by Amy Johnson
I reach a hand out, placing my palm flat against the cold surface. The glass around it steams up from my body heat and my suspicions are proven correct.
I’m being watched.
“Subject 23, state your name,” a voice says, coming from everywhere and nowhere all at once. I attempt to take a step back from the glass, but my back slams into the hard door.
“Eden Cavalleri,” I mutter, glancing around for a speaker. A fist sized circle covered in pinholes sticks out of the white concrete.
“From this moment on, you will introduce yourself as such: ‘I am Eden, Subject 23, inhabitant of the Eyes Exhibit’,” it says. “Now, what’s your name?”
I take a deep breath.
“My name is Eden Cavalleri,” I say, louder than the first time.
Electricity dances up my arm, and I grit my teeth together.
“What is your name, Subject 23?”
Breathing jagged, I rub my shoulder, where the pain lingers.
“I am Eden, Subject 23, inhabitant of the Eyes Exhibit.”
“Good girl,” the voice says, sounding maniacally happy. “Welcome to your testing period.” In that moment, I recognize the voice. It’s Eins, from the alley.
Time ceases to exist in the white room. My legs grow tired and I sink down onto the floor. The metal grate digs into my bare legs, imprinting a polka-dot pattern. I peer through the holes in an attempt to see what’s below, but the darkness proves too thick. The quiet whisper of running water floats up towards me, though.
For what feels like an eternity, no voices come out of the speaker. The door doesn’t open, either. I rest my head against the wall with my eyes closed.
Maybe if I can’t see the walls, they won’t close in on me.
As more time progresses, though, the panic swells inside my chest, and the claustrophobia rears its nasty head. I feel gravity settle around me, pressing the air out of my lungs. My throat contracts and I gasp for air.
“Let me out of here!” I scream, throwing myself towards the door. My knees dig into the grate. I beat my fists against the metal so hard that my teeth chatter and my skin burns.
The dull pain brings me back to my senses, and I press my entire body against the cold metal.
If the room were bigger, I would pace. Yet, I can’t even lift my hands above my head or the concrete would shred my shoulders. I can’t stretch out my legs when I sit down because the room is too short.
A jolt of electricity snaps through my wrist, and I jump back from the door.
A loud “beep” echoes around the room. The door slides open, revealing a cybernetic carrying a silver tray in one hand.
My mouth begins to water.
Yet, when he kneels in front of me, all I see on the tray is a pair of scissors.
I scramble away from him to the farthest corners of the pencil thin room. The glass of the mirror bleeds ice into my skin.
He reaches out towards me, and I swipe his hand away, my heart racing in my chest. With a hiss of breath, he draws a small black box out of his pocket, in the middle of which sits a red button. He lowers his thumb onto the switch, and another shock reverberates around my skull.
I grit my teeth and dig my fingers into the holes of the grate.
When he reaches out for me again, I attempt to dodge and instead slam my head into the wall. My vision swims; my body freezes in stunned pain.
The machines uses my own stupidity to pin me into the corner. One of his hands presses into the middle of my back, squeezing me up against the concrete so hard that I struggle to breath. I glance over my shoulder to see him pick up the pair of scissors.
A new panic replaces my claustrophobia. I don’t know what he would be doing with a pair of scissors, but I picture him using them to cut my organs out of my body like demented arts and crafts.
When his hand moves from my back to my head, I gasp for breath. My knees dig into my chest. I’m knotted up and immobile in the corner.
I close my eyes and brace myself for impact, expecting him to stab me through the back of the head.
Instead, he grabs a handful of my hair, cuts it off, releases me, and then backs out of the door. It slides shut before I can untangle my limbs and turn around.
What just happened?
I reach up and rub the short strands of hair left behind at the base of my scalp. The machines that cleaned me cut off several inches already. While he didn’t take a lot, I can still feel the shortened, dull strands under the rest of my soft hair.
Why would they want my hair?
My stomach growls, and I clamp my hand over it.
How long have I been in here? Are they going to feed me?
The first machine’s words come back to me:
“You will undergo testing before being placed into a specific research room.”
They took my hair for product testing. This is the first phase of the Anthros.
I pull my knees up to my chest again, wrapping my quivering arms around them.
What other tests are they going to conduct on me? Surely they won’t all be as painless.
How many other humans are being held in rooms like mine with no space to move around, fight back, or stretch their cramped limbs?
My questions continue to race around like sprinters in my head, coupled with the murmur of hunger behind my belly button and the dull ache from slamming my head into the wall. I’ve gone days without eating before when the winter was bad.
I refuse to allow hunger to be my breaking point.
✽✽✽
I drift in and out of fitful sleep, haunted by the looming figures of Eins and Zwei killing members of my family in the alley.
They mutilate Linux first, tearing him limb from limb and smearing his blood across the brick walls. Zwei finger paints in the pools of crimson fluid. When she pulls her elongated fingers out, the blood strings like spiderwebs between her and the ground.
Then, they drag Cyrus into the alley. They rip open his chest and tear his heart out, dangling it in front of me like a fish on a line. I scream, but the desperate cries fall on deaf ears.
