"You will never do anything in this world without courage. It is the greatest quality of the mind next to honor". Aristotle
Agnes was surprised she was still functioning, living with such unrelenting fear. Perhaps shutting down was the way to go like Albert, who was now curled up on the floor, not even making sounds anymore. She couldn't even get water into him.
He was taken next, along with the young man with the leather tie back in his hair. She never wanted to see an expression like his again, as he was led firmly by Armitage out of their prison room. He came back for Albert who had to be carried out. Each time he came, he had them step to the rear of their cell, facing it, with their arms up, hands against the wall. He told them once they heard the cell door shut, they could move again.
Time passed. At least it seemed to be passing. She had lost sense of time altogether as the lights were always on and there were no windows.
She could feel her sanity slipping away.
If it hadn't been for Bruno she would have lost it a lot sooner.
Bruno tried to keep up conversations and got the people to tell their stories.
The man who had just been taken was Chad. The woman was called Mara and the man still with them was Thanatos but he said everyone called him Tan. They were what were called scavengers above ground, making their living finding and selling odds and ends for food and pure water. Each of them were survivors from small family groups that had been assailed by super mutants or raiders or just been killed by sickness or beast. The three of them had been on their way a settlement to try and get accepted into it. They had spoken with the provisioners whom they traded with and had been strongly encouraged to try it out. Neither had any surviving family – just the three of them who had found each other while scavenging in the same area. They had been travelling together for the last two years or so.
Bruno and Agnes, for their part, described their lives in the Institute.
"Man, sounds kind of creepy. So you had to behave or what – they erase your brain?" Tan asked in horrified curiosity.
"Yes, that's exactly correct," Bruno said.
"But they didn't do mind wipes on people, right? Just synths?" Mara asked, her eyes big with fright.
"No, no, they didn't. But they didn't transfer human minds into synth brains, either. They don't know how," Agnes said, frowning. She was thinking that's why no one comes back. They aren't surviving the experimentation. She wasn't going to add to their terror.
When they weren't sleeping sporadically, they tried to keep each other talking. It helped ease the unremitting horror of their prospective futures or more likely their non-futures.
Of course, the humans mused, their futures contained at least a possibility of continued existence, albeit in a different body; but for the synths – it would be a true death.
Sometime later the scary, ancient, thin man came in and watched all of them. Finally he turned his piercing intelligent eyes to Agnes.
"What is your designation? And where were you posted?" he asked. His voice was middle-ranged, and for all his apparent age, it was clear and strong.
"G7-56," Agnes said, "I was in robotics."
"Ah, good, G7-56," he said. "If you will behave yourself, I could use a hand in the lab. But if you give me even a hint of trouble, I will wipe both you and Y6-89 immediately."
"I won't give you any trouble," she said aloud. Inside her mind she finished the sentence, 'unless I find a way to get me and my friends out of here.'
He called for Armitage to let her out of her cell. Armitage made Bruno step to the rear of the cell and put his hands against the wall. Then he took her arm and pulled her out. He re-locked the door.
As Armitage walked by her side following the old man, Agnes took in her surroundings. If she had to guess, she would say they were underground. They were walking through a tunnel made out of metal with rubber mats lining the floor. There were fluorescent tube lights on the ceiling of the tunnel.
The large cavernous room they entered could have been transplanted right from the Institute. Their prison area had looked exactly like the holding pens in the SRB. This looked like the robotics lab.
He lead her to an area separated by dividers and tall consoles. She followed wondering what he was going to assign her to.
"You'll take over the care of this synth," the old man said walking around the corner of a long divider. As she followed him around the corner she saw a naked man was strapped to a metal surgical table. "I've made of list of all the care he requires. I need him to recover, G7-56 and if you follow my directions perfectly, he will. I will need you to take his vital statistics every hour, unless he shows some change in condition, and then you will call me immediately and carefully monitor his pulse, blood pressure and temperature."
The man was attached to leads, and tubes from a half dozen different places.
"How do I call you?" she asked gazing at the synth. He had a terrible wound and she couldn't imagine that he could be alive with his lungs apparently destroyed.
"You see this button?" he pointed to a button on a pole next to the surgical table.
She nodded.
