Hijacked by Lolita Lopez
Chapter Nineteen
Woozy and drooling, Camila swayed side to side in the freezing cold, brightly lit cell. A too short chain attached to a ring on the back of her straightjacket was the only thing keeping her upright. Her legs felt strange, numb and heavy. Her arms had long ago gone to sleep from the pressure of the medical restraints buckled so tightly against her back.
The numbness in her arms and hands was a mercy. During her intake, the cruel nurses processing her had ripped her acrylic nails free off her fingers. The excruciating pain had left her screaming and on the verge of vomiting. The chemical cleanser they doused her with had made the pain even worse. That first sedative they gave her had been a godsend because it made her incapable of caring about the agony.
The mask the nurses had latched around her face had another chain attached to the top of it, forcing her head up even though she desperately wanted to sleep. A hard ring had been shoved between her teeth, keeping her mouth from closing fully. Between the gag and the medication injected into her thigh, she slobbered like a mastiff.
All of that was terrible, but the true torment had been done to her eyes. The nurses had dribbled violently orange drops into both eyes. The scorching fluid left her sobbing hysterically, and when the pain finally stopped, she was unable to close her eyes or even blink. The mask holding her head up and the drops keeping her eyes open forced her to watch the propaganda films that ran nonstop in front of her. Speaker buds tucked into her ears fed a constant stream of nonsense into her brain.
So far, she had resisted their cruel attempts at brainwashing, but she wasn’t stupid enough to think she could hold out forever. When she had been processed, the director of the reeducation program had warned her there was zero tolerance for free-thinking. She had been committed to the facility for a minimum of three years, and by the end of those three years, she would be completely remade according to the emperor’s strict standards.
Her memories of the time between her arrest and now were fuzzy and vague. She couldn’t make sense of how long she had been in custody. She thought it might be days, but maybe it was only hours. The nurses came in with new injections to deliver and dissolving strips of nutritional paper they placed under the gag and on her tongue. She couldn’t keep track of how often they came or how many times they had visited.
Flashes of her father shouting her name were interwoven with Emperor Shui’s malicious grin and those malevolent eyes of his. The sedatives coursing through her veins blunted her feelings of betrayal. Knowing her father had given that sham footage to Shui cut worse than any blade could. She remembered the way he held her hand and reminded her of his fatherly love. It seemed so empty and fake now.
If she tried really hard, she could push those ugly thoughts out of her mind and focus on Misko. His tender smile displaced the horrible images playing in front of her. The phantom sensation of his hands caressing her bare skin soothed her raw nerves. His deep voice calling her name replaced the constant loop of the emperor’s screed bouncing off her eardrums. But, the amount of concentration necessary to build the fantasy required too much from her drug addled brain. She couldn’t sustain it, and Misko faded from view, abandoning her in this hellish place.
The strain on her neck and back hurt so badly, and she desperately wished to sit. Lying down sounded even better, but she knew that would never happen, not here where they seemed intent on tormenting her. Knowing that this awful treatment was just the beginning sapped her of any remaining strength she had. Overcome, she sagged against her bonds and let the drugs whisk her away to a place where time ceased to exist.
She wasn’t sure how much time passed before the door to her cell opened. A trio of medical personnel entered the white room. The largest of them, a man with a face like a bullfrog, stood near the door. The two women in their matching green uniforms approached her with barely concealed disgust. She supposed that was fair. She hadn’t been given access to a bathroom and had resorted to simply letting her biological functions occur when the urge was too great to ignore.
“She’ll need to be hosed down before surgery,” the taller of the women said before tugging her medical mask into place.
Camila seized on the mention of surgery. Even drowsy and emotionally suppressed, she experienced panic. Surgery? What surgery?
“Did the doctor want her to receive another dose of tranquilizer before she’s prepped?” the taller one asked.
The shorter checked the tablet she carried. “No, he wants her awake.”
The bullfrog man snorted with amusement. “That sick fuck really enjoys it when they scream and fight.”
Oh, no. No. No. No.
Try as she might, she couldn’t get her limbs to respond as her brain screamed for her to fight. The bullfrog and the taller woman began to unchain her from the wall. Camila collapsed onto her face without the security of the chains. Before she could recover, the bullfrog grabbed her by the back of the straightjacket and hauled her out of the cell as if he were carrying a duffel bag. Her swollen, painful tongue lolled out of her mouth, and she tried to shut her stretched jaw. The discomfort was so terrible she stopped and left it hanging open.
The bullfrog carried her into a tiled room with a drain on the floor. With the practice of a man who did this often, he unbuckled the straightjacket, leaving her naked on the freezing cold tile. She tried to sit up and collapsed again. A blast of scalding hot water smacked her back, and she yelped with pain and shock. She attempted to stand, but her feet kept slipping on the tile. She clambered away, crawling awkwardly like a baby who hadn’t quite mastered the art, and the unrelenting stream followed, leaving her skin raw and sore.