No, not deaf ears. Uncaring ears. Ears on heads that are enjoying themselves.
Every dream features someone new. My parents, the Elders, Charlie, the humans I saw under the glass, the Luddites I’ve lost on missions. Each of them die in a fresh, horrifying way, while Zwei pins me to the wall, preventing me from helping them.
I wake up between each dream, jerking my head back and slamming it into the mirror. My neck aches from the cramped position I sleep in, and my legs go numb. I wiggle my toes and pat my aching calves.
Repositioning myself isn’t an option. I couldn’t turn if I wanted to.
So, I just lean my head against the wall and count to ten, over and over again.
The dreams repeat until I finally am awoken by the loud beep of the door opening.
I raise my head to look at the feminine machine looming over me.
Like the one before, she carries a metal tray. This time, there’s a cup sitting on it.
I don’t waste time crawling away from her. Where would I go? Instead, I blink back rage and hatred, licking my dry and cracked lips.
“You look thirsty,” she states, kneeling down and revealing the full contents of her tray- a cup full of water and a small cookie cutter. I reach for the water, but she lifts it up out of my reach.
“Not before I get what I need,” she says, setting the cup of water behind her.
With the cookie cutter in her hand, she turns to face me once again.
“Lay down,” she orders, and I squeeze against the wall, trying to get away from her.
“No,” I hiss.
With incredible speed, her hands snap forward, grabbing me by the throat.
“You will cooperate,” she says in a flat, monotone voice, “or I will have to do this the hard way.”
“Then do it the hard way.”
The machine blinks and rattles off something in the language of the machines. My cu
ff beeps and electricity dances up my arm. The pain numbs me from my wrist up to my shoulder. A scream edges toward my mouth, but I push it back. A single whimper escapes as her hand closes around my throat. In her eyes, I see the blue lightning move across my skin and blood drip out of my nose.
When she releases me, I slide down the glass. The pain from the electricity subsides, and I take hungry breaths as I lay crumpled on the metal grate.
The cybernetic grabs my leg, extending it out beside her so that my foot hangs out of the open door. In a swift, downward motion, she jabs the cookie cutter-like tool into the fatty skin of my thigh. I scream and attempt to yank my leg away from her. Yet, her grip proves stronger than my desperation.
Holding my ankle, she twists the cutter. Blood pours down my leg through the grate, dripping into the water below. I grit my teeth, throwing my head back against the mirror. I don’t move, too afraid that doing so would make the pain worse.
She lifts the tool out and begins to lift the skin away. It feels like she’s peeling tape off my skin, but the amplified pain says otherwise. When her shadow moves, I risk taking a look. Nausea rises up in my stomach at the sight of my bloody leg, now fashioned with a raw circle.
“Now you can have the water,” she says while putting the piece of me into a square glass canister. With her foot, she edges the water towards me. The liquid inside sloshes out of the cup and becomes lost to the blood covered metal floor.
I lunge for the water anyway, crying out as I’m forced to sit up and move my leg. By the time I grab it, my hands shake with tremors, and I slosh water all down the front of my shirt.
The cyber leaves, and the door slides shut behind her.
I drink the water and am left clutching the cup. Blood trickles out of the hole in my leg. It’s wide enough to fit at least three fingers in. Pink and red muscles show through the blood, snaking in and out of white fatty tissue. How she managed to cut me without maiming my muscle is a mystery, but it feels like she cut my entire leg off.
My mind wanders back to the machine in the street. Her comment about my skin covering being of “top quality” sends a chill over my body. Is this how they design new skin coverings- by extracting samples from living test subjects?
The temperature in the cell drops and I rest my head against the wall.
I had been right to assume that the rest of the tests wouldn’t be as painless as the hair samples they took. How many more skin samples will they take? Will I be left looking like the surface of the moon when they’re done with me?
A long hiss breaks me out of my thoughts and I glance up at the ceiling.
Water drips from the speaker overhead slowly. I twitch as the drops land on my face, running down my sweaty face and chest. Then, the water starts pouring out, streaming down on me. The force with which it falls is anything but refreshing. I attempt to crawl away from the waterfall, but there’s no room.
After a few minutes, the water slows. It leaves me drenched as it drains out through the holes in the floor. I glance down at my leg, shivering from the cold. The water washed all the blood away, and now it shines bright pink.
Would it really have been that hard to just wash it off? Showering me with ice water feels like an extreme solution.
Now, I’m freezing, hungry, and in pain.
The fast dripping fades into lazy drops. Each one echoes around the room before becoming even with the whispering of the water below.
Listening to it reminds me that I haven’t been to the bathroom since I arrived.
I squirm and pull my legs up, wincing in pain at the slightest movement.
Maybe if I just don’t think about it...
Still, though, the pain in my leg stretches up through my pelvis and stomach. I close my eyes. My teeth chatter as I shake from the cold.
Exhaustion sweeps over my body like a wave, and I find the dreams waiting for me on the other side of the water with open arms and hungry eyes.
