They didn't rush at her as Sigyn was expecting, but instead took cautious steps, slowly getting closer to her. They were only two paces away, not quite close enough to touch, but Sigyn tensed her muscles, watching each person to see who would make the first move. It was the man to her right, the one who had the disgusting red coating his emotions. He quickly tried to grab her arm, but Sigyn pushed his outstretched arms away with her left forearm, and then reach forward with her right hand to slap him.
Slaps, while traditionally not any sort of maneuver that she had been taught, worked well when she was able to make good contact. The man didn't stagger back, but he was surprised by the sudden pain in his face. It gave Sigyn a moment to turn and swipe away the hands of the woman who was on her left.
She kicked low with her right foot, aiming and hoping to hit a third man in his knees, but he jumped backward, avoiding her. She dropped to the ground as she saw two pairs of hands reach for her, and she tried to squeeze into the space between two pairs of legs. It was no good, and a pair of hands suddenly caught her right arm.
She jerked her arm as sharply as she could, and the grip loosened enough for her to jerk again, pulling free. But then someone had ahold of her left arm, and when she turned to get those hands-off, the first pair had her right arm again. She jerked as sharply as she could, trying to throw them off balance, but she was still skinny and hadn't the weight or muscle to make a difference.
They started dragging her to the door, but Sigyn wiggled and threw out her feet, tangling them between her captors legs. It worked for a moment, and she dropped closer to the floor getting her feet under her, and she used every muscle she had in her legs to push up. She didn't go far, and it only helped as the two other guards grabbed her feet.
The four guards, each holding an appendage, held onto her as she wiggled and moved in unpredictable motions. But they were all stronger than her, and they carried her through the door and into the hallway.
Sigyn didn't stop her attempts to make them let go, but she made sure to pay attention to where she was going. They marched down the hallway for what Sigyn approximated twenty feet, passed two doors, one on the right and another directly across from it, before she was taken into another room on the opposite side of the hallway of her cell. She managed to look back, spotting her open cell door only a few feet down the hallway before she was carried into the room.
They put her in a chair facing away from the door, holding her down until four straps restrained her, allowing little movement. The straps on her ankles and wrists were tight, but she struggled against them anyway. She heard four sets of feet leave the room, the door clicking shut behind them.
Sigyn dropped her walls, only to slam them back up once she realized she wasn't as alone in the room as she thought she was. There were three people, one, the man who's mental shield Sigyn had been impressed by earlier, one man she didn't recognize, and another who's presence, while familiar in a way she didn't understand, struck fear into her so hard she started shaking.
Then an older man came into view, sitting on a stool with wheels, with a white jacket and equally white hair. He almost looked kind, but something told Sigyn he was anything but. When he spoke to her, it was in a soft voice that sent more fear through her mind, though she couldn't pinpoint exactly why.
"Ah, Sigyn." He smiled at her, showing his teeth. "It is a pleasure to see you again, and I must say the past fifty-two years have been more kind to you than they have to me." He looked at the clipboard held in his hand and scribbled down a couple of notes. "You may not remember me, but I was part of the team that worked with you when you were first brought here."
And then a memory hit her like bricks falling from the ceiling.
The table was cold against her skin, the metal sticking as she tried to move and escape the restraints. There were a lot of people around her, most covered in white suits with masks, moving about the room preparing to do something. They were talking about procedures, experiments that needed to be done, and how they would be done without killing the subject. Without killing her she realized.
There were people sitting above the room, looking in through glass windows, and most of them had military uniforms on. They were looking at her, and she met the eyes of one, making sure to show her fear, displeasure, and anger through her gaze. It didn't phase him in the least, and he just stared right back, saying something to a man that stood beside him, and then laughed.
Then her view was blocked with the face of a man, young, cheeks still rounded with youth. "Hi," he said, a smile dominating his face. "I'm doctor Barret, and you're Sigyn right?"
"No," she said, her voice trembling. "That's not my name, my name is-,"
"It doesn't matter," the doctor interrupted. "From now on, you'll be called Sigyn. Anyway, I'm one of the doctors who will be working with you for the next few weeks. There are many tests that we want to perform on you. Regrettably, many of those tests have to be done when you're awake, so we can gauge your reactions. I'm afraid it will hurt quite a lot."
"What?" she gasped, jerking against the straps holding her down. He only smiled again and put a mask on as she started to cry out. "You can't hurt me! That's not what doctors are supposed to do! Help, someone help me! You can't hurt me!" But Doctor Barret only laughed along with several of the others.
"Doctor Barret," one of them called. "Would you like to make the first cut?"
"I would be honored," he said, the glee evident in his voice.
Doctor Barret took a spot to her right, a scalpel in his hand. He lowered it to her skin and with an exclamation of "here we go" he sliced across her stomach. She screamed, and all she knew was pain.
