Chapter Thirty-Five
Romy
H ow long have I been here?
Long enough for Seth to shove a bed pan under my butt a few times to let me relieve myself. I’m unnerved by the fact he hasn’t just put in a catheter. Not that I want that. It’s just stressful that he won’t unstrap me to use the bathroom but also won’t make it easy on himself and everyone involved by catheterizing me.
Each time the door opens, Seth, with his auburn hair and trimmed beard, comes in to check vitals or run tests. Now that he’s not violating me, I’m growing used to his visits.
The door opens again, but this time, it’s a different man.
Doc Junior.
A tidal wave of nerves washes over me, making me shudder, tugging at my restraints. My skin burns from the tight leather cutting into my flesh. Sores are beginning to form.
“Hello, Miss Langston,” Doc Junior says cheerfully. “Long time, no see.”
I’m able to flip him off, which only makes him laugh. He’s not put off by the gesture whatsoever.
“Ready for some therapy?” he asks, eyebrow arching. “Or shall I help you pee first?”
“Let me out of this bed,” I whisper, voice brittle and dry. “Please.”
“Not happening.” He comes to stand beside me and studies me as though I’m a moth under a microscope. “Do you know what day it is?”
“Where is Kaitlyn?” I demand. “Take me to her.”
He sighs heavily. “We’ll get nothing accomplished if you answer my questions with questions.”
“I guess we’re at an impasse then,” I hiss, pinning him with a furious glare.
He’s quiet for a beat and then nods. “Fine. Kaitlyn is undergoing some of our more formal therapies to prime her for something new and advanced we’ve been working on.”
I don’t like the sound of that at all.
“Just let her go,” I plead. “You can do whatever you want to me, but send her back to Caius.”
He shakes his head, giving me a pitying look. “Oh, see, that can’t happen, unfortunately.”
I scream and spit and twist in my restraints until I’m out of breath, spent of all energy. Doc Junior is unmoved by my tantrum. He leaves the room and returns with a syringe. I don’t have the strength to fight against this anymore.
Buzz. Buzz. Buzz.
My eyes snap open, an eerie clarity instantly making every nerve in my mind come alive.
I’m no longer in the bed.
This time, I sit in a chair with wires attached to places on my head, neck, face, and chest. For a split second, I wonder if I’m in an electric chair about to be zapped to death.
There is buzzing coming from the wires but not enough to fry my brain.
What is happening?
I am facing a blank wall and unable to move my head. It appears to be cradled in some sort of brace mechanism. When I start trying to shake my head, a strong pulse of electricity gets me on the side of my neck, causing everything to go hot and white for a moment.
It’s like I’m in a dog’s shock collar, except there are leads all over my upper half. They could shock me into oblivion. The threat is real.
“Welcome to the beginning of your transformation, Romy,” Doc Junior says, voice sadistically joyful. “You’re going to be blown away with how far things have come along since you first started receiving psychiatric treatment.”
“You’re going to shock me into submission?” I demand, fighting the ball of emotion clogging my throat. “Been there. Done that. It didn’t work.”
The therapies that were forced upon me at just six years old are something I try to block out of my mind for my own sanity, but they’re always there lurking and reminding me of that terrible time.
“There are some behavioral modification leads on you, yes, but they’re meant to keep you on track, not to hurt you,” he reveals, chuckling in that dark, evil way of his. “This is primarily for data collection.”
What do they intend to collect from me?
“Watch the show, Romy.” Something clicks behind me and then a large rectangular light forms on the blank wall. “I’ll walk you through what we’re doing here.”
Since I have no choice, I stare at the wall. First, he shows a video of a kitten sitting on an old lady’s lap as she rocks in a chair on her porch in the country. It’s serene. Sound comes through speakers that seem to be attached to the mechanism that has my head locked in. I can hear the creaking and the kitten’s purrs.
“So,” Doc Junior explains, “when your brain sees something soothing like in this video, it reacts in a certain way that provides feedback to my computer.”
The video is gone, replaced by another one. It’s an aerial shot of a woman lying on a raft in the calm, crystal clear waters near a white, sandy beach. She’s wearing a pink bikini and her skin is rosy from the sun’s heat. I can hear gulls in the background and the soft, rhythmic sound of waves lapping at the shore.
“Your brain just told me that there is an exact match within your neural activity. These videos are calming to you.” He switches the video to a compilation of people slipping on ice. Each of them falls brutally. And while it’s kind of funny, I can’t help but wince, wondering how many tailbones were broken in the making of the video.
“Now,” Doc Junior continues, “the activity changes. Essentially, we’ll go through a series of different videos meant to invoke certain emotions so we can map your brain’s reactivity.”
“Map it for what?” I choke out, not liking where he’s going with this. “This is invasive.”
“It’s just science,” he states, unbothered. “It’s going to help you. You’ll see.”
He switches the video to a montage of malnourished and mistreated animals living in horrendous conditions. My heart aches for the poor creatures. The video then goes on to children lying in hospital beds with hairless heads and little to no life in them.
“I don’t want to see this,” I tell him. “None of it.”
