Chapter Six #3
Landon seemed too preoccupied with their own worries to talk, and for once, Isaiah was fine with that.
It felt wrong to chat mindlessly while Hilker sat alone in the lab, the measured beep of his heart monitor and the slow, steady sound of his breathing the only sign that his concoction hadn’t killed him.
For a time, Isaiah read aloud from one of the cozy mystery novels Hilker had brought, and Landon tackled a chapter of nonsense from a ridiculous philosophical tome after, but neither of them were paying much attention to the words, and when they descended into silence again, Isaiah barely noticed the change.
He settled the side of his head against the wall, with his blanket wrapped around his shoulders, and watched Hilker through his open doorway, feeling every blip of the scientist’s pulse as though it was a part of him.
Hilker thumbed through a worn novel—this one spy-oriented—between jotting notes on a pad.
He ate a granola bar and drank a can of diet soda.
After a bit, he leaned his head back and closed his eyes.
The steady tune of the heart monitor beeped onward.
Hilker shifted once, then again, wrapping his arms across his chest. Slowly, he began to shiver.
He didn’t seem to be exhibiting any other signs of a fever—no sweat, or altered complexion, or physical distress—but he also hadn’t moved much in hours, and the lab was set at an agonizingly chilly temperature.
Isaiah fingered the blanket around his shoulders, pressing it to his nose and inhaling its lingering coconut scent. He chewed on his lower lip.
Before he could think better of it, he stood and crossed the lab, his bare feet so quiet on the cold floor that as Isaiah laid the blanket across his chest, Hilker startled, the beat of his heart jumping.
His brow knit together and he stared at Isaiah like he was seeing a ghost, with confusion and concern and something almost like fear. It set an ache in Isaiah’s chest.
“It’s called a blanket. It protects vulnerable humans from the cold,” he explained.
Hilker gave a little snort, but he finally returned to himself as he pulled the ends of the blanket over his shoulders. “How miraculous an invention.”
“It seems it doesn’t just take a genius to invent such a thing, but also to remember to use one.
” Isaiah settled on the lip of the table.
The heart monitor beeped in the background, but this close, he could sense the pulse of Hilker’s blood alongside it.
His mouth watered, and he swallowed down the desire as forcefully as it had come. “How do you feel?”
“Physically indistinguishable from normal.”
That was a coverup if Isaiah had ever heard one. And he’d heard plenty from Justin. “And mentally?”
“Absolutely existential.” Hilker smiled, too many teeth and too little joy. “You?”
“It’s just another day in paradise for me.”
Hilker snorted again. “Just another day in hell, you mean.” He tipped his head back, and his gaze detached upon the ceiling. “All of my houseplants are dead.”
It seemed like such an abrupt shift, until Isaiah realized— Ah. “You’re working for Vitalis-Barron during the day, and here at night. No rest for the wicked, it seems.”
Hilker gave Isaiah an annoyed look, but only pulled his blanket tighter around himself. “I have my reasons to do what I do.”
“Sure.” Now it was Isaiah’s turn to make a distasteful noise. “Reasons like Justin and his medication. Have you used your science to blackmail anyone else for their health and life, or just him?”
Isaiah expected resistance—either denial or arrogance—but instead, Hilker just looked tired.
“You don’t want the answer to that,” he said.
“If I tell you that it was only Justin and Clementine Hughes who I’ve hurt in this way, then the act was malicious against your loved ones and I am your mortal enemy, but if I tell you that I’ve made a similar play a dozen times, then I’m a perpetual monster.
Just paint me the villain and be done with it. ”
Paint me the villain. Isaiah’s heart thrummed over the sound of Hilker’s monitor, drowning out the slow, steady consistency of the man’s unbothered emotions. “Do you think you’re not one?”
“I am what I do, and I have done many things.” Hilker shrugged.
“What that makes me isn’t for me to decide, only what I do next.
” His hand crept out from under the blanket, and for a moment Isaiah thought Hilker was reaching for him.
Isaiah’s stomach flipped, his skin lighting.
But Hilker tapped the notebook with his research recordings instead.
“And this is what I’ve chosen to be doing right now. ”
Isaiah wasn’t sure how to take that; it was so truthful, so committed, not heroic or villainous, just…
there. Hilker had done terrible things, and what he was doing currently—testing a serum on himself before Isaiah—wasn’t one of them, and that both meant something and absolutely nothing at all.
Each moment was a choice, for better or worse, but that insinuated that no great or magnificent choice could resolve all the terrible ones. They each stood on their own.
And from that, there was always the freedom to take better actions, and always the freedom to take worse ones, too.
With the way his body kept stirring around Hilker’s nonsense, Isaiah had a feeling he was heading for the latter.
Hilker picked up the little clock timer sitting off to one side. With a tiny smirk, he glanced at Isaiah. “Well, I’m alive still. Let’s see whether it has cleared my bloodstream yet.”