Wednesday, May 14, 2003
afternoon
Ralphie could have sworn his heart actually stopped. Ms. Frizzle, their 'handler?' What did that even mean?
The woman at their cage kept smiling, looking as though inspecting a delicate project. "You'll each have an escort for the blood samples, which will take place in just a few moments."
"Over my cold, dead body!" Wanda shouted.
"I encourage you all to cooperate," the woman said mildly. "I would like to avoid losing such fine specimen if I can."
Ralphie's skin erupted into goosebumps.
"You can cooperate, or you can be tazed, bound, and forced. The route makes no particular difference to me. After your blood samples are taken, you will undergo a short series of harmless scans, then you will advance to the phase you were denied. I am glad to have met you all once before the injection. It will give me great insight to the changes to take place."
Arnold's voice cracked. "Wh-what injection?"
Tilting her head, the woman's smile slipped for the first time. "The injection that will unlock your full potential, unlock what you eight were always meant to become. Others might be cautious, but I am a woman that accomplishes set goals. I will spare no time or effort in achieving what I must." Turning on her heel suddenly, the woman strode from the cage, her flanks following her to the door. She stopped, looking over her shoulder as she turned the knob. "I do hope you all cooperate for the blood draw and the scans. You will need your strength for all that's to come."
The door slammed behind her, echoing in the silence. Then everyone because speaking at once.
"What do you think she meant?"
"Do you really think it's just a simple blood draw?"
"No way, these people kidnapped us and locked us in a cage!"
"What kind of injection do you think she's talking about?"
"I'm not lying back to be poked with needles by these people!"
"But what can we do?"
"Not a whole lot."
"And what does any of this have to do with Ms. Frizzle?"
Phoebe's question shut them all up abruptly. Ralphie shifted his weight a bit, just enough to let his side brush Keesha's to ground him a little. Sure, their time with Ms. Frizzle wasn't exactly normal, but it wasn't dangerous. It wasn't something that could spur the violence they were facing. Right?
"Well, regardless, I'm not letting any of these assholes take my blood," Wanda growled.
Phoebe frowned. "If they're just taking blood, it doesn't make sense to fight and get ourselves hurt."
"What, so you're just going to let them do whatever they want to you?"
"No," Tim said. "But that lady said they were going to take a few blood samples and then do some scans before the injection she mentioned. Neither a blood draw or a scan would really hurt us. And cooperating now and not getting ourselves really hurt," he said, shooting a look at Wanda, "would buy us some time before this injection."
Carlos nodded. "Yeah, I bet they're taking blood samples and scans to...I don't know, make sure the injection will work or something. They probably won't be injecting anything right away. They'll be testing our blood samples."
"Giving us a little time to work out a plan," D.A. added. "How long do blood tests take to read, anyway?"
"Well," Phoebe said, "at a typical lab, somewhere around 24 hours. But that's with a much higher volume of tests than just the eight of us."
"But the tests they're running are probably going to be much more complicated, right?" Arnold asked.
"True, but with just eight samples to do the same tests on, I still don't think it'll take nearly as long. My guess would only be a few hours. After all, we do seem to be a...a priority. They probably won't be taking any breaks."
"No...I guess not."
The door flew open, and Ralphie felt a chill run through him as eight men filed into the room, all carrying shining handguns. None of the teenagers resisted as they were dragged, one by one, out of the cage with a barrel to each of their heads. Outside the brightness of the small room, the world seemed particularly dark, rendering Ralphie mostly blind as he was dragged through a narrow hallway. The group was ushered down a flight of tile stairs and into a door on their right.
The new room reminded Ralphie of a dentist's office. But the walls were void of anything but the beige paint and there were ten chairs clustered together in the center of the room instead of one. Ralphie stumbled as the man bruising his arm shoved him forward. He was pushed down onto one of the chairs, where he was immediately tied down with thick leather straps at his ankles, shins, thighs, hips, waist, wrists, shoulders, and forehead.
