The Hollow (Rose of the Dawn Series Book 2) (5 page)

A nurse stands beside my bed. I’m back in
my gown. I’ve been put in my gown.

“What’s going
on?” I can’t move again. My limbs are numb.

She isn’t the
original nurse, but she’s similar. Everything’s white.

“Are you ready?”
She asks, inclining my bed with the touch of a switch on the wall.

“Ready for
what?”

Without
answering, she tips me forward, her arms scoop me up from behind. She helps me
into a narrow wheelchair, but without the wheels. A pocket of air holds it up
and as I am let go, it drops a bit and then rebounds. It hovers a few feet off
the ground. I hear a faint humming sound, but it may be inside my head. I can’t
tell. I’m a bit fuzzy.

I want to rub my
forehead, but my arms won’t budge. I’m able to shake my head, but it only seems
to make things more of a blur.

“Where are you
taking me?” The nurse doesn’t have to push anything. She doesn’t say anything
either. She walks ahead while I’m forced to follow in the chair.

The corridor is
long and symmetrical. The doors are all closed. Streaks of light break into the
hallway, breaking the monotony.

I blink my eyes,
pressing them shut for a few seconds.

Cold. Doors
closed. Ripped plastic cushions and rusty metal doors. Mold and mildew creeping
up the grey walls and across the ceiling. Lights flicker. Crumbling walls and
wood-paneled baseboards. Rusted nail heads, exposed.

I blink the
hallucination away in time to see a dirty and ragged doll lying on the floor. The
nurse kicks it out of the way. Another isolated trip down the hall. I don’t
hear anything. Not even the nurse’s footsteps as she treads across the linoleum
floor. A door at the end of the hall gets closer, though we’re moving so slow.
Slow motion.

We get to the
end of the corridor and the nurse swipes a card and types in a code to a wall
panel by a large metal gate. It looks like another fence. Like the one
enclosing the stairwell. The gate opens and slams closed behind me.

She takes a
right and we’re in a wide-open space with an oval desk in the middle. The desk
is surrounded and encapsulated by glass. Two other nurses sit behind the desk.
Dressed in white. All the same. They don’t look up as I float behind, passing
into another hallway and through another large room with lots of windows. A
breezeway. We travel around in an arc. The room is flooded with brightness. My
eyes close. Too much sunlight. We’re going in a circle and I’m dizzy.

I open my eyes.

White walls.
Bright lights in a line overhead. I can hear the faint buzzing of the
fluorescent lights. Side to side I shift my eyes. Shiny metal chairs outside
each room. Lots of sunlight. Warm.

The nurse stops
in front of a door. My chair stops a few feet behind her. The door we are in
front of is much like all the rest we’ve just passed, but this one is painted
black.

The nurse puts
her palm up against it. Then pulls it away.

“Come in,
please,” a pleasant sounding woman says from the other side of the door.

It opens. The
nurse hasn’t touched anything again. She steps out of the way and I pass
through a double-walled doorframe and glide in on my chair.

The woman from
the morgue stands in front of me. The doctor.

“Have a nice day,”
she says and the nurse leaves the room.

Don’t leave me!
I want to
scream, but don’t get the chance before the door closes behind me.

“Rosamund
Campbell.”

I don’t say anything.
My skin tingles. My hands are clammy. I’m getting feeling back in my legs, but
not nearly enough for me to move. Not enough for me to be able to run away.

Something about
this room doesn’t feel right. It’s too warm. There are too many windows. It’s
bright, though there’s no sun. It’s gray outside. The room is shaped almost octagonally.
There is a dark mahogany table and chairs with lion claws on their feet off to
the left. An Oriental rug goes right up to the fireplace, which is behind the
desk. Red and gold are vivid in the pattern.

Branches in the
room. Broken glass. Roots crawl down the fireplace and grow up through the
thinning edges of the rug.

Goosebumps go up
and down my arms.

“You are safe
here,” the doctor tells me. She walks from the fireplace to the windows and
looks out. Drapes are pulled to the sides and tied with sashes of the same
muted color. The woman isn’t tall, but the black high heels add to her stature.
She wears a black skirt and matching black jacket. A thin, red scarf is wrapped
around her neck.

“Safe from
what?” I ask, my voice cracks.

“Based on what
we know about you and your family history—” she begins and moves behind the
desk. She sits.

“My family?”

“I’d say we got
you in time.” She looks down at the file on her desk. She is average looking
despite being visibly old. Her hair is cropped in a chin-length, dirty-blonde
bob and wrinkles split her skin. She hasn’t been AR’d.

“In time for
what?”

“Forgive me, let
me start by introducing myself. I am Doctor Flint,” she looks up, but doesn’t
get up. She smiles. Her teeth are long. Sharp. “Any more time with those fools
in Aegis and you’d have been AR’d to death.”

“They wouldn’t
do that. They weren’t going to do that,” I lie. I’ve gone from one medical
prison to another and now just await my sentence.

“What did you
think, that they were your friends? James and Patience Jameson. They weren’t
there to help you.”

“How do you
know–”

“They were
friends of The Hollow. Very greedy ones.”

She doesn’t elaborate.

“They were
against ARs. They wouldn’t do that to me, even if they weren’t my friends.”

“Rose Campbell,
I thought you were smarter than that. Weren’t you taught anything?”

I have nothing
to say.

“You would’ve
been sold to the highest bidder had you remained,” Dr. Flint continues. “It’s a
good thing we were looking out for you. Watching out for you.”

“You shot me!
Why?”

“One of my
attendants did. It was just protocol.”

“It was protocol
to shoot me?”

