FREAK: A Dark Medical Romance

by Loki Renard

  “It’s okay,” I murmur to Electra before directing a friendly smile at the Head. “How are you, Ms…”

  I blank. I should know what to call her, but I can’t call her the Head out here in this civilian space.

  “… Smith,” the Head smiles.

  “Of course. Ms Smith.”

  The woman’s eyes run over me briefly, then settle on Electra.

  “Would you like to join us?” The offer is made out of polite obligation, nothing more.

  “I’m afraid I can’t say long,” the Head says with a crystal cool smile. “And neither can Electra.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I mean there’s a job to be done, and it is time for you to do it.”

  “But I’m out for dinner.” Electra's lower lip trembles.

  “You’ll have to have dinner another time. Your country needs you.”

  “Fuck my country,” she growls.

  I’m not happy about this either, but the last thing we need right now is an outburst. This, I think, is a test. It isn’t fair, but when has the Head played fair? When has she ever bothered to make her agenda clear?

  “I don't think this is an appropriate…”

  “What you think is not the matter at hand,” the Head interrupts me briskly. She extends a hand across the table. “Come along, dear. We need you.”

  I look into Electra’s eyes and catch a flash of her thoughts. She wants to stab the Head right through her hand and pin it to the table. It’s a bloody image, transmitted with gruesome clarity. Times like this, I’d swear we have a telepathic bond, but really telepathy is just knowing what someone else is thinking, and I know Electra well enough to know what kind of brutal reckoning she has in mind.

  “No,” I say gently. Not to Electra. To the Head.

  “Doctor Ares.”

  “No,” I repeat, this time speaking to the Head. “This is downtime. She’s not at your beck and call. She cannot be and stay sane.”

  “Your concerns are noted.”

  “Madam, this is a restaurant.”

  Her gray eyes narrow at me. “I’m afraid I don’t understand the significance of that statement, Doctor Ares.”

  “I think you understand it clearly enough.” This is not her compound. She does not rule over us here. Not over Electra, and certainly not over me.

  “This is insubordination, Doctor Ares.”

  “It’s impossible to be insubordinate over appetizers.” I wink at Electra, who lets out a nervous giggle and turns her hand in mine so she is holding my hand.

  Electra

  He’s standing up for me. He knows there will be consequences for this. The Head looks angry, in such a satisfying way. I have always wanted to see her off-balance, something other than perfectly composed, but I never thought I would. She’s always in control of absolutely everything. Everybody in her life answers to her. She holds the power of life and death, and she never lets anyone forget it.

  But Tom is right. She can’t bring that pressure to bear here, in public. Not without making a scene, and that is the last thing she wants to do.

  “You’re welcome to join us for dinner,” he says, extending the invitation again.

  “Excuse me, ma’am,” a waitress stops behind the Head with a tray full of soup plates. There’s an impatient expression on her face, a disdain which fills my dark little heart with joy. I like seeing the Head treated like an Ordinary Person. She always seems larger than life, a small god in her domain. But Tom is right, the world is so much bigger than her, and her facility.

  I suddenly feel free. Intoxicatingly free. A laugh bubbles to my lips and I don’t stop it. I let it emerge, though it sounds strange to my unpracticed ears, like the hooting of an animal more than any human expression.

  The Head shoots me a look so hard the laughter dies on my lips. She is angry.

  “I will speak with both of you tomorrow,” she says. “Prepare yourselves for consequences.”

  “Prepare yourselves for consequences,” I smirk, copying her voice as she stalks away. “Consequences will never be the same.”

  Tom smiles, but it’s a smile that doesn’t reach his eyes. He’s gotten very still and very serious.

  “Do you regret telling her no?”

  “No,” he says. “It had to be said.”

  The meal doesn’t feel like it did before. I don’t feel part of the world. I feel separate from it. The diners around us are carrying on their conversations. Nearby, a small human whines something about wanting nuggets, whatever they are. I feel numb.

  Tom reaches out, and his big hand covers mine. “It’s okay.”

  “It’s not okay. She couldn’t even let me have one night. One. Night. She had to ruin it with her stupid face.”

  “Is everything to your satisfaction?” The waiter is back with his pasted-on smile. I can’t meet his eye. Tom comes out with some pleasantry that most people know how to perform and the waiter moves on to ask the question to another table. Everything is not to their satisfaction. The pasta is cold. It’s not acceptable. They’re sending it back.

  I watch the plates go pasta me, wondering if I should send something back. If I could, I’d send my whole life back.

  “Try not to let it bother you,” Tom says. “We’ll deal with the issue in the morning. We have every right to have a night off.”

  “Do we?”

  “Yes,” he says firmly. “We do. She doesn’t own us.”

  “She owns me.”

  “No, she doesn’t. That’s not legal. I know it’s the way you’ve been made to feel, but it’s not real. This is real. This. Here. Now.” He squeezes my hand and lets it go. “Try the shrimp cocktail.”

  I do not like the shrimp cocktail, though I smile my way through it anyway. I keep glancing around, wondering how many spies there are here, how many of the customers are plants. Is this even really the outside world? Or have they made some hyper-realistic facsimile to trick me?