"Press it," he said shortly.
"Yes sir. What would you have me address you as, sir?" she asked.
"Dr. Zimmer will do just find, G7-56." He turned to leave her.
She wanted to call him back and ask him about his experiments. She wanted to know if Tabitha, Albert and Tod were still alive or what the fates of the people he had taken were. She dared not though. She immediately fell back into her survival mode of being the best synth she could and following her orders perfectly. At least until some kind of opportunity presented itself. She had to be extremely careful in exploring this place. Dr. Zimmer would have to sleep and if Armitage was a Gen 3, he would have to as well. But she had a feeling, Armitage was not your normal Gen 3 synth.
In the meantime, she took Zimmer's list and studied it. There was a hanging chart on the table and check marks for the last procedures done and vitals taken. There was a clock on the wall by her.
One of the machines was taking his blood out and putting it back in. She assumed it was being oxygenated by the machine, since he wasn't breathing. His next procedure was scheduled in fifteen minutes. She looked carefully at him. A handsome synth, with dark brown, almost black hair, a strong jaw, good, straight and masculine nose and a wide, full mouth. His body was a warrior's body, with well-developed musculature. She had never seen a synth like him. His chest was destroyed. Looking at it made her feel angry. This perfect specimen of a young man, and someone had dared to defile it with brutality meant to kill. Under an artificial mesh, protecting his exposed heart and lungs, she saw the strong heart beating regularly. Then she stared in disbelief. She was seeing things.
She was watching his lung tissue growing, right before her eyes. Ever so slowly, but she was sure. And the tissue, the muscles and the skin on his chest were they growing too? She put her pinky fingernail at the edge of his damaged skin and her eyes widened as the skin grew ever so slowly and moved past her fingernail. It would have been imperceptible to her naked eye if she hadn't measured it.
He was regenerating in front of her eyes. What was this synth?
Horrified she looked at the clock, and realized she was 30 seconds behind her schedule. She quickly took his pulse and used the blood pressure cuff and took his blood pressure. She recorded the numbers on his chart and them took his temperature and recorded that too. He was burning hot. His pulse and pressure were a little high so someone who was resting, but he was running a high fever.
She check his intravenous bag. It would be good for a while. His catheter bag had only half an ounce of urine in it. That was good for now too. Her legs felt unsteady. Luckily, there was a chair right by the synth's table. She sat and watched the clock.
It was a few hours later. Either 6 at night or 6 in the morning, when Armitage came to check on her and bring her a meal. He told her to go to sleep in the little room off to the side. It was blessedly dark in there and she fell asleep almost instantly.
He woke her up, with a meal and a blessed cup of coffee. Then she resumed her duties.
She became accustomed to her schedule. And Armitage was better than a clock. She had watched carefully and come to the conclusion that he didn't sleep. She had never seen him eat either. He must have been made before Father had been taken and his DNA used to make human synths. It made sense. Dr. Zimmer could be 70 or 100 years old – but he was old for a human.
Days passed. Occasionally, she heard Zimmer ranting and complaining, at other times, he sounded excited. She was fearful for Bruno. If he became excited more often than frustrated, Bruno would be brought out here soon.
He stopped by, once a day and seemed very pleased with her. "Excellent, G7-56, excellent. It is nice to have your meticulous and precise aid." He took the synth's vitals himself, and compared them to hers when he checked in and that's how he could judge her accuracy.
Watching and caring for the synth was a job she liked. She memorized each line of his face and every part of his fine body. She even allowed herself to touch him and stroke his skin once in a while. His flesh was hot, and sometimes he broke out in a sweat. When he did, she sponged him off gently. She began to talk to him, telling him her story and sharing her yearnings. She watched at the hole in his chest grew smaller and smaller.
A few days later, Dr. Zimmer detached him from the oxygenator and put him on a respirator. He hummed happily as he watched the new lung tissue expand and contract.
"Good, good…" he commented more to himself than to her. "He's coming along nicely, yes ,he is." He gave her an absent pat on her shoulder and told her to watch him carefully. He told her was going to try and take him off the ventilator in two days to see if the synth could breathe on his own. He nodded to himself and went back to his own work.
