From that point, I would spend at least a few hours of my day pressed against the far corner, trying to see if I could spot Eyna. But he did not come forward to eat. Sometimes, I would see his hand reaching across the floor and pulling the tray out of my limited field of vision, but only every other day.
Two days after Eyna had been taken out of his cell, I was taken to the lab, and knocked out.
I woke up in my cell, stiff and sore, particularly in my abdomen.
After pulling myself upright, I lifted my shirt to see what was itching so badly and found cotton taped over my belly button and lower on my torso, just above my pubic bone. I could only stare at the wounds in complete confusion for a whole day before I remembered that Dana had asked the scientists to perform tubal ligation.
It was a term I had never heard before, but quickly guessed what it meant.
Even though I had never thought about having children, and I knew that it was impossible to lead a normal life and have children now that I was being tested on by the Commission, realizing that I no longer had the biological capabilities of having children filled me with a profound sadness that puzzled me. I had never thought being able to have children would mean so much to me.
I guessed it was biological. It was the drive to carry on the species.
That left me with much to mull over the following four days while I was left alone to recover from the surgery, only being removed for short periods of time to be sure that no infections were setting in.
Angry cynicism took over any time the scientists would talk about their family or children.
Considering everything I had seen, it made sense that I had a pessimistic outlook on the world. Not many teens my age had seen a failed revolution, had seen their friends—family, really—die in front of them in some of the most horrific ways possible. The things of television and movies and books about the Second Revolution or atrocities man had committed against one another had been imaginations, uncomfortable imagery that we dreamt up when we were confronted with facts, then quickly ignored because it was painful to think about.
Empathy was not always a good thing. Humans could only handle so much reality.
But it was not something I had imagined. I had not imagined Tara convulsing, Josh bleeding out, Sydney and Cooper’s mutilations, Mykail’s feverish infections, Tori’s decapitation, Griffin’s body flattening under the tank, Mark’s head snapping as the bullet ripped through his skull…
These were not images I could push away. These were memories that were going to be branded in my brain until the day I died.
I just hoped that the day I died was fast approaching.
Perhaps it was best that I was no longer able to have children. Even if I had managed to escape the Commission, if I had lived a normal life—if my father had never been elected to Central—and I had children, I would raise my children in a country where anything out of what the society deemed ‘normal’ was not only deviant, but it was dangerous and those people would disappear without a trace into the Commission of the People, without a thought of a revolution liberating them.
I wondered how many experiments in the Commission knew that the 41141 experiment they considered to be a legend had actually come to be the one who tested on them, who ran the Commission as the horrible institution it had evolved into.
Dana came to visit me the fourth day after my surgery.
He opened the cell door as I stared at him, leaning against the side wall, lost in thought as I watched the horrible memories play out in front of me on the pristine white walls.
“Good morning, Little Lily,” he smiled, closing the glass door behind him as he walked inside, crouching in front of me with a smile. I turned my head to look at him, shivering at the intensity of his golden eyes. The color seemed sharper now, perhaps due to the contrast of the white walls.
He reached forward toward my stomach and I flinched, my eyes closing tiredly as I waited for any sort of pain.
He lifted my shirt and slowly pulled the tape around my bandages from my skin, causing me to cringe. He gently rubbed the skin.
“Healed nicely,” he noted, reaching down and removing the other bandages. “Good. That means we can continue your testing.”
I could only stare at the floor. Dana chuckled quietly, turning to sit next to me, leaning against the wall, his legs bent like mine.
“Nothing to say, huh?” he pressed.
“What do you want me to say?”
“Whatever you want to say.”
“I hate you,” I murmured.
“It’s hard to start a conversation from that.”
“I don’t want to have a conversation with you,” I growled.
He sighed and looked around the cell as I watched him from my peripheral vision.
“Are you sure?”
I finally sighed, rolling my eyes and turning to him.
“Why would I want to talk to you?”
“Because it might be a while before you see me again,” he said. “You’ll miss me.”
“Hardly.”
“We’ll see…”
He still did not move. We sat awkwardly next to one another for an eternity, not speaking as we stared at the wall. I became agitated as we remained in the silence. Finally, I groaned, exasperated.
“Can you get the hell out of here now?” I snapped, standing up, uncomfortable in his presence.
“You really don’t want to talk to me?” he asked in that annoying questioning tone that showed he was expecting something very specific from me. I stared at his expectant expression and decided not to bother trying to figure it out. This was his world and his domain, and I was determined to stay as far away from the rules as I could possibly endure.
“No.”
He sighed and stood, shaking his head.
“Let me ask you something, Little Lily…what are you so afraid of?” he whispered, looking at me seriously as I stared back, trying to be defiant. “You’ve been on the table, you’ve been raped, you’ve fought and faced death in the Dome…what are you still afraid of?”
“I’m afraid of what you want to turn me into,” I hissed.
