I sucked in a clot of saliva and spat onto his visor. Behind the door, I heard him wrestle for his keys when his comrade grabbed him by the shoulder.
“Oi! Not with her. You know the rules.”
“Fine, but I’ll be coming back for you tonight.” He turned back and continued to shove the other prisoners forward into a slow shuffle. “Move it!”
“Shit!” I pushed off the door and wringed my fingers through my hair. Across the hall, prisoner WT35788 laughed. He had stepped up to the bars so his arms dangled through the slits. “What are you laughing at?” I snapped.
His dark eyes disappeared beneath the shadows and I couldn’t see much of him beyond his mop of dirty black hair. Like tangled black wires, his hair haloed around his head and curled down his face and neck. “Hey again, Printless, glad you decided to stick around. You know they call you the lab rat? Doctor Fitzgerald’s little mouse.”
I wrapped my arms around my chest. “They can go fuck themselves.”
“Some words of advice. Whatever you do, don’t get into the technician’s chair in the doctor’s office. That’s how he fucks you up, real bad.”
I carefully reached around and placed my hand on my back. As I spoke, my voice wavered, “What do you know about it?”
“Tsk!” He sucked in his breath. “Shit, you’ve already done it. That’s no technician’s chair; he uses it for his own personal experiments.” I touched my lips as numbness crawled over them. I really was going to be sick, but I swallowed hard to stop the urge. He continued, “A visit to Doctor Fitzgerald is the type of thing that would stay with you forever.”
“Did he do it to you too?”
“Once, in a different body.”
“In a different body? That means you got out, yeah?” I stepped up to the bars and glanced out across the hall. He was standing at the window side on with his head turned toward me. The twisted mane of his black hair had been combed back, revealing his thick strong eyebrows and sharp gaze underneath. I licked my lips. It wasn’t fear that flooded me; it was something else, like a type of wary curiosity.
“You never leave, not really.” He dropped his gaze and turned away, humming again underneath his breath. I swallowed out of nervous habit and my fingers tightened around the bars.
“Well, I’m going to get out of here.”
“And how do you plan on doing that?”
I gulped again. “I’ll figure out something.”
“You know,” he started with a wispy laugh, “one day you’re going to get desperate enough to ask me for help.”
“Pfft! As if I want help from a lunatic.” I turned away and I sat on my bed. After a few moments, there was a clink as my cell door opened. I quickly jumped to a stand, expecting a guard to walk in. Instead, to my astonishment, it was WT35788.
He opened his arms wide and bowed. I scurried backward and hit the wall behind me, but he did not take another step into my cell. Underneath the nest of black knotted hair were twin thick, dark eyebrows that pulled his face into a permanent scowl. His natural gold tan had withered from years of imprisonment as the dark circles around his eyes seemed bruised with insomnia. He appeared lean beneath his clothes; his discoloured collar was hiked up as dark bristles lined his jaw and neck in a five o’clock shadow.
“How did you? But… but my cell was locked.” I looked at him and back to my door. Unsure how to smile properly, he bared his teeth like an animal.
“Once you’ve spent most of your eighty-year sentence behind the same lock and door, you tend to work out their little tricks.”
“Are you kidding me?” I gasped. “You’ve been able to unlock your own cell and you’ve never escaped?”
“Who says I haven’t escaped before?” he asked. “Maybe I’m in here for a reason.” I loosened my shoulders and eased off the bed. He was taller than I had imagined but his bad posture slouched him forward.
“What’s your reason?” I demanded.
“At first it was the doctor, but now I think it’s you.”
I puffed my chest out. “What reason have you got with me?”
“Probably the same reason why the doctor has you locked up.” Footsteps rounded the corner as he stepped back and quickly locked my cell door again.
“Wait! Where are you going?”
“Later tonight I’ll come by your cell and show you.” As he turned to leave, I reached through the bars to pull him back.
“You’re going to help me get out!” This came out more like a statement than a question. He curled the corner of his lip, trying to grin.
