by Hall, Andrew
‘It’s a side effect of the medication I’m giving her for the procedures, to paralyse her,’ the doctor replied. ‘In the beginning she was kicking and screaming too much for me to operate.’
‘I’d rather not know the grizzly details,’ the husky woman replied, wearing a look of distaste. ‘All I want to know is, how much is she aware of? How much will she remember?’
‘Very little, I’d imagine,’ he replied, studying Tabitha’s searching eyes. ‘She’ll see us and hear us now, and in another two minutes she could have forgotten everything all over again.’
‘What if you took her off the medication?’ said the woman.
‘Well, she’d most likely suffer with chronic trauma at a subconscious level. But nothing much on the surface, so to speak.’
‘I’m not interested in her psychology,’ the husky woman replied, tapping a pen on her notepad. ‘All I need to know is whether we can keep her around indefinitely without her attacking anyone.’
‘I wouldn’t recommend it,’ the doctor replied, shaking his head. ‘We’d have to keep her restrained permanently. Cared for, et cetera. And medicated.’
‘We can’t spare those resources,’ the husky woman replied simply. ‘Just take what you can from her and put her out of her misery. Grow her cells or something, I don’t know. I want results. I want to see us winning this war.’
‘I’ll do my best,’ the doctor replied, watching Tabitha’s dazed expression. Tabitha saw the doctor there in front of her, and the husky woman. The fluorescent light buzzed overhead, reflected in the steel table where they sat. Had they asked her a question? She couldn’t remember. When Tabitha opened her mouth, she realised that she couldn’t speak. Why did she have so many cuts and bruises? Why couldn’t she move?
‘Take her in again this afternoon,’ the woman commanded, watching Tabitha panic in her chair again. ‘Her hands are the priority. If they won’t do what you want, open them up and force them. Or cut them off.’
‘This afternoon?’ the doctor replied. ‘But she’s been in surgery non-stop for four days. Her body won’t cope with any more trauma unless she’s given time to recover.’
‘I don’t care how much trauma her body can cope with,’ the woman growled, standing up from the table. ‘I care about getting the alien tech out of her and into weapons we can use against them. Before we’re all extinct. Is that clear?’
‘Perfectly clear, Ma’am,’ the doctor replied, suddenly fearful of her as she loomed over him. The husky woman gave him a cold stare and knocked on the door. A soldier opened it from the other side, and held it open for her as she left the bright room. The doctor looked at Tabitha for a moment, and got up from his seat to walk around behind her where she sat.
I remember now, Tabitha said to herself, as the doctor pulled her wheelchair away from the table. You’re the man I’m going to skin.
There was a wait before Tabitha’s next operation could start. She lay prepped and restrained on the operating table, half panicked and half dazed in amnesia. The doctor kicked and fiddled with some kind of battery block in the corner of the room. A monitor bipped relentlessly beside her, and reminded her of supermarket checkouts.
It was a long wait on the operating table before the doctor could start the procedure. Tabitha was bolted down with the thick cuffs around her limbs, although she couldn’t move her body anyway. She could only stare in paralysis at the ring of lights above her, or catch glimpses of the doctor in the corner of her eye. Once the equipment was up and running again, the doctor loomed over her and began to cut her left hand open. Though she panicked and tried to pull away, she hardly felt a thing. Her grey hands had always been numb to touch anyway; it was only the sounds of chopping and tearing that ran through her. Until he started on the flesh and bone beneath. Tabitha screamed silently, her mouth still. The doctor watched her carefully for any reaction. All she could do was stare frantically into his oversized spectacled eyes whenever they hovered into view above her. When the doctor moved aside for another instrument, Tabitha strained her eyes left to see the mess of her hand. He’d opened up the metal skin; picked her finger joints apart. Sawn her thumb half off. She drifted away in a daze of agony, lost in the pale speckled ceiling. The bipping monitor brought her back round. When she looked again at the ceiling, she realised she was in the operating theatre. Her hand was agony; what had he done to it? How long had she been here?