She had so many questions. How had he come to get so badly hurt? How had he survived? She had never seen him in the Institute. He must have been one of those sent above ground with someone else's face and memories. But, again, showing curiosity or doing anything else besides follow Zimmer's express instructions would only get her wiped sooner.
She continued on, following her schedule perfectly and watched her synth heal.
She listened for Zimmer. He was in too good of a mood. She was not hearing him curse and yell. He made more pleased sounds than anything. She was worried for Bruno and Tan. They were next.
When he removed the ventilator, she held her own breath, trying to will the synth to breathe on his own. She felt fear clench her stomach as she watched for his now fully healed chest to rise and fall.
She was counting in her head, "one one thousand, two one thousand, three one thousand, four one thousand…" and when she got to eight he drew in a great shuddering breath and then another and another. Zimmer was rocking back and forth on the balls of his feet. When the synth continued breathing and it became more regular, and more even, he blew out his own breath.
"Keep a close watch. He could stop breathing at any time. His new lungs are not used to working yet. Press the button if he stops, immediately," Zimmer said to her, actually looking at her face.
She nodded earnestly, "Yes, Dr. Zimmer, sir."
He left her again.
She watched his chest rise and fall with regularity.
After an hour, she relaxed a little.
She figured out her schedule by assuming Dr. Zimmer would work during daylight hours. Of course, he could be a night owl, as the Institute scientists used to refer to those who liked staying up all night. If he was up during the day, she starting watching the synth at around 3:30 a.m., after a bathroom and breakfast break, kept watch until noon, where she got a break, and then from 1 o'clock to 6 p.m. at night where she had her evening meal and break, then she was allowed to sleep until 3 a.m. where she started all over again.
This was so much better than sitting in a cell, being terrified. She felt guilty that Bruno was left behind to wait.
She was bathing him, when he touched her. She nearly jumped out of her skin she was so startled. She turned wide eyes to his face and saw that his dark brown eyes were open and looking at her.
"Where am I?" he said, his voice a harsh croak. He cleared his throat. "Drink, please?"
She didn't want to call Zimmer. She knew she was supposed to but she feared his awaking would mean her duties were over and she would never have a chance to talk to him.
"In some kind of underground lab run by a Dr. Zimmer," she whispered close to his face.
He blanched, his eyes widening. "How did I get here?"
"I'm sorry, I don't know," Agnes said quietly. "He wants to know when he wake up. I'm supposed to call him."
"Don't. Not yet. Do you know the way out? How many people are here? How many military? Are they armed?" he coughed. "Need a drink."
Agnes loosened the strap holding his head down, eased up his head and gave him some of her water. He sipped very slowly and sighed. He tested his bonds.
"Please, don't tell him I am awake. Please," he said seeking her eyes.
"I won't," she said. Even if if cost her a mind wipe, she decided. She felt she had to explain herself, "I was being kept in a cell for his experiments. He is using humans and synths and I believe he is trying to transfer a human mind into a synth brain or the other way around. The only place I have been is here and in a little sleeping area. Armitage is always awake and is always checking. I didn't dare leave my post." Agnes glanced around fearfully.
"What's your name?" the synth asked.
"Agnes," she whispered.
"Pleased to meet you, Agnes. I am Danse," he said, his voice getting steadier. "I've been hearing you for a while now. I just couldn't wake up all the way."
Her eyes got even wider. "You're The Danse? The Danse that Berenger wrote us about? Z's Danse?" Her voice had risen a tiny bit in her amazement. She scanned the area again, knowing she would have little warning.
"Yes. I remember being shot. In the chest. I shouldn't have survived." Danse lifted his head and looked at his chest. The flesh looked reddish and a little raw, but he was whole. Just a small scar where he remembered being the center of the hit he took.
"Shhh," She put her fingers to her lips and started checking his blood pressure. Armitage came around the corner and looked over things and left again. Anges' shoulders sagged in relief.
"It's okay," she whispered, "he's gone for now. I'm on for two more hours. I watched your tissues regenerate, Danse. Your lungs were destroyed. Your rib cage had a big hole in it. Your heart was still going. I figured Zimmer did it somehow."
She gave him more water.
And for the first time since she woke up in this awful place, she began to feel a sense of hope.