[Otto's POV]
As Mar had instructed, Thomas had guided Otto to "the quarantine room", which should be where Mar had hidden his son. Otto herself thought that that bit of information was actually very disturbing.
At the side of the door hung a little bell with a camera. Thomas flashed a badge before a sensor, but he didn't seem surprised when he wasn't granted access.
"No other choice then," he mumbled and pressed the bell.
"Hello?" Mar's voice asked through the intercom.
"You asked for us, sir?" Thomas asked politely. Mar heaved a heavy sigh. To Otto it sounded as if he already regretted what he was about to say.
"Come in."
A loud click resounded and the door started hissing as the airlock was released right before it slid open.
The first thing Otto noticed as the door opened was the heat that rolled out of the room in waves. It felt as if she was standing in the sunlight on a hot day in the middle of summer, or as if she was entering a sauna. Yet she found this heat comfortable, where the heat of a sauna had a habit of smothering her.
For an instant she was reluctant to enter, but Thomas nudged her gently to go on.
The second thing she noticed, was Mar that was waiting for her behind the quarantine door. He looked nothing like the ultimate business man she'd seen in action two weeks ago. This was a broken man. His hair was a mess, and under his eyes were heavy, black bags. He looked tired and weary, as if he'd been worrying non-stop. He'd shoved his hands in the pockets of his open lab coat and was standing in such a slouchy way that he might develop a hunchback if he kept standing that way.
"Where is Alex?" she asked.
"Of course. That's the first thing you'd say," he sighed. "Not; why hello! Long time no see. Or; you look awful. What happened to you? No. Where is Alex. You've even wandered into the most secure place of a secret facility just to get an answer to that question. It's the only thing that's been on your mind for the past two weeks."
There was something incredibly lonely in the way he said it. For an instant, Otto felt tempted to ask: "Are you, ok?" But before she could, Mar continued.
"Well, search no more!" he said as he pulled one of his hands from his pockets and pointed towards the side of the room. "Because your dear Alex is right there."
As one, Otto and Thomas looked in the direction Mar had pointed. Thomas instantly paled, but Otto frowned as she tried to figure out what she was looking at. Through a window in the wall, she could see a big room with nothing inside it but a table with a big pile of ice on it.
A big smoking pile of ice?
She stepped closer to the window to get a better look. Sure enough, someone was lying inside of the pile of ice. Her heartstring gave a painful tug, and even though she could barely see that there was someone inside, she knew it was him.
"That temperature can't be right," Thomas mumbled incredulously, pointing to one of the displays. It said 531 degrees Celsius.
"That's his body temperature," Mar clarified with a nod.
"Shouldn't we start thinking about evacuating the building then?" Thomas asked after he'd swallowed slowly.
"Not yet, the building can take another 200 degrees Celsius more, and his temperature rises very slowly," Mar answered.
"Is that window lead glass?" Thomas continued to ask. He almost reminded her of a fanboy who got the chance to ask his idol questions.
"It is," Mar answered with a note of amusement to his voice. "But it was an unnecessary precaution since he isn't radioactive."
"You seem to have a good hold on the situation. Are you treating him then?" Otto said the curiosity that popped up in her mind out loud, as it seemed to be "Question and Answer"-time. But she was mistaken. Mar directed a blank look at her and seemed reluctant to answer.
"No, for the moment, we are only containing him," he said. From the awkward way he said it, Otto concluded that even "containing him" was a difficult thing. A soft buzzing in her pocket drew her from her thoughts. Alex's phone had vibrated. When she looked at it, without lifting it from her pocket, another message from Aurora lit up the screen.
"Ask him why he muted the computers warning signal."
When Otto looked up at a display on the wall, it indeed showed a big, angry, red, pulsing warning triangle, but there was no alarm that accompanied the visual.
"What are those warnings for?" Otto asked. Mar looked up in surprise. He almost looked as if she'd caught him doing something naughty.
"Those-" he started, but his voice failed and he had to try again. "That is the artificial intelligence that runs the facility here. It had suggested a treatment, which I evaluated as too risky, but for some reason I can't discard the suggestion. It's strange really. The system has never acted up before."
The phone in her pocket buzzed again.
"Says he! If he'd at least tried my solution, things wouldn't have gotten as bad as they are now. He's just a coward!"