I’d like to stop now, please, she said to him, inside her head. I’d like to go to sleep and not wake up. Put me down like an animal, and then you can take whatever you want. Just please, no more. The doctor pulled a strand of grey flesh from her palm, pushed the monitor trolley beside the bed out of his way, and scurried off to examine his prize under a microscope. Tabitha felt a sudden tingle in her dangling broken fingers. Shocked, she glanced over through the corner of her eye. The monitor bipped closer beside her, inches from her hand. It trembled then, attracted to her like a magnet. The casing rattled slightly. A spark jumped from the monitor to her finger; a tiny blue-white arc of voltage. Another spark came after it, leaping to her dangling dissected fingertip. The current wiggled inside her arm, up into her shoulder, and tickled the bones in her neck. Current reaching out to her, embracing her. She felt the voltage heal her. Something popped back together in her spine, and she blinked suddenly like she’d woken up from a dream. Her throat felt there again. Her core and her limbs felt there. She wiggled her toes. She made a tiny noise in her throat, a sorry croak, too quiet for the doctor to hear in the corner. Her hand was agony, a total mess. At least she could move it now though, a little. Her mangled hand was her escape plan.
Tucking in her half-sawn thumb as best she could, Tabitha gritted her teeth and tried to bunch together her strung-out fingers. A sickening pain hit her as she pressed her loose thumb deep into her palm, trying to make her hand as thin as possible. With a sharp tug, and with plenty of blood around to lubricate it, she managed to pull her mangled left hand out through the restraint with a whispering squelch. She looked over at the doctor’s back, wide-eyed with her secret success. The doctor was still hunched over the microscope in the corner, blissfully unaware. With broken bleeding fingers Tabitha searched the metal band that restrained her head. There was a smooth recess on the front of it; a button. She pushed her sturdiest mangled knuckle into it, dripping silver blood on her face, and heard a soft click as the head restraint popped open. It was worth the agony to hear that click. Free to move her torso, she reached her left hand over to her right cuff. It was harder to press the release button on the distant restraint though, with virtually no command of her mangled fingers and thumb. The release button felt miles away. The pain made her head spin. Desperately she reached over again and pressed a loose knuckle into the sunken button. The shackle popped open with a tiny click. With her upper body free, she sat up and unlocked her ankle cuffs and cradled her mangled left hand.
The doctor was taking a scalpel to the strip of grey flesh, cutting it into thinner strands. Silently Tabitha swung her legs over the edge of the table, disconnected her tangle of leads and tubes, and set her cold feet down unsteadily on the tiled floor. The doctor was decanting a flask of acid into a glass beaker, to see how a strand of her grey flesh would react. Tabitha loomed at his shoulder, unseen. Unheard. She could reach over right now and crush his hand around the beaker, she told herself. Acid and shards of glass seemed like a good way to start with him. But wait. He’d scream, and she’d be caught. She waited for him to put the flask down, and then wrapped her arm tight around his neck from behind. She felt her thin bicep press hard into his throat. She squeezed with every ounce of her hate, glaring at the back of his balding head as he collapsed back on the floor. She tried to lift him, and had to stifle a scream at the pain. Her left hand wasn’t going to be good for anything just now, especially not lifting bodies. The answer jumped out at her like instinct. Putting her hands on the bipping monitor, Tabitha felt the voltage inside. She felt it rise up from the wires at her touch, draw
n to her body. The current was coming from a big battery over in the corner, like a car battery. Tabitha reached in for the current, and the current reached out to her. The entire charge in the battery surged up the cables and leapt into her, curling around her organs and stroking her skin. It tingled in her like wine and good sex. She looked down at her mangled hand, and saw the flesh and metal skin knitting together. Healing. She flexed her fingers like new.
Tabitha dragged the doctor towards the operating table and lifted him up onto it. She snapped the cuffs shut on his arms and legs, and around his big head. She filled his gaping mouth with gauze and cotton wool, and tied it up with bandages to stifle his screams. When he blinked at the surgical lights above and came around, she was staring at him. He had a look of pure terror, trying to shake his head and move his limbs. Struggling frantically against the restraints. She just stared into his eyes.
