Barratt never came back, either.
Nick was still sitting in front of the chain-link for hours after 909 was taken out, fingers curled against the wire. He watched with distant interest as a thin trail of the carrier's blood ran slowly down the slope toward the drain in the middle of the corridor. It ran sluggishly along the uneven concrete. The overhead lights made it seem darker than it probably was, a deep red line tracking slowly toward him.
The air vent rattled above his head, but the rest of the ward was silent. It usually was after Barratt lashed out in violence. Nick's gaze followed the red trail of blood back up to the carrier's twisted, discarded blanket, then down again. It had reached the edge of the drain, and he watched as it dripped slowly into the wastewater below.
The quarantine door squealed. Nick retreated to the back corner again, taking his blanket with him, fearing the worst — that Barratt was going to come back in and finish them all off.
Instead, two other guards came in. He'd seen them before; they were the quiet ones that didn't throw him around. They spoke softly, but not kindly to Nick and the others — it often sounded like they were talking to things that weren't really there. Hollow and impersonal. He wasn't sure what to think of it.
They came up to the door of 909's cell. One of them looked down at the blood on the floor and motioned for the other to stop.
"Hey. Watch this," he said, pointing down at it.
Nick watched closely as they took long steps around the blood, skirting past it like one would a poisonous animal. The other guard pulled the radio from his back pocket and spoke into it.
"Ward B. Whole-blood contamination."
They kept going down the corridor and Nick couldn't hear the reply, if there was one. He crept back to the chain-link door and watched them for as long as the awkward viewpoint allowed. There was the sound of the other door opening and a breath of icy air swept down the ward, and then they were opening cells and taking everyone out, guiding them to the holding room.
Nick was the last to go, being the one at the furthest end of the ward. He watched them step around the blood and open his cell door.
"Come on, Nick," one of them said, and he was so slow to realize that it was his name that it startled him and he forgot what he was supposed to do. The closest one grabbed his arm and tugged him toward the hall, voice impatient. "This way."
Hearing his name spoken aloud by them was strange and frightening. He struggled to understand. All they'd ever called him was a number, an object, an it. That was all he was when he was in his cell — in his cage.
They brought him to the holding room with the others and left him standing there, shivering and bewildered. He watched the door to the ward shut and pushed his hands across his hair before sitting on the floor right where he was.
It didn't take long for Carter to find him and place a tentative hand on his shoulder. "Hey. You okay?"
Nick nodded jerkily. "Yeah."
"Jesus. Thought for a minute that you were the one getting beat. Almost had a heart attack."
He sighed and wondered what made him so much more important than anyone else. They were all the same, weren't they? That was what they had been told many times before. Nick sighed, shaking his head and pressing his palms into his eyes. At length, he spoke into his hands, "They called me my name."
Carter sat down next to him, keeping his hand on his shoulder. "What do you mean?"
"My name. My actual fucking name."
The older man fell silent for a second. "You still have it, you know. If you remember it, you still have it. They haven't taken it from you." He patted Nick's shoulder. "It's okay. They're calling everyone by their names now."
Nick curled his legs up to his chest, breathing slowly, waiting to see if his mind could recalibrate itself with this new information. He pushed a hand against his forehead and let out a long breath.
"...They didn't know your name, did they?" Carter asked, at length, hesitation in his voice.
"Never asked me." Nick chewed on one of his knuckles as his mind raced. He had thought that in here, they were just empty things in perpetual and useless motion. Tools. Nothing else. No matter how many blankets they gave him or names they called him, it wasn't going to change.
Was it?
Nick let out a long breath and pushed himself gingerly to his feet. He walked to the back wall and leaned against it, then slowly slid down to the floor, resting his head in his hands and listening to the others mumble about what had happened.
"...Guess the guard beat him real bad—"
"—Only a matter of time 'till they get the rest of us—"
"—I wish we could leave. I wish we could just leave. Why won't they let us leave?"
Nick pushed his hands across his still-short hair. It was coming back, albeit slowly. There was enough to run his palms over, at least, even though it felt like uneven beard stubble. He stared at the ground, trying to get the memory of 909's muffled shrieks out of his head, imagining that he'd heard words in the muddled mess of sounds.
The others kept talking, voices soft and scared.
