by Lola StVil
“It’s time you all know exactly what happened to me at The Center, and what has been happening to Pryor…”
Book III:
Pryor Reese Cane
“Sometimes to self-discover you must self-destruct.”
- Robert M. Drake
Chapter Twenty:
The White Room
I miss my skin: the part that used to be attached to the right side of my face. I also miss the bones that were once inside my wings; I miss my wings. They don’t let you keep your wings here in The Center. In fact, the only thing they let you keep here is the thing you want the least—your life.
They inject you with something called Nuvo. It’s a mixture that allows you to stay alive no matter what horrific thing is happening to your body. Normally this would be a good thing, but given where I am, I prefer death to this. Well, to be honest, death is not a preference it’s a luxury. One that I am certain I will never have.
I’m lying here on the floor of this floating glass box; the scorched remains of my blistering hands and feet are bound. It’s overkill really because the fact is, bound or not, I can’t run away. They have broken my leg. Honestly, it’s hard to remember which torture came in what order.
Was I burned first, then cut open, or was it the other way around? They injected a liquid version of a bone saw into me, called Enda. Once inside you, it seeps into your joints and snaps your bones in half like a twig. You can actually hear your own bones breaking from the inside. So did the Enda come first?
It could be that the Barum came first. It’s a pale grey mixture that is inserted inside your eyeballs. It burns at first but then it cools off. It lets you think that the hard part is over; it’s not. A few moments after Barum enters your eyes, it travels down to the rest of your body and it leaves behind heat. Or what starts out as a warm feeling. It quickly escalates to a raging fire inside your body.
Your blood begins to overheat and it starts seeping through what’s left of your skin. Unable to withstand the impossible temperature, your skin drips onto the floor. You are being baked from the inside and you can’t scream because your vocal cords have melted away.
No, wait! I think it could have been the Susu that came first. It’s a machine that uses a laser to slice you open, digs into your insides, and takes a portion out to be analyzed. It’s like some kind of twisted ice cream scooper; it hollows you out one big scoop at a time. Is that the first thing they did to me?
Damn it, I have to stay focused and remember. Recalling how this all began will help you to know that it’s not forever. There was a beginning and there will be an end. It’s the only way you will survive this. Don’t you want to survive this? What the hell happened to you in the beginning? What did The Center do to you first?
Oh, yes! I remember now. The memory of what took place the night I was taken plays out in what’s left of my fragile mind. I see it all so clearly; it’s as if it’s happening right now. The first thing, the very first thing they do is introduce me to the darkness…
I am home waiting on Randy so we can watch a movie together. Then I get a call from The Center. They have Randy. They place a dark vial on a Port and send it to me. I am instructed to drink the vial or there will be severe consequences. So I drink the mixture and I wake up in a special kind of hell.
I am engulfed by darkness from every angle. It seems to coat both my mind and body. There is no way of knowing how long I was knocked out for. It feels like it’s been days, but it could easily have been minutes. When I open my eyes, I’m trapped inside a glass box suspended in midair. They have stripped off my clothes, put me in a white hospital gown, and removed my shoes.
I take a closer look at my surroundings. The room is white, sterile, and freezing. There are shadows walking around just outside the door. I pound on the glass with every ounce of energy I have but it doesn’t break. I scream and shout for what must be hours, but no one comes in.
Finally, just when I am about to give up hope, someone enters the room.
He’s a Para angel. He’s elderly and has stark white hair, reading glasses, and wears a white lab coat.
“Who the hell are you and why are you keeping me here?” I demand.
“I’m Dr. Bishop. It’s a pleasure to meet you, Pryor. I have heard a lot about you,” he says, as if we are meeting each other for Sunday brunch.
“I don’t give a shit who you are, let me out of here!” I rage.
“I can’t do that,” he replies.
He takes out a glass casing the size of a small cellphone and presses down on one of its many red colored buttons. Without warning, a series of strong sliver coils spring from behind me. They wrap around my shoulders, arms, midsection, thighs, and legs. The glass cage opens up and the coils place me on the shiny white floor, in front of Dr. Bishop.
“There, is that better?” he asks.
“Where am I? What have you done to Randy? If you hurt him I swear —”
“Now, now, Pryor. There is no reason to worry about the human. I assure you he is alive and well.”
“He better be. Now what the hell do you want with me?”
“First, I’d like to welcome you to The Center. This is the place where we do some truly amazing things,” he says.
“I know exactly what you do here. You torture innocent angels like Aaden, and when I get out of here you’ll need to run—fast.” I warn him as I struggle to loosen the coils that bind me.
“Silver was a great specimen. He helped us learn more about the Noru. That’s the goal of The Center: to know as much as we can about our enemy.”
“We are not your enemy, you freak!”
“Not yet, but that day will come. And when it does, we need to prepare. We need to learn as many ways as possible to destroy you should the need arise.”
“We are not dangerous. We’re angels just like you.”
