He forced a small smile. It took every ounce of strength he had left. “Good,” he whispered, “I’m ready to join my Esther. It’s been too long.”
She tried to return his smile. It came out more of a grimace. She had to get out of here. Her anger had cooled, leaving her empty and tired. This job had already robbed her of most of her humanity. The last thing she needed was to have to watch an old man get dragged out by agents.
“Please, miss,” Gerald cried, barely louder than a whisper. “I’m ready to go, but please don’t make me go alone.”
Fuck.
Ruby closed her eyes, swallowing the lump in her throat. Even a heartless monster like her couldn’t ignore a plea like that. She walked over, taking his frail hand in hers, feeling the paper-thin skin, the tremble that ran through his bones.
“While I’m still me, do you mind if I tell you about her?”
HALF AN HOURlater, three agents appeared, clad in riot gear. Ruby shook her head, and they shot her a weird look but removed their helmets. One reached for a medical bag and pulled out a needle and IV tubing. Gerald’s eyes drooped as the needle slid into his skin.
“You know,” he muttered, weak but wistful, “you kinda look like her.”
And then he was gone, slipped into unconsciousness, a mercy for one about to burn.
The IV continued to drip as they loaded him into an ambulance-shaped black vehicle. Ruby rode with them to the crematorium, never once letting go of his hand.
Inside, they laid him on the slab, and she watched as they pushed him into the furnace. The heat radiated off the walls, the warmth a gruesome comfort, a sharp contrast to the sterile chill she had expected. Hospitals and funeral homes were supposed to be cold, but this room was balmy, the flames crackling hungrily from within the chamber. The scent of burning wood mixed with something sharper, metallic, and the room hummed with the vibrations of the heavy machinery.
Ruby slumped against the opposite wall, facing the incinerator. The air was thick with warmth, but there was no smell of decay, nothing to signify the end of a life. No phlogiston released. It was as if Gerald had never existed at all.
Her foot tapped against the cool tile, the rhythmic beat the only sign of her anxiety, but she’d promised to be there for him. So she watched, her eyes never leaving the flames.
The agents moved around her, one checking the furnace, another retrieving something large and silver from a bag. The door clicked shut behind them, and Ruby’s foot stilled.
The lock was enormous—industrial, steel, and unlike anything she’d ever seen. It hung heavy on the door, and she stared at it, confusion prickling at the back of her mind. She glanced toward the agent on her left, but they refused to meet her eyes.
Did they think she would try to stop them? Were they worried about someone stealing the body? Was Edward a threat? She sat up and scanned the room, searching for answers, for anything that made sense.
And then, from within the chamber, the screaming started.
CHAPTER TEN
ON AVERAGE, Abody takes three hours to burn to ash. A thermophile can live through almost an hour of that time.
Ruby couldn’t stop hearing the sound of his screams. They echoed in her skull like broken glass dragged across stone, the high-pitched rasp of fear, the guttural rasp of confusion. She pressed her hands against her ears, knuckles white, but the sound bled through, too visceral to block out.
Still, she couldn’t bring herself to leave.
Her back pressed against the cold wall, each breath sticking in her throat like needles. She watched the clock on the wall beside her, its hands creeping in slow motion. Seconds were lifetimes. She tried to count, her vision blurring through the tears, as if focusing on the numbers would change the outcome. The screaming lasted fifty-three minutes.
When it stopped, the silence crashed into her like a wave, suffocating and vast. She gasped, realizing her nails had dug into her palms so hard they left half-moon scars.
An agent had pulled her aside afterward. She couldn’t focus, couldn’t hear anything past the suffocating silence that had followed the screams. “Thermophiles don’t take well to anesthesia,” they explained calmly, too practiced for talking about the death of another. “They wake up within a few minutes without a constant stream of drugs.”
Her throat burned as she tried to ask why they hadn’t kept him under longer. The agent’s smile was sad, distant, asif they’d had this conversation too many times before. “Highly flammable,” they said, an apology without weight.
Ruby had stared, unblinking, as they explained. They had tried a more "humane" method—a wooden pyre where they could administer the drug freely. The word humane stabbed at her, sharp and wrong, like an insult wrapped in velvet. How could burning someone alive, fully conscious, be humane? The bacteria in their body forced them awake every time, wrenching them from unconsciousness into pain, an automatic response to the agony.
The only way out of this life was to burn, to scream, until the brain disintegrated into ash.
The same agent offered to drive her back to her hotel. She declined. Stumbling through the city, her legs had carried her for miles, each step mechanical, disconnected from her body. The city was a blur—lights, colors, sounds merging into one endless hum that clung to her skin like static.
One day, this would be her fate. She would be packed into a metal box, faceless agents sealing her inside. The world would carry on, indifferent. An agent might pop in a headphone to drown out her screams—a minor inconvenience, nothing more. She would be no more than an animal to be put down, her existence forgotten as soon as the fire claimed her.
Her skin tingled, the world around her too loud, too bright, too close. She forced herself to move, each step heavy as if she were walking through water. She pushed through the crowded streets, feeling like she might drown in the noise, until she reached the quiet of the hotel lobby.
