2.
The light is blinding, despite the fact that it's not all that bright. Your eyes water and you let out a wordless moan.
You try to sit up, but your body isn't responding. Everything aches, at a bone deep level, and your legs are on fire with pins and needles. They get worse whenever you try to move a muscle. The fire dances along the inside of your veins, and makes you gasp with pain.
So instead you move your eyeballs and try to look around the room, through the tears. You just about feel up to that, although your eyes feel bleary and bleargh and ick. Two of those words may not be proper words, but they describe the feeling of having eyeballs like yours very well.
There's wires running overhead, crudely taped to the room and running along all the bits of wall you can see, up against the bare concrete. The room is cluttered. Medical machinery is propped up against the walls. Medical machinery and more. There's a laser cutter hanging from the ceiling, crudely wired up behind a darkened glass shield, and there are industrial freezers in a line
It's not sterile. It's not hygienic. Rather than having tiles, the floor is concrete and clearly hasn't been cleaned in a while. There's dried blood spattered over by the laser cutter and one of the fridge doors is half open, showing that it's been stuffed full of… of organs. In glass jars. Floating in blue glowing liquid. Some of the organs have wires sticking out of them, linking them to other jars.
Some of the hearts are still beating.
Your view of the spectacle is blocked as someone steps into view, brushing her way through the forest of cables and wires which hang down from the ceiling. She's tall for a woman, and bulky. Not fat, exactly, but simply...massive. She's wearing a filthy faded grey coat which reaches down to her knees and bulges out at her midsection. Two sheathed blades hang from her belt, although calling them 'blades' is generous. They look more like machetes. Or maybe butcher's cleavers. Looking up at her, she towers over you, and would do so even if you weren't lying down.
And she doesn't exactly paint a pretty picture. Half her hair is bright pink, and half of it is brown, split down the parting. The same goes for her eyes - her left eye is blue while her right eye is brown. In fact, all the skin on her face looks like it's synthskin, and it's melted and warped and shiny over her jawline, showing the metal plating underneath. She's missing teeth at the front, with cheap black implants to substitute for them.
Despite all of this, though, there's a look of childish glee in her eyes. She's clasping her hands together and all-but capering in joy. "You're awake!" she says happily. "You're really awake! And you're looking back! And the incisions have closed! Oh, I was so worried about you!" She rubs her hands together. "I had to get the things out of your head before I could get going and I was worried that they did too much damage but I put some new stuff in and it's all working and oh! Oh! What do you remember? Did you see anything?
She spins on her heel, and starts pacing up and down. "No, no, no," she says, seemingly more to herself than to you. "That's not the way to do it. She just had lots of cutting and fixing and sewing to fill up all the holes and put the new muscles in. And all the new organs. Precious, precious, working organs. The best ones! She's probably hurting a lot! Stop talking to her like that!"
You let out a pained moan. You don't feel up to talking at the moment. That seems to get her attention back towards you, though, and she sticks a hand into a pocket and fishes out a hand mirror, before stomping over and pulling you up into a sitting position. With all her bulk there's no surprise she can handle you like a doll. Propping you against the wall, she grips one of your hands with hers. Her hands dwarf yours.
"Do you like it?" she asks, holding the hand mirror in front of you. "I did my best! And my best is much better than what they did for me." One of her blocky fingers traces the burnt area on her jaw.
You look at yourself in the mirror. Two bloodshot, reddened eyes stare back at you from a face the colour of milky coffee. The whites of your eyes are distinctly yellow, and your irises are pale brown. There's blood dribbling from the shallow cuts on your forehead and temple, from where you tore out the electrodes. And there are faint white scars around your mouth - or are they seams? They run from the corners of your mouth following the edge of your jaw, all the way up to your ears. You have no idea how you got them. And just as you think that, they twinge with remembered pain.
Is that you? Is that what you look like?
Gritting your teeth, you manage to force your arm to bend and stiffly, painfully, you trace the seam-scars. The motion moves your bare arms into sight, and you can see similar marks running both arms, from wrist to elbow. You're wearing a stained t-shirt and the white is painted brown-crimson in a line which runs down the centre of your chest, between your breasts. It aches there, in the same way as your arms and the corners of your mouth hurt. And your legs too, you realise, looking down at the torn ill-fitting skirt and the similarly seam-scarred marks there.
