Two lefts, one right. Fifteen feet straight, another right. Room 42, secure access. Code 26062010. Eighteen feet, another door, no windows yet, how come? I guess natural light tends to avoid the darkness. Everything's fluorescent and artificial, green tint and the smell of something sweet... sickly sweet. Smells familiar, but down here everything's familiar, down to the last shadow on the sterile white walls- not off white but a pure, sickening white.
It made me nauseous.
"In here, please. Mind the small step. He's straight forward."
More white, more nausea. Still no windows. Different smell, alcohol this time. We're in a hospital? That's impossible- we're 150 miles outside of Kabul. No hospitals there just sand and-
"As you can see, he's very sick. And we need you two to fix him."
He says it like that man's a robot.
No negotiation is possible here. The bombs on our wrist made us lose hope of that. My sick sense of humor popped in for a visit while we were being fitted with our bracelets.
"It's because we are the bomb!"
It's a miracle I've managed to survive this long.
"...And the metal is fitted into his spinal cord. Mind you, one slip and those barbs will tear through his column and into the cord, suffocating him. And if he dies..."
He motioned towards our bracelets. Clearly this man meant business.
"He is not in pain, but he is sedated. We have straps to hold him down, and any other equipment you will need to remove that... that thing".
He said his last words with such disgust, but he was a man who respected fine work. And this, this was truly fine work.
"Any questions?"
I have one. Why don't you go suck a-
"Cock the guns and leave these two alone. They've requested privacy, and privacy is what we will give them."
Silence, except for the sound of drums tearing through my mind. Four count, four half-notes, pause, start again. My heart was beating in rhythm.
``````````````````````````````````````````````````````````````````````````````````````````````````````
I looked up at Jack. Tall, dark, and not quite handsome, but smart, very smart. He majored in biology, more specifically in biological engineering.
In Layman's terms, I caught him masturbating in a receptacle containing a biological goo used to exactly match the flesh of a human being.
That was his tenth grade science fair project.
Since then, he's penned articles, appeared in countless scientific magazines and holds more bioengineering patents than the U.S. government. He was also a notoriously cocky individual, and a ladiesman in every sense of the word.
We met our junior year at Emory. I was short, energetic, and a bit too lazy for the real world, and how I managed to survive Dr. Jones' class is still beyond me.
We accidentally met in the library, both studying for finals. His plasticine biological surgical replacement had hit me in the head. He had been playing with it.
"I'm sorry. Stupid thing slips away sometimes. Kind of like a nude flubber- remember that movie? I'm Jack by the way. Jack Torchwood."
We'd been friends ever since.
``````````````````````````````````````````````````````````````````````````````````````````````````````
"Patient is one Filo de Estrela, 38 year old male, about 5'11" and 187 pounds. Subject's spinal cord has been surgically grafted to metal plating, resulting in pain and eventually death. Eleven barbs are in place at key points and will push down, breaking column and entering cord, resulting in a termination of nerve signals between body and brain. Lowest barb is above pelvis and will begin descent in roughly one hour. Last one is above Pons in the brain stem; severing will result in a permanent coma (not that it mattered; our man would be long dead before then). Marking first incisions."
I looked around the room. Four white walls, one door. The drums are louder now, in my head, in my blood. The smell of alcohol, this place was sterile. No windows, all light was artificial and... pulsing? Yes, the light was pulsing, and not from the ceiling either. The room itself was lit up, appearing as if the walls themselves were producing a soft light. The result was a magnificent effect that erased all the shadows, so that the room seemed endless. All around, there were no walls, just light. Just-
"Hey, are you gonna space out or are you gonna help me with this man?"
I snapped to attention. I wanted to get out of this as much as he did.
I picked up a scalpel and started to slice where he marked. This was my territory. Almost instantly, blood, so deep a red it almost looked black, spewed forth.
"Be careful with this guy, he's anemic."
Like he couldn't tell me that before.
As I started to figure out ways to remove the metal, Jack was working on the machine itself. We had been told that there was some connection between the machine and the satellite belonging to the people who did this to him. Instantly, we both thought to remove the wireless transmitter that was implanted inside.
"Where the fuck is it?!"
Jack was getting angry. He always acted like this when presented with a challenge. Some people took it in strides; other went slow and carefully. Jack bulldozed into it, which tended to raise his blood pressure.
