by Amber Stuart
Object? I wondered.
A kind of irrational anger gripped me as the two soldiers started to steer Nihkil away. I reached for Nihkil’s arm abruptly, gripping the slick fabric of his shirt.
Nihkil flinched at the contact, but looked back at me, arresting his movements. The guards stopped, too, but I saw them frown, glancing at one another and then looking at me as if they thought there was something wrong with me for touching him.
“Nihkil,” I said, at a loss. “What is going on? What are they going to do with me?”
His eyes met mine. "You will come with me."
“But that doesn't make any sense...”
“I am sorry,” he said.
“I need to go home," I said. "Now. When am I going home?”
Nihkil hesitated, then met my eyes directly once more. His own looked sad that time, and faintly guilty. "I am sorry," he said. "That may not be possible." Pausing at my silence, he added, "I am of Oren. It is a good name. A clan of good standing. For my people."
"What?" I stared at him, bewildered.
"My family," he said. "It is Oren. The house of Oren."
The guard pushed at his back.
Before I could think of a reply, Nihkil had already entered the hole in the gray-skinned trunk... and vanished.
9
THE DREAM GETS BAD
I FOUND MYSELF pushed, shoved and prodded into the tube, mere seconds after Nihkil disappeared through that same opening.
No one bothered to tie my hands, at least. They pushed me around the way one might herd a cow or goat that needed to be slapped and prodded a few times to get it moving in the right direction. Even beat up and tired as I was, I found myself biting down on the inside of my cheek, trying to keep from giving one or two of them a few good cuss words, or maybe a cross to the jaw, especially the one who smacked me on the butt.
Once I'd entered the tube, I forgot about all of that, though.
Air rushed abruptly against my skin, dense enough that it felt like water.
Before I could take a breath, I seemed to be falling upwards... and alone, despite the fact that I’d entered the tube with two other guards. The darkness disoriented me, despite the odd peacefulness of the motion as I rose up the pipe.
I couldn't decide if I liked the sensation or not...
... when, just as suddenly, it was over.
I found myself standing on a round platform, on the edge of a featureless room.
When I glanced back, I saw a dark, oval hole in the wall behind me. I figured I must have just come through that same opening. Panting and dizzy, I fought to focus my eyes on a maze of insect-like corridors that snaked out of the round room like spikes on a wagon wheel. Mirrored blue glass shone from every surface, confusing distances.
Nihkil stood there, too, briefly at least. He watched my face, his own expressionless once more. Even so, I got the impression he was worried I might be freaking out, or about to.
He spoke words while I waited, still translating with whatever device he used, the one that made all of his words come to me in a lag, and that didn't synch with his lips.
All I gleaned from his choppy phrases was that Ledi’s medical staff wanted to take a look at me. Before I could wrap my head around that, those same poking and prodding guards had ahold of my upper arms and were leading me somewhere else, sans Nihkil.
They took me down one of the six or seven corridors I'd seen from that round entryway by the end of the elephant-trunk tunnel. A few minutes later, I walked through an oval doorway, into a room that seemed to materialize out of one of those blue mirror walls.
Inside, I found myself surrounded by people in blue smocks.
Yeah. That.
It was like something from a really fucked up horror movie at that point.
I mean, don’t get me wrong... I like horror movies.
But I didn’t want to be in one.
Those blue-smocked people smiled, eyes clinical, looking for all the world like creepy, alien doctors, if a more human version. Somehow their humanness didn't reassure me, though. Even their features looked off, as if their genetic pool hadn’t seen quite enough variation. Round eyes peered at me, strangely uniform-looking and blinking either too much, or seemingly not at all. Their faces appeared too round too, too pale, too hairless. They had small to no chins below their mouths, and strangely full lips that looked human, yeah, but kind of exaggerated somehow.
They didn't look right to me, in any case.
They'd surrounded me by then, though, and I didn’t have Nihkil with me anymore.