"Should have shot myself in that safe house before they found me."
"We'll get out of here. Don't worry. We'll get out."
He wasn't really listening. It was all a distant burst of static to his ears.
Carter was eventually walked over and sat next to him. Neither spoke. A hiss started up on the other side of the door. They were cleaning the ward again. The faint smell of harsh chemicals drifted into the holding room. Nick tried not to let the sound of the spray remind him of a ship's corridors soaking in seawater.
"Probably cleaning the blood out," the older man said. "That's how it's spread, you know."
"...Yeah." Nick ran the underside of his thumb along his fingernails. "I know."
After a lengthly stretch of uncomfortable silence, Carter spoke again. "You can tell me what it is, you know. Your name." Nick wasn't sure if he could hear anything genuine in the man's voice or if the facility had beaten it out of him. "I'd sure like to stop calling you 315."
He didn't say anything in reply. Not for a long time, not until Carter had sighed and turned away and lost interest in trying to continue the conversation. Then Nick finally opened his mouth, speaking quietly, as if he were giving away a secret.
"I'll make you a deal, 745." He rubbed his face and stood up again, feeling uncomfortable, twitchy — he needed a run. "How about that?"
"A deal is better than nothing," Carter replied carefully, looking up at him from the floor.
"...We make it out of here... then I'll tell you my name. Got it?"
Carter scoffed. The both of them knew that there was no leaving the facility. Still, a sad little smile spread across his face, and he nodded softly. "All right. You've got yourself a deal, 315." He extended his hand out.
Nick stared at it for a long moment.
"Shake it," Carter supplied quietly. "You make a deal with a man, you shake his hand."
"...Yeah." Nick grabbed it — it was much warmer and stronger than his own — and gave it as firm a shake as he could manage.
The other man smiled, looking him straight in the eye. "I'm looking forward to it."
When they were returned to their cells, the walls and floors were soaking wet. There was still some off-color cleaner bubbling and frothing in the drain. It smelled like ammonia.
909's cell was empty again — blanket gone, whiteboard wiped clean, floor bare. Like he'd never existed. Their blankets were hanging from the chain-link cell doors, also dripping with water. There wasn't a dry spot anywhere in his cell, so Nick stood in the corner, rubbing his arms and trying to keep warm. They'd cleaned the blankets and it was going to take ages for them to be dry and usable. He'd long gotten used to the smell anyway.
Nick started pacing, since he couldn't sit or lay down without getting wet. He balled both of his hands into fists, remembering how strong Carter's handshake had been and internally questioning how long his own fingers had been so weak. No wonder his rifle had been getting so hard to manage.
The quarantine door shrieked open and Nick nearly slipped and fell on the wet floor in his haste to get to the far corner of his cell. He stood there and looked at the wall, staring at the rust stain that he had memorized long ago and trying to look as harmless as possible.
He heard the crinkling of a trash bag and realized he'd forgotten how close it was to his meal. His sense of time was skewed beyond repair. He still didn't know if it was day or night. Because there is no day or night anymore, that wild, frenzied part of his mind told him. He couldn't keep it quiet anymore. Just meal one and meal two.
This would be meal one. A guard came around and rolled a bottle of water under his cell door and he picked it up. They weren't ever sealed; he suspected after they collected the empty bottles they just filled them again with whatever water they had. There were small particles floating in it this time. The sight might have turned his stomach, ages ago. But now he opened it and took a long sip without hesitation, letting the water swish around in his mouth for a while. It was lukewarm and tasted a bit like chlorine.
After the water they came around with food. This time it was granola, from a large surplus bucket with a horse on the label. The guard grabbed a handful and put it in a coffee filter that served as the plate before sticking it carefully under the door.
Nick ate slowly, as always. It wasn't anything special, he knew, but he was hungry, and he ate it piece-by-piece until there was nothing left but a fine dust over the bottom of the coffee filter. He rolled the thin paper into a ball between his palms, busying his hands and listening to the faint sounds of his stomach as it worked on digesting the tiny meal.
His energy returned, and he started to pace. He unrolled the coffee filter and started folding it into different shapes as he moved. It was becoming more and more difficult to keep his mind occupied, to keep it from falling into bubbling panic or that buzzing, hollow emptiness. Neither of them were pleasant.
