"Strip," she said.
"Why do I need to wear that shit?"
Blanche chuckled humorlessly. "Don't worry this shit's not for you."
If there was any heat in the alcove, it had escaped through the double doors when they'd entered. Wordlessly, Theda pulled off the johnny and the booties as the cold air pimpled her flesh. She crossed her arms over her chest. "Really? You folks don't like to see anyone dressed, do you."
"Always a comic," Blanche said. She yanked a second locker open and pulled out a clean johnny and fresh booties. She tossed them to Theda. "You need to be half sterile," she said.
"Do you think I have cooties?"
Blanche shrugged. It was useless to try to get her goat; the woman simply had no sense of humor. Theda pulled on the cotton clothing and waited quietly until Blanche rang the buzzer to the door's left. A garbled voice came through. Theda couldn't make out what it said, but Blanche seemed to understand and twisted the knob of the door. She stood aside so Theda could go ahead of her, and presumably so she could pull on her protective gear.
Everyone inside wore a type of HAZMAT suit and mask. There was a chair, much like a dentist chair, situated in the middle of the room and surrounding it, several pieces of equipment. Even through his mask, Theda recognized the good doctor. She presumed the others were the remaining zealots. Well, bully for them: they'd managed to make her nervous.
The doctor came forward, his rubber soles squeaking on the tiles.
"We're sorry, Theda," he said. "We must look frightful." He spread his arms sideways. "We have to take precautions, you see. We had a bit of a... spill."
"Not something I need to worry about, right?" She looked down at her flimsy cotton johnny.
He ignored the comment, but nodded curtly to Blanche who drew up alongside Theda, her mask rattling noisily as she breathed through it.
"Maybe you should cut back," Theda said to her and Blanche's eyes narrowed angrily.
"If you'll just have a seat." He swept his arm across the dentist chair. Theda paused before stepping forward. She ran her gaze over the other two men, also garbed and masked; what could be so threatening that they wore suits but left her unprotected.
"Is my skin tingling?" Theda asked warily, focusing on her bare arms.
Dr. Hurte hesitated before he answered. "I don't know why it should... No, probably not."
Theda looked from one masked person to the other. "Are you sure?" She could swear she felt her skin crawling.
"I'm sure it's just your imagination," Dr. Hurte patted the seat of the chair. "Come now, girl. We're waiting."
"What are you going to do?"
"Does it matter? You're an enemy of the state. You can come willingly or you can come with coercion." He looked sideways at two masked men who stood close to him, hands crossed in front of their hips. Theda had made the mistake of thinking them scientists when she entered. Now she knew better. She swallowed. Bracing herself.
"I guess it's going to take some coercion."
The doctor said nothing more, just nodded at the men. They moved forward like they were on wheels. She was already kicking and screaming when they reached her. She swung in every direction, and was thinking she had managed to hold them off when she felt a blow connect with her cheekbone. She staggered backwards, but not so far that she escaped the second blow to her stomach, and the third to her rib cage. She fell to her knees, gasping for air, trying to see past the stars that split into her vision.
She was wrestled into the chair, and pinned down.
"How does your skin feel now?" the doctor mused.
"Pound sand," Theda told him.
Even as she was glaring at him, she felt the burly men on each side of her, each of them strapping her hands down onto the armrests and then moving to her ankles. There was a twist of her skin, like an Indian burn, as the straps came together around each foot.
"Now I know why they call you zealots," Theda said to the doctor.
"Oh?"
"Yes.
"You love your work."
"You know? I really do." He leaned over her, pulling with him steel arms of equipment. She thought she saw tiny clamps attached to the ends of the sway bars, but she couldn't trust her vision. One of the orderlies gripped her chin, holding her head steady. The doctor loomed over her.
"Be still, now. This might sting a little."
There were clamps. And they did sting. They slipped beneath her eyelids, holding them open, making her eyes water furiously. She began cursing; calling him every nasty she had ever heard. He seemed unaffected, checking his watch, tapping the surface.
"How much time?" he asked nurse Blanche.
"It's going to be tight," she said.
"Then let's get to it," he said and squeezed a small vial over each of Theda's eyes. The stinging from the clamps disappeared in seconds, the pools of tears ran down her temples and into her hair unchecked.
"Rising to 67, Doctor," Blanche said. It was an innocent enough statement, but Theda wanted to kick her. She even tried, and Blanche grinned at her for her trouble.
"Sixty-seven?" he said with a trace of astonishment. "We better work fast, then." He looked down at her with chastisement in his eyes. "Your reluctance has cost us dearly."
Theda could feel her heart racing. "What is it? What are you going to do?"
His eyes crinkled around his mask above her. "Don't you worry, we have it all in hand. We've had to step up your re-education, Theda. As you've seen, General Ezekiel has given you three days. You didn't respond well to the psychological stage. We're moving on to the physical aspect of re-education. Let's hope that you respond better to that."
The chair fell backwards, making Theda's heart feel as though it was hovering above her as she fell. It caught itself with a clunk, and her feet rose above her. She stared up at the doctor, watching him taking instruments from a stainless tray. Her heart tumbled down into her throat and she had a hard time swallowing. She thought when he lifted a thin, ice pick looking instrument, that she might lose her mind. The muscles of her eyes screamed to blink, but she felt no burning. Frozen, she guessed. But frozen for what?
