by Loki Renard
I yank my hand out of his grip and shrug. “Yeah, whatever.”
“I thought I told you to cut that attitude out,” he reminds me, his voice getting deeper and sterner.
“I thought I told you to fuck off,” I snap back. It’s a reflex to be rude. I don’t even think about it, but the doctor doesn’t let it slide. He grabs my wrist, whips me around and his palm meets the tender seat of my ass hard. It doesn’t hurt. I mean, not compared to being thrown against a wall as punishment, but it’s enough of a bolt of pain to catch my attention.
“No cursing,” he says. “And moderate your tone. There’s no need to speak to me that way.”
I feel more heat rising in me. I don’t understand it. Why am I embarrassed? The confusion is enough to make me fall silent. I don’t want to explore this place anymore. I want to go back to what I know.
Folding my arms over my chest, I look at the floor. “Take me back.”
“Take you back where?”
“To my cell.”
“You can’t possibly want to go sit in a little concrete box when you could have all of this comfort. Look at the couch.”
I don’t know what the fuck a couch is, and I don’t care. I want to be alone, back in the little space where I am the feared one, the mistress of my domain. It’s easier to be a wild animal than it is to try and play at whatever this is.
The doctor doesn’t give me a choice. He takes me by the hand and leads me over to the big soft seat, which I guess must be a couch.
“I know this is strange,” he says in that devastatingly kind way he has of talking. “But it’s going to be okay.”
Tom
I didn’t understand how far gone this girl was. When she’s in battle mode, she seems no different from any other hard-bitten operative in this place, but put in this domestic setting, all the lack in her life suddenly becomes immediately, heartbreakingly obvious.
She sits there so tight and tense. I want to make it better for her, but I know only time and familiarity will do that. There’s nothing I can do to make this easier, or go quicker. This is a process she’s going to have to go through, and I know it won’t be easy on either of us.
There’s a television in the corner of the room. I grab the remote and turn it on. The sudden sound and color makes her twitch, but not quite jump.
“Turn that off!”
I turn it back off. There’s anguish in her voice, and her eyes are wide with sudden, obvious fear.
“Take that out of here,” she says, her voice rough.
“You don’t like television?”
“I don’t like the scream screen,” she says bitterly.
“Scream screen?”
“They used to show us pictures on them,” she explains. “Bad pictures.”
“What kind of bad pictures.”
“People dying. People hurting.”
I draw in a breath. She’s not just been physically tortured her entire life. She has also been mentally abused. It’s no surprise, but I am finding it difficult to contain my composure. It would be easy to give way to pity, but I’m sure that’s not what she wants - and it’s not what she needs.
“Do you like stories?”
“Stories?”
I pull out my phone and pick out a book on my e-reader app.
“Alice was starting to get tired of laying on the river side,” I begin reading the story of Alice in Wonderland, all the way through to the rabbit running past Alice and pulling out a pocket watch.
“Wait…”
“Hm?”
I glance over. Electra is looking at me with wide eyes. “What is that? What are you doing? Who is Alice?”
“It’s a story. It’s…” I realize it is actually very hard to define what a story is. “It’s a description of things that didn’t happen.”
“Why?”
“Well, for entertainment, and more. Reading helps me to relax. Listening to stories can be very calming.”
She nods slowly. “What happened to the rabbit? Why is he wearing a waistcoat? The rabbits I saw on missions didn’t have clothes.”
Just like that, she’s hooked.
I read the first chapter of Alice in Wonderland. She is utterly wrapped up in the story, and I’m happy to read it to her, at least until I hear her stomach start to growl.
“You’re hungry,” I say, closing the app. “How about we make some food?”
“We can make food?” She cocks her head at me. “What do you mean?”
“Yep, that’s what the kitchen is for. Taking ingredients, combining them together, making something worth eating.”
It’s almost like dealing with a little alien, I think to myself as I lead her to the fridge and together, we pick out foods she might want to eat. It’s difficult, because she’s never seen raw ingredients before. I reckon she’s looking for the brown gruel slop that prisoners tend to be fed. Instead, I decide to make her bacon and eggs.
Electra
The doctor starts pulling packages out of the fridge. They’re all marked with words like the ones he was reading off his phone, but the markings don’t mean anything to me.
“What’s that?”
“Bacon,” he says, glancing at me for a second. I can see him thinking. He’s smart. Too smart. He notices things more than anybody else I’ve ever met. The people I used to interact with were always pushing things on me. Making me act certain ways, do certain things. This doctor notices what I do before he tries to change it. “Electra, tell me something.”
“What?”
“Did they ever teach you to read?”
I feel an unwelcome flush of horrible heat over my skin. “No.”
“Okay,” he nods. “Well, that’s going to be one of the first things we do for sure.”
He acts like it isn’t a big deal, but I know it is. My handlers have mocked me before about not being able to read. Tyko thought it was hilarious. He used to write things down in front of me and tell me the were directions out of the facility. I don’t know if they were or not. My education was specialized, and reading wasn’t on the list. I think they left it out on purpose, just so I would be unable to get by in the outside world. I’m always going to need someone who knows what the signs mean.