Distant memories came and went, fuzzy and intangible. He thought of Rochelle, wondered where she was or what she was doing. And Ellis and Coach. They were smart and there wasn't a chance they'd ended up in a place like this, he thought. After all, they were together. He'd just had a stupid, obnoxious dog.
Nick tried not to think about Rob. Thinking about it made him angry. Angry at Kyle, angry at the dog. Mostly he just hated himself. For not paying attention. For being lulled into a sense of trust. He'd thought he was better than that, smarter than that.
Worthless, worthless, his mind said.
The coffee filter was starting to disintegrate from being manipulated for so long. Nick started ripping it up into pieces. When he just had a handful of confetti he went to the waste bucket and let it drop in, watching it drift through the air like snow.
His mind ate at itself. He paced, and tried to think. He paced, and tried to stop thinking.
Neither worked.
"All right, Nick. Ready to go to the treatment room?"
The voice roused him from his rest on the floor. He hadn't been sleeping, just gazing into space, unable to do anything else. Nick rubbed his face and looked up at the guard looming at the cell door.
"...What?"
The guard held up a file — the blue file that he knew belonged to him. Everyone had a blue file. "The doctor would like to pull some samples from you."
Nick tilted his head. They were supposed to be treating him — not taking things back out of him. He levered himself to a standing position anyway, shying to the back corner as the guard jammed the key into the padlock.
"You gonna cooperate, or do you need the zip-tie...?"
There was a choice? Nick blinked slowly and shook his head. The guard took a step inside his cell and grabbed him by the arm, above the elbow, like Barratt had. This man's fingers weren't tight enough to bruise. They walked silently down the ward. Nick lifted his eyes timidly, catching Carter's gaze as he was escorted past the older man's cell. There was no emotion there that he could discern.
The treatment room was still only a few degrees warmer than the ward. Nick noticed immediately that the dentist's chair was no longer here, replaced by a heavy metal table, like something out of a morgue. The guard motioned for him to sit on it before knocking on the door to the outer hallway.
Nick rested his hands on the top of the table. It was freezing cold, colder than his cell. Anxiety was creeping up in his mind again, bringing with it wild visions of what might happen next. Were they going to kill him? Or were they really just taking samples?
The outer door hissed open and Sijan stepped inside. She was probably smiling, but he couldn't see her mouth past the mask. "Good evening, Nick."
So it was the evening. He tried to plant it into his memory.
Sijan retrieved his file from the hands of the other guard. "We won't be taking blood from you today," she spoke, gently. "What we're going to be taking is bone marrow. Are you familiar with this procedure?"
Nick had only heard about it a few times in his life. He shook his head. It sounded painful.
"Well..." she set his file down and folded her hands in front of herself, trying to maintain eye contact as she spoke, "...we're going to give you a bit of a sedative. You'll lay down on that table and we'll pull the sample, hopefully from your hip. Shouldn't be too bad. Okay?"
He still wasn't sure how to talk around her. It didn't matter which guard was standing next to him; in his mind he would always see Barratt. "Um. Is it — will it hurt?" His voice cracked slightly. He couldn't look at her any longer, so he shifted his gaze to the floor.
"A bit," she said.
Nick didn't like the idea of sedatives. He thought back to the movie theater where he'd been out of it for hours and could barely remember what the hell had happened... not to mention the incident with Kyle. "Are you g—gonna... put me out? Knock me out?"
"We'll just give you something to help with the pain, keep you calm."
He knew he didn't really have a choice, and wasn't sure why she was explaining it instead of strapping him down and just getting on with it. At least they were decent enough to give him some form of pain relief. Nick rubbed the back of his neck and nodded again. He thought of all the other hospitals he'd been to, how many consent forms he'd signed in his life.
They'd never made him sign anything in here. He supposed his 'consent' was being allowed to get shipped into the facility in the first place.
Sijan was talking again. He shook his head and struggled to focus. It was becoming maddening, how often his mind would lose itself and just phase out. He couldn't concentrate on anything anymore.
"I'm going to get your sedative and the instruments," she said, going back to the door that led out to the uninfected side of the facility. "Just wait here, Nick. I'll only be a moment."
