Chapter 32
CONSEQUENCES
I don’t cry.
Not when I receive the summons during dinner.
Not when Vance and Ralston drag me out of evening lectures in front of everyone.
And certainly not when I’m dropped on the ground in Doctor Carr’s exam room like trash.
My knees slam on the pristine tiles, metallic scent flooding my senses instantly.
I cough, stifling the scream I’d much rather be emitting.
“Why do you think you’re here?” he asks, not looking up from his notes. I keep my mouth shut. I don’t have an answer that won’t make things worse.
There’s always a right answer, but it isn’t always an honest one.
I cast my eyes toward Mister M, who looks painfully amused, tapping his leg in a cadence that is eerily similar to the rhythm I stumbled over earlier.
“Don’t look at me, little star.” He wags a finger at me. “This is all your own doing.”
Carr stands. He opens a drawer and retrieves a silver tray. Two vials. One syringe. A long metal rod I don’t recognize. I’ve been poked, prodded, injected, sedated, sliced open and stitched back together, but I’ve never seen a device like that.
“Sequence ten,” he says plainly. “Complete lapse in form. Two missteps. One extended pause. A slip-up like that in front of the board would have been devastating.”
“I fixed it—”
“You broke immersion,” Carr interrupts. “You reminded me you were human.”
He says it like it’s a crime. Like the only thing they can’t seem to control is the very thing wrong with me.
If that’s true, maybe I deserve the punishment.
“I am human.”
“You’ll feel better once we’ve corrected that.”
He crosses the room, motioning me to the exam table.
I move on shaky legs—not fast enough. Vance is on me in a second, depositing me on the table like I weigh nothing.
Two med techs buzz around me, falling into a routine they’ve no doubt done countless times.
Containment cuffs on, restraints fastened, sleeves rolled. In seconds, my legs are immobile.
“This won’t take long.” Doctor Carr flips my arm roughly, positioning the needle over my already scarred skin. Ghosts of past bruises color the crook of my elbow.
The sedative is darker than usual, almost gray. It burns like a line of fire when it enters my bloodstream. Quick. Efficient.
Awful.
I sputter; the room goes sideways. Everything goes dark even though my retinas are blinded by the surgical lights above.
Liquid fire lights its way down my veins.
Someone—Mister M—I think, grips my shoulders, forcing me back on the bed.
He runs a hand along my cheek, too gentle for the motion to belong to him.
He laughs softly, moving to trace the scar at my temple.
“Don’t worry, little star, we’ll put you back together again.”
My blood ices over. A thick static floods the room, softening my edges until I can’t tell what’s real anymore. I wait, but the welcome embrace of sedation doesn’t come. My vision doubles, triples, spins. But I don’t pass out.
I don’t pass out.
Maybe I’m not supposed to.
My body convulses violently, then freezes.
I can’t move.
I can’t scream.
I can’t even blink.
Oh my god.
“Paralytic engaged,” Carr murmurs, dropping my arm back to the bed. “Subject appears to be conscious.” He turns back to the table, and I think I can almost see him grabbing the second vial in my periphery. Or maybe he’s not moving. Maybe nothing’s moving.
I can feel everything. The light still burns my now unfocused, unblinking eyes. My fingernails are frozen, permanently dug into my palms deep enough to draw blood. Pain seems to be the only thing the drug hasn’t drowned out. That and Mister M’s hot breath against my neck as he looms over me.
“She’s conscious, all right.” Mister M runs his hand along my cheek again. “I can see it. She’s trying not to cry.” He laughs. It’s light, as if this form of torture is a delight to him. Carr ignores him, pressing the metal rod to the base of my neck.
The world explodes behind my eyes.
Fireworks. A million colors surge wildly in my skull, leaving pain and chaos in their wake. Memories flicker, stretch, distort, and vanish too quickly to digest. Glass raining down, distant laughing, a uniform stained red, the metallic taste of iron, flowers in a garden.
Nothing.
Everything fades.
I don’t know how long it lasted. I don’t know what he stripped from me. I don’t remember when Mister M left. All I know is by the time it’s over, I can’t tell where the pain ends and I begin.
The paralytic wears like thawing ice, returning me to my body in shards. When Doctor Carr finally dismisses the techs, I feel like I could sleep for a century and still wake up exhausted.
Carr unhooks the monitors one by one, coiling their cords and setting them gently on the trays, as if neatness could pass for mercy. “Poise,” he says low, soothing like a lullaby.
The pulse monitor stills; he wipes dust from its edge with careful fingers. “Obedience.”
I watch in my periphery as he lifts my limp arm, sliding the containment cuff off and replacing it with my daytime monitor. “Purpose.” It clicks shut around my wrist; a sound without sensation.
“Three words,” he murmurs. “That’s all it takes to make the chaos stop. The body forgets pain when it remembers purpose.”
The pain isn’t gone.
His thumb drags along the recalibration scar at my temple, slow and deliberate, pressing just hard enough to sting.
“You were made to be perfect, 214. To be calm. To be obedient. To show the world what beauty looks like when it’s controlled.”
I try to sort the words in my brain, but they muddle, dissolving into vapor.
Doctor Carr studies the steadiness of my pulse, the tremorless still of my fingers. “All better,” he says softly, running a gloved hand along my cheek, brushing away the streak of blood near my mouth. “You truly are one of my finest works.”
My throat tightens around the breath still locked in my chest.
Carr straightens, smoothing his sleeve. “Poise. Obedience. Purpose. You’ll remember now, won’t you?”
The mantra works its way under my skin, words stark against the blur of my thoughts. Static consumes me, burning everything but the three words I’ve been taught to live by.
My eyes fix on the steel panel of the ceiling.
In it, I see me.
At least, what should be me.
The girl in the reflection is hardly familiar: blood on her teeth, bruises beneath her eyes, irises dulled from months in shadow, even though it couldn’t have lasted more than a handful of hours.
Enforcers move to wheel me out; I can’t bring myself to look at them.
I keep my eyes on the girl above, wondering if it could truly be me.
“Sleep now, 214,” Doctor Carr says, smoothing my hair back. “The world’s a kinder place when you stop fighting it.”
The sting of the lie is the last thing I remember as I plunge into darkness.