4.
OFFLINE. TIME ELAPSED: --:--:--
Carefully, he used his fingertips to part the flesh of his chest, re-opening the wound with a quick, ripping motion. Holding the laceration open with one hand, he pulled the tiny sliver of plastic from the inside of his cheek, healed nearly completely into his mouth, riding against his molars. His mouth tasted of blood, and he placed the undershirt back between his teeth and bit down on it. Dentist indeed.
With quaking hands, he lowered the sharp splinter to the cut, then paused, shutting his eyes and taking a few deep breaths to calm himself. He swallowed back the blood, and plunged the plastic into the wound. Walter screamed into the shirt, and twisted the makeshift implement, prying it up. Blood trickled down to his navel, and he set the shred of plastic onto the lip of the sink, using his bloodied fingertips to carefully remove a tiny, amber-colored glass disk from within his chest.
He spat out the shirt, and looked at the disk for a few moments, wondering for the thousandth time what it was, before crushing it in his fist and sprinkling the fragments into the sink with his blood. Walter twisted the tap on, washing it away and beginning to patch himself up.
So, he'd found it, this time, before it had a chance to take root. He was lucky. Most of the time, he'd open up wound after wound, and pass out before any sort of success. He'd have to cut himself open again, and pull it out, tiny silver wire-roots clumped together with blood.
Walter pinched the wound shut, and began to pass the plastic shard through the two layers of flesh, trailing behind it a thin piece of thread from the hem of his sheets. They replaced the sheets every time he was out, so he always had more thread to pull. The plastic piece he had managed to chip from the lip of the keyboard, and they hadn't found it, yet.
He felt himself growing light headed, and stilled in his stitches, leaning over the sink and shutting his eyes. He took a few drinks of water, and continued. What kind of existence was this? Performing such a barbaric act of surgery was nothing short of irony, really. Hell did not get more personal than this.
Walter finished up and patted the stitches dry, taking his time to return to his room and drop into his chair. He looked, unseeingly, into the glowing screen. There had been no activity in a very long time, and he had only to assume two possibilities; they were dead, or they had escaped. He wished very much for the second prospect. But both probabilities left him back where he had started; alone.
xXx
Her own pulse woke her, and, unconsciously, she began to count it. She could still remember where she had left off, and started from there. She cursed at herself mentally, knowing that she had to open her eyes, and look around. She had to find a way out.
Fear- pure, childish fear- kept Olivia from opening her eyes, and she only hid in her numbers, in her heartbeats. She could hear the gentle hiss of a respirator, and slowly came to realize that the sharp beep of a heart monitor followed her counting. The Velcro straps itched at her wrists, and she felt like lead, lying on her back, shivering. A loud hum grew in her ears, vibrating the air until she could feel it in the back of her teeth.
Heat collected on her skin, a burning sensation that was unnaturally numbing. The hair on her arms stood on end, and she found it increasingly hard to breathe. All at once, her eyes opened and a scream erupted from her throat as her cells tore themselves apart.
Olivia opened her eyes, gasping for breath. Her breath fogged in the chill air, and she pulled the blanket around her shoulders to keep out the cold. She was back in the room once more.
She did not go to the computer. She merely rolled onto her side, moving over to rest her back against the wall. Still and silent, she stared out into the dark, waiting. If she didn't shut her eyes, they couldn't take her again.
xXx
It was a good thing that there seemed to be no limit on the amount of hot water he could use, in his small stall shower. He did not know how much longer the cold would last, and had only gone to bathe simply to rid himself of it. But, if he had run out of hot water, he would have caught chills, with wet hair.
It may have been an hour, maybe two, Peter didn't know. It was starting to warm up, when he wrapped a towel around his waist and stood on the misted floor tiles, staring into the polished steel sheet that acted as an unbreakable mirror. His eyes reflected as pale points of light in the dark, and his face was pallid, accenting the dark rings around his now sunken eyes. He was getting better at seeing in the dark, now. He turned away from the mirror and leaned back against the sink.
His fingers absently traced the places on his back where he could have sworn there had tears, but no longer existed. He could remember them so clearly- it was impossible that he had imagined them, and impossible that they had simply vanished… he glanced over his shoulder at his reflection, his eyes spanning the thin, white scars. Unless it had somehow been months that had passed, it simple wasn't possible.
He returned to the room, his clean trousers and shirt draped over his forearm. A tray of what he could assume was food had appeared just beyond the sealed door, and he stooped slightly to examine it for a few moments. Bread, a few slices of banana, a bowl of pudding, and a paper cup of pulpy orange juice. That was a lot of natural sugars and carbohydrates, a natural source of energy. But, if they were simply sitting around in a featureless box all day, why did they need such energy? He could only guess that it had something to do with the activities they did during their lapses. Peter mumbled something, and left the food where it was.
He did not go to the screen. Why would he? There was nothing they could do, now. Fighting was impossible. The chimes would start, and he would simply forget everything, and then find himself lying in the cot, as if nothing had happened. Perhaps nothing did happen. Perhaps he was going crazy, just like his old man.
xXx
Astrid was singing to herself to fight away the misery. Ironically, the lyrics were something along the lines of misery loving company. It seemed to fit the situation.
Her arms were as good as new. She didn't know how, and the very thoughts of such things frightened her, and she pushed her fear aside, seizing the opportunity of her good health to search the room for anything she could use as a tool. She had attempted to pry up the carpet, to no avail, as the fibers came up in her fingers when she pulled hard enough. The sheets could be torn, but she saw no use of such things just yet, and left them be. The bars of the cot were welded, a far too heavy for her to move. She had traced along every part of the walls she could reach, and found nothing. The bathroom had offered nothing, the fogged Plexiglas of the shower immovable. Not even the sink knobs were removable.
At last she returned to toe desk, flopping down in the chair with an exhausted sigh. Her rubbed her eyes with her fingertips, and squinted at the screen. A blinking cruiser awaited her input. She started to reach forward to the keys, and stopped, letting her hands rest back on the desktop. There was nothing she could do, nothing that she could tell them. There would simply be another pointless conversation, filled with hope and ending with despair. She couldn't take it, not now.
OFFLINE. TIME ELAPSED: --:---:--
_BEGIN SUBJECT ASSIMILATION: Y/N?
Y
_ACTIVATING AMNESIA SEQUENCE. REGULATION RELAYS UNDETECTED. OVERRIDE?
Manual sequence command. Code: BISHOP.
_MANUAL SEQUENCE ACTIVATED.
Execute.