Hello!
Since this is getting such great responders, I'm going to reward you with another chapter!
Also, I believe I promised Shout outs...
its420somewhere I loved your feedback, very encouraging!
Heather not only are you loyal, but your reviews were a welcome birthday present. Thank you for making my special day even better.
Nemi-Dina you're a sweetie and your faith in this pass time is a breath of fresh air
Cribellate I'm glad you like my Feral's so much, and I'm glad you see the difference between zombie and infected. Not many do, you're a smart one.
That's all the shout outs I am dolling out. If you want a shout out or to stay up in what will now be my top four reviewers, you know what you have to do. But for now...
ENJOY!
The lights always blared and the fans that offered no relief from the heat rumbled constantly, but she knew when the door opened. The girl lifted her heavy head from the steel of her cage floor, her chopped brown hair falling unevenly in spirals of grisly, tangled locks. The prisoner in the cage next to hers mumbled as he struggled to move in the limited space of the cages. The girl heard the metal scratch the floor, felt the harsh screech right in her teeth. It would be smart not to move more than necessary.
Showing life could mean death.
But, as she'd been told many times, she'd never been smart.
Footsteps, even but heavy, told the girl that the Doctor – one of them, anyway – was twenty paces away.
Fifteen.
Ten.
She'd given up on praying long ago, but she crossed her fingers and hoped he would move past her and pick one of the other prisoners stupid enough to keep fighting.
She wanted to. She wanted to kick and scream, growl and bite, like the monsters on the outside. But a caged animal only lashed out when there was nothing else. Right now, her silence was her weapon.
It seemed her blade had dulled over her time in captivity, however, because the Doctor, in a white suit and the mask pulled over their face to hide a nose that pointed too far out to be deemed safe, stopped in front of her cage. The muscles in her arms and legs twitched, ready to spring if the cage was opened and tear the mask from the face with her teeth. The Doctor studied her slowly, despite knowing her from the years she'd been contained. They acted as if they were looking at her for the first time.
The act made her sick. Staring at her, like they'd never seen the twelve year old girl they'd dragged in that was too afraid to fight. Too afraid to cry until after the first prick of the needle in her arm.
"No fight left?" the Doctor asked her.
The voice told her he was male, but he had no name to her. None of them did. They hid themselves behind masks, stared at her as she screamed without giving her the decency of seeing if they actually felt anything underneath.
"All gone, and only after four years," the Doctor mused as he unlocked her cage.
She leapt at him, snarling and spitting like the animal they treated her as before the bars even lifted. Teeth gnashed and her fingers locked as they found purchase in the soft flesh of his arms. Sadly, she didn't get the chance to sink her mark into his shoulder.
The Doctor had palmed the alarm in his breast pocket the second she'd moved, not trusting that he could handle her by himself. Two other Doctors ran in, shouting and yelling. One woman and a man. One grabbed her arm and wrenched it back. She couldn't tell which as their voices clashed against each other.
The Doctor left standing went for the girls other arm, but not before she surged forwards, hooking her fingers into the cuff of the Doctors mask and ripping it upwards.
Just as she'd thought, a long pointed nose was wedged between two petrified eyes.
Her head snapped forwards, teeth crunching on the air as the Doctor finally lurched back. His fist came about and sunk into her jaw, her head cracking back on the stalk of her neck. She fell back into the cage, but her arms remained stretched out as the other two Doctors kept their grip on her wrists.
It was as they were hauling her out that she finally found her voice.
"Let me go!" she screamed, kicking and writhing. "Let me go, you fuckers! Let me go!"
"Still got a mouth on her," one grunted as they yanked her out of the cage.
She crashed to the floor on her side, her limbs tangled as they held her arms above her head. It didn't stop her screaming and thrashing, even as they clipped the restraining collar you'd use on a stray dog around her neck and yanked it tight. Her cries chocked off, gurgles and gasps taking their place.
Each second the thin wire tightened around her neck, the more her struggles slackened. The lines of the Doctors blurred until they were all just one big white splodge before her eyes.
"There we go. Go to sleep," one Doctor said through grit teeth.
"Keep her chained tight this time," another, the woman, spat. She was nursing the joint of her elbow, and the girl realised she must have gotten in more than just a few scratches.
"When did O-002 become such a pain in the ass?" the other Doctor griped as he held her down, making sure the restraint was tight before they moved her.
"Puberty," Doctor. Big Nose muttered.
