Chapter Three
Day 219
Relieved to find she could move her arms, she raised her hands up to her face and using her fingers had to pry her eyes apart as the dried blood and crusts had sealed them shut. It was uncomfortable, but no where near the level of pain she'd had been put through over the past… well, God only knew how long she'd been in this hell hole. She was still alive, and still being experimented on, of course, they'd gotten in a new batch and they were more preoccupied with them – especially since there were a set of identical triplets, a little person and an albino. Of course, if she'd heard correctly from her new neighbour, the triplets were dead and dissected. Needing to cough, she sat up and hocked the large glob of dark covered phlegm out. No longer hooked up to tubes and machinery, wondering if that was a good thing or not, she stood and took a few stumbling steps towards the transparent front wall.
"Good to see you up".
She turned to see her neighbour.
"Heh, thanks".
She didn't know what else to say.
"You feeling okay?"
"I've definitely felt better".
She grumbled.
"They put you on that shit?"
She raised an eyebrow, confusion evident on her face.
"Shit?"
"Well, not literally. They've got some new drug, its some sort of hypnotic, hallucinogenic,… ah, basically it makes us easy to control, um… rum-fent-something… I overheard them talking about it a bunch of times".
He explained, she noticed he had a definite slur in his speech and when she stepped closer to him she could see the right side of his face was paralysed. Had he stroked?
"I've never heard of that, but I don't feel like I've been hypnotised or hallucinating or whatever".
"Yeah, I guess… apparently it kills you if you don't get any".
"Makes sense, I suppose, build up a workforce that's completely dependant on you for a narcotic that without will kill".
She dropped down slowly into a sitting position by the dividing wall between their cells.
"So… how about you? You okay?"
She asked.
"I'm fine… other then the fact they did this to me".
He motioned to his face with his left hand, his right side paralysed.
"Do you know what they did?"
"Yeah, I heard that big maroon one telling another guy that he'd injected a blood clot he'd harvested from the body of a big fat guy who stroked out in the cells. They dissected him and found it, and wanting to see if it could kill or damage, injected it straight into a blood vessel in my brain".
He slurred through his explanation.
"God. They really are monsters".
She said, a half whisper.
"If I could escape, I would, those fuckers have this place so well locked up no one can get in or out, but I'd rather die trying to escape then fucking live like this as one of their retarded guinea pigs".
"You get no objection from me".
"So… you got any ideas on how to get out of here?"
He suddenly asked.
"Who? Me?"
She raised her voice in reply, surprised.
"Yeah".
"Hell no, most of the time I've spent here I've either been out to it or in such a condition that the last thing on my mind is whether these arse faces have fung shei the place".
"Well, how bout we start paying attention, then. Even if we never put the info we might get to good use at least we've got something to keep our minds occupied".
"You guys are fucking insane if you think you can get out of here, and even if you get out of your cells, how are you going to get down off the shelf? Thought about that? What about how you get out of the door? And none of us have been in our right minds well enough to know what the fuck is on the other side… then what? You gonna ask for a map? Or maybe hack their logins so you can Google-earth their little base here? You people are fucking crazy!!!"
"Sssh! Quiet down Max, you idiot. If you don't want to escape then at least keep your mouth shut when others are talking about it. If you guys wanna try and get out of here, good luck, I'd come with you but… well… I just can't".
A woman's voice replied from the shelf above, possibly next to the man, given she knew his first name.
"Why can't you go?"
A young child from two cells away from Marie asked.
"They chopped off my legs and sewed my arms to the stumps".
There was a horribly uncomfortable silence when she made her statement.
"They're really repugnant, aren't they?"
Another voice from below asked.
"Well, okay, who wants to go with us if we manage to find a way out?"
Voices of agreement rung out from various shelves and cells.
"Well, whatever, you guys are all nuts. There's no way you can get out of here, not alive at least".
Max grumbled.
"So… what's the plan?"
Someone asked.
"Well, I guess as much recon as possible… maybe examine our cells see if we can find weakness, watch them as closely as we can, see if we can figure out their timetables".
Rangimarie replied, but not really sure if it was a good idea… suppose it was the best so far, she thought. And at least it would give them something to do, something to keep their minds occupied on something other then what they were suffering through.