Tesla’s teeth are bared like fangs, and her mouth is twisted into an unnaturally wide grin. I feel my pulse pounding from beneath my fingernails as I press them into my palms.
“Oh, dear,” Tesla says. “You really didn’t know, did you? Your friends have been keeping secrets from you this whole time, and you didn’t even know.”
“What are you talking about?”
She clicks her tongue at me, and the sound is metallic inside of her mouth. “Both of your friends knew why they were here. They knew about the training, the army we are building, and the new bodies they would be receiving for it. Dorian was well aware of what was going to happen to him – and he chose to come anyway.”
“No…” I whisper, but Tesla continues like she doesn’t hear me.
“And your other friend – Holden, wasn’t it? – wanted so badly to join us that he practically begged our recruitment force to let him in. He’s in Section Two now, though, so it shouldn’t be too much longer before he gets his wish. And you have been relocated as well, but I’m guessing you already figured that out?”
Actually, I hadn’t figured out any of what she said, but I don’t tell her that. I’m not sure which piece of information is more shocking to me – that Dori and Holden both came to this place knowing that they were going to be murdered and brought back as killing machines, or that I am next.
She could be lying, but something in the way she speaks tells me that she’s not. If this is the price for the information I’m looking for, then I want no part of it.
“Humans were destroying this world before we came here, and we were created to fix it; you may not like it, but that’s the truth. Things will be much better after this – you’ll see. All of that pain your mother felt? You’re never going to have to feel it. There will be no more suffering, no more war, no more pain. Doesn’t that sound wonderful?”
There is an excitement in her voice that I haven’t heard before. I think it’s possible that she genuinely doesn’t understand what it’s like to be human – at least, not anymore. I don’t know if she had a human life before she became the Digit she is today, but she’s clearly forgotten all about it.
“Being human isn’t all bad,” I tell her. “Dori was in love, but he’s never going to feel that way again. Is it really so ideal to live in a world where no one cares about anyone else?”
“Yes,” she says shortly. “We do care about each other, but not to the extent that we grieve when someone we know is destroyed. Tell me – do you really think it’s better this way? You’re still mourning your mother, and your father, and now, your new friend. Wouldn’t you rather be free of that burden?”
My mind is reeling, but I manage to shake my head through the fog of spinning thoughts that surround me. “No,” I croak out, and that’s the most I can say; I feel like if I try to speak any more I will throw up.
Tesla shoots me one last unreadable glance before she leaves, and I wait for the clicking of her shoes to fade away completely before I back up and collapse onto the end of my bed.
I don’t know what to do. I had assumed that if things ever got to be too much for me, I would just run away like my mother did – even with the tracker in my neck, I could probably get far enough away that they wouldn’t be able to chase me, and maybe I could find a way to remove it somehow. But now there’s not only a wall separating me from the outside world, but a concrete cell in a building full of armed Digits; even if I could somehow manage to get out of this room, I would never make it to the front door.
I wish more than anything that Rin had not contacted me when she did; it’s because of her that the Digits grew suspicious of me and had me locked up. If she hadn’t infiltrated my simulation, I would still be free to take my time and plan my escape properly. Of course, I wouldn’t have found out about Dori then, but maybe that’s for the best; I would rather not know and believe he’s just been relocated or escaped.
I strip off my shoes and lean back against the wall, pulling my knees up to my chest and tucking my chin in against them. It’s not until the first tear lands on my hand that I realize I am crying, and by then it’s too late to stop myself.
Chapter twenty-four
I am hungry, cold, and tired by the time the Digits come to get me. I’m huddle in the corner of the bed with my head propped up on a pillow and my arms wrapped around my legs when the door swings open and two men – both armed with gun that are aimed straight at my chest – enter the room and pull me to my feet before I can even register what’s going on. They push me out the door and each grab ahold of one of my arms, with the guns in their other hands still fixed on me.