They hauled O-002 onto her feet, letting her stagger and give her the hope of regaining her balance, before the woman Doctor delivered another blow, this time to the back of her head. She sagged instantly, one knee buckling while the other locked from disuse, and she finally cried out in pain. A broken sound, a mixture between a sob and scream. It held anguish, pain, rage. It was a sound these people heard regularly, and not just from her. And yet they seemed to enjoy it when it wasn't mixed with her struggles.
"Someone shut her up!"
Another blow to the back of her head, and that was the end of that days fight.
She was back in her cage when she woke, foggy headed with pain rippling up her left arm. She tried to scream, but her throat was dried and felt like it had been the play thing of a cats claws. The burning had her reaching for water that was not there. The penalty of fighting back.
This time it was her neighbour that looked at her with weary, vacant eyes. O-002 remembered when the blues burned with rage and fight. They were now listless and dull, like ice over a frozen lake.
O-002 hadn't looked at the boy next to her like that. Most of them had forgotten their emotions, back in their lives before. O-002 clung to hers. They were all she had, more so after she was taken to this dreadful place, stripped of a name she could barely remember until she thought of the stars they were named from. She missed the stars the most, and the smell of night air. She remembered one of her greatest pleasures before all this was to slip her window open secretly, and gulp in breaths of crisp evening air.
She'd give another six years of her life up for just one breath.
This time the door clanged open instead of sliding against the floor. The occupants of the cages closest all flinched back in terror. There was never two prisoners in one day – not in the six years O-002 had been there. The process of one took half a day, then observation for the remainder. O-002 realized she must have been unconscious for all of it if she had woken back up in her cage.
Fearful chatter started up. One doctor, the woman by her stature, clanged a metal pole against the cages as she passed, creating shrieks amidst the panic. The one with her, most likely male, walked a little ways behind, like he wanted to stop and savour the cowering of their captives.
They stopped in front of O-002's cage again, but she didn't lunge or spit or scream. She played the broken prisoner, even whimpering as she backed into a corner.
"She'll only speak to swear," the woman muttered, folding the metal pole under her arm as she reached for a clipboard strapped to her belt.
O-002 forced a smirk. "D-damn straight, bitch."
Both doctors looked at her then. If she could see under the masks, and sometimes she didn't even have to to know there was disgust on their faces, she pictured the man looking amused. He seemed to take it all as a joke, their suffering, their pain. She pictured him laughing about it all, probably with the rest of the Doctors.
The metal pole clashed against the cage, the woman no doubt sneering at her through the bars as O-002 pressed herself back against the cage's furthest side. She spat at the woman, the droplets pebbling against the masks glass front like dew on grass. It didn't matter that the spit never touched her face. These people never needed reason to be cruel.
The woman struck the metal pole against the cage again. "Fucking animals."
"O-002 isn't an animal," the man beside her said as he plucked the clipboard from the woman. His eyebrows knit together as he skimmed over the words O-002 couldn't see. His cheeks hollowed as he swallowed and she watched him bite the inside. "Maybe not for much longer."
"Really?" the woman asked.
O-002's heart pounded. No. Not after all this. Not yet. She wasn't done fighting. She wasn't about to let all the years of pain result in being taken from her cage and marched out those doors for the last time.
"It's not conclusive yet," the man assured, quickly. "We're four hours past observation." He replaced the clipboard at the woman's belt then turned back to O-002. "We'll up her dosages and extend her observation periods. Maybe we'll see a positive change, or she'll turn like the rest."
O-002 pictured a smirk under the woman's mask. "She lasted almost as long as our first test subject."
The man folded his arms across his chest, leaning onto his heels and settling his stance. He looked her over like he was documenting each needle prick, each spray burn and prodding of the pole against her once tanned skin. All that protected her modesty was a set of wrappings around her breast, and a pair of once white panties, stained with the sweat and tears of a lifetimes worth of pain in that prison. The bandages were not much better, littering her thighs and hips from where they stole her blood and bone for further testing.
Notches of failure for them, trophies of all the times they'd tried to kill her and failed to her.
O-002 stared back into his eyes, breaths heavy as she fought to stay calm. A reaction was what they wanted, and she would not give one. The sick bastards could wait and watch her on their cameras, no doubt getting off on the pain of their prisoners like some sick porno.
They could call her whatever they wanted, but she knew who the real animals were.
Survivor Count - O-002 had no idea how many of them were there.
So, who is this mysterious O-002? (Promounced Oh-zero zero two for those who are like me and have trouble reading their own work) What are they doing inside... well, no one knows where she is. But, what are they doing to her? That's the question.
There's only one way to get an answer, and to become part of my top Four...
REVIEW!