“It is a poison of sorts, completely harmless to one such as yourself. It will increase your heart rate and make things move a little more quickly.” Amy took the capsule and swallowed it, never taking her eyes off Felix. I watched carefully as he pushed down several buttons on the machine and it hummed to life. Amy had insisted that I stay for the entire operation in case he decided he wanted to kill her. “Since your body seems to be containing the metal particles in your bloodstream exclusively this will be easier than some of the other possibilities I’d prepared for. Be glad I don’t have to remove and regraft your skin or muscle, I don’t particularly enjoy doing it myself and not a single patient has enjoyed it yet. It was a favorite method of intimidation for Victor though, so I am quite good at it.”
Blood slowly began to move up the tube attached to Amy’s right arm and into the machine. I could see her jaw clench in pain but she refused to show any other sign that she was suffering at all. How she managed to stay focused enough to ignore the pain was beyond me, then again I had yet to be poisoned. So it might not have actually been as bad as I was making it up to be. She might have still been angry that she had ended up going to Felix for help and nothing else. She seriously seemed to hate the guy. I was about to flat out ask but the second I looked at Amy and opened my mouth to speak Felix interrupted me.
“I don’t think you want her to open her mouth, Samantha. She’ll be in quite a bit of pain for a good while.” He paused to watch as blood began to flow out the opposite end of the machine and into Amy’s other arm. “I know I don’t want to hear her scream, probably about as much as she doesn’t want to be hearing the sound of my voice right now. Unfortunately she’ll just have to deal with it for the time being. Perhaps her anger will help her cope with the pain.”
“Maybe I can ask you something then?” I was still debating whether or not I trusted Felix enough to answer a question honestly. He seemed much more secure and open now that he wasn’t panicking over a nearly dead Dante. Asking couldn’t hurt.
“Ask away my dear, I have nothing better to do than answer your questions seeing as I’m stuck here while the operation is in progress.” His slightly moody reply made me hesitate, but I could tell he wasn’t going to be completely unresponsive.
“Why do you two dislike each other so much?” Amy grunted in pain as I asked but otherwise remained silent.
“She dislikes me much more than I dislike her. I merely dislike that she dislikes me. It’s hard to hold a grudge for as long as she has, and I’m impressed it’s lasted this long.” Felix sighed, I got the feeling his side of the story was twisted. “All I did was ruin her mortal life and end up giving her an immortal one by accident. I was foolish back then, thinking I wanted to live forever. I won’t deny that I’ve enjoyed my time but there are only so many islands where you can relax on the beach and watch the ocean.” He glanced at me like he thought I might understand. I didn’t.
“So what did you actually do?” I really didn’t want to go behind Amy’s back but I didn’t want to ask her while she was in pain and likely to scream uncontrollably the second she opened her mouth.
“I was an actual doctor… a long time ago, and I saved the life of girl named Agatha. It was an odd job, actually, I was hired for my mind and given whatever resource I could possibly use to save her. In return for my service I was promised that my lifespan would be extended to match hers. I was already nearing the end of the average lifespan and I thought a few extra years would be nice. Then I thought, what if I could live forever? The girl’s father had made such a deal with another man, and my deal with the father had shown me just what sort of things he was capable of. So I made a proposal to the father, a prosperous gentleman by the name of Victor, asking if I might share the same eternity as him. He rejected my proposal, content with his daughter’s mortal life and her ability to continue to live and die like every other normal person.” His expression had progressively become more angry as he told his story when it suddenly relaxed as he paused. His voice became calmer as he continued. “So I devised a plan. He clearly disliked me. The only reason he had extended my life at all was as a courtesy, a thank you for a miracle. The miracle that saved his daughter who he would do anything for, whose life mine was now tied to. So surely if she became like her father, immortal, so would I. With this in mind I approached a girl, starving on the side of the road with her sick brother, I promised the girl that if she did something for me I would save her brother’s life and assure his return to good health. She agreed without asking what it was I wanted her to do, the thought of saving her brother more important than her own fate. I asked her to kill Agatha. If she neared death her father would save her as he had been saved and I would live forever.” He laughed, the sound sent a shiver down my spine. “And it worked.”
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“So you’re the reason she became a collector, Hope became a contractor, and it’s your own fault that everyone hates you.”
“When you live forever you make enemies, they can’t touch me though, not so long as they care about Hope’s life. The contract works both ways, if you kill one of us you kill both of us. It’s despicable, and I’m okay with that.” Amy growled at him again, but didn’t move otherwise.
