Heartless (31 page)

The photograph in my mind faded.

With an effort worthy of Hercules, I found another. This one was much more recent. Lucy, at our winter formal, wearing a slinky black dress with her hair in a pile of red curls falling over one shoulder. Her skin pale, her eyes wide. She grinned, a devilish, curling grin, a dimple barely playing on her right cheek. The background of the photo was faded and dark, but there, clear and bright, the focal point of the photo, was Lucy’s hand, fisted but for that one, tall, manicured middle finger. She was flipping off the photographer.
I was the photographer.

Had my body listened to my brain, I’d have smiled.

The photograph in my mind faded, faster this time.

I will not shut down. I will not shut down.

In the waning power I pulled up one last image. It wasn’t a photograph this time, culled from the file cabinets of my brain. This was a feeling, a smell. Cheeseburgers and ketchup, aftershave and laundry detergent. This was Eli’s bed. This was Eli. This was the feel of his arm around my shoulders, our skin bare and warm. This was what my life had been. This was what it no longer was. This was what it would never be again.

I will not shut down. I will not shut down. I will…

The feeling faded. The black came and took me away.

T
he next thing I knew, after the black, was white. Bright-ass, burn-your-eyes-out-because-they’ve-been-closed-for-an-eternity kind of white. I knew my eyes were open when I saw the white, but I also knew almost immediately: I couldn’t move them. I couldn’t move anything.

I was awake, but I was paralyzed.

Again.

For a moment, though, in the initial surge of wakefulness, I could actually
feel
.

The cold steel of the table on which I lay.

The warm hum of the electrical current flowing through the cord in my back.

The soft breeze blown by a fan twenty feet away.

The cool air all around me.

I even smelled the cold, chemical smell of bleach and formaldehyde. The warm, burning smell of decay.

Oh, so that’s what I smell like
, I thought.
I’m disgusting.

I was naked, I could tell, and back in the laboratory. Only it had to be a different laboratory, since Lucy and I had burned down the first one. The thoughts that clouded my head were muddy, murky, and I fought to forget the image of the fire chasing us down the staircase, but didn’t have the power to do it. I relived that moment over and over again, the flames cutting through the mud and making me wish I could scream.

As that thought finally began to fade, I wondered if it had all been a dream. Maybe we had never found the lab. Maybe I’d made it all up. Maybe this was my first awakening and everything before had been a terrible nightmare.

Maybe I wasn’t a monster after all.

Then I heard the voices.

“I still don’t understand why you brought the boy. You should have left him there on the side of the road. He’s nothing to us, a nobody from a nobody family. And even if you were too weak to kill him outright, exposure to the elements would have finished the job for you.” I recognized the voice, but through the haze of my barely-there brain it was going to take a while to put a name to it.

“Yeah, and then we’d have had even
more
cops around here than we did after your misguided attempt at a
peaceful
capture. I brought a stupid little frat boy here; you got the whole stupid lab blown up.”

The second voice I knew. I mean, I knew I knew it, but the words coming through that voice weren’t making sense.

“Besides,” the second voice growled. “I
want
to kill him. Later. When the others can watch. I want to feel their fear as I take his life.” He caressed the last words, his voice soft like velvet. I thought I heard him sigh.

Strong. The second voice is Strong. And he’s been helping us. Or at least, he said he was.

A third voice, another female, cackled with sharp laughter. Over it soared the sound of flesh hitting flesh, a slap across the face that I could not see. “You sound like a cliché,” she said. “Need I remind you that we have a mission here? That we are working on something bigger, more important than your own sorry need to inspire fear? We are trying to change the
world
here. We’re close to unlimited access to all the money we need, and a soldier with an ambassador parent. You know what a gold mine that’ll be? And every step you take to endanger the mission is a step for which you will have to answer when the Master returns. And he is coming. He is coming
soon
, and he is not pleased with either of you.”

I still couldn’t see anything beyond the white light of a fluorescent bulb. I couldn’t even move my eyes.

“Is he really coming?” It was the first voice again. The first woman. She sounded scared, terrified even, and I heard a catch in her throat that I’d heard dozens of times before while I sat through countless discussions of archaic British literature.

Her name is Sondra Lewis. She was my professor at Smytheville, and she’s one of the bad guys. She hurt me.
I tried to move my eyes, to confirm what I already knew, and I failed.
Flow, electricity, flow!

“Yes,” snapped the third voice. The one I didn’t recognize. “He’s coming soon, and he’s not happy.”

The voice was feminine, but hoarse. Throaty. Like the woman had smoked at least a pack a day for a dozen years. She paused, but then continued at a much more crisp pace. “But so much of the damage can still be undone. We can use this one for parts. Her battery, her pump—they’re still in good shape. And we have so much more research to share. Look at what the doctor’s done in his time with us. He had one lab up and running; he’ll have the new one ready soon, as long as we don’t mess things up again.” She sounded hopeful, but I could also sense fear.

“But why are we doing this to her, if we’re just using her for parts? Why the restoration? Why won’t you let the doctor dissect her now?”

There was another slap, a louder one, and Strong groaned in pain. “You know I won’t take that forever,” he growled.