Chapter 8
He came at her with the ice pick and a tiny stainless steel hammer. She guessed at his intent even before he had placed the tip of the ice pick into her tear duct.
"No, no, no. Wait. Please wait, wait, wait." It took everything within her not to struggle.
"What's that?" Dr. Hurte pulled back just enough that she could see his full face instead of just his eyes.
"Please wait."
"Wait for what?"
"I can tell you things."
"We're not interested in information, Theda. We need to educate you. That's what this is all about. Remember?"
"It isn't. The Beast wants information from me. That's why I'm here."
"You're here because General Ezekiel wants you here. John just wants a religion free world. One undivided by war. One not torn apart by such foolish things as beliefs."
She didn't want to argue. Not with the ice pick stuck in her tear duct. Not with the way her cheek was burning. Her left eye was already swelling where the orderly had struck her. Her ribs ached.
He moved closer again, placed the hammer on the tip of the ice pick.
"No," she whimpered. "Please."
His eyes ran past her to flick over Blanche, who now stood at her side. "What are the levels?"
"Seventy three, Doctor."
His glance slipped back onto Theda, frustrated and disciplinary. "We need to get this finished, Theda. You heard General Eazy. He'll be back in three days--two days now. If you aren't re-educated, you know what he'll do to you."
She couldn't not know; she'd read the Promo herself. She hoped the tears that welled in her eyes were enough answer.
"I'm sorry to scare you," he said. "But, as I said, we need to accelerate your re-education. Aversion therapy, shock therapy, there's simply no time to try those methods out only to see them fail. This is the only w
ay." She hated the sound of pity in his voice.
He gave a light rap on the end of the ice pick, and Theda's heart hammered in her ears. There was a sharp prick of pain, nothing as bad as she'd expected, but enough to make her bladder let go. She could feel the warmth of her own urine pooling beneath her on the seat and sopping into the gown. She knew she was crying, she could feel the tears streaming down her cheeks and pooling into her ears, but she couldn't squeeze her eyelids shut, and dared not move for fear that the ice pick would fall much farther in.
"Just scoring the site, dear," he said. "Kind of like making a test hole for a drill." He looked past her again. "Levels?"
"Eighty."
Theda thought for sure her bowels would let go too; she felt her stomach cramp. A deep and terrifying trembling had taken over her body. She feared that the tremors would somehow loose the ice pick and it would gouge into her eye.
"Please, Doctor," she said.
"I wish there was something I could do, Theda"
"There is, there is. Just stop. Please wait. It's true, I do have information that the--that John would want to know. Just ask him. Just take the time to ask him about Henrick, if you don't believe me."
"But what good is information, Theda, when your very life is at stake? If we don't get you reeducated..." he let the statement trail off.
"Surely there's another way."
"Levels?"
"Ninety three."
The doctor looked back down at her. "It's possible that we could continue this later," he said thoughtfully, but with a note of distraction in his voice, and perhaps a bit of anxiety. The levels; they bothered him.
"Doctor?" There was a note of frantic urgency in Blanche's voice.
"Yes, yes. I know." Dr. Hurte pulled on the ice pick, and even though Theda didn't feel it leave, her entire body flooded with relief.
"Unstrap her, and take her back to her room. We'll resume..." He glanced down at his watch. "After dinner should be sufficient time, don't you think?" He looked at the nurse for her affirmation.
"What are you waiting for, then? Get to it." The doctor whirled away and left the room without pulling his mask off. Theda noticed the door he left by wasn't the same as the one she'd come in. There must be another corridor or another alcove on the other side. So. She was somewhere in the middle of the complex.
Theda had to be helped out of the chair, and even when nurse Blanche grasped her in disgust and dragged her through the room to the changing area, she had to have the burly gentlemen hold her up by her arms just to keep her moving. Her ribs ached from the shock of landing against the counter, not broken, but surely cracked. She had to breathe though her mouth because her sinuses were already swollen. They left her on a chair. Her gown had gone cold and the tingling in her skin intensified, making the wet cloth seem electric. And she was weak. She tried to tell herself it was fear, but something in the back of her mind whispered, cancer, Ebola, HIV. Now on top of the cold, she was shuddering from shock. She shivered violently enough to hear her teeth clack together.
"Stop with that foolishness," Blanche snapped.
And it was in that moment that rage took over. It pumped adrenaline into her muscles and she flew at Blanche, knocking her over and falling on top of her. So furious, so completely mad with fear and posttraumatic stress, that she barely felt the woman's nose break beneath her fists and she didn't stop when her fingers tangled in that stiff gray hair and yanked at it hard enough to get a good momentum going, slam, lift, slam, lift, slam.
She could barely see through her left eye, and she knew it was swelling. She felt the thickness on the topmost part of her cheek, and it was getting hard to blink. But it was clear through the vision she did have that Blanche was out cold. It was clear that, for all they had bloodied her face, the old bat would end up with swelling around her own cheek to match. Good. The old bat deserved it. She deserved worse. They all did.