"Waaaa?" you manage. Your mouth isn't working right. It's really more of a wordless hoot. You open your mouth and try to speak. It's hard. You can think clearly, but your mouth simply won't obey you. "W-w-w-w-w," you try, and gulp down air. No. No. Why can't you talk?! Why? "H-h-h-hooo."
The woman just stares down at you with a sympathetic expression, which somehow makes it worse. "There, there," she says, almost maternally. "Who? Is that what you're trying to say?"
Sudden, surging irrational anger pulses through you at this. It's her fault in some way! You know it is! But you don't even know how it's her fault or who she is or...or anything! But it is her fault and now she's patronising you! The world blurs and wavers, your eyes filling with tears, as you try to work your way around the words. "Wh-who are y-you?" you manage finally after some effort. "Wh-what h-happened?"
The stammer hurts deep inside. Your mouth doesn't want to shape the words properly. You know what you want to say, but it won't come out clearly. But at least you can speak. Even if you're… you're clearly hurt. You can't remember anything. The seam-scars - they're surgical markers. You've had surgery. You must be on painkillers or something, because even though you're hurting, you're numb and your body isn't obeying you. You… you think you know something about medicine. Maybe? You don't know what you know, but… you think you might have seen similar things in… in patients? In case studies? You're not sure.
"I'm Electra!" the massive woman says, bobbing her head up and down. "Don't you remember? Well, you probably don't remember. No, you won't remember. I wanted you to remember, though. I thought… no. Well, never mind! This isn't the first time I've done this! Isn't that right, Mau?"
Something rumble-growls in the background, and you almost fall off the hard table-thing at the noise. Something moves in the corner of your eye and you stare at it. It looks like a dog. Sort of like a dog. No, not very much like a dog. It's got four legs, yes. It has a long head full of teeth, yes. But it's blackened metal and burnt-looking flesh. It doesn't look like it was born. It looks like it was forged and welded together. The wickedly sharp teeth in its blackened jaw glow red-hot and its eyes smoulder like cinders and the too-long claws on its hand-like feet leave blackened marks on the concrete when it clicks and clatters around.
It growls at you, a low, rumbling noise which sounds like a furnace, and perks up. Slowly it begins to advance on you, and your heart begins to pulse so hard in your chest it feels like each pulse is an electric shock.
"Down! Down, girl!" the bulky woman snaps, a tone of absolute command in her voice. "Bad Mau! Bad!"
Grumbling and complaining, the dog-thing settles down, but doesn't take its ember-eyes off you. You gasp for breath, and try to move your arms and legs despite the pain.
Just then, a siren starts sounding and the woman - Electra - looks around. "Fuck," she growls, staring at a board of lights on the wall. "They've found us. I thought… no!" She smashes her fist into the wall to the left of you, and the concrete cracks and splinters. "No! No, no, no!" she exclaims, each word accompanied with another blow.
You just sit there quietly.
She lets a deep breath out. "Very bad men are after us," she tells you, as if you're a child. "They'll kill us both if they find us. Me and you. Maybe not you now, but eventually. That's what they do." She helps you upright, and you balance on wavery, unsteady legs. "That's what they're paid to do.
"So we're going to run for it. If we get to the lift shafts, we can make our way down to the underlayers, and if we do it fast enough we can do it before they get a cordon up. So I want you to just focus on gettin' those arms and legs workin'. Okay, right?" she asks.
W
HAT DO YOU DO?
[ ]
Question her - Oh no. You don't know anything. You're not letting her get away with this.
-> [ ] Write in questions
[ ]
Follow Her - She says it's a rush and if you can do it quickly, you might get out. You don't have a choice.
[ ]
Make A Run For It - Look, she's
weird. And scary. And you don't know anything, so you're not trusting her! Or your name isn't… oh, wait a minute.
W
HAT IS YOUR NAME?
[ ] It might be Kiyoko (x1.0)
[ ] Possibly… Caroline (x1.0)
[ ] Carmen? Maybe? (x1.0)
[ ] Cuifen… ehhh. (x0.8)
[ ] Kiara. That might be it. (x1.2)
[ ] It's not any of those ones. You think. Probably. (x1.1)
[ ] You… don't know. (x1.2)
Just a thought.