He sat in uncomfortable silence, staring at the boots of the guard standing next to him. There were goosebumps on his arms and he rubbed at them, shivering. His gaze shifted to his own raw, bruised feet. Nick assumed he and the other carriers didn't get shoes because they might kill themselves with the laces. Or kick each other with them.
The guard shifted and Nick could hear the man's clothes creaking softly in the quiet of the room. He also heard him sigh quietly, though whether it was a sound of boredom or irritation was up for debate. Nick tilted his arm and traced the numbers again, one of the many nervous habits he'd picked up. Three-one-five, zero-two-four, he'd whisper in his mind, over and over.
After a couple more minutes of thick frozen silence, the quarantine door opened again and he let out a small breath of mixed anxiety and relief through his nose. Sijan came in with a surgical tray with some mostly unfamiliar things piled up on top of it. Nick glanced over them; vials and gloves and bottles, but he didn't like the look of the thing with the large blue handle and impossibly long needle. It looked like a construction worker's tool.
Another guard came in behind her and shut the door. Nick attempted to swallow his fear of being trapped in such a small space with so many people.
"All right, Nick." Sijan was drawing up something from a vial. A drug. She flicked out the bubbles in the syringe and came over with it. "This is just a little propofol. It's gonna make this nice and easy for you, hon."
He wasn't sure he'd ever heard of propofol before, and he wasn't excited for the prospect of being sedated. Nick recoiled, but the guard that had been standing next to him reached out and snatched his arm for her. He watched, shaking, as she tied a band around his arm and soaked his skin with alcohol. There were still fading bruises from the last time, and although it looked like she was being careful, it still hurt like hell as she started fishing around for a vein.
Nick saw the flash of his blood in the syringe and heard her say, "Here we go," before she started injecting. It was painful, a strange burning sensation in his veins that reminded him of the diazepam but hot. Sijan pushed it through and withdrew the needle, patting him lightly on the knee. "Just give it a minute."
For a few moments it didn't seem like it was doing anything, but then the horrifying feeling of dizziness swept over him, and he was reminded instantly of Kyle. The drugs. Rob. Nick's mind rolled with panic, but his body wouldn't respond. He tried to slip down off the table but one of the guards grabbed him and put him back, pushing his chest until he was lying flat on the icy metal. The guard stayed over him, holding him down, and the terror snowballed, boiled up faster and faster in his head and his body—
Somewhere in his mind he swore he felt something shift, crumple and shatter. His heart shot up into his throat and the only thought he had in his head was get away get out get out of there get out get out get out—
He started thrashing weakly, trying to break free of the hands holding him down.
"Just the excitatory stage," he heard Sijan mutter. It sounded like she was very far away. "Hold him still. He'll be fine in a few minutes."
Nick bucked a few more times, but then he lost his strength and he felt himself going slack. It felt like something had just sucked all the energy out of him, leaving him limp and useless. His mind was still going, still aflame with hysteria, but he couldn't fight back any more, couldn't lift his arms or kick his legs or scream or yell. Let me go. I don't want this. I don't want this,he cried in his head, but his actual voice wouldn't make any noises.
"...There." Sijan was talking again. She sounded impossibly loud to his ears. "Just relax, Nick. This will only take a minute. Promise."
They rolled him over and Sijan started applying something wet and cold to his lower back. He couldn't tell what it was, nor could he turn his head and look at what it was. One of the guards held his arms down and the other was leaning on his legs. Nick tried to breathe past the panic. He felt like he was going to have a heart attack.
"Just a little pinch," the doctor spoke lightly, then it felt like he was being stabbed by a kitchen knife, deep in his lower back. He couldn't yell or scream although he wanted to; all he could do was breath harshly and fight with his uncooperative body to move.
"Almost done," Sijan spoke. "You're doing great."
It seemed to last forever, the feeling like she was twisting a knife into him. He felt tears coming out from his eyes but couldn't wipe them away or stop them from appearing. His heart was going to explode, he just knew it, it was going to beat right the fuck out of his chest and he'd be dead, right there on the table.
He heard a low whimpering noise and it took him a few seconds to realize it was coming from his own throat.
"Shh," the doctor hissed softly. "You're gonna be fine."
