by RMGilmour
Recent memories of Jordan and the doorway in his home, came and went as I recalled how I had exited his house. And then I remembered he was gone, and decided the doorway didn’t matter.
He waved his hand in a circular motion next to my table, and a smaller table appeared beside it. On top of this was a silvery panel as well as several slim instruments. Some were extremely shiny on one end, and I wondered if this meant sharp. But then I noticed that the sharp tips were actually, pinpoints of white light.
Memories of lasers on TV shows I’d watched back on Earth, flickered through my mind. There was no way for me to know if that was indeed what they were, however I was aware, that whatever they were, they were meant for me.
“What are they used for?” I almost choked on the question.
“Removal of extraneous objects mostly, but some people are tougher to break down than others, and require a little help.”
I was sure my face had lost its color and was perhaps on the verge of turning green, and he glanced up at me when I didn’t respond.
“But I’m sure we won’t need to worry about that with you,” he said, as though reassurance was even possible in that room. But I couldn’t pull my stare away from the tray.
It was his quick movements that caught my attention, and I turned to find him on the other side of me, near my head. He circled his hand, palm down once more and a thin, enclosed tube filled with blue liquid rose up, stopping at the table level about foot away from me. It was the same shade of glowing blue as the Spire.
“Soon, you’ll sleep,” he began. “And this is where you’ll be inserted.” He placed his hands delicately on either side of the tube, protective of its contents. “You may dream of other people you’ve never met before and then you’ll wake up right back here, as though nothing had happened, and you will be free to go.”
The surprising part of what he said, was that he’d said it. Every other person I’d spoken to about the process provided its detail in such a gruesome manner that my stomach couldn’t help but react. And yet he, who gave every appearance of being gruesome, described the process as though it was a harmless journey.
“I… I’m going in there?” I breathed, caught off guard by the delicate nature with which he’d spoken, but at the same time focusing upon the only negative aspect of his words. I had no idea how he was going to get my whole body down that tube. I was sure Grid had told me at one point, but I decided the memory of that conversation needed to stay where it was.
“And that goes straight to your machine?” I heard my voice crack through my constricted throat.
He laughed, and I decided that if I lived the next thousand years and never heard that laugh again, I’d be perfectly fine with that.
“I guess those of you that don’t understand it could call it a machine,” he replied.
“Do I want to know how I’m going to get in there?” Not something I should have asked, but the disgust in my brain couldn’t help but let the question out.
“No, not really,” he laughed again, and my stomach turned at the sound. “Trust me, you won’t feel a thing, and at the end of it all, you won’t even know it has happened.”
I followed him back around to the other side of the table where the shiny instruments were, and he waved his hand once more. This time the tube that came up was a vicious red-purple color and it brought with it the scent of death, despite it being completely enclosed. I gagged, turning my head away, trying to keep my stomach still. If the Guardian was aware of my presence, I was sure that all of me would end up inside that red tube.
I couldn’t help but wonder though, how much of me or my blood would be needed to infect the machine. I was placing all of my trust in Mason that this technician would do as planned, and I decided I couldn’t risk it.
He pulled from the air, a green screen and began his programming. A block of the ceiling directly overhead came away, moving several feet down. Just like it had in Jordan’s room.
The sides of the table I was on, rose several inches around me, boxing me in and I could feel the table beneath me soften as though it had turned to liquid.
A green light emitted from the block overhead and scanned me from head to toe, and was then followed by the solid green light, encasing me. Just like Jordan. I didn’t want to keep thinking about him, I needed to focus. But he was just there. His face, the sense of him. He filled me and I didn’t want to let him go.
I tried to turn my head, but my body was sluggish in the light as though it was weighing me down. Compelling my body to obey, I forced the movement and turned towards the technician, as he deciphered the information that appeared upon the screen before him.
“Ok, you need to stay still,” he sounded annoyed. “These readings are not right.”
Those words were all I needed.
I forced my arm off the table and was about to push myself to reach for one of the instruments, but he was quicker and at my side, pushing my arm back down.
With a strained grunt, he pushed several fingers against his screen. Silver fluid erupted from the table around me, wrapping my wrists, my ankles, my waist and my neck, before turning solid. The restraints were tight. Lifting my head even by just a little forced the bind into my throat, stopping my breath. But he didn’t seem to care. I was there for one purpose only.
Cold, clear fluid rushed beneath my body, as it began to fill the table box, but then stopped at barely an inch deep. For that I was grateful. At least, he wasn’t going to drown me right away.
Once I was secure, he stepped back in front of his screen and frowned, then grunted once more. I was sure that meant he’d figured out I was from Earth, and I hoped he realized who I was. Mason’s name was on my lips ready to remind him, when he slowly turned back to me and smiled.
I gulped back air. I knew that smile, those hard eyes.
“Hello, again,” he sneered.
“You,” I choked out.
“Yes,” he drawled. “Me.” He then touched the lighted screen beside him, removing the solid light that encased me.