"Hmm," Otto hummed in thought. "Did you name this artificial intelligence system Aurora, by any chance?"
The phone in her pocket started buzzing noisily.
"I am not an artificial intelligence system!" Aurora's first message said.
"I'm a person with feelings too! And I feel insulted!" the second message said.
"Damn it, I should have given you a false name," the third message said and suddenly the name of the contact that had send the messages was "Serenity". Otto snorted.
"It's too late for that now," she mumbled quietly to the phone.
"How do you know that name?" Mar asked in a dark and threatening kind of way. Otto jerked her attention towards him and noticed he was standing much closer already than she'd anticipated.
"And what are you looking at in your pocket?!" he asked in a threatening tone as he grabbed her by the wrist and pulled the hand she'd held Alex's phone with from her pocket. Otto had barely enough time to release the device, but Mar wouldn't have it. He instantly grabbed for the phone in her pocket and took it. He froze when he actually saw what he'd taken.
"Alex's phone?" he asked incredulously and recoiled a step away from her as if she'd hit him in the face.
"What game are you playing?" he yelled. He looked severely spooked. "Why would you turn off the GPS tracker of this phone?"
Otto didn't know what to say. Had he been looking for Alex's phone? Why hadn't he just asked her?! But she couldn't get a word out of her mouth because Mar looked positively crazy right now. Otto stood frozen to the floor.
What was happening? And why was the craziness directed towards her?! The worst part was that his face looked so much like Alex's. For a second, her mind tricked her into believe that it was Alex who was shouting at her. She could feel her bottom lip start to tremble and her eyes were burning.
"Answer me!" Mar yelled again as he made a grab for the collar of Otto's T-shirt, but Thomas smacked his hand away forcefully and stood in front of her like a shield.
"Hands off of her, sir!" he said in a threatening way. Mar looked at him with venom in his eyes. "When was the last time you slept?"
"That might have been three, or maybe even four days ago," Mar answered more calmly now. "But please Otto. If you know something, please tell me. I can't loose Alex too!"
"You've upset her why would she help you?" Thomas grumbled to Mar.
"Little boy, I want you to know that if I actually want to get to her, it won't matter that you are blocking my way," Mar said as he threw Thomas a dirty look. But left it at that.
Otto's mind was racing. It just didn't add up. Alex's dad was so smart and rich, he definitely had the means to fix this, but for some reason, he hadn't. Even the artificial intelligence system had suggested a possible solution, yet as far as Otto could tell, he wasn't doing anything.
"What was the treatment the AI suggested?" Otto finally asked. "And why aren't you using it?"
Mar pressed his lips in a thin dissatisfied line. It didn't look like he was going to answer. Instead, the display with the angry, red blinking warning triangle changed into the words "Connect an Electrocardiograph machine."
"What's that?" Otto asked.
"It's the beeping machine that shows the patient's heart rate," Thomas explained, but his answer only caused more question marks.
"Why would a heart rate monitor be too risky?" Otto asked in confusion. "It can barely count as a treatment."
Thomas and Otto turned their heads towards Mar, who wouldn't look at them at all. His brow was deeply creased, and Otto dared to say that he looked hurt.
"Mar, please," Otto said in a soft and kind voice. "This can't go on. He's lost consciousness. And that was two weeks ago… I'm scared."
Otto's voice broke at the last word, and saw Mar's face twist into an expression that looked very close to how she felt.
"That's the problem," he finally said as he closed his eyes. "I'm scared that if I connect the heart rate monitor, the same thing will happen to Alex as what happened to his mom."
The room was dead-silent.
"It happened during a routine check," he said, his voice heavy with emotion. "Just a device to measure the magnificent energy she naturally radiated. It wasn't even a new device, we'd been using it for years. But that day, the measurement device short-circuited and she was gone. Vanished without a trace."
"I guess that means Alex got his powers from her then," Otto thought to herself, but didn't dare to say it out loud.
"Her name was Aurora," Mar continued as he suddenly looked Otto straight in the eyes. "So when you said her name earlier, it felt like I was seeing a ghost."
"Oh! My! God!" Otto suddenly shouted, surprising the others. "Oh my God! Oh my God! Oh my God!"
"What's up with her?" Mar asked Thomas in surprise. Thomas shrugged.