[Disclaimer: All Kingdom Hospital/Dark Tower Saga characters and elements are the intellectual property of Stephen King and/or Lars Von Trier.]
She felt something cold brush the back of her neck as she was writing at her desk. Thinking it was a simple draft, she ignored it. There had always been patches of cold in Kingdom Hospital and not all of them were supernatural. As she felt it again, a voice whispered in her ear. "Mariella." She dropped her pen and turned to face the tall, pale, dark-haired boy... the boy who was not quite dead.
"Paul, where have you been?" she inquired, a mixture of surprise, pleasure, and annoyance in her voice.
"Playing," he said in a low voice, then chuckled.
"They said you were gone," she told him, "that you were all gone."
"They say a lot of things," he reminded her coolly, "and They're usually wrong, aren't They."
"I missed you," she admitted softly.
"Did you?" he asked with dark pleasure. Mariella nodded. "Then why haven't you joined me?"
"I'm not ready—"
"You're afraid," he interjected.
"Yes," she admitted smilingly. He chuckled that low, malicious chuckle of his again. "Did you steal my computer?" she asked him suddenly and he laughed out loud. "I knew it! Paul Morlock, don't you ever ask?"
"Oh, but it's much more fun to take, Doctor Evans," he countered, still laughing.
"Are you planning on giving it back?"
His laughter stopped abruptly. "Um... Dr. Gottreich—"
"Oh, don't tell me he broke it!" she protested.
"No..." he told her. "He used it as a head."
"Did it work?" she asked, intrigued instead of annoyed.
He shook his head. "My mind was somewhere else," he said, his eyes trailing up slowly from her slender ankles to her shapely thighs.
She tugged her skirt down a little, but wasn't discomforted enough to blush. "You sure are hot-blooded for—"
"—someone who has no blood," he finished for her. "I'll bring you your computer back," he conceded.
"If?"
"If you help Dr. Stegman with something," Paul concluded.
"Steg? But you detest Dr. Stegman," Mariella said, confused.
"Revenge makes for very strange bedfellows, Mariella," he reminded her. "Metaphorically speaking."
"Of course," she agreed.
"The Klingerman girl," he began.
"Mona."
"Yes. Mona," he echoed. "She's been moved to Derry Home Hospital."
"Derry... And you can't get to her," she concluded.
"Stegman can't get near her either, but that's not the point, Mariella. We don't want to kill the girl."
"You don't?"
"No..." he said with a hint of impatience at her continuous interruptions. "We want you to heal her."
"It's Flagg, isn't it," she ventured.
"Shh!" he said harshly, laying a finger across her lips. "Of course it is. Now don't call him down on us," Paul whispered. "You're lucky you haven't been made a Breaker so far. If you stop being useful to him on this side, you will be, though. He favors me, but not that much."
"Or else he would have let you kill me by now," she concluded, eyebrow raised.
"Smart girl. Will you do it?"
"Do you really have to ask?" she countered, smiling.
"Touché. Don't you want to know why we want you to heal her?" he asked, surprised by her lack of curiosity on that particular point.
"Well, I know why you want me to heal her," Mariella said. "You want to take the guilt off of Stegman," she deduced, making the sign of the Keepers of the Kingdom with the tip of her thumb in her mouth and her pinkie upraised. "What I don't know is why he wants me to heal her."
"Yes, you do," he said, tapping her gently on the temple with his cold, dead fingers.
"She's a Breaker," she said gravely.
"Very good," he complimented her. "She's not just a Breaker, though, she's the Breaker. The one that can break that last Beam in a single millisecond."
"There are two beams left, Paul," she corrected him.
"Yes, teacher," he said, rolling his eyes. "But only one has to break for the Tower to fall."
She clapped the heel of her hand to her forehead. "Of course."
"Of course," he echoed, looking almost sweet for a moment as he pulled her hand away from her head and kissed her palm, sending a pleasant shiver down her spine. "If you do this, we can be together," he said softly, that penetrating voice of his nearly hypnotizing her with each word. "If you do this, he'll set us free."
"What will happen when the Tower falls?" she asked him. Suddenly Paul Morlock didn't look so self-assured. His eyes widened like those of a lost little boy. "You don't know," Mariella stated. "How can you follow a course if you don't know the end?"
"Come on, Mariella," he countered. "Who ever knows the end of the path they choose?"
"You're right. Of course," she conceded.
"Come," he said, taking her by the hand. "Let's go give Steg a breath of fresh Morning Air."