Sigyn gasped back to reality, covered in sweat and shaking so violently the chair rattled against the floor. Her eyes stared unfocused at the light in the ceiling, her mind trying to collect the little pieces of itself that had been scattered about.
"Ah, yes, I do see that you remember. Unfortunately, there will be no such experiments as those today. Today will only be a brief exam and obtaining a sample of blood from you. My young assistant, Doctor Gibson, will be taking blood from you today. If you'll just sit still."
Another man stepped forward, as young as Doctor Barret had been in her memory, and as kind looking. But the small, very sad smile he gave her comforted her as much as it could in that situation. This man didn't want to hurt her. He was here for a reason, and while Sigyn could feel curiosity leak through her walls from him, there was no malice, no need to hurt her to find out how she worked like Doctor Barret had. He was there for the sake of science and curiosity, not because he was a cruel animal like the doctor he was working under
While the man's emotions and presence helped soothe her mind a bit, she still couldn't stop the shaking. With an apologetic look, Doctor Gibson secured her upper arm with another strap.
"I'm sorry," he told her quietly. "You're shaking too much, I would cause more damage if I didn't keep your arm still."
Sigyn watched him as he washed his hands in a sink she hadn't noticed, put on white gloves, and brought over a tube and some small plastic vials. She watched as he prepared her arm by tying a flexible band above her elbow, then wiped her arm with a small cloth that smelled like alcohol, before taking the needle out of its package. She cringed away from it, not really wishing to experience the stick of a needle again. She had experienced enough of that for a lifetime.
She shied away as much as she could with her arm strapped down so tightly, turned her head away and closed her eyes. "Just a bit of pressure," Doctor Gibson said right before she felt the needle pierce her skin. She heard him change out the vial almost a dozen times before he finally took that painful band away and pulled the needle out. She didn't look as he placed a bandage over the spot, nor when he stepped away and Doctor Barret came back to sit next to her. There was a long pause, but she just stared at the wall opposite of where the doctors were standing.
A cold stethoscope was placed over her heart, causing Sigyn to jump and look, but it was Doctor Gibson who was standing next to her again, not Doctor Barret. He listened to her chest in several spots before putting the stethoscope into his pocket. Next, he placed a cuff around her arm before pressing a button on the machine attached to it.
Sigyn watched curiously as the machine pumped air into the cuff, and then the air released. Doctor Gibson took the cuff off, writing down her blood pressure on the clipboard before standing next to her.
"I'm just going to feel your stomach. Nothing to worry about, it shouldn't hurt a bit."
Doctor Gibson gently pulled her shirt up, revealing her stomach. He paused, staring for a moment at the thin scar that ran horizontally beneath her naval. Gentle, but firm, he pressed his fingertips to her stomach, asking if it hurt when he pressed here, then what about here? When he was done, he gently pulled her shirt back down and wrote another note on the clipboard.
"Well Sigyn," Doctor Barret said, his voice booming. "It seems that other than a severe case of malnourishment you seem to be in the same perfect health as you were fifty years ago. You'll have a bit more time to heal before we start the fun stuff."
Sigyn shuddered at the excitement in his voice and was happy to hear him leave the room. She really didn't want to find out what the 'fun stuff' was.
Doctor Gibson's voice quietly drifted to her ears a moment later. "I'll do everything in my power to make sure any testing we do will come as painless as possible." And then he left.
Five footsteps immediately walked towards her and hands started unstrapping her arms and legs. She didn't fight, too tired after the days events. She only held up her walls, knowing that once she was back in her cell and alone she could drop them and rest. They dragged her to her cell, laying her on the mattress and leaving once more.
The walls around her mind melted and Sigyn slumped, pulling the covers over herself. The memory that she had buried deep within her mind had reached the surface, dragging her through one of the worst things she had experienced in her life. That memory was the start of the worst year she lived through, and also marked the beginning of her imprisonment.
She never would have thought that Doctor Barret would still be alive, working with these people, and here to torture her again. She had hoped he was dead after these past fifty years, that she would never have to look at his face again.
But there were opportunities now that she knew he was alive. There was a chance, however small, that she might be able to repay him for what he had done to her, and probably to others as well. She didn't know how she would pull it off, but there was time for her to plan what she would do next. For now, the strain that had been put on her mind for holding the wall for so long was pulling her into sleep. She needed to heal, to help lock that terrible memory away before it tore her to pieces.
Sigyn briefly noticed that there were new sheets on her bed as she drifted off into a dreamless sleep.
The days returned to normal, though the food was starting to become more variable. They had started off with giving her different fruits, pears, bananas, mangos, before switching up some of the other foods. Her personal favorite was the night they gave her a pasta dish, so light on the tomato sauce she could hardly taste it, and a piece of plain bread to go with it. While the other food tasted good, she was happy to eat something different. She enjoyed every bite, and even marveled at the fact they had given her a fork to eat it with.
