I'm not sure how to add in author notes of FF but just a warning that this chapter and the upcoming ones get dark. There's medical torture/horror, suicidal thoughts tec. I'll tag them so you can avoid. This chapter has medical torture and suicidal thoughts.
It was hard to tell how long it had been. The lights were always on, searing bright and cold against her retinas. Shutting her eyes gave no relief - it just painted everything in flushed orange. Emily had initially tried to gauge the passage of time by tracking the rotation of procedures, but everything had blurred into an endless procession. A few days could have passed - or a lifetime.
There was the metal box - closed all around her - with nothing to see but hot pulses of electricity, as it scattered sparks of light along embedded wires in the polished silver walls engulfing her, and across the network of metal grafted into her skin; like a spider web of gleaming lines and studs. Then there was the transfusion. Tubes hooked up to giant glowing domes, strange coloured liquids being pumped in through stents in her arms and legs and chest. Emily had watched, trying desperately to focus through the fog clouding her eyes, as the brilliant red of her blood was pulled into one machine, and pushed back into her body by another.
At first, Emily would wake up on a hard, cold bed in a blindingly white cell, exactly six and a half paces by four, counted out on shaking feet before a pale gas would filter in through nozzles in the wall, smothering her into sleep. When she refused to eat or drink - the next time Emily woke up - there was a wide tube, capped on either end with gleaming steel, inserted in through her belly button. When she tried to pull it out, gagging and choking on screams, she woke again to find herself strapped to a table; arms and legs clamped down with thick bands of metal.
This was her life now. The electric chamber. The transfusion. The feeding machine. Her mouth and throat were too dry now to scream her rage - not that it made any difference when she could. Robots were the only things that interacted with her; human looking ones with arms that ended in knifes and pincers - or shaped like domes, with colour vats and needles and tubes protruding from their base. Emily could still recall, at one point - so tired and dazed from existing - that she had dreamt of Death, cloaked all in black before her. She would have begged him to take her, pleaded, but the dream slipped away as quickly as it came.
She was in the electric chamber this time. Emily watched the flickering glow cascade from one end of her eyeline to the other. It was almost beautiful. Thin beams of lightning carved geometric patterns in an endless loop, branching out across her vision until it fizzled into black. It didn't even hurt anymore. It was like all her skin was just scar tissue now - or maybe that was just her mind? Could a brain be scarred until it didn't feel anything? Is that what they wanted to know?
Her mind dimmed - the darkness stretching out. The air around her felt thin and anaemic in her lungs. Did seconds tick by? Hours? Emily wanted to pound her fists against the wall, but she was clamped in, gasping for air in her metal coffin. At this point though, she was almost grateful. This was the easiest way she thought she would go. If she was lucky, it would almost be like falling asleep. Wasn't that what it felt like to drown? Once the initial panic faded, wouldn't it just be like breathing in the emptiness around her?
She could feel it too - everything slipping. It was like letting go. Would she see her family on the other side? Would her brain have enough oxygen to gift her with the last, dying gasp of neurons, allowing her to briefly glimpse the faces of everyone she loved? Was that too much to ask? Was it wrong not to fight? She was so tired of the endless struggle.
Everything receded back.
Then it split. Lights blinded her. Her lungs desperately struggled to pull in air. Sound blared sharp and loud against her eardrums, filling her mind. Her hands flopped down, and then her torso collapsed against something hard, that shifted and beeped beneath her. Emily was tossed down onto a slab of metal, solid and flat. Something clamped down around her waist, tugging at her, as a whistling noise overlaid the blare of sirens pounding her head. Emily scrabbled against the smooth surface, clinging to the sharp edges that met her fingertips, with a strength fuel by nothing but knee-jerk survival instincts. She gasped and coughed against the air; it felt thick like soup, tasting of nothing but copper on her tongue and the blade-edge of fury.
Emily's hand brushed across something icy, clattering against the polished table top. Her fingers snatched blindly, fingertips pressed down on sharp, cold edges of an unfamiliar object, it's reassuring heft steadying her trembling hands. She was barely conscious at all of pivoting; her body twisting until she felt a blunted shudder echo through her bones, as the sharp gleam of metal in her hand plunged into the illuminated faceplate of the robot trying to haul her from the table. It sputtered and moaned as she stabbed down, again and again, until the smooth glass fractured and sparked, and she was tossed to the floor beside the twitching mechanical limbs. Emily stared up at the rotating beam of glaring red light, flooding the ceiling, as it swept a pulsing crimson into the corners of the room.
'Move', her mind screamed. Move you crazy bitch! Do it now or you might as well just fucking lie here and die. Emily rolled onto her side, blinking past the swirling flecks of light that swarmed her eyes. The room around her held nothing but her metal coffin, and the tray of instruments pushed up beside it; the sparking ruin of the robot she'd stabbed still jittering at her side. Emily rolled back, trying desperately to pull together the will to move.
It took an age; but eventually she managed to open her eyes against the dragging exhaustion telling her to just give in. She looked around the room, taking in the glowing wall panels, the hanging cables dangling from the ceiling. Emily spotted a backlit recess in the wall to her left, blue symbols imprinted over a long, glowing interface clinging to the panel's edge. Emily inched herself towards it, willing her legs to push against the dead weight of her torso, feeling the ache of wasted muscles in her shoulders and arms as she dragged her numb legs over the polished floor. The metal in her hands pinched hard against her scarred skin, but she held onto it so tight, it might as well have been grafted to her bones.
It took an agonising lifetime to reach the door. Emily could have spared a moment's thought to studying the flashing panels, in the hopes of deciphering the hieroglyphics that glowed with a scrolling blue light across the screen. Instead, she jammed the spike of metal in her hands against the nearest seam, fingernails clawing and prying until the cool glass gave way against her assault, as Emily wrenched at the bundle of wires concealed underneath. The door panel slid back, revealing a wide corridor beyond.
Emily took in the flat white walls that stretched out beyond her room. She gave herself a second to weigh up in her mind the frighteningly small odds of escaping; battling against the horrible realisation that she'd have to crawl her way through an unknown building. The one thing certain in her mind, was that she couldn't give up; not while there was still hope. Emily hauled herself on to the now emaciated pile of bones she had once called her legs. Glancing down over the web of metal still wrapped around her body like a tattoo, she focused on her next steps.
Emily needed to find out where she was; then she needed to find a way out. Once she was out, she'd make the bastards pay for what they had done to her. As weak as Emily felt, the sheer anger that burned inside her chest, fuelled her limbs as she dragged herself onto her feet. With grim determination, Emily staggered blindly down the hallway, her improvised weapon still clutched so tightly in her hand, it was enough to draw blood.
The options before her were clear; she'd either make it out of here alive - or she would die trying.