‘Hi,’ she said quietly, savouring his panic. All her thoughts had been coming back to her. All those dosed-up hazy memories that had been swimming around vaguely in her head. They were clear again; falling into place. Tabitha remembered. The doctor stared in terror. Tabitha’s sympathy was dead. It was that way he’d looked at her, when he poked that first needle into her arm. How many times had he cut her open and dived straight in, despite her endless kicks and screams? Not once had he looked at her and seen a human being. All he’d seen were possibilities. Weapons. Living armour. Strange organs and superhuman healing. To him she was only Test Subject.
‘Do you remember what I said when we first met?’ she asked him, setting out the instruments on the trolley beside her. ‘I said I’d get free and then I’d strip the skin off you. Well, here we are.’ He writhed and struggled afresh, with tiny muffled screams coming from the clump of gauze in his mouth. She watched his staring eyes, huge behind his thick glasses. She showed off her healed hand to him. She wanted him to see how little damage he could do. How little pain she could feel. She had to prove that to him. Before she showed him how much pain he could feel in return.
‘You’ve got no idea what I am,’ she told him, picking up the cruellest scalpel from the trolley. ‘Or what you’ve done to me.’ She tapped her temple. ‘I used to be a nice person, once. Shy. But that was before everything happened.’ The doctor could only stare, trembling in fear on the table. ‘You’ve changed me,’ she told him. ‘You all have.’ She rested the scalpel blade on his hand, and watched his eyes. A bead of sweat rolled down his forehead. She heard his breaths, quick and shallow and nasal. She pressed the scalpel into his palm, popping the skin. Dragging, slicing. Peeling. He was screaming. Ruby-red flesh and peering white bone.
‘Hearts are quite weak, really,’ Tabitha observed, holding her hand to his chest. ‘Human hearts, I mean.’ His heart beat fast; faster than she’d ever thought possible. She could feel the muted electric pulse through his breastbone that jerked that rubbery muscle, flushing red blood to his raw dripping hand. Tabitha felt upset, frustrated.
‘I really wanted to skin you alive,’ she told him, disappointed in herself. She’d gone back on her word to him. All she could manage was his hand, shining wet and red under the surgical lights. ‘Maybe it takes a certain kind of person to torture another human being,’ she said softly, pricking his side with the scalpel. He yelped. ‘I wish I had your stomach for torture, I really do,’ she whispered in his ear. His eyes widened as she placed a cold grey hand around his throat. ‘I wish I could strip all the skin off you and wait hours for you to die. But I couldn’t do that to a person. I’ll never be like you. And I’m glad.’ She tightened her grip around his neck, tighter, strangling the life out of him. He threw his body against the restraints, rattling the metal table in his panic. He stared into her yellow eyes, pleading silently for life. Tabitha hesitated. She finally saw something human in him, and she hated him for it. Why couldn’t she do it? How could so much hate crumble away so easily? She remembered all her pain, and gripped his throat hard again.
‘I can’t,’ she mumbled, loosening her grip altogether. He stared at the ceiling, gasping for breath through his nose. ‘There’s been too much death,’ she said, backing away to the wall. She’d already taken more revenge than she could stomach. Seeing the mangled ruin of his hand proved that to her. She’d done that to him. Only a minute ago, she’d felt like she could have done so much more. But she couldn’t take his life away. That would have made her the monster they expected; a feral creature who deserved her restraints. Killing him would be their victory, not hers. There was a knock at the door.
‘How’s it going in there doctor?’ came the husky woman’s voice. The door edged open slowly. ‘Any developments?’ she said, stepping inside. It took her a moment to take in the scene and realise that doctor and patient were in the wrong places.
‘Hi!’ said Tabitha brightly, and laid her out on the floor with a punch on the jaw. ‘Where’s the way out?’ Tabitha demanded, gripping the dazed woman by the throat.
‘I… I,’ the woman stammered, terrified. Tabitha pressed the bloody scalpel against her neck.
‘Tell me or I’ll cut you open,’ Tabitha growled, staring into the woman’s wide eyes. ‘Tell me now.’
