Code Name: Aries by Janie Crouch

20

Wavy

When I woke the second time, I wasn’t in the van, and it wasn’t dark. The lights were so bright, it hurt my eyes to squint the smallest bit. I blinked over and over, trying to open my eyes a little more each time. Harsh, fluorescent lights flooded this room.

I didn’t have a gag. At least I could breathe easily, but it meant I was somewhere screaming wouldn’t help.

My arms didn’t hurt like they had before. They weren’t pulled tightly behind my back, but I still couldn’t move them much. They were restrained. So were my feet. But I still had my little painting clutched in my fist. I didn’t know how that had happened, but I didn’t care. It was my only link to sanity.

I forced my eyes open, then immediately shut them tightly again. This time not just because of the lights.

I was on some sort of medical bed with railings on the sides. My wrists and ankles were tethered to the bed itself. The bed could be raised or lowered, so I wasn’t quite lying flat. I was propped up enough to look down on the rest of my body.

And my polka dot dress was gone. I was in a medical gown.

Panic blanketed me again, cloying and sticky. Someone had stripped me out of my dress while I’d been unconscious.

I clenched my eyes closed again. What else had they done to me that I had no idea of?

I tried to push down the panic, but it wrapped tighter around me.

I swallowed, my throat dry, and turned my head to look one way, then the other. I wasn’t the only one in this room. There were at least a dozen other people, all on similar beds, like this was some sort of hospital. We were spaced about ten feet apart.

Nobody was moving; nobody was talking.

All the beds had medical equipment by them. My eyes flung back to my own bed. How had I missed the IV tubes coming out of both my arms? I tried to move my head, but I couldn’t because there were wires attached to it too.

More panic. I tried to swallow it down before it swallowed me whole.

I looked over at the person next to me, a woman. “Help. Can you tell me what’s going on? Hey. Hey, can you talk to me?”

Her eyes were open, but she didn’t respond. I turned to look on my other side a little farther down. A boy, a teenager. He also stared blankly. His head was shaved in different spots where nodes were attached.

Oh, God. Was that what was attached to my head?

“Hey, kid,” I said. “Are you okay? Where are we?” I pulled at the straps on my wrists and ankles, but they didn’t budge. “Can you hear me, kid?”

Still no response.

I didn’t see any doctors or nurses or guards, and there was definitely no sign of Erick Huen. I was almost drowning in panic now. I pulled at my restraints, thrashing on the bed. But all that achieved was exhausting me and making me dizzy.

Focus, Wavy. Work the problem.

I counted to ten, forcing myself to relax. Panic wasn’t going to solve anything.

What could I hear? What could I see? What could I control?

I closed my eyes and listened. Some of the people around me were making a sort of distressed sound—moans. But most of them were silent.

I opened my eyes again. Bright, fluorescent lights. No windows. Gray walls, white ceiling. Everyone was hooked up to at least a heart monitor and an IV, but that was all I could identify. There was a lot of other medical equipment also, but I didn’t recognize what it was.

What could I control? That was scarier to answer.

Except for the people lying in the beds, I still hadn’t seen anyone else around. Yelling couldn’t hurt then, right? If just one other victim was lucid and could get loose, we could work together and maybe find a way out. “Hey—” My voice cracked and I started again. “Hey, is anybody awake? Can anybody talk to me? Hello?”

I heard someone from down at the other end of the long room. I lifted my head but couldn’t see who it was.

“Hello?” I tried to make my voice louder, not sure why it wasn’t working correctly. “Can you talk to me? Are you okay?”

“I-I think so.”

“Okay. Good.” Thank God. Hearing another voice ratcheted down my panic to manageable levels. “What’s your name?”

“Janice,” she said. She sounded young.

“Okay, Janice. It’s going to be okay.” I pulled at my straps again. I had to get out of here. I had to get Janice out of here.

“You are not responding well to the medication. That’s unexpected and unfortunate,” a male voice said from behind me. I stiffened, then tried to turn my head to get a good look at him but couldn’t.

“Who are you? Where am I? What’s happening here? If you’re a doctor, you need to understand that I do not want to be here. I was taken against my will.”

Clicks on a keyboard. “I tried to explain to Mr. Huen that not everyone is a viable candidate, but he was insistent that you needed to be one.”

“Erick Huen kidnapped me. Do you know that? You need to let me go. Just put me back in the van and let me go.” I was trying to remain rational, but it was hard. I rubbed the painting between my fingers, seeking any semblance of calm.