“You must think I am so stupid,” I say, picking up a white spheroid thing from a package containing twelve spheroids of various hues from white to brown.
“I don’t think you’re stupid,” he reassures me in a tone that makes me not completely believe him. He feels sorry for me, and I hate that. I’d rather he was scared of me than thought that I was some pathetic person who…
“What the fuck!”
I only put a little pressure on it and the whole thing cracked to pieces in my hand, clear sticky fluid and a yellowish orb running through my fingers onto the floor.
“Raw eggs are delicate,” he explains, running warm water over a cloth, then wiping my hands for me. “Don’t worry about it.”
A hot tear slips out of my eye and runs down the side of my nose. I’m so embarrassed right now. The doctor is having to do everything for me, because in this world outside my cell, I’m basically fucking useless.
“Hey, it’s okay, really,” he reassures me. “Don’t worry about it.”
“I hate this,” I sniff. “I FUCKING HATE THIS!” I sweep the carton of traitorous white things off the counter and watch them splatter all over the floor. There is so much yellow stuff and clear goo inside them, and the shells float about in the mess, all lost just like me.
“Okay that’s enough,” he says firmly. “No need to lose your temper.”
Yes, there is. I know how to be angry. I don’t know how to be anything else. I go to grab something else to throw, but he catches my wrists in his big hands and he stops the motion.
“Listen to me,” he says, his voice very deep and very calm. “I know this is a lot to take in, but you have to get a grip on that temper. I want you to go sit down on that stool on the other side of the counter and wait for you
r meal. Can you do that?”
I nod. I am still filled with anger, but I don’t want to take it out on him. He is trying to feed me. He lets me go, and I walk around to sit at the counter, watching him as he cleans the mess on the floor up, washes his hands, and starts cooking.
“Sorry,” I mumble. “I’m super fucked up, and I’m really stupid.”
“Actually, I think you’re quite intelligent,” he says, giving me a smile. “You’re just new to a few things. You’ll pick them up in good time.”
I don’t think I will, but I try to watch what he’s doing. ‘Cooking’ seems to be a simple matter of heating food. Pink and white slivers of meat become crispy bacon strips. A fresh carton of round spheres are cracked open, and when they hit the pan, they go bright white and yellow.
“Wow,” I breathe. It’s like watching magic performed in front of me, things that were sort of food-like transforming into delicious meals.
“Here you go. Eat up.”
He gives the food to me on a plate, not a tray with all the little pockets compartmentalized, but an actual plate.
“Will you be alright eating that? I need to go see someone about something.”
“Sure,” I say, shoving the food into my face. It tastes incredible, so much better than the food I got in my cell. There’s crispy, salty, rich texture, followed by a liquid gold flow of pure deliciousness. I could eat this all day long.
Try
Tom
“I’m surprised to see you so soon, Doctor Ares.”
“Are you?”
I’ve come to the Head because I am no longer willing to put up with only knowing part of the truth. Every word out of Electra’s mouth surprises, shocks, and appalls me. Every piece of missing knowledge in her personal inventory makes me concerned at the past she’s been forced to endure.
“I want to know what happened to Electra, and I want to know now.”
The Head gives me a sharp look. “Her attitude appears to be rubbing off on you already, Doctor Ares. I would be careful of that tendency.”
“I would expect for you to expect to see me again, given what I’ve discovered. Redacted reports don’t count as information, by the way. She doesn’t know anything. About anything. She seems to have been raised entirely within the walls of one facility or another, never exposed to any basic education besides soldiering. She doesn’t know how to be a human, because she’s never been shown any humanity.”
“I’m not sure you need me to tell you anything,” the Head says. “You seem to know everything already.”
“I don’t know. I’m guessing.”
“Those guesses are going to have to be enough to go on, Doctor Ares. I’m not able to share the details of Electra’s origins.”
“Make yourself able,” I suggest, risking my life to do so, or at least my balls. The Head does not like being talked down to by men. She makes examples of the ones who try to pull rank on her. But I suppose she understands my pushing is in aid of our mutual goal, because she finally elaborates.
“Electra is the product of an experiment by the same name,” she says. “She was engineered to be the perfect soldier, grown inside a laboratory, and conditioned, rather than raised. She never knew a mother’s touch, or a father’s embrace. Until a matter of months ago, she lived inside a top secret facility outside United States borders. I managed to retrieve her with the hopes of using her…”
The Head pauses long enough to let me judge her, as if she is expecting me to do so. I do not disappoint her. The words themselves are cruel, using her. She thinks of Electra as a tool. I do not know how it is possible to dehumanize somebody to that extent, especially someone as superficially appealing as Electra. Her design, as the Head would put it, was clearly made to be appealing. She’s adorable. But the Head cannot see that. All she cares about is how much use she’s going to get out of her.
