The Hollow (Rose of the Dawn Series Book 2) (2 page)

“I advise you
not to run away. Do not even think of running away,” she whispers and I avert
my eyes. When I look back up, all I see in the hallway is bright whiteness.

Clipboard under
her arm, she heads back toward the door.

“Where am I?” I am
able to get out before she leaves. She turns around and smiles. She doesn’t
answer before leaving the room.

Where am I?
I wish it were
brighter. My eyes are having trouble adjusting to all this darkness and they
want to be closed now that I have control over whether or not they are open. I
try to pick up my leg because I don’t think I can feel it, but it’s too heavy
and it won’t budge.

Something
squeaks and then creaks. Something bumps against the ground and is moved
against the wall. The blinds are pulled open. Brightness floods the room.

In a gown
similar to my own, another patient stands in front of me at the bottom of the
bed. He’s skinny, almost scrawny, from what I can see. He has thick, wavy, brown
hair. In this low light his skin looks green.
Is he sick?

“They like to
keep some of us in the dark. You like it bright, don’t you? I do. I’m lucky. I
get sunlight all hours of the day.” he speaks as he walks away from the window,
not waiting for my answer.

“Who are you?” I
manage to get out. He seems much smaller than me. I’m not scared of him.

“I’m Leland. You
can call me Leland.” He bows and as he comes back up, he flashes a smile. He
has a mouthful of straight, white teeth.

“Who are you?” My
words are back, but slow to form.

“Just another
patient here in The Hollow.”

I gasp.
What’s
The Hollow?
My body reacts with a shiver I can’t stop.

Leland
continues, “there’s a bunch of us kept under lock and key in this place. We
heard someone new was admitted, so I decided to take a chance and check you
out. Who are you?”

He takes a look
at the chart at the base of the bed and reads aloud.
What’s on the paper?
How come my screens aren’t activating?

“Rosamund Campbell.
Female. Seventeen years old–”

I turned 17?

“- Height.
Weight.” He stops. “Oh, look at this. Very interesting.” Leland looks back and
forth from my chart to me, from me to my chart.

“You’ve got some
pretty special blood, Rosamund Campbell. Type AOA negative. Would’ve never
guessed from the looks of you. You’re kinda small for such a big, powerful
bloodtype.”

He tries to lift
up my bedsheets from the bottom. “Let’s see where they gave you the tell-tale
tattoo,” he talks to himself. I swat his hand away and hold the sheets down. I
can move my arms! If I could use my legs, I would kick him.

“Oh don’t worry,
Roz – or do you prefer Rosie? I’m not going to hurt you. You’re not my type if
you know what I mean.”

“Rose.” I don’t
know if I know what he means.

“Rose, huh. I
kinda like Roz myself. You look much more like a Roz than a Rose and it goes
way better with Rosamund. Do you care if I call you Roz?”

“Uh-uh,” I shake
my head, still clutching the sheets. I’ve pulled them up closer to my chest. If
my arms work, I better use them.

I am beginning
to feel a dullness that radiates down my arms from a pain in my back. There’s a
numbness in my legs, too. I can’t feel them.

“Legs are still
paralyzed. I’ve been there before. They drug you for your brief stay in the
morgue once you’re presumed dead. It’s not enough for you to OD. By the time it
wears off, you’re stuck with one heck of a recovery.”

I was inside the
morgue.
Was I dead?

“Movement and
feeling in the arms comes back first and then eventually your legs will be
under your control again. I could tell, you’re arms jerked too much when you
pulled up the sheet. It’ll all wear off soon.” He pats my legs, though I still don’t
feel it. His hand leaves an impression on the bed.

“What hospital
is this?” My throat is sore.

“It’s a hospital
of sorts, I guess you could say.” Leland walks over to the window. I can’t tell
what he’s looking at from here, if anything. “But not the Imperial Hospital, if
that’s what you’re hoping. It used to be a hospital for the criminally insane.”