Without thinking, Theda gathered a mouth full of spit and let it fly. Straddled across Blanche's waist, she looked down at the woman, heaving from exertion. She was out of breath. Her face hurt. All she wanted to do was curl up somewhere, but there was an itch in her spine. It went straight through to her sternum and rose like a wave of panic through a crowd. She had to get out of there.
There was no time for calm scrutiny of the place anymore. She wanted out. She needed to get out. Now. She scrabbled away from Blanche, trying to find footing; falling twice. Her gown stuck to her legs and buttocks where it was wet. She could smell her own stink. She fumbled through the lockers, finding her old johnny gown and flinging it toward Blanche.
And then she truly ran her gaze over Blanche's unconscious form. It was possible she'd killed her, now that she thought about it. She chewed her lip, thinking. She had to shove that possibility as far back into the recesses of her mind as she could. It was useless to think about that sort of thing. If she was dead, she was dead. She had to disguise the body. In a flurry, she rushed toward the woman and did her best to strip her of her nurse shoes and stockings and then laid the old johnny over top of her, tucking it beneath her back.
She couldn't do anything about the hair or face, but she hoped that a cursory glance at the woman would make anyone going by think she was an inmate. For good measure, she pulled Blanche a little further toward the wall so that anyone passing by would only see her legs.
With a deep breath, she pushed herself through the doors, thanking sweet fuck that they weren't barred. She did her best to walk down the hallway as sedately she could, for the first few steps, and then realizing that the hall was empty, took to running. She turned corner after corner at a headlong pace.
It was still gloomy dark and the emergency lights were still lit. That meant it wasn't even dawn yet. How long she had been in that lab, she didn't want to guess. It seemed like an eternity, but it was probably only half an hour or so. If she was lucky, no one would be up at all. She came upon two emergency exits in her journey, both of them barred. Obviously, this was a part of the complex that wasn't well used, so they didn't expect anyone to be in this sector.
She had no idea where she was going, and the headlong rush through the halls was doing nothing but making her exhausted. She had to form some sort of plan. She stopped and pressed her back along the wall, letting her leg muscles find some rest. Her chest was on fire, and her right eye had swollen nearly shut. The mask was making it difficult to breathe. And she felt so claustrophobic, that she had to sink to her haunches against the wall. She'd just rest a minute. She tried to gather her wits and her breath so she could get up and find a closet or something, some place where she could hide until she understood the layout of the complex.
She was mentally running herself through a series of days, expecting to come out at night and forage like a squirrel, when she heard the shuffling of footsteps. She was on her feet too late.
"Hey!"
Weak knees and painful ribs be-damned, she had to find cover, and she had to find it now. She darted back the way she'd come, rattling every door she passed. She could hear the person behind her slapping tiles with rubber soles, panting, out of breath. Out of shape, no doubt, living a cushy life of employment and housing, sofas to sit on, four squares a day.
Even weak, Theda was well accustomed to running. Adrenaline and survival instinct blocked out the pain. She'd pay for it later, but half blind and terrified, she was able to find the lab's corridor. She flew past that, seeking the darkness of a stairwell where she hunkered into the shadows, waiting to see if the fat idiot got as far as she did.
It took every particle of willpower to paralyze the panic, to force the wheezing of her breath to rasp out slowly instead of like a starving man wolfing down a meal. Then she prayed. To what god she had no idea, but she prayed for the first time in half a dozen years.
And she waited to see if one answered.
The god had gone deaf. After what seemed hours, but what was, no doubt, minutes, her breathing slowed and she began to feel the ache deep in her t
issues, she sank to the floor. Moving at all was risky, but she simply couldn't stand one more second. Truth be told, she needed to lie down. She ended up curling into a ball right where she was. If no one had found her yet, they probably wouldn't. At least, that was what her muscles told her. Her brain knew better. Just a breather, then. Long enough to catch wind and make sure she was safe enough to search out a place to lie low.
Her skin was on fire. Every bit of muscle tissue ached, and her throat had begun to feel as though she was swallowing glass. Something wasn't right at all.
She tried to feel her forehead for fever; her palm met cold sweat.
She eased onto her knees. There wasn't time to catch her breath; she'd be passed out before too long and she had to find her feet.
She found her way to a wobbly stand, clutching at the wall for support, bracing herself for the rest of the trial. She pulled in three deep, preparatory breaths and pushed herself forward.
Straight into the chest of her pursuer.
Chapter 9
"Hey," the voice was soothing like warm oil across her skin. "Hey, it's okay. You don't have to cry." He reached toward her face, letting the thumb slide across her cheek. She winced as it touched the corner of her eye.
"What in the hell did they do to you?"
She shook her head; mute, unable to form any words. The relief of hearing a soothing, even kind voice made her tremble all the more, but it was a giddy kind of trembling, one that forced little choking sounds to come from her throat.
"Are you okay?"
This time she nodded her head, just as mute.
He sank to the floor with her as her knees let go, trying to study her face in the gloom. "Your face," he said.
Theta Waves Box Set: The Complete Trilogy (Books 1-3) (Theta Waves Trilogy) Page 24