  Tom wants this to be a ‘nice night’ so badly. This matters to him. I don’t know why, but I know that it does. I try to smile when he smiles at me, and laugh when he looks at me with those expectant eyes which tell me he has told a joke.

  “Would you two like a dessert menu?”

  “Yes, please,” Tom says. He winks at me and makes a comment about how I’ve been a good girl. He likes to speak to me like I’m a dog or something, praise me for my behavior. But my behavior doesn’t matter. My life has always been on rails. There’s been a plan for me from the beginning, and that plan is still in progress, even if we are at a nice restaurant.

  Over the other side, people burst into a sudden cacophony of screeches.

  HAPPY BIRTHDAY TO YOU!

  “Why are they screaming?”

  “They’re singing,” Tom says. “It’s… a ritual that’s done around special occasions.”

  “It sounds awful! Do they not like the person?”

  “Actually, they probably like them very much.”

  “Oh. What’s a birthday?

  He gets that pitying expression in his eyes. The one I hate. I grab a handful of the nearest soft foodstuff and mash it in his direction, and he only just manages to stop me from filling his eye sockets with gravy laced potatoes.

  “Cut it out," he growls, grabbing napkins to clean his hands, and mine. “Go to the bathroom and wash your hands, and stop acting out. I know seeing the Head wasn’t pleasant, but neither will getting your butt whipped if you don’t start behaving.”

  “Oh, so stern,” I say, a little mocking. I like teasing Tom. After we’re done with dinner, I want to go to bed with him at his house. I want to see where he lives, be included in his world. I want to become real.

  We finish the meal without further incident and leave the restaurant hand in hand. That is when the trouble starts. Crossing the threshold makes a chill run down my spine. It’s not instinct. It is electronics.

  The implant in the back of my neck has been activated remotely. Bastards. I almost forgot it was po
ssible for them to take manual control of me. They can't make me do anything, but they can stop me from moving. My feet lock on the ground, and every attempt to move results in incredible pain. It is as if every muscle in my body has become stone.

  “Run, Tom, run!”

  It’s too late. We are surrounded, and he would never leave my side. They overpower him and drag him away from me. He is strong, but not stronger than six highly trained agents. I hear him trying to reason with them in that calm way he has, but this is bigger than him. The city goes on around us as we are abducted. Nobody stops. Nobody cares. If they see this happening, they do not notice it.

  “Electra! Be good!”

  Those three words are the last I will hear from him in a very long time, I know that instinctively. I do not intend on following them.

  The North Pole

  Tom

  I open my eyes slowly. Reluctantly. It doesn’t feel as though they should be opening. It feels as though I should be sleeping for a very long time. I’m clearly heavily sedated. Last thing I remember was being slammed into the back of a van and injected with something. Now my mouth is dry, my head is throbbing, and I feel sick to my stomach.

  “You’re a good doctor.”

  The words sound like a compliment, but I know they’re not. They come in the clipped, cool, composed tones of a woman who has gotten what she thinks is her revenge.

  “Where’s Electra?”

  “That’s not your concern anymore, Doctor Ares. It came to my attention last night that the two of you have become rather more close than I had intended.”

  “You had us live in the same quarters for weeks at a time.”

  “Soldiers do that frequently without becoming insubordinate," she says. “You got ahead of yourself, Doctor Ares. You started to consider yourself the authority, forgetting my role.”

  “So this is about your bruised ego. I thought women were supposed to be above ego.”

  “Your misogynistic supposes aside, this is not about ego. This is about order. You defied a direct one last night. And so did Electra. The two of you will not be reunited.”

  Her words are harsh, cruel, and devastating. They’re also wrong. I absolutely will be reunited with the woman who trusts me. One way or another. I have nothing but time and the Head has her fingers in too many pies to remain interested in screwing with our lives forever.

  “You know you’re never going to be able to control her now. She’s become too human,” I say, sitting up slowly. It's hard to argue from a prone position.

  “She was always human.”

  “True, but she didn't have human expectations. Now she does. She knows what goes on outside your bars and your missions. She knows where I am.”

  “Are you saying you think she will get free and try to come back to see you?”

  “That’s exactly what I’m saying.”

  “I thought that too. That’s why I’ve taken the precaution of moving you.”

  At that moment, a powerful gust of wind blows against the window, icy sleet following in its wake.

  “Where the hell am I?”

  “We have a small base in the Arctic,” the Head says. I should have taken more notice of the way she’s dressed. She’s wearing a long fur coat, no doubt made of the skins of genetically engineered puppies. Nobody is able to approach this place without clearance and specialist equipment. At this time of year, very few people brave the weather.”

  “But you did. To spite us.”

  “To teach you a lesson,” she says. “About obedience.”

  It was a mistake to cross this woman. She has a particular kind of madness which destroys all it cannot control. This, I know, is mercy in her terms. It would be easier for her to kill me. This might still kill me, because I will not sit here in this cabin at the end of the world and abandon Electra to whatever fate the Head has in store for her.

  “I understand,” I say, trying to gather my wits about me. “And I apologize that you found our behavior disrespectful.”