“The Hollow?” I
get out.

“It eventually
became state-sponsored art so to speak. Government funded and then forgotten.
People locked up were locked in. It was vandalized and abandoned—”

My visions.

“And then it was
bought by a developer who turned it into a state-of-the-art facility for supposed
scientific advancement. All private doctors and scientists. All private
donations.”

“And everyone
locked inside?”

“Became human
test cases. The Imperial Bead turned a blind eye. Better than having to do
something with them.”

“Human testing?
The Hollow?”

“The Hollow. The
nurse didn’t call it that, did she?”

“Uh-uh,” I shake
my head. “You did.”

“No. No, she
wouldn’t. That would mean she was admitting to it being something other than
what it purports to be. The Hollow makes it all sound very mysterious though,
doesn’t it? There are ghosts here for sure. Shells of people that had souls and
such. An empty, hollow place. Lots of empty in here.”

“I-I-I can’t,” I
stutter. “I-I-I can’t—”

Leland looks at
me. “Take your time. There’s no rush.”

“I can’t be
here!” I blurt out. Waves of panic come and go like a tide. “What’s going to
happen to me? What is this place? Why am I here?”

Leland flops
down on my bed, stretching out and over my legs. I still can’t feel anything.
“You’ve never heard of it?”

“No,” I shake my
head, squinting. The sun streams in the window. As the talking tires me, the panic
diminishes.

“It’s pretty
much a non-space. Like an area that, let me correct what I said - an area that
no one wants to know about. The Hollow puts up a good façade with support from
influential people and investments from high-powered businesses, but it’s a
whole other story here on the inside. Not a nice place. Human testing. A
medical wasteland. Not a nice place at all. Anyway, no one knows we’re here. No
one knows you’re here.”

My mind is
blank. I can’t process this.
No one knows I’m here.
My legs jerk up,
kicking Leland in the side. He yelps, sitting up, rubbing his ribs.

“Oh don’t
worry,” he notices the concern on my face. He takes my hand. It’s warm and
comforting. My whole body tingles and my legs relax. “Someone will find out
we’re in here.”

“Someone who?”

“Someone from
the Imperial Bead. Once they know, it’ll just be a matter of time.” His voice
lacks the confidence from before.

“You’re just
saying that to make me feel better,” I say.

“Is it working?”
He smiles.

I nod my head.

“Wait till you
meet the gang, Roz. You’ll love them!”

“How many more
of you are there?” I ask, glad to know we’re not alone.

“More of me?” He
pauses, I think for effect. In this place it’s kinda creepy. “You mean more of
us. There are two groups of people here in The Hollow. Doctors, nurses, and
attendants who are here willingly and then all of us who are here against our
will: service patients who do duties around The Hollow, the disappeared and the
regeneratives.”

“What’s the
difference?” I ask. I shake my head. I don’t understand.
What are they going
to do to me?

“I am a
regenerative and am administered one test at a time. The disappeared are tested
mercilessly. Regeneratives are not. We are variables. We are only one factor in
their investigation. The disappeared are human guinea pigs. They’re tested all
the time in every way possible.”

“Why me? Why am
I here?”
I know why. I’m a regenerative.

“You are a
complete and total regenerative and something else. The Hollow hasn’t seen one
of you in a long time,” he pauses to think.

“Something
else?” I ask.

“You were shot,
right?”

“Yes.” My skin
prickles. I can feel where the gauze is taped to my back.

He gets up from
the bed and frantically taps on a screen. Only one of them lights up. An
anatomical picture of my body. An X-ray. It doesn’t look like me, but my name
is above the scan.

“See?” He asks.

“See what?”

His fingers
press against the screen and widen. He swipes left twice, the body spins
around. His hand taps on a point.

“That’s your
back. You’re lower back.”

“But there’s
nothing there.”

He swipes the
screen and while the black and white outline of my body, my ribs and bones are
still there, white specks are all around my midsection. There must be at least
two dozen.