Finally, finally, the pressure of the needle relented. He felt a heavy breath shudder out from his lungs. The pain remained, but it wasn't nearly as terrible. Nick's face was pressed into the metal table and the surface was slick with tears. Out of the corner of his eye he saw a massive syringe in the doctor's hands, filled with a dark reddish substance. She moved it to the counter, then turned back to him.
"All done. See how easy that was?"
Nick wanted to laugh, but he couldn't make the sound. Easy? She thought it was easy? Anger mingled with the terror and made a strange, white-hot feeling bubble in his chest. Of course she would think it was easy, she wasn't the one kept in a freezing cold cage with a damp blanket and two meals a day. She probably had never encountered a zombie; she had no idea what easy was.
His breathing was beginning to slow, and he willed his heart to do the same, squeezing his eyes shut and resting his forehead against the freezing table. The panic was still ricocheting around in his head like a nagging, terrible headache. The guards removed their hands from his arms and legs and he tried to move them, but they felt heavy and clumsy.
"You can take him back, now," he heard Sijan say. Nick wasn't sure if it was the drugs or his own mind playing with him, but she sounded angry. A tone of voice not unlike Barratt's. His mind, already in overdrive, tried to understand, tried to come up with a reason for it, but it could only tell him, She's lying to you, she's lying, she doesn't give a shit, none of them do, and you fell for it you fell for her con—
One of the guards was lifting him up by his arms. "All right, let's get going," he said, and levered him down to the floor. His legs felt like rubber and he clung to the guard's arm to stop himself from collapsing.
The other one took his other arm, and they helped him back to his cell, setting him down carefully on the concrete. They threw the still-damp blanket over him and left, locking the chain-link door behind them. Nick curled up as tightly as he could, trembling with fading panic and anger, and let the drugs pull him into sleep.
His back hurt for days. There was no outward sign that he'd even been touched except for the fading orange stain of iodine and a tiny band-aid. He couldn't see much of it, anyway. It still hurt when he sat down or lay on his back.
As it turned out, Sijan had taken samples from all of them. Nick didn't think of that possibility until the next cleaning day, when he saw another carrier rubbing his back in the holding room, and when Carter sat next to him in their usual spot and asked, "How's yours doing?"
"Sore as hell," Nick answered after a second, resisting the urge to rub it again.
"Wish I could get more of those drugs they gave me. Haven't slept so good in months." The older man leaned against the wall, pillowing his hands behind his head. He looked so casual, like he wasn't really in a testing facility forcibly getting fluids taken out of him every day. "Why do you think they're taking bone marrow now?"
Nick shook his head, remembering how Sijan had talked when she was done with him. He shivered and pulled his knees to his chest, ignoring the flash of pain as he stretched the muscles in his back.
"Stem cells, maybe," Carter mused, and Nick wasn't sure if the other man was talking to himself or not.
He replied anyway. "I don't know a lot about medicine."
"Yeah, me neither. I used to be a taxi driver." Carter rubbed the top of his head, running his hands over his greying, regrowing hair. "How about you?"
Nick frowned. "Does it matter?"
"...No. No, I guess not." The older man sighed and dropped his hands into his lap. "I miss my girls," he said at length. "My family. My friends."
You don't have any family, and you don't have any friends, Nick's mind hissed at him. He dug his fingers into his stubbly hair, trying to ignore the bitter, taunting voice. Nobody's ever fucking cared about you. Because you've never cared for anybody.
"You okay?" Carter asked, worry on his face as he tried to catch his gaze.
Nick wasn't so good at eye contact any more. "Y-yeah. ...I'm just tired."
"Aren't we all." The older man patted him on the back. "You'll be okay."
No, you won't. "...Thanks."
"If you're half as tough as you look, this place won't get the best of you for a long, long time, 315."
Nick rubbed his eyes and nodded. He stared at the floor and listened to the comforting background hum of the other carriers. "I hope you're right," he mumbled after a while, hugging himself to try and generate a bit more warmth. He thought he should be used to the feeling of being cold by now — he thought he would be able to phase it out after living for so long in it. Instead, it got worse, and more painful, and impossible to ignore.
"Hope is... it's just a word, 315," Carter spoke softly next to him. His voice held no humor or strength. "A word with a big damned hole in it."
The words echoed in Nick's head for a very long time.
(A/N: Turn the page, wash your hands.)