“You can save your outrage, Doctor Ares,” the Head drawls. “And you can put aside any gallant notions of saving her. She has already been saved. This is where she belongs. This is where she will flourish and reach her full potential.”
“Killing people for you,” I say, flatly.
“Exactly.” The Head’s eyes glint at me. “You do know where you are, Doctor Ares. You do know why people come to you terribly injured. You are not separate from the world Electra was created in, you are part of it.”
She’s trying to draw me in, make me feel ownership, maybe even guilt. That would be convenient for her if I fell all over myself to do her bidding, believing that I myself had become evil. The Head manipulates everybody she meets. I don’t believe she can help it. At this point, it is an ingrained habit. I have to remember that everything she is telling me could be a lie.
She could have told me this in the first place when I asked for information, but volunteering information is not the Head’s style. She keeps everything close to her chest. Even her name is a secret unknown to the people who work here.
“This is so much worse than I expected,” I growl. “She’s not just some specially trained rebel agent. She’s a girl who has been brutalized her whole life, denied basic education. She can’t read!”
“It is unfortunate,” the Head agrees. “You have a great deal to rectify.”
“I’m going to start by asking you what role you played in this. Are there others like her? Are there more being made?”
I’m going to keep asking questions until I get some semblance of an answer out of this woman. It is not good enough for her to give me a broken-souled girl and expect me not to care.
“Electra’s program was shut down recently. Since that time, I have attempted to have her rehabilitated, but the agents here are hardly suited to the task. I think you will succeed where they failed.”
“I’d have a much better chance if you told me exactly what was and wasn’t done in the first place. What was her life like where she was? Why didn’t they teach her anything useful?”
“They taught her many useful things relevant to her purpose. From the time she could walk, she was drilled in physical exercises. Mental conditioning was rigorous, involving resistance to pain, and desensitization to violence. They did what they could to take the human component out of the human. I think Tyko would say they succeeded. But you have already brought something out of her, Doctor Ares. I think you might be able to help her.”
“I can’t fix a lifetime of abuse and neglect in a pretend apartment in the middle of what amounts to another prison,” I say, spreading my hands out in despair. In medical school, we did plenty of work on early development. There are some things, which once broken, stay broken.
The people who made Electra damaged her on purpose, and there may not be any way to put her back together. She may never be able to feel love or make a meaningful connection with a human being. She may truly be fated for a short, brutal life as the Head’s pet assassin.
The Head fixes me with her steely, inimitable look.
“Try.”
Together
Tom
I have to try.
I leave the Head’s office with no real specifics, but a confirmation of my suspicions. What I have in my care - who I have in my care, is a super soldier. A young woman designed by the government to have the traits of a specialist killing machine. She knows nothing about what it means to be a person, not really. I am going to have to start with the absolute basics. The one thing I do have going for me is that she does seem to trust me. I think she’d trust anyone who showed her kindness. She’s starving for it.
I smell the burning before I even get to the fourth floor. As I step out of the elevator, I get a face full of thick smoke.
“Hello!” Electra emerges from the smoke. She looks pleased with herself, having apparently nearly burned the place down.
“Why isn't the fire alarm going off!?”
“I put a bag over it. It kept beeping at me when I was trying to cook.”
“Is that what you’re doing? Cooking?”
“Ye
s. I have made food!”
She presents me with a plate full of charcoal with a proud smile I can’t help but return even though my eyes are stinging from smoke. I guess she doesn’t know how to use an extractor fan, and even if she did it wouldn’t make a dent in the clouds which are billowing all around us.
“What did you make?”
“Everything,” she says.
“Everything, huh,” I say, going to the kitchen to start the extractor fan. “I think we’re going to need to open a few windows in here.”
“None of them open,” she says. “It’s kind of a fire risk.”
“No kidding,” I agree.
It takes a call down to the main office to get the extractors in the ducting to activate and within a few minutes, things are smelling much better, if not looking better. The kitchen has been trashed. Pots and pans have food burned into them so deeply they will never be separated. There’s soot up the walls. The fridge is wide open and everything, absolutely everything has been pulled out of it. What hasn’t been burned has been smeared over the counters and the drawers, which are all open.
I am stunned. I’d lecture her for the mess, but it occurs to me that nobody has ever taught her to clean up. Nobody’s taught her how to do anything at all.
“You’ve done really well,” I tell her.
“Eat some of it,” she says, pushing the charcoal plate toward me.
“I’m not hungry. I had eggs, remember?”
“Eat. Some,” she insists. “I made it for you.”
Electra
He takes a little piece and puts it to his teeth with a grimace.
“You don’t like it,” I say, feeling disappointment wash over me. I’ve been trying so hard. Some of it isn’t even completely black. I’ve found that cooking is mostly about things going black and crispy really quickly.
“It’s a little… overcooked,” he says. “But you’ve done very well for a first try.”
He’s pandering to me again.
“Too much heat?”
“A little too much,” he says. “Next time I’ll help you. For now, let’s practice a different life skill. Cleaning.”