“Yes, you will,” the third voice said. “And you will remember who is in charge here, and who will take the biggest fall when the Master gets here and sees this mess.”

“He wouldn’t…”

“Hush. Yes, he would. The agent whose oversight caused this dilemma has been terminated. You know that. Now, would you like to save your own worthless lives?” She paused, and then continued even though there was no verbal response. “Yes, I thought so. So. We’re clear. And let’s be clear on this, too. We are restoring this girl simply because if her parents see her in the shape she was in prior to her arrival here, there’s no way they’ll think we can reverse the process.”

“Why do we care?” said Sondra. “We’re just going to…”

“Hush,” said the other woman. “We’ve said too much already. There are too many unknowns.”

A chill went down my spine, and something inside me shuddered.
They’re going to kill me.

I’d known it, on some level, for so long, but hearing it loud and clear while trapped and paralyzed on a surgical table? That was the icing on the cake.

I had to get out of there. Deep inside me, deep within the pit of a stomach I no longer knew for sure I possessed, a seed of fury sprouted roots. As I listened to my captors, it began to grow. And with it, I grew thirsty for revenge.

“Now,” the angry voice continued. “Will one of you please check on her and confirm she’s still functional? We need her awake soon if we’re going to get anywhere with the parents.”

Strong’s face appeared below the white light, close to my own. I lay still, silent, because I had to. I willed my eyes not to move, not to give away the fact that I was awake and aware. It worked.

There was cold pressure on my bare chest. A stethoscope. I wondered what he was listening for, since I knew there was no heart beating in my chest.

“She’s humming,” he said after a moment. “It’s faint, but it’s there. The heart pump is still operational. She looks a lot better, and smells better, too.” He smiled over me. “Good job, Jo,” he said. He patted my cheek. The touch of his hand on my face caused my skin to crawl as though with maggots.

Kiss my ass, scumbag,
I thought.
If I could move, I would hurt you. Doesn’t matter how big you are.

“Good,” said the unknown woman. “Let her charge a bit more. We want her awake, but not too strong.”

“I don’t think she’s discovered yet how strong she actually can be.”

“Then let’s keep it that way, Adam. We’re almost done with Jo. She has nothing left to offer us, except that one crucial connection.”

“And the boy? What shall we do with him?” Strong’s voice rose with excitement, and I wondered if that was the only part of him that rose. My face twitched as I almost let it smile. Luckily I stopped myself in time. The paralysis neared its end. It was time to amp up my willpower and self-control.

The woman snorted. “You’ll have your fun with him. Don’t worry. He won’t leave this place alive.”

“Yes, Martha,” said Sondra and Strong in unison, and somehow I didn’t think they were having any fun.

That was fine with me, though. I wasn’t, either. But I was starting to feel like maybe, just maybe, I could.

Design Docs, Iteration 4

Hydration is key to maintenance. To keep subjects fresh and functional, we need to keep fluid flowing into them at all times they are not in use. Removal from hydration source causes rot-like effects as cells dry out and wither away. Dehydration can, to some extent, be reversed, but some damage is irreparable. Therefore, subjects should not be away from hydrating fluids for more than three hours at a time. Anything longer than that and they will begin to smell, attracting undue attention, and losing their glow of life.

“B
ring them over here,” the woman called Martha said.

An hour had passed, judging by the ticking of the clock that hung somewhere in the room. I had, for a while, been able to wiggle my toes, imperceptibly I hoped, though I was somewhat sure I heard the crinkle of dry leaves every time I moved. I could no longer feel anything but the flow of electricity into my body; I was back in sensory deprivation.

“Here,” she said, from close beside me. “Their voices will help her wake up.”

I heard the squeak of a door opening on rusty hinges, then the clickity-clack of high heels against a hard, tile floor.

“No. That can’t be my Jo.” That was my father. I heard him stifle a gasp, and my nonexistent heart began to break.

“Let me go. I have to see her.” That was my mother. She sounded calmer than my father.

More shuffling steps. Then slowly, cautiously, my mother’s face floated into my field of view. It took every ounce of self-control not to reach out to her. I wanted her so badly I could taste her perfume in my barren mouth. But I knew I had to play it cool, to keep my cards close to the chest while our captors were nearby.

My mother’s eyes trailed across my withered body. Her hand hovered above my cheek, my forehead. She turned and looked away, I assumed at my father. “I’m afraid to touch her,” she said. “She looks so fragile. Like she could blow away.”

“It’s not her,” my father said. I couldn’t see him, but I could picture him, standing with his legs spread and his arms crossed on his chest. It was how he always stood when stubbornly opposing an argument. Even when he knew he was beaten. “You’ve got a girl here who maybe once looked a bit like Jo, but it’s not her. Look at her! No hair, gray skin! How can you expect me to believe…”

My mother turned back to me. This time, she focused on my eyes. She moved her face closer to mine, wrinkling her nose only once against the smell I knew must have burned inside her nostrils. Soon, she was almost nose-to-nose (had I still had a nose, that is), forehead-to-forehead with me. I lay still, battling against every impulse to move that sparked within my body.

She stared into my eyes. Her own eyes searched, pouring deep inside me, looking for a hint of her little girl.

She found me.