by Amy Johnson
I move my eyes up his body, coming face to face with two mud-colored eyes set deep in his face. The shadows cast around his hollow eyes make him look lethargic. A thin layer of peach fuzz covers his head of indiscernible color.
Below the waist, he wears a pair of black pants which match Eins and Zwei’s. One foot is clad in the same black shoes they wear, but the other glints silver.
“These are the two you’ve chosen?” he asks my captors, stepping into the room. His voice resembles the sound of a growling stomach, which must be where it comes from. With every step he takes towards me, his body hisses as the hydraulics in his single robotic leg work.
“Yes,” Eins says, walking to stand on the other side of me.
“Why? She’s half-dead, Eins.”
Eins shoots Zwei an angry glare, and she skitters to the other side of the room like a wounded dog.
“Her body will heal,” he says, “but her mind is powerful. She’s smarter than most humans, and she can already fight. When we captured her this last time, seven Artificials fell at her hand.”
“You’re telling me that a human neutralized seven Artificials on your watch, and this isn’t the first time you’ve captured her?”
Null’s voice seeps into the mattress around me, making my empty chest vibrate.
Eins pales. He opens his mouth to speak, but no words tumble out.
“I can only hope she won’t fail me like you two useless beings have,” Null growls as he grabs my face with his robotic arm. The cold metal fingers squeeze my cheeks together and forces my lips into a pucker. He forces me to look up at him.
“Introduce yourself,” he says in a hiss, drawing out the ‘s’ in a long string.
“I am Eden, Subject 23, Inhabitant of the Eyes Exhibit,” I recite in a whisper. Talking around his hand proves harder than it should be. His grip on me tightens until my teeth begin to ache.
“You were trained in the Anthros,” he says, nodding to himself. “Good. How old are you?”
“Seventeen.”
He nods and then glances up at Eins.
“She’s barely old enough. Any younger and the procedure would kill her.”
The word ‘kill’ bounces around between my ears, turning my blood to ice in my veins. Humans have been taken for harvesting as young as ten years old, and as far as I know, no one ever dies in the way he’s talking about. What am I about to face?
“I know, sir,” Eins says. “We wanted to wait until she was older, but she wouldn’t cooperate and attempted to escape the Anthros.”
“You’re telling me this seventeen year old human girl wouldn’t cooperate with two highly trained Idyllic?” Null repeats, narrowing his eyes at Eins. The man nods and lowers his eyes.
Faster than I can process, Null crosses the short distance between the two of them and slams Eins into the glass window behind him. The thick, frosted glass cracks on impact, and thin lines scatter from his neck where the larger man dangles him off the ground.
“You’re so weak that one human child can bring you down?” Null asks, closing his fist on Eins’s throat. The man gasps for air and grips his attacker’s arm. “I designed you myself, Dummkopf. Get yourself together before you embarrass me. She’s going to remember that you’re incompetent, and I plan on making her stronger than you can ever compete with. If I don’t kill you, she will. Understand? There’s no margin for error and weakness.”
Eins mumbles a wordless apology, kicking his feet to find release from the pressure on his windpipe. With a short grunt, Null pulls away from him and points a trembling finger at Zwei hiding behind Knox’s bed.
“And you,” Null hisses, stepping towards her. “I know your mind is twisted.” He plants a hand on my calf, and I scream in pain at his icy touch. “This is your doing, I’m sure. At least you tried.”
Zwei rises up from her hiding place and smiles weakly at him. He returns her smile with a forced grin of his own, a one-sided smirk that gathers his pale skin under his eye. Lines form where his eye and cheek meet, stretching toward his hairline.
As he turns toward me again, pulling his now bloody hand from the open wound on my leg, the smile turns into something much more menacing and emotionless.
My body begins to shake, and my breathing breaks into uneven gasps. My eyes fill up with tears, streaming down both sides of my face as I press my head into the mattress.