“My work here is important, and he’s threatening it by bringing you here if you’re not a viable candidate. So right now, you need to go back to sleep.”

A hand reached out and attached something to my IV drip. “No, wait. I don’t want to go back to sleep. Can you just tell me what’s happening right now? If you let me go, I promise, I won’t say anything about where I was or what I saw.”

That was a complete lie, but anything that got me out of this room got me closer to helping myself, Janice, and all the rest of the people.

“Right now, you sleep.”

“Wait. Talk to me. Tell me about your w-work.” Shit. I could already feel my words slurring.

“You’re not a candidate, so you don’t need to worry about it.”

Not a candidate? Was that good—they’d let me go? Or bad—they’d kill me?

“Wait—” The world swirled. “W-what does that mean?”

“It means you’ll never—”

Darkness.

* * *

It took me multiple times of waking up, trying to talk to the people in the room with me, especially Janice, and being put back under before I learned not to open my mouth when I opened my eyes.

They put me back under every time I did.

But I found out a little information each time. First, that there was a girl named Janice. Second, that she was sixteen years old. The third time, Janice hadn’t spoken at all, and I’d gotten a little hysterical. Someone else had moaned like they were trying to talk, but it had been on the wrong side of the room—so it couldn’t have been Janice.

Could it?

My mind was more muddied every time I woke up. And the pain—a throbbing through my temples that never seemed to quit. They were drugging me, with more than the drugs that knocked me unconscious. I had other aches too—they were doing things to me while I was unconscious, but I didn’t know what.

The pain, the drugs, whatever they were doing to me was making it hard to remember . . . anything.

Why was I here? How long had I been here?

The only thing that seemed to tie me to reality was the tiny painting in my hand. There wasn’t a lot of it left—it was barely larger than a postage stamp now. It had ripped when they’d tried to take it from me. Sometimes, I pressed it under my leg when the nurses or the man they called Dr. Tippens were nearby. I didn’t want them to take it from me.

I wouldn’t survive without it.

I had to stay strong. I had to survive. Survival was always the most important thing. That’s what my brother had taught me. That’s what all the Linear guys taught in their classes. I know it was what Ian would tell me now.

Survive, Rainbow.

I closed my eyes and listened to his deep voice. The pain wasn’t so bad and the fear so immediate when I listened to his voice. I was tempted to stay inside my mind with him.

But I couldn’t. I needed to think, to figure out a plan. I had to focus on getting through what was ahead of me, on living through today’s pain and the nausea that made me want to fold myself over and do nothing but vomit.

Erick Huen had been here earlier before they’d put me back under. He and Dr. Tippens had argued about me; Tippens saying I wasn’t a viable candidate, Erick arguing it didn’t matter—I would be one anyway.

What did that mean? Dr. Tippens had mentioned being a candidate before. Dr. Tippens was in charge around here. All the nurses call him by name when they asked questions or gave a report. Dr. Tippens was the boss.

Except for when it came to Erick Huen. That wasn’t good.

I cracked my eyes open again. Had I fallen back asleep? I never knew how much time had passed. There was something going on. Something was different than the other times I’d been awake.

There were a lot more people, more medical people, but also other people. People with guns.

My head hurt, and I closed my eyes again. I had to swallow back the urge to vomit. That would only bring more pain. I rubbed my thumb along the portion of the painting.

But keeping my eyes closed made it harder to stay conscious. My body knew if I would let it fall back under, I wouldn’t have to feel this pain ripping through my skull. I knew I was fighting a losing battle . . .

“DeRose knows you, not me.”

At the sound of Dr. Tippens saying Ian’s name, I dragged myself back to the surface. How long had I been under? It didn’t matter.

“He somehow found out about this place. He shouldn’t have been able to.” I shrank away at the sound of Erick so near my cot. “The bastard is determined to get to her. I knew he wouldn’t like that I had her, but I didn’t know he’d go to such extremes to find her.”

I kept my eyes closed and body still. I didn’t want Erick to touch me. Revulsion rippled over my skin.

“You’re risking everything by keeping her, Erick. She is not a viable candidate. It’s not going to work. You need to either kill her or let her go. If we keep this up, it’s going to get worse like it did with Bronwyn Rourke.”

I knew that name. Why did I know that name? She was who I was supposed to help. No, that was Janice. Who was Bronwyn?

“We haven’t gotten to that point yet,” Erick responded.