"Is all this really necessary?" Carlos asked nervously from somewhere to Ralphie's right. "I mean, you guys have guns."
It did seem a bit excessive, as well as incredibly panic-inducing, to be tied down to the point of being unable to even wiggle.
But the men had stepped back, disappearing from view. Three women in dark gray lab coats seemed to come out of the walls. They all wore the same smile, slightly manic and entirely unnerving. One of them stood next to Ralphie and ran a finger up his arm. His restraints kept him from properly shivering at the touch.
"We do not want to do any more hurt than necessary," the woman nearest Ralphie said. Her English wasn't quite as flawless as the woman that spoke to them earlier. "You are the most wonderful, most incredible subjects we have ever study."
"Yes," another woman, just out of Ralphie's line of sight, said. "We be careful, no worry."
Ralphie's heart was surely going to beat right out of his chest for all the terror that was coursing through him. He didn't like needles to begin with, much to his mom's constant exasperation, but as the strange woman approached him with a large syringe, Ralphie felt that unease swell into full-blown panic. His muscles all tensed instinctively as he watched the needle draw closer to the crook of his elbow, only exacerbating the sharp sting where the needle broke his skin. Then came the draw, the cold suction that always left Ralphie slightly dizzier with every passing second.
But where the blood draw normally wound end, leaving Ralphie a little fuzzy-headed but otherwise still functional, the foreign woman continued to pull. Ralphie's heart tried but failed to race with the blood loss as the moments snailed by. It was only when the exterior of his vision began to fade, cutting his sight to pinpricks, that Ralphie felt the needle slide out of his arm. The chair spun eerily beneath him.
Phoebe's voice tickled his hears, her speech slurred. "Howm-much bloodid you take?"
"Just tiny more than typical," one of the women answered enthusiastically. "But you are young and strong. You feel better fast. You are so wonderful, you are."
"Wh-hat makesusso...so wonderful?" Ralphie asked. His tongue felt like lead.
Someone giggled as a door opened, the sound strangely loud. "Do you really not know? Do you really not know how special you are?"
"Neomu manh-i malhaji mala," came a deep voice as someone began undoing Ralphie's restraints. "Geunyang ne il-eulhaela."
One of the women began to reply, but Ralphie was roughly pulled to his fee then and the blood loss won. The world turned black.
Wednesday, May 14, 2003
afternoon
Not that the walk to the lab was remotely pleasant, but the exiting journey was significantly less so; Dorothy Ann felt on the very edge of consciousness as her feet failed beneath her, a gun pressed to her head and a strong hand literally dragging her. Phoebe's skin was almost translucent as she was moved along in front of Dorothy Ann, and alarm bells were dimly going off in her head as she noticed that Ralphie was entirely lifeless in the man's arms behind her.
The world wasn't behaving right around Dorothy Ann as she was forced back into the dark hallway; the floor was moving like a treadmill in contrast to the tilt-a-whirl feel that the walls were giving her. She inadvertently reached up to steady herself on the man that was about to break her arm as they mounted the stairs. He shrugged her off, still marching them forward in silence.
They followed Phoebe and and the other man through a door at the top of the stairs. Dark like the hallway but somehow glowing like an aquarium, the room didn't offer Dorothy Ann's dizziness any relief. Equipment was stacked against one wall, facing a grid that was projected onto another. Somewhere deep in the back of Dorothy Ann's mind, she thought that the white machines were some sort of medical device, but she couldn't be sure as she struggled to stay awake.
She was pushed forward past Phoebe, then spun around and shoved against the grid wall. She groaned.
"Yeogi seo," someone ordered.
The hand on her arm released her, and Dorothy Ann fought the urge to collapse onto the floor. The projector light was too bright, even against her closed eyes. There was a series of whirs and beeps.
"Wassda," the voice said, and Dorothy Ann was grabbed again, yanked roughly away from the wall.