“Oh come now, I think we can all agree that the Noru are far superior to Paras. Your strength, your abilities, and your very nature allow you to outperform us on every possible level,” he says in awe.
“Yet you’re stupid enough to try and contain me,” I point out.
“We do what we must in the name of preservation.”
“We have never harmed any of you!” I shout.
“Not long ago you lost your temper and nearly demolished all of New York City,” he points out.
“I didn’t mean to do that. I just found my brother’s dead body, you asshole!”
“Yes, well, meant to or not, your kind is a liability; a threat that must be neutralized. I wish we didn’t have to do this. But for some reason angels insist on mating with ones outside of their species. And that makes for these super-powered mistakes, like yourself.”
“When my team comes for me, they will have no mercy on you,” I roar.
“Yes, I have no doubt of that. In fact that’s what I am counting on. You see I have programmed a Deed. As you may know, it’s essentially a bomb. It will go off should Silver reach an unprecedented level of anger. I have no doubt he will find your location, as he can be a very determined young man. But once he sees you, he will reach the level needed to activate the Deed. And when that happens, all of you will die.”
“Why not just kill us?”
“I need more data on you, and by the time Silver finds us, I will have all the information I need. And again, I myself am not a violent angel. I would never kill. I deconstruct angels in the name of science. In the end it is Silver whose actions will kill your kind. He had a choice, may I add. We told him to stay away from you. We needed to know that this intermingling would stop but he refused. In the end I think this is best.”
“You really are out of your mind,” I reply as I shake my head in utter disbelief.
“My ex wife used to say that. In fact you know her, she teaches at your school I believe. Anyway, she’d say it in jest, but I think she really thought that. Well, I will prove her and everyone else wrong. Noru are dangerous and
should be destroyed.”
“You were married to The Face?” I ask.
“You know she actually loves that name. She jokes about it,” he says, laughing.
“Did she do this? Is she helping you?” I demand.
“Oh no, she’d never do a thing like that. She’s a kind woman but limited in her thinking. No, but I do however have help. I have an Apprentice.”
“And who is that?” I ask.
“Someone who I have arranged to come by and meet you soon. You won’t see my helper’s face. It’s better that way.”
“Why?”
“In case we need to activate plan ‘B.’”
“You might as well tell me because I promise your plan ‘A’ will fail.”
“I doubt that, but since you won’t live long, I think it’s only fair you know. With all that we learned from our time with Silver, I have developed a mixture called Balance,” he says, holding up a vial so I can see it up close.
“What is that?” I ask, already dreading the answer.
“It’s a mixture that does the impossible. It strips Noru of their powers. I only have a pint of it made, as its ingredients are scarce. But rest assured, I will make more. Because I’m certain more of you will come into our world.
“Once we learn all we can about you, I hope it will help us perfect Balance. Right now its major flaw is that it takes several minutes to strip Noru of their power. We are working to accelerate the process. Now, enough talk, Noru. It’s time.”
“Time for what?”
“Exploration. We are about to subject you to a series of medical procedures, mixtures, devices, and general discomfort. But rest assured this is all in the name of science and discovery. And don’t worry; you won’t miss them all that much.”
“What? I won’t miss what?” I shout.
“Your wings.”
* * *
What followed was so horrific, parts of my mind refuse to accept that it happened at all. The glass box folded itself and turned into a gurney made of the same material. The same coils kept me in place while Bishop injected me with the first of many mixtures. The torture had officially begun.
“Now, my dear, I’m inserting you with Frost to understand just how cold your body will get. You need to know this: the coldest substance in the human world is liquid helium. It’s rather nasty. It will flash freeze your flesh in a fraction of a second. This mixture I’m putting into you is liquid helium mixed with a special advancer. In other words, there is a good chance you might lose a body part or two. But it’s only going to last a few minutes. We need to freeze you because we need to get to your soul, without harming it. We wouldn’t want your soul to die and have you leave us before we were done with you”
The needle pierces into my skin and the liquid enters my body; I feel a cold unlike anything I have ever felt before. It’s a kind of cold that your body does not understand and cannot process. I scream and scream over and over again for him to let me go. My cries fill the spaces in my head and bounce around the room.
I catch a glimpse of myself in the reflection of the exit door. That’s when I realize I’m screaming inside my head. My body is actually frozen. I am being held prisoner inside my body.
They use the Susu; the laser carves into the glacier that they have turned me into. They cut into the ice on my chest and take a chuck of my skin off along with it. A tube then springs out from under the gurney and attaches itself into the hole in my chest. The tube sucks out a glowing orb from inside my chest cavity.
That’s my soul…
Bishop studies the orb and speaks to his minions about what he sees. I can’t think long enough to form a sentence. I don’t know how I’m able to live with my soul outside my body. All I know is that I am empty. I feel nothing.
“That’s a very strong soul you have there, Noru. Now that we have seen it, we are going to warm you back up and see just how much your soul can take.”