“That is where
you were shot.” He points to the smatter of white dots. “Now look again.” He
goes back to the first X-ray.

“It’s all gone.”
The white specks are no longer there.

“That’s because
it’s all healed. You’re all healed within a matter of days.”

“Days? No.”

“Yes!” he
corrects. “In this respect, you’re not like the rest of us regeneratives.
You’re not only regenerative, but you’re a healer.”

A healer. I knew
I was regenerative. JJ knew that, too. He’s the one who told me. But a healer.
“What is that?”

My head gets
heavy. A thick fog wraps around my brain.

“You are one of
us. You’re special like we all are, but in your own unique way. While we can
all regenerate, you can heal. That’s why they want you. You’re super-human,
Roz. It’s in your blood. Literally.”

“Everyone here
is regen—”

“Yes, ma’am.
Everyone. The Hollow has made it their sole mission to capture anyone and
everyone like us. They’ve got the financial backing and that is very
motivating.”

“What will they
do with me?”

Leland paces by
the window. His movement leaves trails of bright colors. Like a beacon in the
fog that is my mind. Pink, yellow, blue.

“Test you.
Harvest you,” he pauses. Looks up at the sky. “Allow you to heal and then test
you again. See how they can use you.”

“You mean
torture. They’re going to torture me!” My voice squeaks and my pulse races. My
neck sweats. “Have they tortured you?”

“Yes and no. In
my own way I’ve undergone numerous tests, but only one at a time. I’m not any
worse for wear. Really. I shouldn’t be scaring you like this.”

I try to manage
a smile, but I can’t force my face to move.

“Ease your mind,
though. I don’t think it will suit them to do anything like that to you. I
don’t think that torture will be on their To Do list. You’re too important to be
abused like some of the others. Like the disappeared.”

“What do they do
to them?” I can’t avoid the question.

He doesn’t
answer. Just stares out the window. I’m glad he doesn’t answer.

“How long have
you been here?” I ask.

“Who knows for
sure. I keep track, but only know how long it’s been based on the seasons and
the position of the sun when we can see it. As far as I can guess, I’ve been
here for four full seasons, so that would be two years. Summer and winter.
Summer and winter. No more than two seasonal years as far as I can tell.”

By the looks of
it outside, it must be almost winter. Or spring. The tree branches cast shadows
on the walls. There are no leaves. I have no idea how long I’ve been anywhere
now, but I know I’ve only been here days.

“Shhh,” Leland
has moved back from the window to my bed. He crouches down, both hands on the
mattress.

“What is it?” I
whisper.

“I’ve got to go.
She’s coming back.” He pushes away from the bed and slides to the baseboard
beneath the windows. He pulls out the ornate iron grate, only 2 feet by 2 feet
square and slips into the wall, squeezing his shoulders through, his legs
sliding in behind him. Turning around, I can see his head poke out before he
brings the grate back into place.

“Wait,” I am
able to sit up straighter. My voice isn’t as weak and the fog in my brain is
lifting. “Will you, will you come back?”

“Hush. I’ll come
back. You’ll see me again. Don’t mention anything to your nurse. No questions.”

The door opens
and the white nurse strides in, clipboard in hand. She stops short when she
sees my screen on. My body in X-ray spinning on the wall. She walks over to my
chart, taps two fingers on the wall screen, the rest of them lighting up, and
then looks at the open blinds. Instead of saying anything, she jots something
down on the clipboard. She minimizes the window.

She moves over
to my bedside and inclines the bed so I am at a 90 degree angle. She reaches
for my arm, moves the gown away and scans the bar code. My records are back up
on the screen. She lets my arm go. It drops back on my lap. She takes my wrist
and times my pulse. The milliseconds tick up on the wall.

“You are getting
feeling back, I see.”

Don’t say
anything to anyone.

She puts down my
wrist and pulls a syringe from a pocket on the front of her skirt. It’s already
full. She taps out air bubbles, holding it to the light.