"Spiky dog lizard. Glowing cactus branches. Giant tick cow."
Image after image flashed in front of Emily, but she was barely giving them her attention. She had no clue why they were showing her this stuff. It was like a 3D artist was pitching their portfolio for the next Avatar movie. Maybe Elon Musk was wanting to set up a new franchise, and had decided that, when he wasn't making her sick or terrifying her with robots, he'd get some art critique from her as well. It didn't matter. Emily didn't give a flying fuck about what they wanted, she just knew that they tended to leave her alone when she was doing this stuff - and that gave her time to think. If 'think' was an appropriate word for what she was actually doing. A reasonable person would probably call it, 'obsessively replaying events and devising malicious acts of terrorism,' but hey, it's not like a reasonable person was within a hundred yards of her anyway.
"Twisty teacup. Flying spider bat. Crystal petal ball."
It was her fault. They hadn't put Ben in with her because of her scars, as she had first thought; they'd obviously done it because they needed someone to help keep her calm and control her. The minute she had started to comply, they'd realised that they didn't need Ben there with her anymore. Oh, he'd played along well. He had smiled, and patted her arm and said bland, comforting things in English - as he pulled on his boots and let the robot scan and inject him with stuff. But it didn't matter what he said; Emily had seen the soft sorrow in his eyes when she'd grabbed his hand and tried to tug him back from the door. She'd heard the sadness in his voice when he'd squeezed her hand in both of his - warm and calloused and so familiar now - and had said, "I am sorry. I learned the word for hello, but I do not know how to say…"
"Stop," Emily said, and the hologram winked out of existence. She stared at the empty bed across the room. It had been two days since he'd left and the boy had disappeared too. In their place, even more random people had been coming and going - a few of them dressed up so ridiculously, it made the regular two cosplayers look positively modest in comparison. There was knobbly conehead goatee man, and the guy like Bane from The Dark Knight, but wearing a fake octopus like a wig. They would come in and stare at glowing screens as Melted Mickey - or 'Pea' as Ben had called them - talked and talked. Emily tried to make out words, but they all spoke so fast she couldn't keep up. Most of the time they'd just stand there and stare at her, until it made her skin crawl, like their eyes were crowding around her and pushing in.
She had to do it tonight.
Emily had already tested out parts of her plan. She'd purposefully woken up during the night to visit the toilet; and had observed the robot light up at her movements, but then it quickly shut down when it saw her intentions. The second night, it didn't turn on at all. She'd also managed to hide one of the spoons under the padding on her bed. It was oddly shaped - more like a tiny shovel really - with a long, blunted edge that dipped into a shallow bowl. It wasn't the best tool she could ask for, but it would do for what she needed. She also knew exactly what panel in the shower wall to go for. There was a seam that ran down the side of one of the wall-jets. She was sure she could jam the edge of the spoon in there, and pry it off.
The only problem with all of this, was that she was now doing it entirely alone. Emily had hoped to find a way to communicate with Ben, so they could work together to break out. It was obvious that he knew something about this place, and had been stuck here far longer than her. With his knowledge - and almost distractingly excessive muscles - they had a much better chance of finding the boy, sabotaging the shit out of the building, and then getting the fuck out of this hellhole and back to normal civilisation. Now, Emily was faced with the prospect of doing all of that alone - plus needing to find out where they were keeping Ben so she could free him. And what if they weren't the only people kept prisoner here? What if there were hundreds of others - maybe even some from the plane crash like her? She had to make sure everyone got out of this place. Emily couldn't stand the thought of someone being left here to be experimented on.
That meant no lighting the place on fire, which had been a reoccurring fantasy of hers for some time. No running around punching things (another fantasy). No, she'd have to rein in every sudden impulse and knee-jerk reaction which had, since birth, been the solid foundation Emily had chosen to build her hectic life on. She would now have to be slow, and cautious, and methodical, and above all - rational - if she was to get out of here with Ben and the others. She knew there wouldn't be a second shot at it if she failed.
Emily was pulled out of her head by a quiet rumbling of voices. Turning at the sound of her name, she watched as around eight people swept into the room behind the glass. Most of them were cosplayers she had seen before; like Octopus Bane, Conehead and the hovering green Build-A-Bear Robot. All of them were wearing varying styles of the pyjamas that Ben had worn. Standing out from the browns and beiges, an older man stood amongst them - wearing a long, stiff and fancy looking dress in black and burgundy. He approached the window immediately on entering; his rheumy eyes, set in a deeply lined face, fixed on her. Emily stood up from her bed - the shift in the atmosphere was so sudden, the air almost tingled around her. Something was happening.
"Emily," the older man said, his face creased into a soft smile. He turned to the others and said something else. Emily could pick up, "she" and "speak" and "Basic".
"Yes," Emily answered, before one of the others could; quickly clarifying, "I speak small words." She didn't want to give him the expectation of her being a savant or something. For every ten words Ben had effortlessly learned, Emily had usually only managed to fumble over one.
"Good," he said, his smile widening. "I am…" and then he made a jumble of sounds. Emily smiled and nodded. Did no-one in this fucking place have a normal sounding name?
"Hello," she said, not even attempting to say his name.
"Hello," he returned, looking positively giddy. He turned back to the others and started to speak; his words were clear, but far too fast for Emily to properly keep up with. It seemed like a normal conversation, and if it weren't for the odd mention of her name, she would have thought it wasn't about her at all, given how they all seemed to ignore her. The Old Guy then said something, and Pea cut him off - their voice low and clipped. The others shifted and mumbled at whatever Pea said. Emily hadn't really interacted much with her two cosplayer voyeurs; but if she were to guess, she'd say Pea wasn't happy, and everyone else in the room was equally unhappy with Pea - going by the scowls
Pea went on talking, ignoring anyone who tried to cut in. Once the monologue stopped, it became a free-for-all. Everyone had an opinion. Emily imagined that she would also have a strong opinion on whatever they were talking about, if she could only understand a tenth of what they were saying, but no-one had bothered to stop and fill her in. Eventually it was really only Pea, Old Guy, Baldy and Build-A-Bear Robot talking. And what even was the point of the floating stuffed toy? Was someone just speaking through it from somewhere else? The whole thing was bizarre.
The conversation stopped. They had all turned to look at her, and Emily could feel her hackles rising as they did. She had the horrible feeling that something had been decided, and that she had absolutely zero fucking say in it. Old Man said something to her, but she only understood her name at the end of it. Then he left the room; the others leaving with him until only Pea was left behind. Pea's dark black eyes briefly met hers.
"I am sorry," Pea said in broken English.
"Why?" Emily asked, a knot of fear coiling in her belly.
Pea opened their mouth; the weird drooping flaps of their face mask quivered a little. Then, after a moment, they shook their tan head. "Sorry," they said again, and turning, walked out through the observation room door, leaving Emily alone. Whatever that group of trick-or-treaters had decided on, it had set in stone Emily's plan to escape tonight. Something was happening, and she wasn't going to stick around to find out what.
When they came for her a few hours later, they didn't even give Emily a chance to grab for her spoon.