The-woman-who-couldn't-remember-her-name's day started out the same as it had for the past fifty or so years. She woke on a bed that was barely more than a rug, covered in another, less scratchy, rug. She had no sense of what time of the day it was, so it might have been morning, it might have been late at night, There was no way for her to tell. What she did know, however, was that the sound of a metal tray hitting the floor of her cell meant that it was the start of another cycle in which she called a day.
Her long hair, having been uncut for a dozen years, was splayed around her in a terribly tangled mess. Despite her state of malnourishment, her hair was a shining red, shimmering like gold. Even under the blanket, it was easy to tell that the woman was small in stature, and was unnaturally thin. The cheekbones of her delicately made face stood out, her eyes dark, the wrist clutching the blanket closer lacking definition causing the bones of her arm to stand out.
But the woman didn't move, not seeing the point to hurrying to food that tasted like cardboard and was as cold as the walls of her terribly small cell. She couldn't feel bothered to open her eyes, knowing that the bright light that was always on in her cell would blind her. Instead, she lay there, waiting for something to happen, even though she knew she would never be rescued, that nothing would break the cycle of the day.
She had tried so hard to escape at the beginning, planning out her escapes piece by piece. She would spend years thinking every step through, planning what she would do if something went wrong. As soon as she got close, she was moved to a different location. The woman never knew how they found out when she was about to attempt an escape, it couldn't have been complete coincidence. But , not patient by nature, had learned that sometimes there was nothing more that you could do but wait for the right opportunity. That had been thirty years ago. Or, at least, that had been what the redhead had guessed was thirty years ago.
When she was moved from place to place, the marks that she had put on the walls were lost. She tried to remember, but over years the exact number slipped from her head. But when the woman compared the time she had spend as a prisoner to the life she had lived before that, and she guessed she had spent almost a forth of her life sleeping on floors and eating food that was hardly suitable enough for her to stay alive. She had slept in worse places, on a dirty street, in the sewer more than a few times, and in the beds of strangers more nights than she could remember. Her cell may be cleaner than those places, but it was certainly the worst experience she had ever encountered.
Her entire day was in this cell, staring at the walls, trying to think of some way to escape. She ate cold cardboard, drank water that tasted like metal, and slept on a rug that did nothing to keep away the chill of the concrete floor.
When her stomach finally rumbled enough, and started cramping in protest, she got up, her body weak from the lack of proper nutrition. She crawled to the spot her tray had been pushed to, only a foot away from her would-be bed, and nibbled slowly on the grey block of squishy, slimy sludge. The woman had noticed, early on, if she took her time eating the portions of meal that was fed to her, the less time she would have to sit and wait and think the day away. She chewed each nibble twenty times, swallowed, and repeated until the block of food was gone. Then she would take a turn with the water, drinking it one sip at a time, mostly so she didn't cause herself to be sick after the cardboard taste that seemed to stick in her mouth. She swished the water around for several seconds, replacing the food taste with the metal one.
It was a long process, but she needed it to cope. She knew that the speed she ate at was the only thing she could really control about her day. There was nothing else that she had a say in. When the woman had finished, she pushed the tray up against the little door in the actual door to the cell, so the person who came by to collect the tray would just take it and leave. She had no interest in talking with anyone who had kept her locked up for a forth of her life. She didn't even want to see them.
A little while later, when the tray door was unlatched, a hand popped through, grabbed the tray quickly, and the door was locked again. The woman had tried grabbing the hand once, and in turn she had almost lost her own. She had gripped the man's hand tightly and yanked on it as hard as she could. The man hadn't been completely thrown off by her attack, but she had been able to get a good grip on his fingers. But, despite her usually quick reaction time and because of her weakened body from the less nutritious food, the man had pulled her arm completely through the hole and she felt a sting as the skin of her wrist was pierced by a blade. She had squeezed a little tighter, and the knife cut a little deeper into her wrist, blood flowing freely over her hand. She let go, knowing there was no way she would be escaping that day.
An infection had developed in the wound because she didn't take care of it the way she should have. Eventually, the infection and sickness because of it was so bad she passed out from the fever that swept over her body only a few days later. When she woke up, there had been a bandage over the cut, and while she felt weak, she didn't have a fever and the pain from the infection was gone. That had been her last desperate attempt at escape. After that, she gave up.
So now she watched the hands, sometimes a woman, sometimes a man, put in and take out tray after tray. It was the only real way she had to mark the passage of time. She took naps in between meals, now weaker as the portions of food grew smaller and smaller. It had been happening over a period of what had to be a few months, and she was sure they didn't think she would notice, but she did.