I recognize both men as having been present when Signa brought me to the upper floor lab to have my brain scanned; one is the tall, dark-haired Digit who did most of the talking, and the other is the man who spent the first half of my visit sitting behind a computer screen. The second man has shaggy brown hair and a permanent scowl set into his jaw, and his gun is pressed uncomfortably hard against my shoulder.
“You’re probably thinking about running away, aren’t you?” he asks, his voice higher in pitch than I’d imagined. I don’t answer. “It would be pointless, you know. We can use your DNA whether you’re dead or alive, so we have no reason not to shoot you the second you make a break for it. There will be a lot less pain involved if you just come quietly, and I know just where to aim to make it hurt the worst.”
He pokes his gun harder into my arm, and I flinch. My body already aches enough without the extra bruises he’s pushing onto my skin.
“Shut up, Tetra,” the dark-haired Digit says to his companion. “Don’t forget why we’re here.”
“Yes, of course, Sir,” Tetra mumbles, clearly put-out by his reprimand. I wonder why all of the Digits keep calling the dark-haired man ‘Sir;’ is that his name, or is he their leader? He doesn’t look strict enough to be in control of such a large group of people, but that could just be the way his face was made – maybe whoever created him wanted to make him look sympathetic. If I didn’t know how cruel Tesla is, I would probably be inclined to think that she has some kindness in her, too, but I know her better than that.
The two Digits lead me down the hallway, pulling me along almost as roughly as Signa had just yesterday. I expect them to take me to the lab room I was brought to before, but we pass by the closed double-doors without stopping.
We turn down another long hall, with just a few rooms spaced far apart on either side. I peer through the windows as we pass, but I see nothing but empty beds and dressers; in one of the rooms, though, I think I hear the muffled sound of crying, but the dark-haired Digit, Sir, pinches my arm hard enough to make me wince, and I forget about the sound until I can’t hear it anymore.
There is a single iron door at the very end of the hallway, with no windows but two bolted locks and a barred handle. Sir lets go of my arm for just long enough to open the door, but keeps his gun pointed at me from behind his back the entire time; after he unlocks it, he slides the door sideways into the wall, generating a high screeching noise that makes my ears hurt. He grabs my arm again and pulls me into the room, and I don’t even fight him. What’s the point?
Inside, the room looks like a combination of a doctor’s office and a factory. There is a huge metal table in the center, with a very familiar-looking circle etched into the floor underneath it. What looks kind of like an assembly line is spread out along three of the room’s walls, with metal parts and circuitry displayed at random intervals along it; I don’t recognize what most of them are, but I see a couple of things that look suspiciously like mechanical body parts. A tray of tools is set up on either side of the table, and a large light fixture on the ceiling casts a dim, eerie glow over the entire room.
“Lay down on the table,” Sir tells me, holding his gun up higher until it’s at eye-level with me. I do as he says, noticing as I pull myself up on the table that there are straps on either side, both in the middle and towards the bottom. I take as much time as possible to get mysel
f settled, though I’m certain that I am just delaying the inevitable; the press of cold metal against my skin makes me shiver, and the table is so flat and rigid that lying on it feels almost painful.
Sir slams one of my shoulders down with his free hand and holds me down like he expects me to try to get up and leave. I have no intention of trying to escape, even though I want to more than anything. If I knew that the Digits would shoot me down and kill me if I attempted to run away, I wouldn’t even hesitate, but I know by now that they want me alive – at least, until they’re finished with me. If I try to run, they will just capture me and push me back down on the table again, so it’s pointless for me to even think about it.
While Sir keeps both his gun and his eyes locked on me, Tetra circles around the table, using the straps to tie me down at my wrists and my ankles; he pulls the bindings just tight enough to dig into my skin painfully, but not so tight that I lose circulation in my hands or my feet. I struggle with them for a moment, hoping that I can loosen them enough to let me escape if the chance presents itself to me, but the straps are thick and heavy and do not budge.