“But we will. The protocol doesn’t work with everyone. There has to be a certain aptitude for addiction, plus a number of biological and genetic factors. I was clear about that from the beginning.”

I cracked my eyes open. Erick and Dr. Tippens were standing right in front of me. Around them, other patients were being moved, their cots and equipment wheeled away.

“The important thing right now is that we get everyone moved to a secondary location.” Erick sounded frustrated. Good.

“The current secondary location has ties to you, so you can bet someone with Ian DeRose’s resources is going to find that eventually too,” Dr. Tippens said. “We need to move them to somewhere associated with me. I have a lab we can use. He doesn’t know about me at all, so he’ll be much less likely to find us.”

Erick crossed his arms over his chest. “Can it hold everyone?”

“Yes. I know you’d like to be in control of everything, but this is a better plan.”

“Fine. If it means DeRose won’t find us, we’ll go with your place.”

“But that means I get autonomy in my research. No more bringing in people who aren’t viable candidates.”

“Fine,” Erick said. “The only exception is her.” He pointed at me, and I quickly closed my eyes so they wouldn’t know I was listening. “She gets the full protocol.”

“That is tantamount to torture. Her body will continue to reject the genetic editing and the drugs. You saw what happened with Bronwyn Rourke.”

“I don’t care. Full protocol. And you record the whole thing. That’ll be a nice gift to send to Ian DeRose. Let him know what it’s like to watch someone he loves die painfully.”

I struggled to keep my breathing normal, to not give myself away. I had to do something. If they got me out of this lab into that secondary location, Ian would never find me.

There was no way I was going to make it out of this building. I didn’t know if I could stand, or if I could somehow get out of this bed.

I only had one option, and I wasn’t sure that it would help, but I had to try.

With my eyes barely open, I watched Erick walk away.

“I know you’re awake, Wavy,” Dr. Tippens said. “I can tell by your heart rate. You are a smart one, I’ll give you that, learning to be quiet. We’re going to move you. Everybody’s getting moved.” He reached over and unstrapped my wrist. “We’ll have to move you to a rollable cot. Trying to walk right now will make you sick. I know you have to feel sick, Wavy.”

I didn’t answer. I didn’t open my eyes. Maybe he wasn’t sure that I was actually awake. I was only going to get one shot at this. Ian was on his way. I had to believe that this was going to work.

Dr. Tippens reached across me and unstrapped my other wrist. This would be the only chance I had. I reached up with every bit of strength I had—oh God, my arms were so heavy—and scratched him as hard as I could at the neck.

I drew blood. That’s what I’d been hoping to do. My arms dropped back down and I prayed it was enough. I had no more strength left.

Dr. Tippens jumped back. “You stupid bitch. Why would you do that? What would it accomplish?”

I didn’t respond. It was taking all my effort not to vomit.

“You know what? I would have helped you, would have given you a quick, painless death. I would’ve told Erick that your heart couldn’t take the protocol and you died of a heart attack. But now you get to live through everything he had planned for you. I’m afraid this is going to be a very painful trip to the new lab.”

He left, and I lay there, breathing in and out. Scratching him had taken all the energy I had left. My hands were still unrestrained, but there was no way I could reach down to unfasten my legs.

Moments later, Dr. Tippens was back with two different vials. I watched as he emptied one into my IV. The other, he injected directly into my leg.

I let out a whimper.

He shook his head. “You think that little shot hurts? That’s nothing. Just wait a couple minutes, and you’ll understand what I mean.”

He walked away. He didn’t refasten my wrists. That couldn’t be a good sign.

At first, I didn’t feel anything beyond the normal nausea and throbbing in my head.

Then the burning started.

It started in my leg, then bubbled slowly through the rest of my body, like acid eating me from the inside out. I couldn’t stop the whimpers that fell from my throat.

Then it grew. And grew. And grew. The fire spread everywhere. I clawed at my skin, trying to stop the burning, but there was nothing I could do to make it go away.

I hoped that the blackness would drag me back under as my whimpers turned into wails, then my wails turned to screams.

I writhed, back arched in agony, as two men came over and moved me from my bed onto a cot. Dr. Tippens forced a round, wooden block into my mouth then fastened its straps behind my head.

“So you don’t bite your tongue off when the pain really starts,” he said in my ear.

As they wheeled me away on the cot, my hands jerked open. I tried to close my fist, but my fingers were cramping and jerking uncontrollably like the rest of me.

The piece of the painting, the last connection I had to Ian, fell to the ground.