When the bullfrog deemed her clean enough, he grabbed a handful of her now soaking hair and dragged her into a standing position. She wobbled on unsteady legs, and he propelled her forward with the fistful of hair he gripped. She cried out as she stumbled out of the room and down the hall to a surgical suite. She shivered as the chilled air touched her wet skin and looked on in horror at the terrifying machines and sharp instruments laid out on trays.
“I see that shower woke her up a bit more,” the short nurse cackled. “Get her on the table and strap her down.”
Camila weakly smacked at the hand still caught in her hair. Her body moved so slowly, and her useless attempts to break free only served to amuse the evil medical staff. They laughed as she whined like a beat dog as the hand in her hair twisted tighter, lifting her up on her tiptoes. She stumbled toward the surgical table and grunted in pain when the male nurse lifted her up and tossed her onto the hard, cold metal.
The bright lights overhead blinded her sensitive eyes. The water from earlier had rinsed away some of the medicated drops, but her eyes felt gummy and dry when she blinked. She managed to close her eyes for a few seconds before the muscles flexed and her eyelids sprang apart again.
“Give her another dose of the drops,” the short nurse ordered. “He’ll want those eyes paralyzed before he starts the procedure.”
A hand cruelly gripped her sore jaw, squeezing so hard she whimpered. The burning drops were applied again, and her vision turned a cloudy orange. Eventually, the orange faded away, and she could see clearly again. Her eyelids remained frozen in place and retracted in the most abnormal way.
“Let’s get a line in,” a new female voice, this one huskier and older, instructed. “If Dr. Dessai had another liquid dinner, he’s likely to slip, and she may need medical support. Set out an intubation tray as well.”
“Yes, Dr. Smiff,” the nurse replied.
The doctor operating on me is a drunk? Oh, stars above! What is he going to do to me?
Hands touched her body in the most violating ways. Her arms were strapped out to her sides. Her legs were strapped together and bound by the ankles to the bottom of the surgical platform. A needle entered her hand and then something painfully hard was slipped into a vein. Freezing cold fluid entered the vein, and she began to shake atop the surgical platform.
“Put in a block,” Dr. Smiff ordered. “She’s liable to bite her tongue, and I want her airway clear.”
Plastic packaging was ripped open, and then two nurses in surgical uniforms, their faces covered with biohazard shields, appeared above her. One held her jaw and forehead while the other jammed a strange device into her mouth, separating her jaws with a crank and securing her tongue to the side with a clamp.
“Do we have orders to shave this?” The nurse who had crammed the device into her mouth asked as she tangled her gloved fingers in Camila’s hair.
“No,” Dr. Smiff answered. “The emperor’s man was very clear that he wants this one to stay pretty. No obvious bruising. Nothing done to her hair. Minimal weight loss.”
The nurse made a sound of annoyance before dragging all of Camila’s hair into a ball at the top of her head and slipping a clinging cover over it. “Must mean he intends for her to go to the dollhouse after this.”
“Probably,” Dr. Smiff agreed. “After he trots her out for press conferences and PSAs,” she added. “He’ll want to keep her alive to put pressure on the family.”
“Bunch of rich cunts,” someone said nastily.
“Let’s go ahead and push the anti-inflammation and bruising cocktail,” Dr. Smiff instructed. “When that’s done, we’ll start the neural pacifier. I want at least one dose on board before Dr. Dessai arrives.”
“Should I prep the nose or the eyes?” a nurse asked.
“Prep the eyes,” Dr. Smiff replied. “It would be easier to access her brain via the nose to ensure minimal bruising, but Dessai has his preferences so...”
Gripped in panic, Camila started to scream. The wash of adrenaline flooding her system overwhelmed the remaining tranquilizer drugs running through her veins, and she experienced a surge of strength and clarity. She jerked against her bonds and shook her head, thrashing side to side and refusing to submit.
Not my brain! Please! Not my brain!
All the horror stories and whispered tales of depravity and sadism surrounding this hospital were true. Camila screamed again, terrified by the prospect of being lobotomized and implanted with a processor that would give others complete control over her body. They would tell her what to say and how to say it. She wouldn’t be a cyborg with independent thoughts and autonomy. She would be little more than a pretty little meat puppet for the emperor to display and play with whenever he wanted.
“Give her another sedative! Now! And another neural pacifier!”
Hands pressed her down onto the metal platform, and drugs were injected into the fleshy part of her thigh. She continued to fight until her muscles no longer responded. Deflating like a popped balloon, she sagged against the surgical bed. Her head lolled to the side, and she couldn’t make sense of the conversations swirling around her. It was all unintelligible noise.