“If you think that hurts, you’re in for a rough two days,” he says, walking back up to my face. “Did they tell you about the procedure itself?” I shake my head, not trusting my mouth to emit anything other than sobs.
He shrugs, grabs my left shoulder, and digs his thumb into the shallow bullet hole.
“I thought you were trained,” he mumbles, eyes meeting mine. I gasp for air, unable to tear my eyes away from him. The pain diffuses from my shoulder, throwing my body into panic. I thrash away from his touch and arch my back toward the ceiling.
“I’m sorry!” I stutter, untangling my tongue.
“Oh, I know you’re sorry. Now apologize, and do it correctly.”
His thumb presses in deeper, and he moves it in small circles. I grit my teeth, jerking against the restraints as tears pour out of my eyes.
“I apologize, sir,” I say, voice no more than a whisper.
“Much better.” With that, he removes his hand, wiping the tip of his bloody thumb against the mattress cover. Red smears across the white fabric, joining the plethora of other bodily fluids that stain it.
“Now, your procedure will take two days. During the first day, I’ll be operating on your body, reinforcing your organs and installing steel plating over your shoulder and thigh, and threading your skin with the microfibers. My job is to give you the cybernetic and artificial intelligence technology for those two aspects of your transition.
“On the morning of the second day, I will inject the nanotechnology into your bloodstream. The nanos will change the neurosystems in your brain and modify your emotions. They will also contain your new intelligence bank and serve as miniature control panels. The nanos will stay in your bloodstream as long as you’re alive.”
“Why are you telling me all this?” I ask, chewing on my lip.
“Because it’s going to hurt,” he says, pulling a small metal table towards him. Several metal tools line the top of it, ranging from scalpels and graspers to needles and syringes. He pulls a pair of light blue gloves over his hands and rubs the inside of my elbow with an icy alcohol swab. The strong smell makes me grimace and turn my head away.
“I don’t care that it hurts you,” he continues, exchanging the swab for a long, thin needle that I recognize as very similar to the one I pulled out days before. “But it’s only fair that I warn you. I’ll be putting you under very large amounts of anesthesia. The dreams that follow will probably haunt you for a long time, if you survive.”
Those last three words send chills up my spine. I wince as he inserts the needle into the already bloody crook of my elbow. I have no idea what anesthesia is, but his use of the word ‘dreams’ makes me think I am being put to sleep.
Null moves across the room, draping a long plastic tube behind him. He attaches the tube to a service machine, typing at the screen. Clear liquid begins to pump down the tube toward me and disappears into my vein.
“Don’t fight it,” he says over his shoulder. He faces Knox now, turning the unconscious boy’s face from side to side. Zwei checks his restraints as she watches Null work with admiration. “Fighting the inevitable will only make it hurt worse. Sleep, Eden, and when you wake up again, you’ll be perfect.”
I lay my head back against the mattress, staring at the white tiles overhead. They’re the same as the ones in the prep room and my Anthros room. The prep room had four rows of six for a total of twenty-four squares of tile. My room had seven rows of five for a total of thirty-five. Even when my body feels like it’s shutting down, the numbers come back to me like old family friends with open arms and warm hugs.
The whit
e tiles begin to blend into the black strips that run through them, creating a curling green Van Gogh-esque image. I blink to fix my vision, but the colors come back washed-out and graying. Black appears in the corners of my eyes and my lids droop against my cheeks. My arms weigh a thousand pounds, and I’ve lost all willpower to pull against the restraints.
Gravity presses me into the table, evening out my rapid breathing into rhythmic waves. Taking Null’s advice, I let the fatigue catch up with me, and my eyes slip closed as the darkness blankets itself around me, surrounding me in warmth.
Chapter 17: Deceived
Eden
The first thing I feel is the ice of the floor seeping into my back through my clothes. My senses return one at a time, pulled back like lids on storage boxes, revealing what’s around me.
After my body becomes focused, the sound of dripping water surrounds me. It is slow at first, but as other sounds join in, the rhythmic pattern increases. A clock ticks to my left, opposite of the dripping faucet. Heavy breathing joins the chorus, followed by a hum too low to be a paralyzer gun.