“Tetra, would you like to do the honors?”
“Yes, Sir,” Tetra says, beaming like he’s just won an award. “I would be delighted to.”
He rummages for something on the raised tray nearest to him and holds up a syringe with a small vial of murky white liquid inside of it. His hand disappears from my line of sight, and I feel a slight pinch in the side of my neck as the needle breaks through my skin and whatever medicine is inside of it filters into my bloodstream. I can actually feel it tingling under my skin as it runs through my body, and after a few moments the stinging is replaced by numbness. Every fiber of my body feels weightless and empty; I curl my toes, pull hard on the restraints around my wrists, and even bite at the inside of my lip, but I feel nothing.
Is this what it’s like to be a Digit? To not only feel no pain, but to feel nothing at all?
I also begin feeling tired, but not enough that I can’t force myself to stay awake. My eyelids are heavy and I close them halfway, but I don’t let myself fall asleep. I’m too afraid of what I will wake up to.
“You’re a fighter, kid, I’ll give you that,” Tetra says with a throaty laugh as he watches me tug at the straps futilely. “But then, I expect as much from a Section One recruit. You’re almost more trouble than you’re worth.”
“You know,” Sir cuts in; “We’re not here to hurt you. I know it’s hard for you to understand right now, but we’re helping you. We’re replacing all of the aspects of you that are flawed.”
“You mean, everything that makes me human,” I spit out, unable to hold my tongue any longer. If the anger I feel inside could somehow be converted into physical strength, I would be able to rip my restraints clean off of the table and mow down every Digit in the way of my escape. But I try once again, and the bindings still don’t budge.
“No, everything that makes you weak,” Tetra says sharply. “We were human once too, you know, and we try not to lose sight of that. Part of us is still human, actually.”
His words echo in my head; that means I was right. Dori is still alive, technically. The Digits aren’t entirely made of machinery, though for how little empathy they have, they might as well be.
They are human, just like me - part human. “Which part?”
“The Central Nervous System. Well, bits and pieces of it. The brain, mostly.”
“So you things can feel?”
Tetra throws his hand over his chest and puts on an indignant expression, but his tight, rounded features twist it into more of a half-lipped smirk.
“Of course we can! We are human, after all. Mind you, we can’t feel pain, and our emotional range is quite limited, but we are capable of experiencing feelings, just the same as you.”
I glance quickly between the blade in his hand and the straps tied to my wrists. “And what are you feeling right now?”
“Me? Oh, nothing at all!” He twirls the knife between his fingers, catching the sharp edge on his palm and drawing small tears along the skin. He doesn’t bleed, and he hardly even seems to notice what he’s doing. “We can switch our emotions on and off as we please; I’ve got mine turned off right now. Would you like me to turn them back on?”
“Would it make you any less likely to kill me if you did?”
“Hmm,” he hums, pressing an index finger to his lips and rolling his eyes. “No, probably not. Sorry.”
“Tetra,” Sir growls, frowning at him. “You’re wasting time. We have other recruits to work on. Continue, or I will.”
“Yes, Sir,” Tetra says, ducking his head. He stops playing with the scalpel and instead grips the handle of it between his fingers and lowers it down towards my throat.
My heart beats louder and faster the closer the knife gets to my skin. My fear has nearly tripled since I found out what they intend to do to me; I would have accepted death, as long as it was quick and relatively painless, and I know that there is nothing I can do to stop them from replacing me with a robotic killer that has my face. But to think of them taking my brain – with my memories and my feelings and everything else that makes me who I am inside of it – and altering it until I’m nothing more than a heartless monster like Dori…
I don’t have a lot of experience with technology, so I can’t even begin to fathom how the Digits transfer a human’s brain into one of their mechanical bodies, but I believe them when they say that they can do it.