She fell into herself, into a dark pit of nothing. She resurfaced every now and then, becoming vaguely aware of another presence in the room. Bigger hands gripped her face, turning it side to side for examination. A blunt fingertip poked her eyeball. In the deep recesses of her mind, she screamed, but outwardly, she remained impassive, immobile.
The jumble of voices and medical machines melded into a cacophony. One of the nurses clamped a medical device around Camila’s head, fixing it in place atop the surgical table. A tube coated in something slippery and strange tasting snaked between her teeth and into her throat. The lubricating gel completely deadened everything it touched, killing her gag reflex. The tube slid deeper and deeper until it seemed to be sitting in her stomach.
Please, let me die.She silently begged the universe to end her life. She couldn’t imagine life as a human doll. If she couldn’t be free, death was the better option. Let me die on this table. Please.
A gleaming instrument came into view above her. The menacingly sharp point seemed to be aiming for her eye, and she screamed silently in her head. No! No!
Desperate to remember the people she loved, she began repeating their names in a soundless mantra. Misko. Sara. Willa. Over and over, she thought of their names, their faces, their voices. The needle probe moved closer and closer to her eye, and Camila continued her mantra. Misko. Sara. Willa. I love you. I love you. I love you.
Amid the jumble of sounds her brain struggled to process, Camila noticed a bizarre banging and increasing volume. The tip of the metal probe, now so close to piercing her eye, stopped moving. The lights in the room flickered and then shut off completely. Plunged into darkness, the banging noise morphed into a hiss. Camila managed to pick out strains of fear and panic in the cacophony.
Something happened. Suddenly. Without warning.
An explosion? A bang. The rush of something that smelled sweet. The hiss of gas from a ruptured pipe.
Chaos erupted.
The sharp metal probe began to fall toward her face. The doctor wielding it had gone slack. She couldn’t move, couldn’t flinch. She couldn’t even shriek in pain as the razor-sharp point pierced the spot just beside her eye. With the force of the collapsing doctor behind it, the probe crunched through the thin bony structure there and popped into her nose, slanting sideways as it cut through muscle.
Blood pooled in her field of vision. She couldn’t blink or wipe it away. Was that it? Had she been lobotomized?
Masked people appeared above and around her. She could barely see them through all the blood. A gloved hand covered her uninvolved eye, making it less likely that her possibly injured eye would track and follow. The IV in her hand was ripped free. The tube in her throat was pulled out of her. The device forcing open her mouth was removed. A pair of injections were slammed into her upper arms.
Within seconds, her fuzzy brain began to clear. She started to decipher sound again, to understand what was being said around her. Modulated, robotic voices echoed in the operating room.
“Is that probe in her brain? Did it dissect important anatomy?”
“Unknown. Intraoperative scanning equipment failure. Probably when we cut power.”
“Secure the probe. Cover both eyes. Prepare to evacuate.”
“Contact medical. Have them setup for emergency surgical repair.”
Unable to see once her eyes were closed with tape, Camila had no choice but to stay still. Her brain lagged behind a bit, her thoughts still muddled. Wracked by pain, nearly delirious from exhaustion, she put up no fight when a mask was fitted over her nose and mouth. Clean air rushed into her lungs, and the wooziness began to fade. Strong arms lifted her, and she was transferred from the surgical table to something soft like a hammock. A stretcher?
Something heavy slammed onto the table, taking her place from the sounds of it. She didn’t even want to think about what that was—or who. Carried on the stretcher, she tried to stay awake. Jostled by the movement of her rescuers, she let the spikes of pain work for her. The agony of her shifting body provided the jolts she needed to stay conscious. The rescuers moved faster, running instead of jogging. The confusion of it left Camila feeling nauseated and off-kilter.
A door banged. A cool, humid breeze wafted over her skin, reminding her quite suddenly that she was stark naked. Whatever embarrassment she might have felt about her nude state was eclipsed by the relief of being handed up and into some kind of aircraft. The swooping sensation of the ship shooting sky high and then arcing wildly to one side left her reeling.
“Cam?” A modulated voice, bass and soprano tones mixing eerily, called her name. A gloved hand gripped hers. There was a shuffling sound, a whoosh of air and then a familiar and wholly unexpected voice. “Cam!”
“Willa?” she asked in shock, her tongue thick and heavy in her mouth. “Willa?”
“I’m here, Cam.” Willa squeezed her hand. “You’re safe. I’m here. I’m right here. Rest. Okay? Just—relax.”
Bewildered and overwhelmed, Camila tried to make sense of what was happening. Willa rescued me?
Willa who couldn’t remember to shower or change clothes? Willa who practically lived in her lab? Young, naïve, utterly scatterbrained Willa?
I’ve lost my mind.
There was no other explanation that made sense. Willa couldn’t be part of some heavily armed rebellion.
Could she?
