I lose track of the days. I haven’t seen my father since the first day, when Dr. Albatur attempted to lift knowledge from my skin. It had started as a tingling sensation on my bicep, a tool shaped like a hammer but electronic, emitting tiny red sparks. Gradually the tingle had kindled to a burn, then an all-out inferno on my arm, the skin lasered off layer by layer as he gathered the samples of my epidermis needed to examine in his many tests. The next day, my other arm. The next day, my back. The patches are treated with narruf gel when I am returned to my white-walled cell, and every time the attending whitecoat applies the thin layer of goo to my burned skin, I think of Dr. Adibuah, the day he’d applied it to my neck. The day I’d seen the philax. The day this all began. I wonder if he knows I’m here, if he knows what they’re doing. Maybe he’s dead too. Or maybe he’s one of the faces watching coolly from the window.
But my father knows. And I know he’s not coming. And the pain of every cell of my skin they steal is even worse with the knowledge that he knows. My father knows. And still I am alone.
Dr. Jain will be in for me soon. The days blur together, but I was given sustenance through my intravenous some time ago, and they usually come to retrieve me a few hours later. That allows enough time for the morning drugs to wear off, helped by the tube food midday. They want me alert for their evening experiments. My reactions must be clear and observable, not artificially enhanced or stunted in any way. This is the worst part of the day, my body weak, but my mind awake. I sit like a stone in the lonely white room, wondering if the Faloii have left for the Isii, if they’ve already convinced the planet to swallow us up. If I could see Alma again, maybe I could try to get through to her, break whatever chain has tethered her to the Council.
I think the same thoughts over and over again. Escape. My father. My mother. The Faloii. War. Dr. Albatur. Escape. My father. They give me only enough liquefied food to keep me going. They want me weak.
The door hums open.
“Awake,” Dr. Jain says, his smirk ever present. “Good. Today will be a little different.”
“Different,” I repeat. My fists are already clenched. They keep my limbs tethered to the cot. I might choke him if I had half the chance.
“Yes. We’ve finished with your dermis and epidermis.” He studies his slate. “Today we’ll be moving on to your bones.”
“I’m not Faloii,” I spit. “Nothing in my bones is going to help you. And theirs won’t either. I won’t let you.”
He doesn’t have to say what his eyes express: that I’m not in any position to make threats.
“You don’t have to let me go,” I say. “But I need to talk to the Council. They need to know what they’re doing has consequences. If we start a war, it’s not something we can win.”
“War,” he says. “You don’t know the meaning of that word.”
“I don’t,” I say. “Neither do you! You’re younger than my parents. You were probably a baby when they left the Origin Planet.”
He squints. “I don’t need to remember it to know where I belong.”
“Maybe not,” I say, desperate. “But that’s not the point. The point is, what you think you know about war isn’t what’s going to happen here. I’ve seen the drones. This isn’t that. The whole planet will turn against us.”
“It’s always been against us,” he says, and returns his eyes to the screen of his slate.
“That’s such a stupid thing to believe!” I cry. “Do you not even think about what he tells you before imagining yourself as a victim? Stars!”
I hang my head when he doesn’t respond. “Just let me talk to the Council,” I say. “They need to know more than just what he tells them. Does he not have to prove his theories? Isn’t that science?”
He stares at me, his lips pursed, his dark eyes clouded. He’s hearing me, I think, and my pulse quickens. He understands.
“This isn’t about science,” he says, putting his slate away. He’s reaching for the cot. “It’s about power.”
I jerk away, the clang of my bonds echoing in the small stark room. I hear the snarl rise out of my throat and can’t recognize the sound of it as myself. The beast in the white coat takes me out into the hall, away to where they will prod at my anatomy as if it is I who is the monster. I keep snarling. I can’t stop.
When I’m returned to the white room, the snarls have been drained from me by a series of syringes. I lie limp and sweaty on the cot, near unconsciousness. I hadn’t even bothered looking for my father as Dr. Albatur prodded my bones. I had expected the Head of the Council to continue pontificating about the future of N’Terra, but when the needles came out, his mouth was sealed into a thin line, the weak blue of his irises turning shiny and hard. I don’t see a future. When my eyes are open all I see is the vicious white of the room; when they’re closed, nothing but faint patterns of stars on the backs of my eyelids.
Dr. Jain is there in the room, staring down at his slate, swiping through what must be data gathered from my anatomy. The light of the screen glows in his square spectacles, and he takes on the beast-like quality again. Glowing eyes. A smirk. He barely looks up when the door hums open.
It’s Alma. The sight of her expressionless face floating above her white coat is like another needle plunging through my skin and into my breastbone. I can’t take it, her round eyes empty when they pass over my face. Has she been coming in and out of my room as I slept these days away? The idea that she has seen me held prisoner day after day and done nothing makes me want to die.
“The tranquilizer?” Dr. Jain says, still not looking up but addressing his words to Alma.
“Yes, doctor.”
“Good, right on time. You may administer it now. Her vitals are stable enough.”
“Yes, doctor.”
She approaches my cot, the syringe gleaming on a small silver tray. I don’t even try to twist away, as I had the last two nights when drugs were administered. What’s the point now?
The hands of the girl who had been my best friend are cool on my clammy skin. I remember when she’d removed my intravenous after I’d been lost in the jungle, so long ago, when my reappearance meant relief for her. Her fingers had been deft and expert in their movements, as always. She seems to be having some trouble now, fiddling with the port where the syringe goes in. Then a pinch. Not inside my vein. On my wrist.
I crack open one eye. I don’t have the energy for both. The syringe is there in her fingers, but the liquid inside it is clear—not the blue substance I know to be the tranquilization drug. Is this new? I force open both eyes, afraid that they have invented some new superserum that will immobilize me even further. But then I see Alma’s eyes.
They’re hers again. The flat, lifeless stare of the last few days falls away, the disguise put aside. Her two fingers are still at my wrist where she’d pinched me to get my attention.
I’m wide awake now.
She flashes her eyes down to the syringe in her other hand and, darting her eyes in the direction of Dr. Jain, gives one quick nod. Then she lifts the syringe to the intravenous port, fits the needle in, and injects me with whatever is in the syringe.
I feel it immediately. Not the deadening effect of drugs but the sweep of energy and vitality usually associated with a vitamin compound. She’s given me the opposite of a tranquilizer: she’s given me some kind of liquid energy.
“She shouldn’t give you too much trouble,” Dr. Jain says, but his voice is distracted, his eyes still on the slate’s screen.
“None at all, doctor,” Alma says in that dead voice. But her gaze holds mine, as bright as before. Now she closes her eyes and tilts her head ever so slightly. I know her meaning: Be asleep.
I close my eyes, my heart pounding. I know I need to get it under control in case Dr. Jain checks my pulse. I focus on breathing deeply, slowly, even as the burst of energy from the vitamin compound rushes through my circulatory system. Alma, I think, hope taking off in my stomach like a flock of oscree.
“All done, doctor,” she says. With my eyes closed, I feel her move away from my bedside and make her way toward the door. “She is unconscious.”
“Good work,” Dr. Jain says, and his slate case snaps shut. The door hums open. I pray that he will go, that he won’t bother to come touch my wrist, my chest. His voice is eager: there must be some results from my data that he wants to go chatter with Dr. Albatur about. Or some other specimen that they have imprisoned nearby that he can’t wait to go prod with another set of needles. Either way, I am forgotten as they leave together.
I remain still. I have no idea what is to come, but Alma has a plan. Her eyes were on fire with it. Now all I have to do is wait.