More items had started showing up in her compartment as well, a toothbrush, toothpaste, some actual shampoo for her hair instead of a bar of soap. They were small items, almost insignificant, but Sigyn knew to appreciate the little things. When she had finally finished brushing her hair out completely, all the tangles and snarls unraveled, they had actually sent her little rubber bands to put in her hair after she braided it.
She continued to receive new clothes, blankets, and sheets every two days. She always changed the sheets just for something to do. She could shower anytime she wanted, as she often did right before the guards brought her dinner.
She spent her days pacing her cell, doing what exercises she could remember to strengthen her body, and throwing up wall after wall until she only needed half a thought to protect her mind. She was able to hold the wall longer and longer, until one day, twenty-five days after she had been taken to that room for her medical exam, and thirty-three days after she had been put in this new cell, Sigyn was able to hold the wall around her mind for the entire day. She was exhausted afterward, but she was happy with her accomplishment.
Once she was able to hold the walls in her mind for three more days without interruptions, she decided it was time to move on to some of the harder things her abilities let her do. Changing a person's emotions was a delicate process, something that had to be done with care. If she were to go just a bit too far in pushing someone's emotions, their entire mind could be thrown off balance, causing damage that could take months to repair. Sigyn had even encountered a girl whose emotions had been so completely out of balance that she had ended up in a mental asylum for the rest of her life.
So the days were now filled with more pacing as Sigyn struggled to create emotion after emotion in a way that would be acceptable to manipulate someone with. It took some time, two full days, for Sigyn to get the first emotion just right. She had decided to start with loneliness, an emotion she was most familiar with. After spending the last four decades almost completely alone, Sigyn felt as if she knew the most about it.
When she had it just right, she waited for her evening meal, preparing herself to open her walls just enough so she could manipulate one of the guards feelings. She closed their eyes as they approached, and she picked the harder target of the two. Her chosen person felt particularly happy this day, and Sigyn, with a sort of glee that she had never felt, was excited to ruin that feeling.
She opened her mind just a little, feeling around the aura of the man's emotions, finding a spot to implant the tiny little spark. When she found it, she gently nudged the man's aura, settling the feeling into the spot she had chosen. She paused for a moment, waiting to see if the spark took or if the man's mind would expel it. His mind didn't reject it, and there was no panic in his emotions at the new sudden loneliness.
Sigyn, happy with her success so far, nudged the spark to expand, little by little, allowing it to continue to grow on its own when it reached that point. Sigyn sighed in relief. The hard part was getting the emotion to stick and grow. Once it started growing on its own, it would feel natural to the person, and not as if someone was forcing the emotion on him.
She retreated to her own mind for several moments, taking deep breaths, not letting herself become too excited yet. Then she reached out, slowly, gently, for the man's aura, and found it covered in the very emotion she had planted in his mind.
A grin, the first one in probably two decades, spread across her face. She opened her eyes to see the two guards looking at her through the window, one with a very sad look on his face, before they disappeared. The beep sounded from the compartment, and Sigyn opened the door, happy to find chicken on the tray instead of the ham.
She ate it, happy to feel that she wasn't as drained as she had been in the past few days. She paced her cell after eating, working on the next emotion she wanted to try. Anger. She practiced and worked until the lights dimmed, signaling the end of the day. She smiled as she pulled the blankets up to her chin, looking forward to the test she would give herself tomorrow.
Sigyn woke very happy and motivated. She started her day by brushing her teeth and hair, then paced around her cell, pulling her emotions in and around herself, preparing the next emotion she would be testing. She ate her breakfast of oatmeal and a single strip of bacon before going back to her pacing.
She was ready before she gauged it was even halfway through the day. So she started on other emotions, happiness, calm, sadness, fear. She had only remastered fear by the time the guards brought her dinner, and Sigyn was ready to pounce on them when they crossed into the range of her mind. She didn't pick just one guard and instead decided to manipulate both of them in different ways. One, a woman, felt calm and collected, while the other guard, also a woman, felt sad.
Sigyn dove into both of their emotions, planting seeds and sparks of anger and fear into both of their auras, nurturing the sparks until they grew on their own. She pulled back quickly, surprised by how easily efficient she had changed their emotions. They hadn't even reached her door by the time the sparks had grown to cover their entire aura.
The two women didn't even bother to stay and watch her through the window, just pushing her tray into the compartment before leaving. She smiled, proud of herself for the quick progress, and went to get her food.
On the tray was a cup full of unsweetened tea, chicken lightly seasoned, mashed potatoes, green beans, corn, and a small pill labeled vitamins. Sigyn ate it all quickly, starving after working her mind so hard, and took the pill without much difficulty.
She put the tray back in the compartment, suddenly feeling very tired, and walked towards her bed.
She didn't make it to the mattress before she dropped gracelessly to the floor, completely unconscious.