Fuck Elon Musk, was all Emily could think, as she retched into the oddly shaped bowl tucked into her lap.
This had to be him.
It all made sense, right? The Star Trek walls with their glittering lights and displays. The cosplayers stood behind the glass; always watching. The actual fucking flying robots. What else could this be, but some underground lab built by a weird, fetishist billionaire? And they didn't come any weirder than the utter fruitcake called Elon Musk. He probably kidnapped people from disasters all the time; hoping they'd just be written off as tragic losses, with no additional effort put in to finding them. Would her own family accept that excuse? Would they still look for her? What was her mum thinking right now - did she still have any hope? What had her brother told her nieces and nephews? Auntie Em is dead kids; no more sleepovers and cat-shaped pancakes and long mornings huddled together under blankets watching Youtube. Would they just accept it and forget her? Would she eventually forget them?
The bowl was eased out of her hands, and Emily realised that she was so caught up in her thoughts, she had just been sitting there, crying into the thing. A constant leak of tears had steadily dribbled down her face ever since her earlier breakdown. It was like she'd busted the off switch on her tear ducts. It wasn't helped by the fact that she was so hungry now, it was getting harder and harder to focus on anything else. Everything they'd given her to eat so far - including that last weird stick of stuff that tasted like egg yolk and smelled of watermelon - had made her horribly, wretchedly ill. If Elon Musk was wanting to test food for his Mars colonization or whatever, then he was doing a terrible job. If they sent folk up there with the crap they'd been feeding her so far, those astronauts would just be living in a floating tin can of vomit and shit for the rest of their lives.
A water bottle was pushed into her hands. She looked up to see the ever present Beardy…no wait - Ben - as she'd now dubbed him, after several failed attempts to pronounce the jumbled mess of sounds that was his name. It was close enough to the noises he had made, and it didn't make her sound like she'd just had a stroke. Ben, however, hadn't seemed too enthused at the new nickname - not that he spoke enough English to argue with her. Although, at the frankly alarming rate he was currently learning - he'd be fluent in under a month.
"Drink," he encouraged, the word sounding odd in his strange, clipped accent. She did as asked; the water helped to clear out the bitter taste of bile from her mouth. Ben turned from her and walked over to the big window, opening a slot and depositing the bowl of her deposits inside. Emily didn't want to think about what they did with that. Turning back, he looked down over his pyjamas with a sigh. He hadn't quite managed to get the bowl to her in time, and Ben had found himself on the receiving end of her first volley. She'd feel worse about it - if he hadn't been the one who had encouraged her to eat, against her misgivings, in the first place.
"I clean in…" he paused, and then said a word in his own language.
"Toilet. Bathroom. Restroom. Lavatory. Shitter," the flying robot in the corner of the room suggested, listing off in its staticky voice the myriad of names she'd use to describe what went for a bathroom in this place. Ben seemed to mull the options over.
"…restroom," he settled on, with a small smile. Emily couldn't help but feel a little disappointed. He had an uncanny ability to avoid all of her favourite phrases.
With a strange little half-bow that everyone seemed to do to each other, Ben walked towards the wall nearest his bed. He waved a hand over a recessed light, and the panelling slid seamlessly back, revealing a clean, empty bathroom beyond. Emily wondered if there were other rooms hidden behind the walls, and what they might contain. More toilets? Wardrobes full of sci-fi costumes and facepaint? Kitchens where they mashed egg yolks and watermelon together like it was a fucking valid culinary idea?
The door whooshed shut behind Ben, and Emily was once more left alone in the room. Her stomach had thankfully settled, but a pounding headache was starting to drum out a beat behind her eyes. She peered over at the window. The only person there, for now, was the boy. Emily had no idea what he had to do with any of this. He was tall and a little gangly looking, like he'd just had a recent growth spurt and was still trying to figure out how he fit into his body. He'd appear and disappear at certain times throughout the day, like he was always in a rush, and would spend whatever time he had chatting with Ben or the others. Though they didn't look much alike, there was something about the dynamic and the familiarity between Ben and the boy, which made Emily think that they were closely related. She'd seen the exasperated looks Ben often gave him, and the fondness that lingered on his face when the boy eventually dashed off. It reminded Emily of how she felt about her nieces and nephews; they drove her to distraction most of the time, but she just loved them all the more for it.
