They fabricate another collar. Once it’s around my neck, four guards escort me to the clinic, which is pointless overkill now that I know Mookie’s at risk. I guess they don’t know he’s the only reason I’m here.
A wide swathe of blood covers the front of my tunic, the wet fabric sticking to me like a second skin.
As we enter one of the examination rooms, the autodoc stationed inside comes to life. It takes a couple of goes to scan my retina past my swelling eye sockets. It shines a light from one of its fingertips into my left eye, then the right. It orders me to stand while it watches me with its lenses clicking quietly, before telling me to sit.
The autodoc’s fingers are cold and hard as it pinches my nose. Its hand actuators whir for a short moment, then it snaps my nose back into place with a shock of pain and a burst of speckled white across my vision.
It sprays antiseptic on my wounds without bothering to warn me. The spray stings in my eyes only slightly less than in the splits across my lip and the bridge of my nose.
“Apply ice to minimize swelling,” it says, synthesized voice too bright for these circumstances.
Yeah, I’m sure the guards are prepping an ice pack for me right now.
“These painkillers and antibiotics will help with the healing process.” The autodoc’s arm folds backward at the elbow. Segments of the forearm’s shell split apart, leaving an empty hollow wide enough for a person to fit their arm inside. I shift back from the autodoc, but a guard is there. She pushes me forward and keeps a hand on the back of my neck.
I sigh, and slide my left arm into the gap. The mechanism in the autodoc’s upper arm ticks and whirs, then three needles emerge. Green light stripes across my arm and I turn my head just as the needles plunge into my skin. I chew the inside of my cheek to stop myself from making noise.
I pull my arm free and the autodoc turns away, apparently done. I stand and pitch to one side, then right myself. The guard shifts her hand from my neck to my arm, the android’s metal fingers pressing into the fresh puncture wounds.
The painkillers kick in and the various stinging and aching parts of my face fade as the guard leads me from the clinic.
* * *
“Strip.”
We’re in a small tiled room with a drain in the floor, but no showerheads or taps on the wall. The envoy blocks the exit.
There’s a squick as my bloodstained tunic comes away from my skin, and a wet slap when I drop it to the floor. I take off my bra next, then peel off my pants and underwear together.
The guard crosses the room and kicks the discarded clothes aside.
She walks back to the door and thumps one of the tiles. It swings open, revealing a coiled length of bright-blue hose. Before I can speak she sprays me in the face. The water is so cold it forces the air from my lungs and I pant and sputter as I struggle to breathe. I hang my head and hug myself as she runs the blast of water over my body. Looking down, I watch the whorls of diluted red swim toward the drain.
All I wanted to do was save Mookie; get inside Homan, find him, and leave. I wasn’t planning to kill everyone who had a hand in running this place, but plans change . . .
“Turn around,” she yells over the roar of the hose.
The water hits my back with enough force to push me toward the wall. Soon she turns off the water and I stand shivering while she replaces the hose.
“Alright, prisoner, come with me.”
“Are you going to give me a towel?”
The woman grins.
“What about something to wear?” I ask.
“I knew I forgot something,” she says, then she closes a pair of handcuffs around my wrists. “If you wanted clothes, you shouldn’t have gotten blood all over your uniform.”
* * *
She pulls me by the short chain between the cuffs, as though I’m an animal struggling against its leash. My feet slap wetly across the floor. Long after that sound has dried, water drips from my hair and rolls down my back.
We reach the cells of the central building and walk past the large group units to the small, solitary rooms. She pushes me into one of these bare cells—a two-meter cube, every surface the same white polyplastic, glowing diffusely.
I don’t see the guard work any controls, but a slit opens in the ceiling and a chrome hook protrudes through the gap.
“I’m not doing this,” I say; “get me Rathnam.”
The guard ignores me, and after a few seconds the far wall of the cell comes to life with an image of Mookie’s face. It’s only when I see the light on his collar blinking that I realize it’s a live feed. She doesn’t remind me what will happen to Mookie if I misbehave, she doesn’t make any threats, she just says, “Rathnam will see you when he’s ready, and not a moment sooner.”
“You can’t do this,” I say, but even I hear the lack of conviction in my voice.
She grabs my arms and lifts them until the chain of my cuffs is over the hook’s curl. There’s a ticking sound overhead as the hook retracts, pulling my arms and lifting me up until I can barely touch the floor with the tips of my toes.
The guard exits the cell, leaving only silence behind.
* * *
My heart beats hard, struggling to push blood up to my hands. I can’t feel my fingers, can barely feel the cuffs digging into me, hard metal against bone.
The cell’s walls, floor, and ceiling dim so slowly that at first I’m not sure it’s happening. Soon I’m in darkness.
My breathing sounds ragged, too loud. It scrapes my ears. My pulse thrums against my collar. My head rocks with the pulse, forward and back on the tide of my blood.
“Let me out!” I yell, but the words dissipate on the walls, refuse even to echo back at me.
The pain in my shoulders switches from sharp to dull at intervals. I drop my head and hang from the hook, let the cuffs carve deeper into skin.
I close my eyes—black.
I open them—black; inky black that churns with impossible shades of dark. I see movement somewhere beneath me. I know the cube is two meters a side, but the moving shape is much farther away than that. It drifts and shifts as it approaches—soft, gray, with four white spots.
“Ocho?” I say, picturing those spots as her little paws.
I hear her maow, but she’s not there. The darkness folds and swims. I close my eyes, but it’s the same.
* * *
I jolt awake, screaming. The scream rattles my vocal chords, but I can’t hear it. The Emperor’s Requiem fills my head, skull vibrating with the deep tones of the dirge.
They’ve pulled the hook up higher now. Even stretched, my toes don’t reach the floor, and I sway without purchase.
I shake against the hook in the roof and pain shoots up my arms as the blood returns to the muscles.
The walls of the cell begin to glow. The light builds, grows, consumes me; I look down, away from the walls, and watch my feet dissolve, bleached by light. I close my eyes against the bright; pinks and reds flash across my eyelids. I scrunch my eyes tight, but still the light burns through.
I yell for help, not knowing who I expect to come.
No one does.
The light holds me, refuses to let go.
The Emperor’s Requiem ends and I hear sobbing. The sound falls away as I stop to take a breath. Just as I begin to yell, the song starts over.
* * *
It’s dark again. Too dark. For a moment I think I’m dreaming; I think I’m dead.
I’m not, and I don’t know how I feel about that.
My body shakes uncontrollably. The cold is so harsh my skin feels like it’s burning.
There’s a constant ticking, and I wonder which part of my body could make that sound. I’ve grown used to every noise this meat engine makes—the squirt of swallowing saliva, the bubbling groan of my empty stomach, the steady hiss of my lungs, the too-slow beat of my heart, the splash of piss on my feet. This noise is something else.
The floor rises beneath me, presses against the balls of my feet, then against my heels. For a second I think I’ll be crushed, but then I realize: I’m being lowered.
I glance up but can’t see the hook; I can’t see anything. I shake my arms and hear the chain rattle. I pull and I yank and I start to cry, then I lift the chain from the hook and collapse.
I hit the ground and feel my heart stop. I hear one beat and then I wait, and I wait, feeling an empty-headed numbness falling—then it beats again. My head sputters and I rest it against the floor.
I curl up, trying to find solace from the cold. My arms are crossed over my chest, my knees are drawn close. I press my lips together to stop them shuddering. I bite down to stop my teeth from chattering.
I wait for sleep, or death.