Chapter 10

(Bo)

It hurt. Hot water on snow frozen skin. Bo knew it would hurt eventually.

It always did.

She was prepared. This feeling of flames all over one's fingers burning through flesh and bone after touching ice with bare hands for too long. It was almost impossible to bend them and even harder to stretch them out again.

"You have five minutes to clean up your mess!"

His growling voice pierced through the hallway before he closed the bathroom door. He was waiting on the other side, staring on the clockhand of his black Italian Panerai-Luminor watch.

He always did.

Five minutes to wash off the dirt of her cold blue body. The water seemed to boil her skin. Red spots marked her flesh where the drops plunged on acid like. She held the tiny piece of soap in her hand and started rubbing it over her chest. It felt numb. The only thing she could feel was the persisting pain of her blood trying to get her body temperature out of the state of hypothermia. The thick smell of curd-soap filled the room immediately.

Her clumsy fingers were gilding over red weal and bloody scratches. Some were deep enough to leave scars. Yet again silent reminder of the brunette's mistakes tonight. The water was running down her shaking form and gathered in a pool of brown and red soup on the flagged floor to her feet.

"Four!"

He would continue counting. With that deep and dark voice. Low but unmistaken twanged the word through the thin wooden door. He would keep on letting her know, that she didn't have the time to take a breath. Even though the mission was over. She failed and had to get through the bitter aftertaste. So he kept on counting.

He always did.

Bo had a hard time washing herself. Her hands were shaking more than usually after a hunt in a cold winter's night. Her whole sixteen-year-old body was vibrating. She was angry. Frustration grew inside of her and made it even harder to focus on the work at hand.

It had felt colder this time as well. Colder than it had been before in the forest. In her inner eye, she went through the mission repeatedly. Her naked feet had to sneak soundlessly over an ice-cube-like undergrowth. Fifty minutes had passed before the brunette could make out her mark. She had already been way too late by then. Everything had to be even faster from that point on.

Brown eyes focused. Trained muscles tensed up. The well-oiled machinery was ready to take off. Ready to kill. The young deer in front of her hadn't had a chance. Bo acted fast and silent and within seconds the animal's neck was broken with an almost inaudible crack. It had felt like a matchstick underneath her deft hands.

Only a few minutes later she already headed back to the compound. Not much time had been left to finish the one and a half kilometer that separated her from her destination. One and a half kilometer of thicket and snow-covered landscape.

Without hesitation, she sped up. Bo was running like never before. It almost felt like flying. Adrenalin rushed through her veins. Poisoning her body. Telling her lungs to breath more efficiently, cheering her legs to run faster.

The soles of her feet couldn't feel the ground underneath anymore. They had been numbed for some time by now. Her brain delegated on autopilot. The priority clear. She had to make it this time. She couldn't fail again. Not twice a week. She couldn't go through the torture of misbehavior again. Not again. Not tonight.

It had been snowing all day. White frozen droplets turned the dreary surroundings into winter wonderland any child would have loved to play in, but it had also turned Bo's path into a slippery playground slide. She wasn't playing. She hadn't been a child for some years anyway. The moonlight couldn't light up her way bright enough for her otherwise night trained vision to see the thick stamp of an old rotten tree a few meters ahead.

In the blink of an eye the brunette's left foot hit the barrier and it disturbed her greyhound-like run. She stumbled forward over the dead wood. Her attempt of trying to steady her fall with her right foot went literally downhill. The hunter stepped on a pond of thick mud under a blanket of rotten leaves and slipped. Her heart skipped a beat when she fell into a bramble. Its branches embraced her pajamas covered body. Thrones sharp like tiny needles with bards ripped through the clothes and pierced through her soft skin.

The brunette forced herself to get up again. Wet clothes only meant an even colder way back. Her right ankle must have twisted while she was falling. When she tried to put weight on it, a thunder of pain shot through her calf up to her thigh.

Bo looked up into the night sky. She didn't make a sound. The silence of the night clutched like a chain around her throat. When she closed her eyes, a sharp breath escaped her lungs. A single sob made its way out of her vocal chords. Bo was trained to suppress pain or at least to hide it well. A tear was running down her reddened cheek. Not because she was hurt but because she wouldn't make it in time anymore.

She had failed. Again.

"Three!"

Bo shook her head. She had to get out of the train of thoughts. For now, she needed to clean and patch up. She would have enough time to go through the mistakes she made. Another twenty-four hours of isolation without food and only a rationed amount of water in a bright room where the light never went out. They called it 'the white room'. They didn't want its visitor to know the time of day.

"Two!"

She needed to hurry and turned the water off even though she wasn't done showering yet. The soap would dry on her skin eventually and leave her scratching herself with no end. Her body felt heavy. Wobbly legs walked over to the first aid kit that was lying on the ground close to the door. For once she was relieved that the room was small.

"One!"