Smells assault my senses after the sounds calm down. The tangy smell of blood reaches me first, and I scrunch my nose up against it. Then, it is washed out by lemons, alcohol, and melting plastic.
My eyes shoot open, blinking as the gray tiles materialize into shaky view.
This isn’t the room I fell asleep in. Something isn’t right.
I push myself off of the floor, glancing around. Small silver doors with metal knobs line the wall. Drawers. Along the other side, service machines sleep, arms hanging to the floor, lifeless.
I’m in the assembly room.
Using the empty table to help me on my feet, I limp toward the window along the back wall. My thigh throbs with every step, but the bleeding seems to have stopped. On the yard below, the fountain sprouts up water in the air. Cybernetics shuffle through the space and move in meticulous lines on the sidewalk.
A beeping sound fills the room, and I spin around, pressing myself up against the warm glass of the window.
“Good morning, Schätzchen.”
Zwei steps into the room with a chain dangling from her hand. I swallow my fear, following the chain to the wrist they’re attached to. Pale, sweaty skin greets me, covered in dirt and grime. I run my eyes up the body, past the filthy t-shirt with gaping holes that show the colorful skin beneath. With every inch, my hope sinks further into the floor.
“Cyrus,” I whisper, bracing myself as my knees buckle.
My older brother’s body sags against the wall of the silver box. Damp brown eyelashes cage his muddy green eyes, of which I can see very little. Purple bruises and red welts cover his face and neck.
At the sound of my voice, he lifts his head and peels his swollen eyes open to look at me. Blood trails down his face from a deep gash across his forehead.
“Eden?”
His strangled word brings me to my knees.
Zwei gives the chains a tug and Cyrus tumbles out into the room, stumbling on his own feet. I run over to help him, bare feet skidding across the tile.
“Oh no, you don’t,” Zwei says, grabbing my arm just as I reach the two of them. She shoves me away, and I hit the floor, sliding back. Cyrus watches me. His dry, cracked lips part, but blood stains the inside of them. Words spill out of his lips like crumpled wads of paper, but I fail to catch any of them.
“What are you going to do to him?” I ask, pushing myself back up to my feet.
Zwei smirks at me, lifts Cyrus like a baby, and lays him flat on the table. She moves around him and straps his wrists and ankles down with slow hands. The leather restraints contrast with his unusually pale skin, cutting into wrists so thin I could wrap my fingers around them.
Was he this skinny before?
How long have I been asleep?
It’s hard to look at him in this state. The Cyrus that I remember may have been my height, but he wore every muscle and scar like a suit of armor. Every tattoo told a unique story. His body doubled as a work of art and a map of uncharted lands. This Cyrus is nothing more than a blank sheet of paper with scorch marks. He looks more like a nightmarish version of himself.
“He’s going to be assembled,” Zwei finally says, rolling a service machine over to Cyrus’ trembling body. His eyes dart between her and the machine, unfocused and glazed over. “We wanted you to watch.”
My knees go weak, and I take a step toward the two of them.
Arms wrap themselves around my body. The familiar smell of vanilla fills the air around me, and my body relaxes involuntarily.
Wait.
No.
I buck away from the arms, but they’ve locked me in place. Knox lowers his chin onto my shoulder and squeezes me against his soft chest. He leans into my ear, breathing down my neck.
“You cannot go over there,” he says in a voice more robotic than ever before.
“Watch me, Subject 3,” I snap, jerking away from him again. He plants himself in place like a tree, unmoved by my dramatic attempts to get away. His arms are metal beams around me, prison bars that I can’t bend. His hands grip together in front of my chest, an unbreakable knot. I flap my arms around a few times, grunting.
“I am stronger than you,” he hisses in my ear. “Call me whatever you want. It will not change the fact that you’re trapped.”
Zwei clicks her tongue against her teeth, and Knox looks up at her. I whip my head back around to face her.