It reminded her of the first five years she had spent as a prisoner. Test after blood drawl after test had been preformed on her, learning everything they could without actually cutting her open. She was confused as to why they had decided to test her again. They were pushing her to the limit, finding out how many calories she would need before she became so weak she couldn't function. But why now? Why start the tests anew? There was really no reason that she could think of. She had been here for so long. They had had ample time to test every theory they may have thought of. Why now?
The woman, after sitting for hours contemplating about the food, her blue eyes staring unseeing at the wall, finally decided it didn't matter. Eventually, they would push her to her limits, and finally they would push past them. Once they did, she would make sure that they didn't get what they wanted. She would be slowly starved, her body would break down pieces of itself, slowly eating away at any fat she had left, then her muscles, then, finally, organs that her body was dependent on.
The woman had been on the cusp of starvation before, and it was not something she wished to experience again. But, there was something she could do, something she had considered a long time ago when she thought she had no alternatives. She would have to suffer through starvation, if it came to that. But she could limit her suffering, even if it would only last for a few hours at a time. And eventually, those hours would grow longer, and even longer, until eventually there would be nothing for her to wake up to.
That was a last resort, she hadn't approached those thoughts since the beginning of her captivity. But she was ready for this to end. These last fifty years had changed the redhead in ways that she had never imagined possible, even when she began to discover how different she really was. What she had been through…
She herself was unsure as to how she survived. The only thing she could guess was that the strange things that seemed to happen to her, things that she had discovered over time, had allowed her a way to adapt to terrible things that normal humans would never had lived through. She had had many breakdowns over the years. In the beginning, it had been from the pain. The torture they had inflicted on her had caused certain parts of her brain to shut down, to not have to deal with the pain. It had taken her twenty years to recover from the torture they inflicted on her for over five years.
After that twenty years, she had recovered enough to finally, completely, comeback to her full self. She would never be the same she knew, the scars, both physical and physiological, ran much too deep for her to ever fully recover. But she had been able to start to plan again, for her mind to function at a normal level instead of the survival mode she had been forced to live in.
But, the thirty years after that had been worse in many ways. For thirty years, she had been moved place to place, never really aware of where she was, who was taking her to the next cell, or if she would ever escape. She had given up hope of rescue long ago, when the loneliness had started to set in.
The loneliness, that was the worst part. For over forty-five years, the only touch she could remember was a cruel one. They only wanted to hurt her. They cared for her most basic needs: food, water, shelter. But there was another level of need that every person required, one that she had been refused. At least at the beginning she had some form of human contact, something other than a hand reaching in and out of a cell to give her food. But now, after her torture, the only human contact she had was when they were moving her. And that wasn't enough to survive, or at least it wouldn't have been for a normal human. But the woman had known for a long time that she wasn't normal, that she may not even have been human at all.
And just like that, her day started to end as it had for the past fifty or so years, with limited variation. Once a week, a door would open from inside her tiny cell, and a small shower would appear. Time was limited, and the woman quickly stripped her clothes, standing under the cold water, and letting it wash over her. She scrubbed and cleaned as best she could, knowing that she was probably going to have to skip using the bar of soap to wash her hair to make sure that other parts of her body would be clean. She didn't mind so much though. She had been much dirtier for a much longer time than a couple of weeks.
But after drying off and putting on the fresh clothes that were provided to her this week, she climbed back into her bed, not even having the energy to wait for the food that always came after her shower. The woman was so exhausted that only a few moments after she lay down, she was asleep.
The small door opened, revealing a hand and a tray of food. The metal clanged on the concrete, ringing slightly against the metal of the walls, but the hand didn't immediately retract. Instead a face pressed against the floor outside of the door, half of a face looking into the cell. Only the brown hair and one blue eye could be seen, it's gaze sweeping over the small body as if looking for something.
The face disappeared, but the flap in the door was not closed, allowing two voices to echo into the small cell.
"…one of them?" Said the female voice
"From the past records, we can only guess." This was a male voice, calm, calculating. It was a voice full of secrets, a voice that knew there were terrible things. "We have started testing her again, looking at her behaviors. It is too soon to tell, and modern technology is much different than it was when she was first captured."
"How long has she been here?"
"There are no records for when she was first captured, but she has been here longer than I have, longer than anyone else has ever worked here."
There was a pause, the air heavy with terror, curiosity, and sadness.
"She's been here so long. Why hasn't she been set free?"
"No one I know has the authorization, not even me. No matter what I try, there is nothing I can do to help her. She has become valuable though. If she is what we think she is, then she will provide information that could avoid a repeat of New Mexico."
"Does she even have a name?"
"No, or at least not one that anyone has bee able to find. In the records they call her Sigyn."