“We can help each other out a lot, Printless.”
“It’s Nadia,” I corrected. “If we’re going to work together, then we should probably know each other’s names.” He grinned wider and walked out of my grip. “Wait! You didn’t tell me your name? Your real name!”
“Well… it’s not prisoner WT35788.”
CHAPTER NINE:
I waited for nightfall. A small part of me expected the guard to come by for his promised revenge; another part of me expected no one would. I couldn’t sleep and this time it wasn’t because of the wailing of my cell mates; it was the nerves. By the time I heard my cell door click open, it was nearly 1 am.
In the heavy shadows, a voice whispered at me, “Yo! Wake up. It’s time to move.” Despite my uncertainty, I didn’t hesitate to follow. I rose to a stand and very carefully stepped around the door as the prisoner opened it. Alpha prison was a maze of identical concreted passageways, armed barricades and watchtowers with twenty-four- hour security cameras. WT35788 moved in quiet and trained stealth, and carefully, I tried to match his every movement. We used the scattered pockets of shadows to creep down the corridors with our back glued to the walls. He led the way, using hand gestures to signal me to stop or follow as we took hidden back ways to skip around the patrols. Suddenly, he pulled me aside and held me against the cold wall. He then pulled a handkerchief from the back of his pockets.
“Put it on.”
“What? Why?”
“I don’t know if I can trust you yet.”
I snatched the handkerchief from him. “You’re the dodgy one here, not me.”
“Hurry up. It’s not far to go.” Once I secured the handkerchief around my eyes and he checked it for gaps, he took me by the bend in my elbow and led me onwards. We walked only thirty steps before we slowed and he took the handkerchief away. Despite the short distance, the room looked completely different, almost as though we were in another building. It was lighter inside and the walls were red bricked and chipped with evidences of an earth quake. We headed down a short flight of stairs that led to an underground basement. The lights reflecting off the scorched tiles set the room into a sickly green glow. The single door opposite us had two guards playing cards set up in front.
Unnerved, the prisoner stepped out from the shadows and addressed the two men with a nod. As he passed, he slipped them a small bag.
“As you were.” The guards inspected the stash and promptly nodded. The prisoner then looked back at me. “I have a guest tonight.”
I stepped out from the shadows as both men jumped to attention. One of the guards lifted his weapon. “Wait, who the hell is she?”
The prisoner pushed the man’s gun down so he dropped his aim.
“Careful. She’s worth more than you are.” He then proceeded to pull out a second bag and placed it on the table. “You didn’t see anything.”
I walked across briskly and followed the prisoner through the single door. Inside the narrow, cluttered office was a decapitated head of an Enforcer hanging by metal cords stripped from the roof above us. Even without the rest of its bulky body, the Enforcer’s head was twice the size of mine and thicker than a watermelon. A long tube protruded out from the back of its neck that connected the machine to a large battery. I side stepped around it in wonder. What amazed me most was that it was still operating. The machine blinked on as a flash of red hit my eyes. I jerked away quickly.
“Iden
tification invalid.” It announced in its precise robotic voice. In the next moment, it scanned the prisoner’s eyes, followed by a sharp beep. “Identification 1598M499. Cyro-Quarantined.”
I turned to him puzzled. “Why do you have an Enforcer tied up in here?”
“To test my experiments.” He smirked with a mixture of amusement and hatred toward the machine.
“It scanned you with a different code.”
“It didn’t. That is my real identification number.” His smirk quickly dropped, “But you can call me Diesel.”
“Wow, so you really are here by choice then? You paid for your cell?”
“I agree having a choice in my identity and imprisonment comes with privileges many of the other blacklisted don’t get.”
“I’m assuming the D400 drug is on the list of perks as well as your own privately guarded office.”
“You know I’m on the drug?” His eyebrow arched.
“You’re creepy, but not as creepy or crazy as the others.”