“It was protocol
to aim for non-essential organs. You were never in any real danger. You’re
already healed.”

“Do you want me
to thank you?” Anger swells from the pit of my stomach. This Dr. Flint makes it
sound like I should be grateful I wasn’t wounded more. I’m not sure thanks are
in order.

“No, Dear. You
don’t have to thank anyone.” Her smile is thin. Her jaw is set and she grinds
her molars. They make a low popping sound. I can see them through her skin.

“What are you
going to do with me?”

“That’s why I
had you brought here. Our facility–”

“You mean The
Hollow,” I interrupt. Dr. Flint doesn’t look pleased.

“I don’t know to
what you’re referring, Dear. Whatever name you’ve come across is neither approved
nor acknowledged.” She smoothes down her skirt as she stands and moves around
the desk toward me. “Rejuvenation Industries.”

“What are you
planning on doing to me?”

Dr. Flint
doesn’t respond and it frightens me. She’s hiding a lot.

“What are you
going to do? What do you need me for?”

She smiles.
Still doesn’t answer.

“Answer me!” I
am able to lift my arm and it jerks up before slamming back down on my lap.

Dr. Flint’s face
reddens.

“Please,” I
plead now. “Are you going to do the same thing to me as the others? Will I get
a letter and a number, too?”

Dr. Flint slams
her tablet down on the desk. She walks over to me.

“You understand
I could have had you killed.” Dr. Flint squeezes my face between her cold
fingers. Her breath is acidic. It smells strong and stale. My eyes tear as her
fingernails pierce my cheeks and blood trickles down, dripping onto my gown. It
doesn’t stop her and we both know it doesn’t matter. It will heal.

“What are you
going to do to me?” I ask, my voice trembles as air pushes through my lips, my
face still held in her hand.

She let’s go and
walks back to her desk. She smoothes her skirt down again and sits.

“Harvest cells.
Mitochondria, cytoplasm, nuclei, and transition to organ implant,” she reads
from something on her desk.

“That’s what
you’ll do to me? What about my own organs?”

Without hesitation,
this time Dr. Flint answers, “we will remove them and regrow parts of them for
implantation. For the advancement of science, of course.”

I think I may be
sick.

“And when we
replace them,” she continues. “We will see whether you are capable of rejecting
or accepting the new organ.”

The room is
contracting. It’s so stuffy in here I almost can’t breathe.

The phone on her
desk lights up and she answers it.

“When will you
start?” I ask, knowing she isn’t paying attention to me. I’m dizzy.

“At once,” she
says, but I don’t know if it is directed at me or the phone.

“I’m sorry,
what?” I try to gain enough control of my twitching arms to be able to move my
legs, but I’m completely helpless. Vulnerable and scared and outraged.

“We can start
today.” She states, putting the phone down on her desk.

“What will you
do?”

“Whatever I
want,” she counters.

“Wait. No. You
can’t.” I’ve got to keep her talking. I’ve got to stall her. If I have just a
little more time I’ll be able to move my legs.

“Oh I can. And I
will.”

I’ve made a
mistake baiting her.

“We will start
slow. A few biopsies and cultures. We will monitor your brain for wave action
and reaction. General potential.”

“My brain? Will
you remove my brain as well?” It’s like my talk with JJ, but this feels so much
more wrong. So much more out of my control.

I wiggle my
toes.

“Eventually,”
she reaches back into her desk or under her desk and puts something into her
pocket. I don’t see what.

“Why?”

“As your brain
has the same genetic code as the rest of your organs, it will have to come out
to be studied.”

“Why?” I
persist. My lower legs cramp and I think, given a few more minutes, I may be
able to move them.

“Above all else,
Rejuvenation Industries values significant scientific advancement.”

“Would you keep
me alive?”

Dr. Flint gets
up again and moves back around the desk.

“We wouldn’t
have to—”

“But—”

“But if we could
sustain your brain without you—”

“Without keeping
me alive. If you could do that, you wouldn’t need me at all.”

“We wouldn’t have
to kill you, Miss Campbell. We could replace your brain and you could
assimilate a new one.”

“So you’d just
AR my brain then.” A tingle travels up my thighs. If I can move out of this
chair and to the door, how far could I get?

“We’d download
all of your current thoughts and all of the memories you have stored in your
brain onto a microchip. We’d then wipe your brain clean and remove it,
replacing it with quite a bit of matter and the chip. Your entire code would be
exactly the same.” She stares out the window.

“I don’t want to
do this!” I am able to hold one arm with the other. The one I’m holding
twitches almost uncontrollably.

“You don’t have
a choice. You are the property of Rejuvenation Industries.”

“I am not. No
one owns me and no one ever will. You may have captured me, but no one will
ever–”

Dr. Flint darts
from the window to my chair. She grabs my arm and pulls it out straight. It
hurts as she turns my arm outward. She points at a dark black tattoo on my
inner, upper arm.

“Do not be
mistaken, Miss Campbell.” Spit from her lips spatters my face. “I will do
whatever I want to you, whenever I want to do it.”

I am stunned
speechless.

“I do own you,
Miss Campbell.”

She reaches into
her lab coat pocket and pulls out a syringe.

“You don’t need
to do that,” I try to lean away from her.

“Of course I do,
Miss Campbell. I need to make sure you understand who is in charge here.” She
is less than delicate as she jerks up my gown. I swing my arms around without
any direction. My legs are still too heavy to move. I hit her across the head
and on the side of her face. My arms won’t stop swinging. Dr. Flint ducks her
head, her fingers press into my leg as she stabs me in the thigh. I try to push
her off, but despite my protests, she injects the syringe.