---------------
“That should do it.” Felix exhaled evenly as he pressed down a button on the machine and all the others popped up. The humming stopped and the blood left in the tubes found its way back to Amy. “Do you feel any stress in your pulse? Anything being rejected?”
“No.” Amy’s mouth hardly moved, she’d been holding it closed for so long she might have been stuck. “Not yet anyways. If you say you’re done I’ll believe you. Just because I know you want to be done as much as I do.”
“If I wanted to be done faster, I would have done a poorer job. I actually enjoyed being able to help you. It reminds me of when I was a real doctor.” Something about the way he’d said it gave me the impression he resented what he’d done despite what he’d said earlier.
“Touching.” Amy rolled her eyes before turning to me. “Can we go now?”
“Nothing stopping you from leaving.” I shrugged. “I’m just along for the ride, so lead on.” I motioned towards the door and Amy walked out but I stayed behind as I watched Felix carry away the machine. “Where are you headed now?”
“I was thinking a Mediterranean cruise.” Felix answered over his shoulder. “I think I want some sun after being cramped in this dark hole for so long.”
“Bottle some for me.” I laughed. It might have actually been possible and I didn’t know any better, but I just laughed before I jogged out of the room to catch up with Amy.
“Having a nice little chat with your friend the doctor?” Amy growled. She was intentionally walking faster than necessary just to force me work a little bit harder to catch up. “Don’t get me wrong, I’m not jealous. You can talk to whoever you want, I don’t think we’re actually that close and that you talked to him is not what bothers me. He is a disgusting and vile man, completely self-consumed in his morbid little world where he is the only one that matters. He ruined my life in the worst way possible, and it may have been a long time ago but do not even try to justify what happened or find any kind of redeeming qualities. I do not want to talk or even think about it or him.” I was going to remain silent but something popped into my head.
“But he did save your brother.” Amy stopped suddenly mid stride and I cringed, just waiting to get an earful.
“Yeah. I know.” She was calmer than I had expected. “That is literally the only good thing he has ever done and it only balances out part of what he did to me. I was a decent, moral, albeit poor girl before he dragged me into this mess for his own stupid purposes. If my brother had never gotten sick we would have both ended up living fulfilling lives and creating two healthy family lines. He’s killed hundreds because I never got a chance to live my life and have a family and children and grandchildren.” She had slowly devolved into tears. “So yeah, our family didn’t die out entirely, but half of it never got a chance to even exist.”
“Is that like, permanent though?” I was curious, no one had ever said being a collector was permanent thing. “Can Hope like, un-immortalize you or something?” Unlike contractors, we still had our bodies, so if we got our souls back it made sense that we’d go back to being normal.
“She never would, even though it’s Felix’s fault she still blames me for everything. I could have said no to him and he could have gotten some other schmuck to kill her for him, but I said yes.” She’d gotten angry again. “The worst part is I can’t actually kill him or even hurt him, even though he’d be a lot easier to kill. He has the same stupid protections Hope has that prevent me from attacking her.”
“Well.” I sighed, I really had no place in the story. These were her demons, and it kind of hurt to hear them. I had kind of idolized her and to see her break down was really sad. “At least you’re being honest with yourself.”
“Oh, shut up.” She laughed dryly. “What are you, my therapist?”
“No, but I feel like we should have one of those.” I bet there were contractors that actually had therapists, or had some kind of psychology background themselves. “Or is time our therapist or something stupid like that?”
“That sounds about right. It’s probably more effective to just let us brood than to try and figure out what our problems are.”
“Cheaper too.” I tried to mimic Dante, I don’t think I got the tone down but the quiet creepiness was easy. “That just sounds like something Dante would pop in and say before dragging someone into some ridiculous job.” Amy burst out laughing.
“Well it is.” Dante mumbled. I had actually expected him then and he had not caught me at all by surprise. His slightly offended tone made me laugh. “On both accounts. Cheaper and something I would say. Since you know me so well, however, I’ll just let you have at it then and try and guess where I’ll be dragging you off to next.”
“Well I’ve been stabbed about a million times, burned alive, and beaten to death so far, so probably somewhere where I can freeze to death or drown.”
“I don’t think we can actually freeze to death.” Amy muttered thoughtfully. “I’ve never done it myself so I don’t know but we would probably heal fast enough to avoid it. It is a slow way out and an even slower death to revive from, so I’d rather not test it out.”
“Wrong.” Dante answered flatly. He motioned down the hall. “My office.”