Suddenly there was a noise. It wasn't very loud, but the sound itself terrified me.
It was the sound of drilling. Then the sound of torn flesh.
Blood, everywhere. We both stared in horror as the first of the barbs drilled into his coccyx. He would never use his legs again.
As blood poured forth, I remembered the moment I wanted to be a doctor.
``````````````````````````````````````````````````````````````````````````````````````````````````````
Eleven years old, sitting in a restaurant in the Lower East Side. My grandpa was sitting across from me. Next to us were two elderly ladies, dressed finely. One was wearing red, the other in blue. My grandpa was asking me a question but I wasn't listening, all I could think about was the red on that woman, how red it was. Almost like-
A noise made my head whip 'round, and I realized it wasn't the noise itself but the absence of any noise.
And my grandpa was laying in front of me, dying. His blood was pouring out of the quarter shaped hole in his chest; he was anemic. Blood, tissue, pieces of bone all over the place, just pouring out, so red it was black. He was shaking and I realized he was still alive, still holding on. I traced his dying body with my eyes. His frail legs were shaking violently, his entire torso folded in on itself, as delicate as a fetus. His hands holding each other, rubbing each other, like they were cold. I looked at his face, and something wasn't quite right. I was too much in shock to notice what was wrong until someone screamed.
It was the lady in red, and she was pointing at his face.
I looked down again and realized what was wrong: my grandpa wasn't screaming. All that pain, that blood, and he didn't make a noise. And that helped me realize why.
Below his sunken eyes, his nostrils dripping blood, his pallet open and his tongue was... nothing. His entire lower jaw had exploded, or been blown off, or had simply wished itself away. Blood was pouring out of the tendons hanging from his upper jaw, his face frozen in a permanent scream, his tongue flapping down, flailing, waiting for death. I realized that it wasn't bits of bone that were coming out of the bullet hole in his chest. They were teeth.
I remembered what he had asked me: "Do you hear that?"
I was helpless to save him and he died there, in that restaurant in the Lower East Side. The woman in red came over to pull me away, to shield my eyes. I passed out moments later, from shock, but I remember that woman's red, red clothes, and her perfume. It smelled sickly sweet.
``````````````````````````````````````````````````````````````````````````````````````````````````````
I had made the third incision and from what I could tell, the constant cussing coming from Jack's lips meant that he wasn't getting anywhere. His eyes were narrowed, beads of sweat rolling down his face and onto his lab coat. He couldn't figure it out, and any wrong move could lead to this man's death, and then to ours. I started thinking about how I didn't want to die, how badly I wanted to see my daughter again. She would be turning six next week, and we had special ordered a TARDIS cake to celebrate. I couldn't die. I couldn't let the drums stop. Where's that sound-
"I got it!"
Jack was holding up a small chip- a microchip? I could barely use a computer, let alone identify it's parts. Whatever it was, I could tell that Jack had bought us time, and for that I was grateful.
As the last incision was made, I heard the sound again. It was beeping, very fast, too fast. I had only made a passing note of it before because I thought it was simply part of the machine. But it wasn't, Jack had proven that. So what was it...
Shit.
Filo de Estrela's eyelids were fluttering, and as the fluttering got faster so did the noise.
Mr. de Estrela was waking up and his body was registering pain. Soon, he would go into cardiac arrest as the adrenaline levels in his blood spiked.
There was no way to save him. Of all the medical equipment in this room, a defibrillator was conspicuously absent. Sedating him with his heart the way it was would make his heart explode. We didn't have a chance in hell. I started to cry.
"I'll come back. I promise."
I looked up. Jack was standing above me, his bomb-watch in his hand. He had disarmed it.
"I'll come back with help. Don't be scared. I promise I'll come back."
He started toward the door, and I began to scream.
I knew he wouldn't come back. Someone else would, to sift through the wreckage, to find two bodies. They would identify one as Prince Filo de Estrela, royal heir to the throne of Echilon-5, and a tiny human girl, face contorted in a scream and dried salt on her face.
Suddenly the drumming was louder. And louder. And so loud I thought I was going deaf.
There was another noise, but I couldn't hear it too well. Whatever it was, it made the drumming stop.
. You also have a great creative storyline and the ending just left me wanting more. Your vocabulary was wide and precise, I loved every minute of it.
Gender:
Points: 300
Reviews: 0