My legs and knees hurt like hell and had started to stiffen. I felt bruised, broken, battered, and pretty much completely out of juice. It felt like a struggle just to breathe in here, like I’d only been allotted the bare minimum of oxygen, no more and no less, and had to work harder to get it into my lungs to keep the machine functioning.
The room also lacked instruments, which I liked a little better.
Less reassuringly, lights made of what looked like skin hung from the ceiling in odd clumps, with glowing, finger-width, worm-like somethings writhing in veined pouches. The light they emitted resembled candlelight more than electric light from home. It bounced and flickered and replicated on the blue-green, mirrored walls.
I couldn’t really track the size of the room, or even how far I'd gone inside it.
Everything about the new space made me claustrophobic, even though the images stretched endlessly around me, duplicating in multiples whenever I tried to get my bearings. It reminded me of a fun house mirror room, and I hated those. I hated not knowing where I was, and in those things, I always felt like I might walk into a wall any minute.
When the smocked people motioned at me, I consented to sit on what I’d assumed was a metal bench. The material morphed as soon as my weight rested on it, though, and I panicked, gripping the edges as the padding conformed to my butt and legs.
When those smocked doctors pushed me to lie flat on my back, the material moved again, that time conforming to that whole side of my body, until I felt like I was suffocating, being swallowed whole. I tried to sit up, but a hand fell on my shoulder. I felt reassurance there, an alien-human attempt at calm, but it didn't really help. I stared up at multiple sets of dark eyes, trying to decide if I should go all out in fighting them off.
A semi-hysterical urge to laugh hit me.
The woman who stared back at my face appeared to be entirely hairless, somehow more alien-looking than any of the men.
I asked where they’d taken Nihkil.
None of them answered. I couldn't even tell if they understood me.
One of the blue-smocked people laid a hand on a wall to the right of the bench and a light came on. I shied back, watching in disbelief as the wall melted into liquid. A protrusion broke the mirrored blue surface, followed by what looked almost like a computer monitor, or maybe a flat-screen television. Puzzle-like characters appeared on that screen, like ancient hieroglyphs only I didn't recognize any of those symbols, either.
The symbols scrolled down that odd-looking screen and occasionally moved off the screen altogether, reconfiguring into pictures and what looked like graphs. I tracked them with my eyes, trying to understand. I fought once more to get up, but too many hands held me now. I cursed myself for cooperating, like some lamb led to slaughter, and struggled harder.
That time, paper-thin strips of metal circled my wrists, ankles, thighs and chest.
I tried to sit up again, but couldn't move.
“Okay,” I said, glaring around at all of them. “...I’m starting to freak out. Seriously.” I wrenched against the restraints, looking at the wash of blank faces. “Can you understand me? Any of you? Hey! You need to let me go! Right now. This is not cool!”
One of the doctor-like people splayed fingers their fingers, pressing them against a different section of the same wall.
That time, a round face popped up.
The face appeared to
be talking, but I couldn't make sense of any of the words. I saw something slither off into the wall near my feet and my fear exploded into terror. The walls seemed to be alive... and these people reminded me more and more of machines. I could hear more of that talking around my head, but none of them used the translation devices that Nihkil and Ledi had used.
A tube snaked out of one wall, moving fast.
That time, I let out a shriek, unable to help myself.
Trying to evade the thing, I threw my weight against the straps. A second shriek left my lips as the tube touched down at the base of my throat. I fought to turn my head, but my neck felt paralyzed, and I realized another strap held me there, too.
Something bit into my skin.
That time, I opened my mouth in a long, wailing scream.
10
WILLINGLY GIVEN
... A GLASS-COVERED room flashed out of the dark.
It emerged slowly, as if from a deep cloud bank, permeated by a low-lying mist.
I was pretty sure that last part came from my mind, though.
Round walls pulsed a reflecting, pale, sapphire blue.
I was in pain. A lot of pain.
Once I could see the room, once I knew more or less where I was, at least in terms of the basic geography, the pain seemed to come out of nowhere, broadsiding me. My body had landed, not gently. Or maybe, I'd landed back in my body.