Unable to keep her eyes open anymore, unconsciousness very close to overtaking her, Dorothy Ann focused everything she had in moving her feet. The walk was graciously short. The unreasonably bright lights that suddenly turned her eyelids red were familiar, the cage door opening almost a relief. Then she fell face-first onto the concrete floor. It hurt, but it was nice not to be upright anymore.
"Taking blood isn't supposed to be like this," Phoebe's soft voice murmured.
Dorothy Ann opened her eyes. Lying on the cage floor with her were Phoebe and Ralphie, both looking just as wrecked as she felt. But Ralphie wasn't even moving, and it was then that Dorothy Ann remembered he had been completely unconscious at one point. She crawled over to him.
"Ralphie?" she asked, hand on his chest and pushing as much as her weakened muscles allowed.
He moaned, eyelids fluttering.
"Ralphie, wake up, come on."
"I...I'm going to be sick."
Dorothy Ann smiled a little. At least he was awake. "You know what Keesha would say, don't you?"
As though in reply, Ralphie abruptly rolled away from Dorothy Ann, bracing himself on a quivering hand, and vomited all over the floor.
"Oh!" Phoebe exclaimed on Dorothy Ann's other side.
Rolling back, Ralphie finally opened his eyes and looked at Dorothy Ann. "Keesha's going to be so proud. Let's save it for her."
The door opened. Dorothy Ann slowly shifted to see Carlos and Tim stumbling into room, both struggling to keep their eyes open as they tripped over the cage entrance and crashed to the ground. Just behind them, a third man walked in with Wanda over his shoulder. Her wrists and ankles were zip-tied again, and when she was literally thrown on top of Carlos and Tim, Wanda twisted enough for Dorothy Ann to see that her mouth had been duct taped, too. All three groaned as the cage door locked.
"Wanda, what happened?" Phoebe asked, crawling over to help her.
"Yeoggyeoun," one of the men said, sounding disgusted. "Chiwola."
As Phoebe was ripping off Wanda's duct tape, two towels were tossed into the cage. Dorothy Ann scooted over to grab them, sure they were for Ralphie's vomit. She stopped to touch Carlos' shoulder, rubbing gently. "Are you okay?"
"That was not a normal blood draw."
Dorothy Ann laughed once through her nose. They were all so weak, but they were alive and well enough to make stupid jokes.
"Why did they tie you up?" Phoebe asked Wanda, slowly undoing her wrists.
Tim answered. "Because she tried to fight them, bite them, run away."
"Oh, Wanda..." Phoebe sighed. "What were you hoping to accomplish?"
Wanda's voice was unashamed, albeit breathless. "I can't believe you all are just willing to let these guys do whatever they want to you."
"We don't even know where we are, though," Dorothy Ann replied, wiping up the vomit as best she could. "Getting yourself shot or something is just being stupid."
"You-"
But Wanda's hot retort was cut off as the door opened again and Keesha and Arnold were brought into the room. Carlos, Tim, Phoebe, and Wanda shuffled only just enough to allow Keesha and Arnold the space to fall on their legs, cushioning the impact a little. The cage door slammed, and the eight were alone again. Phoebe finally broke the binds on Wanda's wrists and exhaled deeply from the effort. Dorothy Ann, having collected as much as she could of the vomit into the two towels, shoved them as far into the bars as possible.
"Thanks," Ralphie whispered.
Dorothy Ann gave his shoulder a squeeze, then turned to look Wanda in the eye. "We just have to cooperate until we have a real opportunity," she said quietly. "While we're all weak and disoriented and have guns to our heads isn't the time to try and escape."
"Yeah, but how are we supposed to do anything now?" Ralphie asked. "We're too weak to even stand up."
"Our blood will replenish itself," Phoebe said. "We just need a little time to let that happen. Then...then we can figure something out."
Everyone nodded, even Wanda. And while Dorothy Ann felt it in her heart that she was right, that Phoebe was right...as she looked around at the pale faces of those that she loved most, caged in the bright fluorescence of who-knows-where...she really hoped that they had the time to recover.