I was put into Section One because I resisted them – because I had the will to survive that Dori and Holden once had. They must have been using the simulations as a way to break our minds, to take away every bit of resistance and turn us into the fearless war machines they brought us here to become. I don’t know what the Digits do to the people put in Section Two, but whatever it is, it destroys everything inside of them that makes them human.
I can’t even imagine how much pain Dori must have been in, and I didn’t even search for him. His mind was broken until he couldn’t feel a thing, and I didn’t even try to help him.
A weight drops into the pit of my stomach, filled with guilt, dread, and sadness. Tetra’s scalpel touches down on my collarbone and presses into my skin; I gasp and squeeze my eyes shut against the pain. The knife sinks further until I can feel it running along my bones, carving out an arch from one shoulder to the other. The medication they injected into my neck is numbing the pain considerably, but it still stings, and I can feel the knife dipping up and down in my flesh like a saw. For a second, I think about how terrible my body will feel once the medicine wears off, but then I remember that I won’t be feeling anything at all by then.
I think I might be crying, because when I blink my lashes blur water in front of my vision, but I can’t feel any tears on my face. Craning my head, I lift my upper body as far up as the restraints and my captors will allow; I can’t see any of my injuries from this angle, but there is so much blood in my field of vision that my skin looks more red than brown. I hear small plopping noises on the floor, and with a sickening twist in my stomach I realize that I am hearing my own blood dripping off of the table.
Tetra pauses for a moment, setting his scalpel back in its place on the raised tray and sifting through the rest of the tools. Each time Tetra turns his back to me, Sir presses his gun hard against my shoulder and fixes me with a glare. Does he honestly think I’d try to escape now? I’m outnumbered, sedated, injured and bleeding, and trapped in a building inside of a massive wall that I have no way of getting through. Even if Sir didn’t have his gun trained on me, I still wouldn’t attempt something I know would end in failure.
The medicine must have reached its full effect, because I can’t feel the pain in my chest at all anymore. I’m not sure if that’s a good or a bad thing, though.
When Tetra turns his body back towards me, he’s holding a long, narrow knife in one hand and a pair of surgical clamps in the other. I wonder what he’s going to be using them
for, but then I immediately regret thinking about it; each scenario I come up with in my head is more creative and horrific than the last.
I can see – but not feel – the blade touching the space between my collarbones. Tetra holds the clamps on one side of my neck and the knife vertically in the middle. I realize that he intends to slit my throat – that I am going to die in a matter of minutes. Seconds, even.
Why did he cut across my chest first, then? Was he testing my level of pain tolerance, to make sure the medication was working properly? Was he trying to torture me one last time before he killed me? Or maybe he did it just because he wanted to; it wouldn’t surprise me at all.
I close my eyes and wait for my lungs to stop drawing breath, but it never happens. Just as Tetra’s knife begins digging into my throat, the door is slid open loudly, and the two people I least expect to see walk – and wheel – inside.
Chapter twenty-five
Rin and Holden enter the room side-by-side, each holding a rifle level with their chests. I have no idea how they managed to get here – or how they even knew where I was – but I’m too relieved to see them to care. Tetra nicks my neck with his knife as he pulls it away, throwing it aside and reaching for the gun holstered in the belt on his pants.
Sir aims his gun at Rin and fires twice, hitting her forearm with one shot and the wall behind her head with the other. I pull on my restraints desperately, trying to force my hands through the tight loops so that I can help Holden and Rin in some way, but all I receive for my efforts are lacerations on my wrists that are rubbed so raw they’ve started to bleed.
While I’m watching Rin dodge the bullets Sir is firing at her, I hear a single shot fly through the air by my ear, cracking like a whip and burying itself deep inside of Sir’s skull; it hits him directly in the red chip on his forehead, which shatters like glass on the floor as he falls. I look over to the door and see Holden, his gun raised and smoking, with a tense look on his face that startles me. Tetra draws his gun and takes aim at Holden, but before he can even get his finger on the trigger Rin shoots him right between the eyes and he topples over.
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