“No, I’m not turning you into anything,” he assured. “I’m merely speeding up the evolution of what you already were.”
“What the hell does that mean?”
“You have everything you need to become just like me already inside of you…you were born with it. And you followed the same path as me so precisely that there was no way you would not become me…in due time.”
“Never,” I growled. “If we had won the revolution—”
“Who would have been in power?” he demanded. “You?”
“No.”
“Then you would put someone else in power?”
“Yes.”
“Who?”
“Whoever was best qualified to clean up this mess,” I snapped.
Dana nodded, pensive.
“Clean up the mess and replace it with what?”
“I don’t know,” I snarled. “There are people a lot smarter than me that could figure that out.”
“Really? You would just take your hands off the wheel of your so-called revolution and let the people that accepted and understood the purpose of the Commission of the People clean up the mess?” He looked at me skeptically. “No…you didn’t like what you were seeing and you sought to change it. If it had not changed, then you would never be able to leave it alone. That’s just who you are.”
“Don’t you dare tell me who I am!” I snapped, pushing him, though he barely took a half-step back. “I actually cared about people. You just see them as toys and dolls to play with. Do you have no feeling soul?”
“I started out just like you, Little Lily,” he said, leaning closer. “But I went through a transformation so grand that you could never comprehend what it has done to me.” He stared at me for a long moment and then shook his head. “You really don’t see it, do you?”
“See what?”
“Who I really am,” Dana hissed. “I am the one who cared and gave everything of myself to everyone who needed it. I am the one who put other’s needs before my own. I was the one who helped people escape from the Commission. I opened my home to them, gave them food and safety…I was the promise of a new and better future away from laws that had become too constricting and too horrible to bear. Do you see any similarity between me and someone else?”
I stared, unsure what to say, my mouth opening and closing uselessly as I tried to form a coherent sentence, trying to follow his train of thought as I pertained it to myself and my own actions in the revolution.
“America.” He smiled darkly, his head tilting to the side in that dangerous manner that always made my hair stand on end. “I am America. I entrusted everything I had to people who were considered outcasts by the government and by society. I gave them an escape. I gave and gave…and yet, despite the good I believed I had done, I was taken, stripped of everything that made me who I was, plundered and raped of all that I had, and warped into something that is now unrecognizable—an altruistic idea that no one can touch, morph, or reclaim. Just as humans did to this country.”
“That…” I hissed. “That doesn’t…”
“Oh, Little Lily,” he breathed, walking closer and placing a hand on my face. I shivered, frightened, yet unable to look away. He was passionate about what he was saying, strongly feeling each word as he compared himself to the country. As much as I looked into those bright eyes, trying to find the pain of what he had endured, I could find none.
That was when it hit me. He didn’t feel anything for what had happened to him. He was not traumatized, he was not in pain anymore…he had completely accepted what happened. He had embraced it. That was who he had become. That was the danger I had always seen in his eyes.
“You…you d-don’t…care…” I barely managed to breathe. He smiled.
“No, I don’t.” He leaned forward and kissed my head. “And soon, neither will you.”
He began walking out of the cell. He turned back to me when he was at the door. I was staring after him, stunned. “I might see you in two weeks, but we’ll see how everything pans out.”
How everything pans out…
At first, I thought he meant depending on his schedule until I remembered his expectant stare earlier. He meant what happened with my schedule, with my testing. I felt my stomach turn into knots, thinking about the next round I was going to endure. I still remembered all too well the pain of the previous round, and knowing that was only my first of many, I began to feel the panic rise in my chest.
But I did not let it show on my face.
Within a few hours, another group of people had come to my cell, comprised of scientists I had never seen before. I stared at them warily as they walked into the cell and grabbed me, slapping the cuffs around my wrists and ankles before leading me out.
I looked the strangers over worriedly, but I did not fight them, assuming that I was just being led to my normal group of scientists.
Despite the pain that I had endured, I felt more comfortable with the scientists I already knew. It was one of the strangest ironies I had known in my entire life.
The lab was empty when we walked into the cold room. I realized immediately that a new group was going to run tests on me. I bit back a small whine of fright, not sure what to expect.
Surprisingly, they were much nicer than the other group. The scientists were all younger than the ones in my first group, and the young man who looked to be only in his late twenties, offered his hand to me when the shackles were removed.
“Could you lay here, please?” he asked with a smile.
I was immediately wary of the smile. I hesitated, looking between his gentle smile and the hand stretched out to me. No one behind me forced me to take his hand, one of them waiting to be sure I did not run while the other two moved around the table, preparing trays on the rolling tables for the tests they were going to perform.
Slowly, I took his hand, still unsure of his courtesy. His smile widened as he moved me closer to the table.
“Thank you,” he said as I climbed onto the table. “My name is Randy, by the way,” he introduced. “And this is my team. That’s Amanda and Tiffany over there, and back there is Andrew.”