I tried to move against the restraints, but only enough so that he wouldn’t see that I couldn’t. The bite on my right hand had mostly healed, thanks to Haize’s remedy. The pain was gone, but I flexed it anyway, trying to shake off the surfacing memory.
The corners of his mouth twitched and he smiled, watching my movements.
“Shame,” he grinned. “I was so hoping for another fight. But we can fix that,” he said, patting my leg next to the ankle bind.
“Don’t touch me,” I huffed at him.
“You came here to die anyway, so what does it matter?” He moved closer to the smaller table near my head, his eyes shining at seeing the instruments that lay waiting it seemed, for him.
He jumped with ease into the table box, splashing the fluid, and reached across to the instruments. Then sitting upon my knees, he pressed them backward into the soft table. I tried to keep my legs straight, hoping the table hadn’t become too soft that it would allow my knees to bend the wrong way.
He then held up the tool for me to see. There were no sharp edges, only the pinpoint of light, which, by the way he held it, I was sure would have the same effect.
“Get off me,” I breathed. I needed to remember the restraint around my neck; it crushed my throat when I lifted my head to speak.
“Or what?” he sneered. “Ever had your body ripped to shreds while you were still conscious? Pain for pain,” he spat. “Do you know what this does?” He waved the instrument before me. “Shall I demonstrate?”
My eyes followed the instrument to my right side until I could no longer see it.
But I felt it.
He slashed long and slow down my arm. The light burned through my skin like flame, scorching to my bone. I didn’t want to scream, but there was no choice, and it came out half choked from the bind. He lifted my arm to inspect his work, his fingers digging into the wound, but the pain was too much, and I coul
dn’t use it to strike at him.
He smiled, a crooked good-news-for-me-but-not-so-good-for-you smile. “It’s not going to take much to cut you out of these binds.”
I refused to think about what he had in mind. Though as I stared up at my wrist, I realized that arm was no longer restrained. He’d done for me what I’d needed to. It almost brought a thank you to my lips. Almost.
He watched my blood run down my skin, then threw my arm above my head as if it no longer held his interest. The movement sent a jolt of pain down its length to my chest. I didn’t want to move it again, fearing another spike.
“I wonder if I can make you scream the way you did on Earth.”
He sliced the knife along my side as he said this, over my ribs to my hip, watching me, not his work, but it didn’t have quite the effect he was looking for.
For me, it meant one less restraint. But his words brought back the memory, the one that always shattered me. And I remembered the pain of that night. Similar to this. Sliced open by shards of glass. Blood dripping, mine, his. The pain of seeing Brian’s life mangled and ended, wrenched through me one more time. But I let the images flood my mind and I saw it for what it was, for the first time. His body had turned in his seat, facing me, half dangling toward me, shielding me from the worst of the falling glass. My screams this time, remained in my memory, and I remembered I wasn’t screaming from the pain, I was screaming for him. He was gone, and I wanted to go with him. All I had to do was move several inches forward in my seat, into the path of the falling glass, but I’d stayed where I was, choosing to live.
Accepting the scene as a part of me, I let it run its course. The images would never leave, but I was sure the screaming would now stay in its place, locked within the memory. He’d saved me, whether he knew it or not. I whispered my thank you, my long overdue goodbyes to him, and quietly put his memory away.
The stale breath of the technician upon my face brought me back to the white room. Leaning across my body, he held the tool in front of my face, waving it slowly back and forth.
But I couldn’t focus on it.
Jordan’s image wavered behind my eyes, his body encased in green light, lying peaceful, as though waiting for me. I could almost feel him.
The ward spoke again, but his words were muffled by my memories. I didn’t want to think about what he would do next, and I gasped back my fear as his free hand wrapped around my neck, squeezing for just a second, before traveling to my chest.
“I told you, you were mine.”
I needed to move, do something before he turned the knife on me again. For Jordan. I had to try. But the pressure of the bind against my neck held me in place.
“Scream for me,” his growl vibrated in my ear, and his eyes raked over my face and down my throat, as he waved the knife close to my skin once more. “This. Is really going to hurt.”
A gargling scream erupted from deep within me as the burning sliced over my jaw and down my neck. I couldn’t open my mouth any more than I had, fearing I would tear the wound open further.
His movement was slow, he was taking his time, as though relishing each torturous moment.
The searing pain eased up momentarily before it resumed carving the lower flesh of my neck. And in that brief absence of pain, I knew the neck restraint was broken.
I was free enough.
I wanted to scream my next words at him, but all that came out was a strangled whisper.
“For you and me both!”
Lifting my still bound and gloved left hand out of the fluid as much as I could, I squeezed my hand tightly closed, and pulsed my palm toward him as hard as the restraint would allow.
The slicing stopped at my collar bone. His eyes grew wide with shock before roaring at me as he was ripped out of the technician and sent back to the Spire.
I forced my free hand down to the technician’s and grasped the laser-knife. At the same time the green light from the screen beside me, flickered out and the technician disintegrated backwards, in a howl of shock and pain as he also was pulled back into the machine.
Of course, he was a ward! But this caused me to question Mason once again, was he even real, or did he not know about his technician friend? But I really, no longer cared.