Tabitha peered up and down the white corridor and edged her way out from the operating room. Her bare feet slapped against the cold tile floor on her way down the silent old hallway. Then it struck her. The lights were on. Electricity. It couldn’t have been coming from a battery; maybe there was a generator here. She reached her grey fingers out to a socket in the wall, and voltage leapt out into her hand. It felt like hot water, soothing and intense. It wanted to be inside her. She knelt down and pressed her lips against the wall socket, and drank voltage. The lights flickered down the corridor as she drained the wires. There was a distant shout of panic at the sudden gloom, somewhere off to her left. She put her mouth to the socket again, and drank deep. The blue light oozed into her waiting mouth. The voltage coursed through her like an orgasm. She felt wired, intense. Superhuman. When she breathed the voltage back into the socket, all the lights blew in a sudden sparking racket. She’d never heard a more beautiful sound.
‘What’s happened to the power?’ a soldier shouted down the dark corridor.
‘Get downstairs and try the fuse box!’ shouted another. ‘We need to get the floodlights back on, right now! We’re fucked if they come for us now!’ Tabitha grinned at their frightened voices, revelling in their panic. She ran off down the corridor.
‘We’ll be fine,’ said another voice. ‘We’ve got night vision cameras outside.’
‘Yeah, but they won’t work if there’s no bloody power on, will they?’ the first man screamed back. Tabitha ran her hand along wall as she went, feeling her way in the pitch black. Suddenly there was no wall against her fingers. She turned the corner, and heard more voices behind her in the dark.
‘Get outside!’ a man yelled to another. Running footsteps echoed up the corridor. Tabitha ran on and turned a corner at the end, and ran into someone in the darkness.
‘Who’s that?’ said a woman in the dark. Tabitha felt for the woman’s shoulder, grabbed it, and slammed her fist into her face to drop her to the floor. Thoughts, plans, mercy, she didn’t have time for them. This was escape. This was survival. Suddenly red lights flickered on down the hallway; a backup generator.
‘Thank god for that!’ came a distant voice.
‘They’re coming!’ another voice screamed. ‘They’re on the moors!’ Tabitha ran from the sound of sprinting boots, deeper into the maze. Breathless, she reached a barred window in the corridor. She saw spotlights moving outside in the inky night, and soldiers shouting and massing on the yard. A military base, bigger than she expected. An old siren had started up. As the spotlights swept over the moors beyond the big chain-link fence, Tabitha glimpsed things reflecting the light. Swarming shapes in the dark. She stood away from the window, still gasping for breath. The distant voices behind her forced her to run. She had to get out. She had to survive this.
; Even with the dim red backup lights on it was impossible to find a way out. The base was a labyrinth, a sprawl of concrete corridors. Every corner brought more corridors, more turns. Barefoot and hospital-gowned, Tabitha sprinted down an empty hallway. She tried the door at the end, rattling the handle open; it was a store room. The siren wailed outside in the yard, and she heard gunshots and screams. Down the next corridor on her right a fire exit glowed to her in green and white, her salvation. Far up the corridor behind her, a soldier shouted at her and shot. Tabitha ducked away from the shots and ran. The gunfire was deafening on the concrete walls. She didn’t stop to look back; just ran for the exit. She’d never run so fast in her life. Bullets punctured the tiled floor around her feet, shattering with ceramic snaps like broken cups. She zig-zagged from one wall to the other as she ran. He was running close behind her. Closer. She banged against the fire exit but there wasn’t a metal bar to push. It was a lever at the top. Breathless, she tried to grab at it. Desperate to escape outside.
‘Get on the ground! Now!’ the man yelled. He was coming closer with his pistol aimed. Tabitha turned to face him. Stared at him. She saw fear there in his eyes; it was unmistakeable. He had the perfect shot, and he wasn’t firing.
‘You need to reload,’ Tabitha told him.
‘Get on the ground or I’ll kill you!’ he roared.
‘If you had any bullets left you would’ve shot me,’ she replied. The soldier hesitated and quickly took the empty clip from his gun, reaching desperately for another clip on his belt. Tabitha ran for him and burst his nose with a punch. He dropped like a sack. She took the gun from his hand and the spare clips on his belt, and reloaded it. She was all but deaf from the gunshots. She thought about taking his clothes, but there wasn’t time for that. She heard more soldiers running down the corridor in the gloomy red distance, shouting and searching for her. Tabitha reached up for the lever at the top of the fire exit, and punched it open with a clang.