Or maybe someone dropped me here, from some horrifying height.
Either way, I had to face the fact that it hadn’t all been a dream.
Nihkil lay collapsed on the floor, not far from me.
As far as I could tell, we were alone.
I didn’t remember how I’d gotten to this room, either. Something must have knocked me out, but truthfully, I didn’t want to go there, even now. Rubbing my face with one hand, I fought to occupy my mind with something else.
This room was even smaller than the medical lab.
Round, it seemed to have almost no features at all.
I felt trapped inside a blue crystal ball... or maybe a glass Christmas ornament.
Looking at Nihkil, I felt sick, wondering what they’d done to him. His expression looked different than I'd seen it up until then. He looked tense, almost angry, as if he’d been fighting up to the instant he fell unconscious. Someone had removed the glass knife from his shoulder, though, and changed his clothes. Metallic wrappings lay flush against his skin under a loose gray shirt. Black pants that could have been Earth-made covered his legs.
Despite the hard expression, his bruised face looked young in sleep.
My neck throbbed, blurring my vision.
I felt sick... and not fully present.
Silver light flickered in the corners of my vision, like sparks dancing in the night. The mirrored walls of the blue room morphed into a high, blue sky, once more filled with clouds. The world rotated around me sickeningly. Even inside that world, I felt drugged. It reminded me of high school, when me, Irene and Ricky mixed clove cigarettes with alcohol and all ended up puking, then lying on that ratty old bed with the sunken springs in mom’s old house on Capitol Hill. I felt kind of like that now, only the pictures in my mind were all over the place.
That stockbroker in the alley glared at me, holding a knife made of glass-like rock. Multi-colored clouds scuttled overhead like cotton pulls in a purple-blue sky. Orange-colored eyes stared at me in a golf course in the middle of the night.
I saw Nihkil. His muscular arms were bare from the elbows down. He wore a shirt that looked almost like a band t-shirt I'd once given my brother, Jake.
Jake.
I blinked, forcing my eyes open.
Memories from the medical lab swam forward against my will.
I saw it again, those instruments coming out of the walls. Hands holding me down, stronger than mine, and too many of them. Metal straps all over my body... even choking my throat. Instruments and fingers prodding at me.
Later, they cut into my skin. Tubes bit into my throat, sucking blood. People with white, chinless faces and dark eyes took pieces of my hair, cut other things off of my body, or shaved them off with thin-bladed knives. They kept me conscious while they sawed into my arms. The images worsened, grew into horror images, causing me to flinch away, to recoil from the darkness I felt there. The sky began to melt, turning blood red...
“Dakota?” The voice sounded loud, and right next to me. “Dakota? What is wrong?”
I forced my eyes open, found myself in that blue-mirrored room again.
I tried to take to take in the face that hovered over mine.
His hair looked darker than I remembered it. I saw it shift color then, sliding into a near-auburn. For an instant, I thought Gantry’s face hung over mine. I thought maybe I really was at home, that I’d gotten some kind of concussion in that alley...
“Dakota!” he said, shaking me lightly. "Tell me your name!"
His fingers touched my face, pushed hair back from my eyes and cheeks. I lay on a blue floor that looked like ice. This couldn’t be real. It couldn’t be.
Nihkil's fingers tightened.
"Tell me your name! Do you you remember?”
"Dakota," I managed to slur. "Dakota Mayumi Reyes."
"Where are you from, Dakota?"
"Earth." The answer struck me as absurd. "Seattle... Washington. United States."
"Do you see me now? Can you see me, Dakota?”
I looked up at him blankly, not really understanding the question. “Yeah. I see you.”
He breathed out what might have been a sigh of relief.
“Good. That is good." His inflection didn’t change when he added, "The drugs they gave you... it is too much. They drug you, thinking you are like one of them. They use many drugs, and have higher tolerance to be drugged. They don’t understand why you do not. It is better if you do not sleep now...”
