by Ann Vremont
“What is it, Adam?” the young woman asked, her outstretched arm reaching past him for the clipboard at the back of the wheelchair.
There was the scent of her perfume and the brush of her smock against his cheek. Frowning, he tried to move his head to see if there was anyone else in the room she might be addressing. It was when he could not turn his head that he remembered the purpose of the chair. He was paralyzed.
“Am I Adam?” he asked the young woman.
She scratched a note on the clipboard before answering. “Yes.”
“There was another name…” he started, his tongue pushing around in his mouth for the shape of who he had been.
“You’re Adam, now,” she corrected, her tone devoid of the soft indulgence he remembered his Lissa having for his questions. Where was she? he wondered. Why had she left him to the care of this cold E. Branson?
“What has happened?” he asked. There was a tremble in his voice. He could feel the fabric of his pajama pants against his legs, feel the slippers on his feet, yet all but his facial muscles refused to move.
She stepped behind him, tapping at the base of his skull with her pen. “Your motion circuits have been turned off,” she answered.
Motion circuits? He started to ask her what she meant, but then he felt the tip of the pen penetrating the skin covering his shoulder. “You can’t move, but you can feel everything,” she said.
His lips quivered for an instant as he felt the sensitive cells being damaged, and then he cried out until she took the pen back out. In front of him once again, she crossed the room and he saw the green and brown camouflage of her pants beneath the smock before they disappeared into black boots. A warm flush spread across his skin, warning him to run but his muscles remained disobedient.
“Why are you doing this?” he asked. Why is Lissa letting you?
She looked over her shoulder, one side of her mouth pressing down in displeasure. “Because you’re a murderer, Adam.”
Images flashed through his mind. A man on a gurney, blood oozing through his mahogany hair. Another man on the floor, stuffed between a coffee table and couch… Lissa’s gaze widening in fear at the dead body. And then a name rose unbidden from his memory. Cayce!
Was he Cayce? He ordered his chaotic thoughts to coalesce around the question. His mouth tightened to a hard line. No, not Cayce. Cayce is the enemy.
“Did I kill Cayce?” he asked, his tone full of unrepentant hope that he had managed one last murderous act before having been consigned to the wheelchair.
E. Branson turned back to him, a genuine smile on her face as she walked toward him with a scalpel in her hand. “No, you failed in your attempt.”
Grinning now, she pushed the sleeve of his pajama shirt up—the sight of a dozen bloodless lacerations on his forearm playing at the bottom periphery of his vision. The memory of past torture seized him an instant before fresh pain shot through his body and he was screaming again.
“What is this? Where am I?” It was wrong, he knew, what she was doing and the pleasure she seemed to take in it. Someone had taught him it was wrong…forceful restraint only.
She pulled back, rocking on her heels as she showed him the scalpel.
No blood.
“You’re at an Army research facility,” she answered, standing and returning to where she had left her clipboard.
“Dr. Spence—”
“Doesn’t have the stomach for this kind of research, I assure you,” she answered and made another note, circling it with a flourish.
“This is wrong!” He felt the heat of anger washing away the pain her scalpel had caused. “It’s…it’s against…”
“Against what, Adam?” She hovered over him as he yelled, her body seeming to shake in anticipation of his answer.
He searched for the word. Someone had taught him—forceful restraint only. It was a part of…a part of his… He wanted to slam his fist on the armrest of the wheelchair, saw her mocking awareness.
“It’s against your programming!” he blurted out. The muscles in his face sagged and he dropped his gaze.
“Very good, Adam,” she said and dropped to her knees. She pulled a small tube from the pocket of her smock and uncapped it, running the tip along the cuts in his arm. “Wrong, but still very good.”
Recapping the tube, she looked up at him. He could only avoid her gaze by shutting his eyes and he refused to do so. Something danced in her black pupils. Malice? Compassion? He wished Lissa were there to explain it to him.
“Programming, you see, is for machines and I’m a human,” she explained, turning his hand over and prying the covering to his palm off. “But programming is a very apt word for you to use, Adam, because you are—”
“No!” He squeezed his eyelids tight, blocking the sight of her but not the sound. A lie, all a lie, everything but his Lissa was a lie. He opened his eyes, E. Branson’s face fading, gray drawing a tight circle around everything but her smug grin. Her lips moved, shaping the words he refused to hear.
He was Adam.
He loved Lissa.
He was a man.
He was Adam.
He was not…
He was not…
A machine.
About the author:
Ann Vremont is a mother, wife, licensed attorney, technical writer, high school dropout and former Russian linguist for Army SigInt. She’s called Bingo for a living, waitressed at a strip club, scooped ice cream and conducted political surveys—including for the wrong party. She maintains that, if she hadn’t dropped out of high school, she would probably be a mineralogist or a geophysicist—lifelong interests reflected in her first title with Ellora’s Cave, Calabi Chronicles: Bloodstone. Ann further maintains that if she had never met her husband of fifteen-plus years or had their son when she did, she would probably be making her living illegally—or, if unsuccessful, sitting in jail. She has a large collection of minerals and a growing collection of lighthouses. Having been born and partially raised in Arizona, the mineral collection doesn’t surprise her, but she’s still puzzling the source of her lighthouse fetish.
Ann welcomes mail from readers. You can write to her c/o Ellora’s Cave Publishing at 1337 Commerce Drive, #13, Stow, OH 44224.
Also by Ann Vremont:
Calabi Chronicles: Bloodstone
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