  “I didn’t find your behavior disrespectful. It was disrespectful. And it is far too late for apologies. I have never cared for them, and I have no time for them now. You will spend the next three months on this base. When the winter ends, you will be able to return to the facility and resume your duties as doctor, perhaps. Or perhaps, I will decide that you will remain here and tend to those sent here to train. I’m not sure as yet. What I am sure of, Doctor Ares, is that you will regret your arrogance. Deeply.”

  Box

  Electra

  Bitch. Bitch. Fucking bitch.

  I am back in a gray box. I am ending where I began, and it all feels as though it has been completely pointless.

  Tyko’s face appears behind the glass. He better not come in here. I will kill him. He stares at me for a moment, shakes his head, then moves on.

  I let out a scream of frustrated rage. Why!? Why did they give me to Tom just to take him away from me? Why did they do any of this? I was bad before, but now I will be so much worse. I refuse to work for this place anymore. I refuse to do anything but find Tom, or die.

  I don't know where the Head is, but I know she won’t be coming into my presence any time soon, and I know if she does, that will be the end of her.

  What did she do with Tom? Why did she work so hard at getting me used to the outside world when she was just going to put me back in this box? Was it all some cruel joke? To give me the world so it could be taken away again? I wouldn’t put it past her.

  I miss him. There’s an ache inside me that won’t let go. I feel as though I am being squeezed all the way to the middle of me. I don’t feel pain the way normal people do. I’ve always known that. I was engineered in such a way as to be able to hold myself separate from the desperate cries of my nervous system, but there’s something about the agony of missing Tom which overrides all the programming and throws me into a state of inconsolable misery.

  I have to get back to him. I have to find him. I cannot manage a single thought which does not somehow reference him. Is this what love is? I don’t know. He tried so hard to teach me the ways of being human, and he told me that love was the most human thing of all. I didn’t understand it at the time, and I don't understand it now. Is it love to feel as though you are being ripped apart in the most visceral torture possible? They have hurt me in many ways over the years, but I’ve never felt pain like this.

  “LET ME OUT!”

  I do not know why I am crying out. They will not listen. They never have. My sounds are just data being thrust into their processors, so they can manipulate me more thoroughly next time, and probably so they can do this very same thing to others yet to be cut out of their gel slumber.

  “PLEASE!”

  I do not expect a response, but my weak biology demands that this pain have expression. I must call for my lost love, I must try to bring him back to me with the sounds of my soul. I wail and I cry, pulling against the bonds which hold me in place for what feels like hours. Time does not have the same meaning it once did. When I was with Tom, time was always short. It seemed to me that the weeks we spent together passed by in the space of minutes. Sun rises were followed almost immediately by sunsets, as if I lived my life in time lapse.

  Now I am apart from him, time seems utterly endless, the moments between my breaths drawing out into infinity. My face is wet with liquid leaking from my eyes. My shoulders heave. My nose runs. My body is breaking down, turning from blood and bone to snot and water. There is a pain in my chest, a tightness and an ache which makes it hard to breathe. Am I dying? I have seen images of death many times, felt the pain of serious injuries, but this feels different. It is deeper and it consumes every part of me.

  I cry out until my throat is raw, another new feeling. Missing Tom isn’t just an emotional response, it is a full body torture, one I’m not sure I will be able to survive. Is he coming for me? Can he even come for me? What has she done to him?

  Next time I see her, she will die. I’m done bei
ng civilized. It’s weakness. It allowed me to feel and then those feelings were turned against me almost immediately. I’m going feral. I’m going to yank at these chains until they break. I’m going to claw my way through that door with my bare hands, peel layers of metal back until I can crawl out of here, and then the dying is going to start.

  All I have now are violent fantasies. But I can’t do any of those things. This room was engineered to hold me. I’m a prisoner in a world I cannot escape. But there will be a chance. Maybe not today. Maybe not tomorrow. But inevitably, I will have my revenge.

  Brother

  Electra

  A very long time passes. The lights are always on low, enough to sleep by, but not enough to ever be fully awake or fully rested. I am jacked into the chemical plugs which pump nameless substances into my body. I do not move. I do not do anything besides hate and wait.

  And then one day, the door opens.

  It is a tall man with a beard. He has broad shoulders and narrow hips, and though the lights do not illuminate his face, I know the outline of the man I love.

  “TOM!”

  “Not Tom.” The voice emerging from the blank man does not belong to Tom, but he looks so much like him, I can’t understand it for a moment or two. My mind is slow. I didn’t notice it before in my state of twilight existence, but I have been heavily sedated. Now that I try to communicate, I find myself stupid.

  “I’m Ken,” he says, stepping into the room. “We have met before.”

  “Right. The brother.”

  “That’s right,” he says. His tone is neutral. I don't know what he wants. His hand touches my wrist as he undoes one of my shackles, and my skin reacts to being touched again. It has been a long time since I felt any human contact. It feels strange. Something I want to recoil from even though my instincts tell me to go toward it. I need to be touched, but not by Ken. The brother is not good enough, and I can scent another woman on this man. His mate.