They then warmed me back up so that they could proceed to the next experiment. That’s when I first saw it—the Enda vial. The vial that snaps your bones in half while it’s inside you. They insert it into my leg and it makes its way around my body randomly picking which bone it will snap in two.
“AAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH…”
I’m crying blood. I’m shaking. The bone rips through my body and sticks out from my leg. Can’t understand how this much pain can exist. Can’t grasp the agony coursing through me. The Enda makes its way into my wings and snaps off every bone it comes in contact with.
“NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!”
I bang my head against the glass gurney in hopes of knocking myself out, but it doesn’t work. I bang my head harder and harder still. I split my forehead open and keep going. His minions hold my head down and inject me with something so that I am wide awake and unable to even close my eyes.
“AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!” I rage as my torment worsens.
The last thing I recall before my mind can no longer process is the Enda latching on to the bone that holds my wings together. It binds it until I hear a snap.
“Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaden!!!” I cry.
In my head I’m floating out into a never ending void of anguish. I don’t know how much longer this goes on. I can’t tell time. I’m in hell; there are no clocks in hell.
* * *
When I open my eyes, I find myself back in the glass box. Everything hurts—my fingers, face, toes…everything. But when I look across the room, all the hurt goes away and I am left with only one emotion: unmitigated sadness. There, hanging on the wall like a cheap poster, are my wings.
They ripped my wings away…
I won’t cry. I refuse to give that Bishop bastard the satisfaction of seeing me weep out of sadness. Maybe I can’t control crying out in pain, but I will not weep for him or anyone else!
It’s okay, the team will come for you. They will save you. He will save you. Aaden is coming. You just have to hang on…Pry, hang on.
Once again the coils spring up and restrain me. The box forms a gurney and the next step in “discovery” begins. They inject the Barum behind my eyes and set me on fire. The agony of having your blood boil inside you cannot be put into words. There simply is no way to convey the torment that is making its way into you.
My blood cooks inside me so much it bubbles up to my scalp and singes my hair. The roof of my mouth slides down my throat. I should be dead. But Bishop will not allow that kind of mercy.
Once again, my mind cannot process my agony with words. Instead images flash into my mind: In the first image, the devil himself is breathing fire into my mouth. In the second, the world’s hottest peppers are ground up and placed inside my eye sockets. The final image before Bishop finally allows me to pass out without reviving me is lava dripping into my skull.
* * *
“Did you get any information from her?” a voice asks.
“Oh yes. We’ve learned a lot about them. How much they can and can’t endure. This will help us to make our Balance mixture even more effective. Based on the testing done here, we should have no problem with future Noru,” Bishop says.
“That’s wonderful. I am honored to be a part of this.”
“And I am honored to have you as my Apprentice. Please stay and watch our test experiment. We have tested her body and broken it. Now it’s time we tested her mind.”
“It is time for the White Room?” the voice says, excited.
“Wonderful, then you’ll stay?” Bishop asks.
“Certainly,” the Apprentice replies.
I pop my eyes open, desperate to get a glimpse of Bishop’s helper, but I’m too late. They have both left the room. The only thing I know about his helper is that I have heard the voice before. But I can’t place when or where. But then again, I can’t really depend on my senses. For example, I swear as the Apprentice walked away, his scent wafted through the air and he smelled like almonds.
&
nbsp; Almonds?
I’m going crazy. It’s not just my body like Bishop said. The Center is getting ready to mess with my mind. I remember the terror that filled Ruin when she spoke about the White Room that Aaden had been in. She wouldn’t go into details, so I have no idea what’s about to happen…
* * *
Bishop must have knocked me out because I wake up and find myself in a different room. There’s the sound of a machine roaring to life in the background, but it slowly fades. This room I am in is also white but in a totally different way. It’s a warm glowing white that fills me with hope and peace.
I’m on the gurney, but my restraints have been lifted. I look around and there are windows that look out onto the beach. My body is broken, so making it to the window seems next to impossible.
What the hell?
My body is back to normal. There isn’t a scratch on me. I examine my body in disbelief. How did this happen?
No, this is some mind game, right?
I walk over to the window and see the ocean laid out before me. There’s an angel standing on the sand; he’s facing away from me and has silver wings. Before I can stop myself, I call out to him. Aaden turns around and smiles back at me; he gestures for me to join him. I look around for a door—the second I see one, I run out towards the water. But for some reason the door takes me right back to the room.
I try another door, but no matter which one I try, I end up back inside the same room. I call out to Aaden; he grows angry that I am taking so long. I ask for his help and he smiles, but not at me. There’s a group of girls who appear out of nowhere and surround him. He laughs with them and together they walk off.
“Aaden!” I shout repeatedly.
I don’t understand…
I walk away from the window and look around. The room now has more than a dozen doors. I know this is a trick that The Center is playing on me. I decide I’m going to stay right where I am. But then I hear someone call me from outside the window.
“Carrot! Carrot! Come play!”