Diesel looked at me side on with a stretched grin. “Thank you.”
“It wasn’t flattery. What does Cyro-Quarantined mean?” I asked sternly.
His strained grin widened. “It’s not good. Let’s leave it at that.”
“So, you’re in here disguised as someone else but I thought it was impossible to change your soul imprint.”
“I haven’t changed it. No one can change their soul imprint. I can disguise mine though with prints very close to my own. I use this machine to make sure my products work.” He stepped around and ushered me over to his unkempt work desk. I had to suck in my stomach and squeeze past the Enforcer to fit between it and the table. Overspilling from the counter were sketches of the retina and the internal nervous system connecting to the eyeball. There, among the interconnecting veins, was the soul imprint. It was small and faint, something that couldn’t be seen with a human eye alone. Among the drawings, there were profiles of strangers with their irises enlarged on a poster.
“What’s all this?”
“My project. Before, when I said Doctor Fitzgerald was my reason to be here, it’s because of his work in the D400. I need the formula to replicate it.”
Diesel sidestepped around the table to a cabinet jammed in the corner filled with jars. They appeared empty, only containing some last residue of old water at the bottom of the cups.
He pulled one out and twisted the lid open. He then emptied the contents onto a dish with two clear circular contacts. I leaned in closer, noticing the small scratching along the curve.
“I’ve engineered these contact lenses to have the common structure of a soul imprint. Every soul imprint has the same basic line, like a trunk of a tree. It’s where the branches fan out that determines the individual. With this structure alone, you can pass off as anybody. I’ve tried myself, but my soul imprint shows through the contacts. But with you… you’re a blank slate.” He cupped my cheeks and tilted my chin downwards to get a better look. His hands were rough and warm, it was unnerving. “When I heard of your mutation, I knew I had to have you.”
“Don’t get so ahead of yourself.” I quickly pushed him off. “And saying I’m mutated doesn’t win you any favours. Why are you even making these?”
“Think about it. With these contacts, we’ll be able to enter any security gates, get into any computer, take anything we want and be anyone we need to be.”
“I’m hearing a lot of we in your plan. What’s in it for me?”
He snorted. “You should be begging me to use the contacts, unless you want to spend the rest of your life tied to a cutting board?”
My brows tightened mistrusting but the cuts and bruises on my back were reason enough to take the risk. Staying where I was meant to live a life of experiments and torture but pairing with a madman didn’t fill me with much more ease. His temptation of freedom was too great and I rather fight for my survival outside a cage.
“Fair enough,” I snarled. “Does that mean I get to keep them?”
“Pfft, as if.” He reached down and gently pinched the corner of the contact lens. He then turned to face me. “Don’t move.”
I rolled my eyes upwards as his finger blurred when he reached forward. Carefully, he pulled the skin around my eyes back and placed one lens at the bottom of my eyeball. He then instructed me to blink so they settled over my irises. He then placed the other one in. They did itch a little bit, but it was an annoyance that I could live with.
“Come.” We stepped around the Enforcer again until we were facing it head on. Diesel turned his back to avoid re-scanning, when the flash of red blinked across my vision. The Enforcer’s internal board hummed as it dug into its database for a match.
After a few painful moments, it announced, “Identification invalid.”
My shoulders dropped disappointed as I heard Diesel hiss under his breath. He grabbed my face again and with expert ease dragged the contacts from my eyes. Once he had them, he returned to his table and set them back on the dish.
“Nice theory,” I said, trying to hide the hint of frustration in my tone. “Too bad it doesn’t work.”
“Minor adjustments. By tomorrow night, I’ll have it ready for testing.” Annoyed, he pulled me by the cuff of my clothes and shoved me out into the hands of the guards outside. “Take her back; make sure you’re not seen.” He then held a screwdriver against the curve of my throat. “Breathe a word about this to anyone and I’ll hang your head next to the Enforcers.”