Time flew by way too fast and Bo was way too slow to adapt to the speed limit. With shaky fingers, she fiddled package after package open that she needed to clean her bruises and cover her cuts.

"Ouh…."

She tried hard to keep it inside. The ache, the sorrow, her distress. His hand was lingering on the doorknob. She could hear his grip tighten. Only seconds separated her still naked self from being dragged downstairs. It was either throwing on some clothes that waited neatly folded on the chair to her left or continuing first aid and risking staying in her Eve-costume until she would be let back into her dorms.

The thought wasn't even finished when she felt the cold air draft of the door being opened on her wet skin. She closed her eyes and waited for what was about to come.

"I know what you are about to do."

Bo's eyes flew open when her ears made out the whispered words. Irritated of the sound of a female voice she looked around and found her very much adult self in a bed instead of the shabby bathroom. She was fully clothed and when she touched the spots she patched up only seconds ago, she found nothing but a small white line in her otherwise scarless upper arm.

The moon was shining bright again tonight. It was the only light in the room. The man on the moon must have meant it well, although Bo would have preferred the dark blanket of the night for her way out of the loony bin.

"I'm still in the hospital, aren't I?"

A pair of piercing ice blue eyes were staring back at Bo in the corner of the room. The young Russian she shared her room with, sat still on the small window sill.

"Very much, yes."

With a deep breath of relief, the brunette sat up and leant back on the headboard. She must have fallen asleep after talking to the doctor.

"What time is it?"

She needed to clear her head and prepare her escape. There was no time to rest. How could she have fallen asleep?

"Dunno."

The younger woman slid down from her seat and with her back to the wall she walked back to her side of the room while staring at the brunette.

"What did you mean? You know what I'm about to do?"

The other patient stopped in her tracks. Her hands flat on the wall next to her thighs.

"It means what it means, what it means."

She said with a small voice staring daggers towards Bo.

"I knoooow."

She whispered, leaning forward away from her safe spot in the dark. The shine of the white plate in the sky framed her face and let her blue eyes glow mystically.

The brunette stood up from her bed and walked towards the black-haired woman. She stopped within an arm's reach and mirrored the other patient's standings position.

"Kenzi, right?"

Bo's voice remained soft and calm. The other woman nodded slowly.

"So, Kenzi. Let me ask you my question differently. What do you know?"

A small smile tickled around the corners of Keni's mouth.

"I know who you are. I know what you are."

The brunette kept her cool, but on the inside, she was flabbergasted.

"I see. And what would that be?"

The young Russian stepped sideways and danced around the room humming silently. She spun around and around on her heels and swung from side to side. Bo shook her head and stared to the floor.

"I see."

Her hands went through her open hair. The dancing girl's voice grew louder and her dance wilder. So that was what insanity looked like.

"I'm not insane!"

A shriek voice broke through the dark in the room. The humming stopped as fast as it had begun. When Bo looked up in shock, still asking herself if she had said those words out loud while questioning her own sanity, the smaller woman had somehow made her way next to the brunette.

Kenzi reached out and barely touched Bo's right ear. Her forefinger traced the path of the brunette's earlobe along the outer ear and paused half way up.

"You can hide it, but you can't hide it."

"What?"

Bo turned her head. Her patience had run out. She didn't have time for that.

"I can see. I can see you. I can see it."

"Okay, Kenzi. Just leave me alone. See whatever you want to see and know whatever you think you know."

When Bo was about to take a step, Kenzi grabbed her arm with the same hand that just a second before invaded her personal space.

"You can let your nice brown hair grow and hide it away, but I can still see the mark of the creature you are. They built you well. Strong."

"The heck…"

Bo shook her arm free. Before she could do anything else the black-haired girl pointed her forefinger out again and touched the space on her scalp about two centimeters away from her ear.

"It's still there."

"The fuck!"

Bo pushed the other woman away.

"Don't you dare touch me again!"

Kenzi smiled mischievously.

"You don't know, do you?"

Bo watched the woman in front of her.

"What in hell are you talking about."

Her voice was low and angry.

"Your designers."

"My what now?"

Kenzi grew serious again.

"The people who caught you and fought your soul until there was nothing left but the machine in front of me."

"You don't know nothing!"

Bo walked to the other side of the room. That child's play had to end now. She opened her closet and grabbed the little she had stored and put it on her pillow. She needed to get to her bag back.

"You need a key to get your bag."

Bo froze.

"Okay creep. Stop it! You can't possibly know what's going on in my head!"

Kenzi found her place on the other side of Bo's bed.

"No, that would be weird."

Bo nodded.

"Yes, it would."

"What did you feel when you killed that deer on that cold night? Or was the little bit of humanity that was left in you already dead?"

The brunette stared into the blue eyes in front of her. That was impossible.

"Who are you?"

"I'm special."

"Like in crazy?"

"Like in gifted."