I could only blink, confused. I tried to take in all of his words.
I nodded a few beats later, not fighting him as he pulled me up to a seated position. Once he had me more or less upright, I fought another wave of nausea as the spinning in my head worsened. I found myself staring down at what had to be a pile of my own vomit. It didn't help much with the nausea... or the fact that I’d been lying in it. Gross.
Nihkil continued to hold my arms, sliding closer on the polished floor.
I saw his eyes change colors, despite the lack of expression on his face. I tried again to decide what I thought of him. He let those doctors take me away and cut at me. He also saved my life, and tried to help me. He warned me not to come here.
Thinking about this, I let out a low chuckle, closing my eyes.
Not much in the way of real humor reached me, though. More than anything, I wanted to curl up in his lap, sleep until I woke up somewhere I liked.
"You are better now?" he said. "Less sick?"
I shook my head, then regretted that, too, when it made me dizzy. I glanced at my own vomit just long enough to feel my throat tighten. I motioned at it clumsily with a hand.
"Can I get... away from that?" I said.
Glancing down at the brightly-colored bile, he seemed to understand. Taking hold of my arms, he tugged me physically closer to him. Then, scooping my shoulders and the back of my knees with his arms, he lifted me, rising carefully to his feet. He held me as though I barely weighed anything.
"Dakota," he said. "You must stay awake." When I didn’t answer, he cleared his throat. "Open your eyes. I will be forced to call the technicians back, if you do not."
I forced my eyes open at his words, blinking in the dim light. The blue-mirrored walls seemed to slide and move under my eyes. They looked alive to me.
"Where are we?" I said, slurring a little.
He shook me lightly. "Open your eyes."
I realized only then that I’d closed them again. But it was too much work.
"Dakota... wake."
My tongue didn’t
want to cooperate.
“Leave me alone,” I said.
Still holding me, he walked directly to a wall.
The mirrored surface melted soundlessly in front of my groggy, half-awake eyes, creating a low opening that stood up from the floor. Climbing up, he carried me through it. Pushing me into the center of the cave-like space on the other side, he touched another segment of wall inside. An access panel appeared, something less organic than the morphing tiles I'd seen in that room with the doctors. A screen flipped up, and Nihkil spoke in that other language.
It sounded like some kind of command.
Freezing cold water flooded the small space. Letting out a startled shriek, I tried to squirm away, but he pinned me there, half in his lap.
In seconds, the water drenched us both.
"You must wake," he told me firmly. "It is important. I do not want to call the doctors back here... I do not trust them with you."
My eyes continued to not work correctly, but I did feel more awake.
I still saw geometrical shapes in the water, whirling around us like iridescent fish. The water felt almost good, now that I was over the shock of cold. I kept my eyes open as the cool liquid washed dirt and medicine off my body. Parts of me hurt a lot, from the fight with the stockbroker, the cuts and scrapes in the glass gully, what those soldiers in the gray scuba suits did to me, and then whatever the creepy doctors did after that. I tried to move again, but my stomach heaved. That time, it happened too quick for me to hold back.
I threw up violently on the tile. My body arched from the effort of it.
Hell, I nearly blacked out, but somehow, it was a relief, too.
Turning away from him, I heaved again. And again.
Nihkil didn’t move. He sat with me, neither comforting me, nor reacting to what I was doing. I was powerless to stop it, anyway, at least for a few minutes. It hurt more at each heave, and not only because nothing remained in my stomach to expel, not even the alcohol I drank with that sociopath in the bad eighties club.
"It is right," Nihkil said. “This is better.”
I didn’t try to make sense of his words.
The vomiting finally wound its way down, and I leaned against the morph’s chest, wiping my mouth and closing my eyes. The water washed it all blissfully away, and I felt that relief intensify as my vomit and its smell disappeared down the drain. I felt better. So much better in fact, that I glanced up at Nihkil, blinking at him through the falling water.