CHAPTER TEN:
The following morning, I was unable to look away from Diesel’s cell. I wanted to know more about the contacts and his plans. I had so many questions that I couldn’t sleep. Returning two hours after me, he hadn’t made a peep all morning. As the guards turned up to unlock his cell, Diesel gave me a quick glance and a smirk before heading to the courts outside. Despite his feral nature, this looney was my ticket out of here. In fact, with those lenses, it could change my life completely. I itched to be released from my cell, but yet again, the guards walked right past me.
The endless boredom left me restless as I laid down on my cot with my legs swinging over the edge. I spent hours imagining what I would do once I was free. I closed my eyes, letting myself fall into my daydream. The bruising on my back was gone and the scabbing had almost cleared up. I woke from my daydreaming by the distinct click of my cell door followed by footsteps nearing my head. I snapped my eyes open just in time to see a set of arms pin me down and cover my mouth.
With a fast jab, the guard stabbed me in the neck with a needle. I seized up underneath him; more stunned than frightened before the darkness pulled me into unconsciousness. The last thing I remembered was my head rolling to the side as they forced a bag over me.
As I slept, trapped behind a veil of intoxicated paralysis, a sharp pain ran up my back like a metal centipede with needle legs was digging into the curve of my spine. The pain scorching my back went beyond the limits of skin; it sunk into my very bones and ran with my blood into every inch of my body. The sickness sat with me for days after. I vaguely remember being dragged back to my cell and dumped on the concreted floor.
I tried to open my eyes but I couldn’t. I choked on my vomit and felt someone turn my cheek to help clear my airways. I vomited nothing but bile across my cell. I didn’t sleep, not once. Even though I was motionless and kept in darkness, my brain was on fire.
Eventually, my strength returned enough to open my eyes. It felt as though my body had been severed in half, disconnecting the nervous system from the middle of my torso to my feet. As focus eventually returned, I noticed I was inside a larger cell, a different cell. After a few moments, I managed to roll myself over onto my stomach. My throat was parched and my lips were dry; dehydration strained my head with a new type of ache. Above the bed, there was a shaft of sunlight coming in through the window. I climbed onto the cot and heaved myself up to the windowsill where I saw a view of the courtyards below.
The drugs dragged my body down, fi
lling my veins with lead. I groaned and turned over. There was a tightness near my temple as I brought my hand up to my head. When I touched it, there was a tender pinch under my fingertips. I ran my hand backward, combing it along my head at the vacant touch of my long hair. They shaved my head, too?
I slumped forward on the edge of my cot. With both hands, I gently brushed down my hair, noticing they had only shaved down one side, shaving from the centre parting and down just past my earlobe. Suddenly, my door unlocked and Doctor Fitzgerald walked in.
“You’re finally awake? Good. The council will be eager to see you.”
I tensed and kicked away as he approached me. He was a blur but I could make out the distinct outline of the syringe in his hand. My voice trembled with anger and fear. “I’ll kill you if you touch me again.”
I heard him laugh and shake his head. “The drugs will wear off soon. You don’t need to be scared.”
“I mean it! Get away from me, you freak.”
“Just relax.” He dropped down to a squat. “You’re going to be okay.”
What the hell is wrong with him? He’s deranged! I looked around the room for an escape but I was trapped. “I swear to God, I will kill you!”
“Always so violent. I’m not your enemy, Nadia.”
“What have you done to me? Why did you move me out here?”
“It’s for your own protection. I can’t risk having you running around with common trash. You’re important to us and I had to ensure my product was safe.” My eyes widened as Doctor Fitzgerald’s smile curled. “That’s right,” He reached behind his head and tapped his neck, “I’ve always got my eye on you.”
The tracking device. My throat clenched, making it difficult to swallow. He found Diesel’s lab.
“You don’t have to look so scared; that boy won’t be bothering you anymore.” Behind Doctor Fitzgerald, two guards stepped into the room.
Soulless (The Immortal Gene Trilogy Book 1) Page 7