“Darling, don’t play with the human,” Zwei scolds in a playful tone, a smile lingering on her lips. “Bring her over here.”
Knox lifts me up like I’m made of feathers, holding me square against his chest. My legs dangle under me, useless as he walks me over and sets me back on the ground a foot away from the assembly table.
Cyrus’s eyes meet mine once again. They glaze over with clear liquid that tips over the edge of his light eyelashes. Fear kneads itself into my stomach, and I begin to pant, willing myself not to cry.
“Normally, we would put him under a sedative before the procedure,” Zwei explains, typing into the screen of the nearest service machine. The blade of one machine hovers over his chest. Another positions itself above his head, and a hand-shaped mechanism extends towards his skull. On the tip of each faux finger sits a petite blade.
“But,” Zwei continues, “we wanted you to hear him scream.”
My body begins to shake, falling limp against Knox. His chest shakes as he laughs and holds me even tighter against him. His heart beats against my shoulder blades, ringing through me like an alarm.
“Please don’t do this,” I whisper as Zwei types in more commands. A green circle appears on the screen, flashing the word ‘begin’ in the center. The woman’s finger lingers over the button as she glances over her shoulder at me.
One corner of her mouth curls up at me, causing her cheek to puff out under her electric blue eye. Her dark lashes bat against the pale skin. She bites her bottom lip with teeth as yellow as Eins’s.
“Oh, it’s too late to beg now,” she whispers, pressing the button. “You humans never stood a chance against the Idyllic.”
With a series of clicks, the service machines come alive. The knife vibrates, cutting through what remains of his old t-shirt. Small, tired whimpers join the tears that roll down the sides of his face.
The hand clamps itself down on his head, lacerating his shallow forehead as it rotates in a slow circle. When the line is complete, the razors pull back the skin and reveal the baby pink tissue underneath. Blood leaks from the incision points and runs down to pool on the metal table.
The restraints do their job as he begins to jerk against the machines. They tighten with every desperate motion, holding him in place as the knife over him breaks through the fabric, entering his skin at last.
It begins under his chin, directly between his breasts. Sweat rolls across the shaking surface, blending together with the blood pearling out of the incision. Cyrus screams, clamping his eyes shut as i
t pulls down with no struggle. The knife moves downward, through his stomach and stopping at his waistline.
I flail against Knox’s iron hold and throw my head back into his chin. He continues to hold me, unfazed by the hits that make my vision swim.
My own screaming coalesces with Cyrus’s and reach record volumes. The table vibrates under him, a mixture of our cries and the motions of the two machines around him.
His shaking amasses into tremors, body falling slack against the table. His screaming fades into nothing as his face softens. The color abandons him, leaving him pale and sweaty. His already gaunt cheeks cave in deeper as his eyes roll back in his head.
“No!” I scream, jerking at Knox’s hold on me. He grunts as I throw myself towards my brother. With every movement, I inch closer to the table. “Cyrus! Please, Knox! Let me go! Please!”
Knox breathes a long sigh and unknots his hands.
I fall flat on the ground in front of us. My head hits the metal table on the way down, but I grit my teeth against the stinging and smear hot blood across my face with a hand. I grip the edge of the table as I pull myself up.
Cyrus’s chest rises and falls in slow motion. The machine pries open the two flaps of skin, revealing a gaping expanse of muscles. Everything is too red, too raw, and too overwhelming.
I take a step away from the table and shake my head.
This can’t be happening.
I was supposed to protect him.
He saved me, and this is how I return the favor.
Guilt forces me onto my knees as I gaze at his limp hands in the restraints. They quiver faintly for a moment before following the pull of gravity towards the floor. I trail up his arms to his head.
The hand-like machine holds his brain within its palm. The large organ drips crimson blood and white cloudy liquid. The fleshy surface of the brain reminds me of the sunsets Knox and I could see through the smog and glass of the dome. It’s a dingy pink--not bright like I imagined.