Three days later, Marten Warwick, Marcus Jensen, Wallon Smith, and Ternce Corley entered the auxiliary showers after the evening training session. Most of the trainees used the main locker room showers after training, but Marten didn’t like undressing among the commoners. So, with the help of a communiqué from his mother’s office, he’d managed to procure the private use of the auxiliary showers, and he’d generously decided to share his privileges with the members of his crew. It wasn’t a huge perk, but it helped reinforce their loyalty to him, adding an extra aspect of eliteness that some members lacked in their home lives.
“Her face looks even worse today!” Ternce laughed as he high-fived Jensen.
“And I thought she couldn’t get any uglier,” Wallon Smith chimed in.
Marten raised a hand dismissively. “Violet Weaver may be a lot of things, boys, but ugly is not one of them… With or without a black eye.”
The smiles momentarily disappeared from the other three trainees’ faces.
“Still, it does look good on her…” Marten added, and the laughter returned.
They disrobed and entered the communal showers. The doors slid closed behind them. Steam quickly filled the tiled shower room. Marten reveled in the warmth of the water as it soothed his aching muscles. “Nothing like a good soak after a hard day’s training, eh boys?”
He received a round of affirmations and continued his enjoyment of the heat. Moments later, he felt the temperature rise unexpectedly.
“Alright, who’s the wise guy?” he asked, turning around and waiting for one of the others to fess up to playing the prank. Instead he got only indifferent responses and shrugs.
“We didn’t touch it,” Jensen offered with a grin that he hoped would appease their unofficial leader.
Marten didn’t know that he believed them, but he continued bathing anyway, adjusting the cold intake to counterbalance the heat. He managed to scrub for several more seconds before the burning sensation returned. This time it was worse. His mind raced to the worst thoughts imaginable as he stared at a spot on his forearm. He concentrated his attention there, trying to determine whether or not his reddening skin was scalding from the hot water, or if something else was at play here. His vision grew blurry, and he teared up, blinking continuously in an attempt to clear his sight.
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He tried to return his attention to the patch of skin on his forearm, but something was wrong with his vision–his eyes wouldn’t focus. Instead of smooth skin on his forearm, he saw only bubbles and ripples, like there was a semi-transparent bed sheet draped over his burning skin.
He ran the fingers of his other hand over the ripples on his forearm and felt not the smooth skin he expected his eyes to see, but the bumps and wrinkles that he did see.
He cried out as he realized there was nothing wrong with his vision–there was something deathly wrong with his skin.
He slapped for the shower controls with panicked hands and managed to turn the water off after several clawing attempts. He expected to find instant relief, but instead found that the searing pain persisted, if not increased.
Marten was dimly aware of the cries of his friends around him when he began to cough. With each cough his lungs struggled to take in enough oxygen, which caused his diaphragm to spasm, which in turn produced stronger impulses to cough again.
In the corner of his eyes, Marten saw Jensen dropped to the floor of the steam-filled shower room. Jensen writhed around, his face red and filled with panic, his skin covered in boils, looking as though it might slough off with the barest of touches.
Marten's lungs screamed for more air, and in the midst of the agony of his own burning skin, he nearly dropped to the floor like his fellow compatriots. It made a kind of sense after all… the brain saw the similarities between the steam from the hot water and the smoke from a fire and was driven to seek more oxygen close to the ground.
But amidst the screeching of his friends, the burning of his skin, and the shortness of breath in his also burning lungs, Marten had a moment of clarity. He had to escape from the situation entirely, not chase his shallow breath down to the floor in the hopes of finding a little more oxygen.
He scrambled for the door, nearly tripping over Wallon or Ternce–he couldn't tell–so badly was the skin of their faces burned by some invisible fire that raged all around them. When he reached the door he slapped madly at the controls on the wall, his lungs felt as though they would burst. And nothing.
He frantically tapped the controls again, and then pounded on it with his fists in a desperate attempt to activate the opening of the doors, but they remained closed. His vision began fading, darkness creeping in from the periphery, like entering a tunnel. He was only briefly aware of his body collapsing to the floor as he lost consciousness.