The next time the door beeps, I can’t lift my head. The skin around my leg wound dried up long ago. A stench of urine fills the room, mixing with sweat and feces and overall filth. The frequent ‘showers’ do nothing but mix it altogether.
I’m just another ingredient in the soup.
A machine steps into the room, the grate vibrating under its heavy steps. I stare at its matte black shoes as they contrast with the slick silver of the wet metal beneath them. It kneels, grabs a handful of my hair, and forces me to look up at him.
My eyelids droop.
The energy to fight back slips between my fingers like vapor. I smile as a familiar quote comes to mind.
“For what is your life? It is even a vapor that appears for a little time and then vanishes away.”
Maybe I’ll get lucky. Maybe this machine is here to kill me.
The androgynous machine sets its metal tray down and inspects my body. Two syringes sit on the tray. One of them holds a white liquid and the other lies empty.
The machine glances back at another shadow and rattles something off. The words disappear into the mist between us. Whether it was English or not, I don’t know.
“The human needs food,” the machine in front of me says, placing a hand under my chin to support my sinking head.
“The injection should keep her alive,” another voice says, not above a whisper. “They want her weak for the training. According to prior testing, food gives humans strength. She will receive no food until the Idyllic see her.”
The machine holding my face turns my head to one side and picks up the empty syringe.
When he aims the needle at me, I don’t even flinch. It enters my skin with no pain, but I feel the tug as he draws my blood. I close my eyes, wincing as he pulls the needle back out and inserts another in the same place.
This one injects something into me, and when the cybernetic pulls away, I fall against the wall.
I’m left alone again.
The dreams appear different this time, threaded with intense color and vivid sounds. I can hear Linux screaming, feel his nails digging into my skin, and smell the musty quality in his clothes. I claw for him against the brick and scream his name as the machines descend upon him for the hundredth time.
When Eins pulls Linux’s lifeless body away from me, he leans in to whisper in my ear:
“We are better than you. The Idyllic always win.”
His hand wraps itself around my throat and I wake up with a start.
I half expect the room to spin around me, for my eyelids to close again, and to lack the strength to stay awake. Instead, my body is alert and on edge. My heart races in my chest.
Idyllic?
That’s not the first time I’ve heard that word, but I don’t know what it means.
The machine who drew my blood samples used it. He said I wouldn’t eat until they saw me. Was he talking about Eins and Zwei? Is that what they are?
I search through the many parts of A People’s History that I’ve memorized, hunting for the word. Something about it sounds familiar, but it runs through my fingers like the water that springs downward out of the ceiling.
What did that machine give me? The hunger lingers still, but it’s less like a crippling pain and more like a dull ache. The wound on my leg has faded to nothing more than a circular scar. I lift my hand to feel the shortened hair from the first test, surprised to find it’s grown out.
Either I’ve been asleep for a long time or they’ve given me medicine with advanced healing properties. There’s no way of telling which is true.
I take advantage of my alertness and look around my prison. Blood streaks the white walls in long, thin stripes, littered with pale, crescent moon shaped debris. Upon closer inspection, I discover that they are fingernails. I look down at my hands, grimacing at the sight of my bloody nubs. When did I scratch my own fingernails off?
The memories come back in the form of ear-splitting screams and nauseating panic.
Even more disturbing is my clothes. The once white fabric now ho
lds unrecognizable brown and yellow stains. The smell of the room brings tears to my eyes. It’s a mixture of ammonia and stagnant, fly-infested water. If I strain enough, I can hear the tiny flying insects just below the grate, circling and hunting for food.
I stretch my toes and knead out my unused muscles.
What was the purpose of healing me? Are the tests over?
The door emits a low beep and then slides open.
Two machines stand in the entry, wearing all-white outfits and empty eyes. The man holds an unmarked bag on his shoulder and the woman holds the black box with a red button in the middle. I tense up at the sight of it.
“You look much better,” the female states, stepping in.
I stare up at her, eyes darting between the bag and her. What’s in there? How do they plan to torture me this time?
“Come with us,” she says, reaching down and grabbing my arm. She lifts me to my feet. My lead feet tangle in themselves and my shoulder slams into a bloody wall. I use my other hand as support, placing it firmly on the other wall. The heavy cuff pulls my wrist down but I fight against it.
Regardless of the circumstances, the fact that I’m standing up brings me joy. As I limp out into the hall, my muscles scream with blissful relief. She leads me back down the long tunnel, through the room with clothes, and into the prep room.
“Up,” she commands, letting go of my arm.
I look her up and down, swaying where I stand. She still holds the switch, ready to light me on fire.
“Subject 23, get on the table.”
Taking a deep breath, I do as I’m told, laying flat on my back so that the male can strap me in. Fighting her would have been stupid.
“What are you going to do to me?” I ask in a voice like sand.
“It is none of your business,” the female says, “but we are conducting more tests.”
The male puts his bag down on the counter, rooting through it. He pulls out a series of vials and tubes, some glass and some plastic.
Product testing.
I jerk against the restraints, sucking in a breath of air as dizziness descends upon me. I might feel refreshed, but my body is still weak.