Emily caught her reflection in the window and winced, reflexively bringing a hand up to trail over the shorn skin on her head. She had always wondered if she could pull off the bald look - and the faint outline in the glass confirmed that she definitely couldn't. The strange gel bandage that covered almost the entire right side of her face, like a phantom of the opera style mask, probably didn't add much either. Emily ran her fingers over the edge of the bandages, circling around her eye socket, curving down along her cheek. A small, solitary burn mark stood out, swollen and red on the side of her nose. Was that what the rest of her face looked like? Emily grabbed the top edge of her bandage and started to peel it off. She needed to see what it looked like under there. The boy motioned to her, shaking his head and saying something in his own tongue.
"Stop! No touch," the robot said, it's eye lights flashing amber.
Emily ignored them both. The material peeled back with ease, tugging only lightly on the skin underneath, a layer of gel still remaining behind, slick and glistening in the light. When she'd pulled the bandages down to her jawline, she stopped; the wet curl of white fabric slipping from her numb fingers. Emily felt like her mind couldn't comprehend what her eyes were seeing. She skimmed over it all, again and again; the deep puckered gouges, the smaller rust-red marks scattered like splotches of paint flicked from a brush, the raised ropes of burnt flesh that crept like vines, curling up from her neck to cup along her jaw. She took in the whole of her face; it was unrecognisable. She didn't know this Emily.
She quickly scrabbled to claw off the rest - fingers shaking as she tore at the edges that moulded over her neck and shoulder. The boy yelled something. The robot whirled and repeatedly blared the word "Stop!", in an off-beat to the blood pounding in her ears and thrumming in her chest. The gel made her fingers fumble and slip. She couldn't feel anything that touched the raw, gnarled skin; not the pressure of her fingers or the scratch of her nails. A damp hand clamped over her wrist; the grip too strong for her to fight against
"Emily, stop!" she heard, close to her ear. "Stop. Please."
She was panicking now, eyes blurring as she was led away from the window. Hands pressed her down until she was sitting. It felt like she couldn't get her lungs to work properly, like every breath she took dissipated as soon as she sucked it in. Her heart was beating so fast she felt sick. Emily stared down at the rough hands engulfing her own; all of her focus bent on pulling in oxygen. The thumping rhythm of her heart slowed. Her chest eventually decompressed, and the fuzzy haze of her head cleared. Ben looked back at her through a wet tangle of auburn hair plastered to his head, blue-grey eyes soft with sympathy. He let go of her hands and started to smooth down the white bandages once again, section by section covering up the ruined skin.
Reality started to piece itself back together. The robot had stopped blaring. Emily could hear the sound of the boy's voice, mixed with the familiar questioning tone of the cosplayers. They must have returned at some point during the commotion. Ben, she realised, was dressed in only his pyjama bottoms - his skin still damp. He must have rushed out from having a shower. He shifted, and she felt her breath stick in her throat.
Ben's torso wasn't just scarred; it was mauled. Layer upon layer of pale slashes and raised burns crisscrossed his chest and arms. Some were the bloodless white of old injuries, while others still had the raw pink and red edges of new trauma. A gouged crater lay just below his clavicle, and not even thinking, Emily reached out a finger to trace the dip in his skin. Water had gathered in it, dripping down her fingertip. Ben paused in his ministrations around her ear.
Was this why she was taken from the crash? Was this why Ben was in here with her? Were they collecting the most damaged and scarred people they could find - and for what? To conduct tests? To treat them? To scar them more? Ben pulled her hand away from his body, and she looked up to find him regarding her back. Emily couldn't guess what he was thinking. Worse, she had no way to ask. She needed to speak with him; to find out what was going on – and to find a way to escape. Because whatever this was, she hadn't asked for it, and now she was beginning to suspect that Ben hadn't either. Was that why they kept the boy here? To keep him from escaping? To keep him compliant?
"Sorry," Emily whispered, taking back her hand. He held her gaze for a few seconds longer, before turning back to fix the bandages on her face.
Emily was going to find out what was going on, she was going to find a way to communicate with Ben, and then they were all going to get the fuck out of here. Until then, she'd play nice with the cosplayers, and would choke down whatever excuse for food they gave her - but when the time came, she was getting the hell out of this place, and the minute she was out, she was going to expose their sick operation to the rest of the world.