I looked around at the younger group of scientists, extremely suspicious of how kind Randy was being. They did not act hard and callous like the other scientists, and I briefly wondered if they even understood what they were doing in the Commission to begin with.
“We’re going to be administering your next two tests,” he continued. “They’re pretty close to one another, but they really should only take about a week to complete.”
I wanted to ask about the other team of scientists, but could not find it in me to speak.
“Alright, just lay back.” He guided me down to the cold metal of the table, gently placing my hand in the cuffs. “This is just to keep you from accidentally hurting yourself.”
The others moved around me, fastening me into the restraints. They all spoke quietly as they looked over what I assumed was my file, discussing my odd reaction to the previous test and that Mr. Christenson had ordered them to administer these tests at exact intervals.
“So, 88911, this first test is going to hurt a lot, but I promise you will survive,” Andrew explained, stepping up to my side and wiping the skin covering the large vein in my arm. “Just trust us. It will hurt, but it should pass within twelve hours.”
Didn’t he understand that it didn’t matter if it was two minutes or twelve hours? It still felt like an eternity when every cell of your body was ripping itself apart.
“Take a deep breath,” Amanda instructed, gently placing a hand on my leg, as if comforting me.
Of course, I could not do so. I remained with my eyes locked on the needle that was progressively making its way to my arm. Andrew looked at me and stopped, staring at me for a long moment before turning to Randy.
“Hey, are you sure this is what Mr. Christenson asked?”
“That’s what he said,” Randy nodded with a sigh.
Andrew turned back to me, his hand resting over my forearm as the needle came closer. I felt my heart speeding up, remembering flashes of the intense pain I had endured my first round of testing. The ten days that I had been in agony had passed quickly with nothing to distinguish hours from one another. While it should have eased my mind that this test was only going to last for twelve hours, I could not shake the queasiness.
“It will be alright,” Andrew assured. I felt the prick and bit back a scream. Nothing hurt yet, but I knew it was coming.
I felt the serum move into my vein, cold and sharp, unlike the first test. It felt like ice. I shivered and my eyes closed, waiting for the incredible pain to overwhelm me.
Despite the way the serum moved up my arm and through my chest, the pain only started after my entire body was shivering from the icy liquid in my veins. My left side began to cramp. I was focused on the pain, on the way it was slowly building in my body, until it became overwhelming. It seemed like a short time before the pain that was growing inside overtook me and made my back arch off the table.
The pain was not at all hot. It did not burn my body as it had before. This time, it was cold. I felt my muscles tensing as if they were straining harder than ever, pushing on the bones and quivering with effort. But despite their contracting, the ice took them over, covering them in frosty crystals before penetrating into each fiber and freezing it to the core, making the muscle brittle and sharp as it moved under my skin.
My lungs were heaving, trying to find a way to take in air around my shivering teeth and the freezing of the muscles around my ribs.
My back was arched off the table, my muscles frozen. As the cold stopped spreading, the panic took over. If I moved, every muscle in my body would shatter, I knew it. My eyes snapped open and focused on the bright lights of the lab above me. I let out a scream, trying to find a way to plead with the sci
entists to keep me from moving so that my muscles would not splinter.
But the scream was intelligible, and my body fell to the table.
As soon as I felt the jolt of my body stopping on the smooth surface, it was like every bone and muscle in my body shattered, splintering apart and sending shards of ice all around me, like an icicle falling off a roof. I could not even scream, my mouth and jaw frozen completely as I tried to gauge what muscles I still had left.
None…
Nothing was moving.
I willed my body to move, but when no movement came, I began to believe that my body had shattered to a deflated mess of frozen muscles, torn skin, and broken bones. My brain was only functioning because it was slow on the uptake. The pain was very different. It was all encompassing, powerful, but I was still coherent. That made me panic. I could not look down my body to see what had become of it. There were sharp, stinging pains that acutely told me what had become of my skin, and it was clear with how much I was unable to move, that I was one blink away from death.
All I needed to do was blink, and I would be dead.
At first, the thought terrified me, made me panic more that I was going to die on the table from my body shattering into a thousand pieces. Memories bubbled to the surface of bodies being crushed under heavy machinery, but I could not place the time or person.
And then…I thought about what I would escape if I could die.
I tried to blink, but my eyes would not close.
I was stuck in a limbo of being in between painless death and unimaginable pain, leaning one direction but being chained back. I wanted to let out a sob, the tears rising to my eyes, but the hot water of my tears was searing my frozen flesh and caused the pain to heighten.
I had managed to convince myself that I was just a head laying on a table while the scientists moved around me, picking up pieces of my body and collecting them, trying to decide how to tell Dana what had happened.
I was further convinced of my dismemberment when I started to feel pain in my right leg. Then I felt a sharp pain in my right hip, cracking heavily as if the socket had been popped back into the place.
They were reassembling my body.
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