Trying to control my shaking hands, I cut the restraints on my other wrist and my ankles, freeing myself. I cut away a portion of the table ledge, draining the now pink fluid I was lying in, and then slashed at the top of the blue tube.
And with the tube uncapped, I watched the fluid spill over onto the floor before it leveled off. I gritted my teeth, and prepared for more pain as I sliced the wound on my wrist deeper, refreshing the flow of blood. I then stretched that arm across the table and out to the blue tube.
Resting my wrist upon its now sharp edges, I let my blood flow down into the liquid, as drop by drop it turned the bright blue fluid to a violent shade of purple, before streaking down into the system.
“Nooo,” I heard call from the doorway. It was one of the men from the white work-room that I’d first walked through, no doubt to investigate the uproar. He stared at the now purple tube in disbelief. “What have you done?” he groaned, and then ran from the room, nevermind the state I was in.
Though I had no idea how long it would take to work, or even if it would work considering only part of me, my blood, was running into the fluid. But I guessed from the man’s reaction that I’d done something to upset the system. Hopefully, my small effort was enough to save Hera, if she hadn’t yet been inserted, and the colonists, for I had no idea how to get the rest of me into the tube.
I closed my eyes, keeping my wrist in place; I couldn’t look at it anymore, and I didn’t want the last thing I ever did to be to throw up everywhere. The pain in my arm, my face, my neck and my side, throbbed and spiked in unison, but I refused to scream anymore for that room, or for the Guardian. I was done with it.
I didn’t hear anyone enter the room again, but I felt someone touching my arm. I cracked my eyes open to see the woman who had brought me in, as she wiped a cold, clear substance across my wound and down my neck. She then placed my arm upon the table.
“Why?” I asked her, but she was already running back through the door. I couldn’t understand why she would try to save me, but I guessed, most likely, so they could torture me later.
The substance though, was numbing me. I tried to wipe whatever it was off my skin, and felt the gash open up again.
Deciding not to stay where I was, in case she or anyone else came back for me, I forced myself over the raised table ledge and fell to the floor, barely managing to avoid knocking my head against the cold, hard surface. Too weak to stand, I crawled to an empty corner, leaving behind me a crooked red line. I was not even close to being concealed, but it didn’t matter. I didn’t have much longer.
I curled up beside the wall and watched my blood drip from me, creating a small puddle. Keeping my focus upon it, I watched it grow, the sight and smell of it no longer affecting me. I wanted to smile at the stain I’d made on their perfect white floor, but couldn’t find the will for even that. I was tired. All I wanted was to see his face once more, and upon hearing my feeble need, the Central Unit provided.
Beside me, a picture-perfect portrait of him appeared across the floor. I silently thanked the Unit as I inched my hand to him, and hoped once more, that I’d accomplished what I came to do.
“Jordan,” I whispered, his face was growing dim, but the sense of him surrounded me. “I’m coming.”
The room began to fade away, darkening until I could no longer see. I closed my eyes, and gave myself freely to the void that had spent years trying to take me by force.
And now that I was ready for the removal of the pain and the loss, the void wasn’t yet done with me. It needed to sink its claws into me one last time. It didn’t want my submission, it wasn’t my friend ready to ease my pain; it wanted my capture, forcibly ripped from any spark of hope and locked in eve
rlasting agony.
“In here,” I heard. I knew that voice.
And then another moved through me, whispering my name.
“You need to wrap her wrist and her neck. Stop the bleeding, take her to Haize.” Aleric’s voice was close to me.
“No,” I knew that voice too. “Get her across the hall.”
“Mason, no. She won’t want that. Haize can heal her.”
I felt them moving me, my arm, my neck. There was pain in the pressure, but it was dull and it barely registered compared to the pain of knowing that he was gone from all existence.
“It’s too late for that,” Mason urged. “Get her across the hall, now, and find Hera.”
I should have known they’d find me, and I began to wish I’d taken the time to find a place to hide from them all. I couldn’t survive losing Jordan as well.
I tried to open my eyes, to make them leave me, but my lids barely fluttered.
“She’s conscious,” Mason said.
“No, Jordan’s gone,” I groaned, but I wasn’t sure if they could hear me. “Let me die with him.”
I felt strong arms pick me up and cradle me close to his chest. His warmth wound tightly around me and through me, but my soul barely stirred.
“No,” he whispered down to me, his mouth touching mine, his scent entering my lungs. “You can’t leave me.”
His voice moved through me again, filling me with pain, his pain. I turned my face into the warmth of his chest and slowly inhaled what little breath I could.
Jordan. I wanted to cry, but I didn’t have the strength.
I forced my eyes open, trying to stay conscious, to look up at his face, but there were only dimmed, blurred shapes; the light would not enter. Needing to stay with him, locked in his embrace, I prayed Mason could save me.
‘You’re alive,’ I wanted to say, but I wasn’t sure if the words were coming out.
All I could feel was the darkness tearing me from him, pushing me down into an eternity without him. I wanted to plead with the void to let me stay, but my request went unheard as it wrenched me down into its endless abyss.