The screen flits back to something I’m grateful to see. No more sad stuff. It’s a scene in a forest where it’s raining. The droplets bounce off leaves, making them jiggle. Pattering sounds echo around me and the occasional distant rumble of thunder can be heard.
Before I can fully relax, the screen fills with bodies, emaciated and gray, lying in rows in the dirt. Someone douses them in gasoline. A match is tossed. I’m forced to watch their corpses burn.
It’s sick.
Then it’s a different video. A scuba diver deep in the water and standing on the edge of a dark abyss. Something big rises out of the darkness and a tentacle wraps itself around the person’s leg. They struggle against it, but the creature uses another tentacle to suction to their face mask. It’s then ripped from their face and an explosion of bubbles bursts around the diver. I can hear his submerged screams as he’s yanked into the darkness.
“Stop,” I croak out. “I don’t want to see this stuff.”
A sharp buzz to my neck reminds me to fall in line. I have no choice. Watch, listen, watch, listen, watch, listen. That’s my only job here.
The change from terrifying to soothing is jarring. I seek solace in the sound of wind softly whistling through the tall grass as the girl walks along barefoot. A dog barks in the distance. She turns, shielding her eyes from the sun, and grins in that direction. I ache to be out of this chair and standing beside her, a world away from whatever sort of torture this is.
Doc Junior takes me through a gambit of emotions, back and forth between scary, worrisome, devastating, and then to something serene. I’m mentally exhausted and drenched in sweat. Then he switches it to a new video.
I can hear the slurping sounds of someone licking. The visual is of the ceiling, the fan going around and around. Then the person with the camera points the view down to the sound. A bearded, tattooed man has his face buried between two curvy thighs, eating her out like it’s his job. Heat floods through me as I remember the last time Caius was doing the same thing to me.
“I’ll admit,” Doc Junior says, “these videos are my favorites.”
Sick bastard.
The videos turn back to violent and terrifying and sad, but this time, there’s a sexual element to all of them. My own past traumas of Vivienne and Gareth spring to the surface of my mind. I sob through all of them, grateful when it returns to the tatted man and his soothing licking sounds.
When will this end?
I’m going insane.
The videos are on a constant loop. I don’t want to see them anymore. Anytime I try to close my eyes, Doc Junior all too gleefully zaps me until I reopen them. He pauses briefly with the torture to feed me and give me fluids before it’s back to the torture.
Finally, he shuts off the video.
I’m too wired with confusing, alternating emotions and feelings to feel any relief. My heart won’t stop racing and the tears keep falling.
I want to go home.
Where is home?
“I think we’ve collected enough data,” Doc Junior says as he comes to stand in front of me where I can look straight into his eyes. “Now for the fun part.”
I don’t have the strength or energy to ask what that entails. Since he’s a narcissist, he’s happy to provide me an answer nonetheless.
“Me and Seth took my father’s life’s work and expanded on it, making it better. This is the future, Romy. It’s incredible. The dinosaurs like our fathers are using outdated methods to modify human behavior. There’s so much room for error and failure. Like you, for instance. They tried to fix your broken brain as a child, but it failed. It’s time we fix it once and for all.”
Dread consumes me.
“With the evolvement of AI, we’re able to take science, especially in the field of psychiatry, and rewire a person’s brain. This is an incredible advancement,” he explains, voice turning giddy. “People will no longer need medication or endless, useless therapies that don’t always work for mental health problems like generalized anxiety disorder or bipolar disorder or schizophrenia. We can take actual hard data from the person, reveal the inner workings to an AI program, and have AI create a customized brain modification system.”
He’s lost his mind.
This is crazy.
You can’t play God like this without consequences.
“You can thank your fiancé for that technology,” Doc Junior says with a chuckle. “Caius created the program for his own purposes, but Orion sold it to us to use in our research. We did not disappoint.”
I know Caius is intelligent, but it’s unnerving to know that his brain created something that is now being used experimentally with these mad scientists. If he knew what they were doing, would he be okay with it?
“People will be healed of their ailments,” Doc Junior continues. “They can go on to become functioning members of society and live to their full potential, not being weighed down by their illnesses or past traumas. Think of the soldiers suffering from PTSD. With this program, anytime their brains revert back to the awful, terrifying memories, the customized system will divert them to a safe zone in their mind. The system is intuitive and forever self-correcting.”
He walks away and returns with a tiny granule that’s almost imperceptible to the human eye. “This seemingly insignificant piece of hardware is what we call a Stem Lock.”
My eyes are blurry from the forced video watching. I try to focus on the fleck to see how something so small could be so important.
“Think of it as a healer, a miraculous healer.” He thrusts his hand closer to my face. “Once we affix the Stem Lock device to your brainstem, your mental pain and anguish will be a thing of the past. Your doctor can easily monitor and adjust the system via an app.” He laughs and shakes his head as though in awe of himself. “This is life-altering, Romy. It’s a game changer. Humanity is about to be eradicated of mental health disorders. The possibilities, after that, are endless.”
He’s insane.
The ramifications of such technology is terrifying.
“Want to know the best part?” he asks, grinning at me. “You and Kaitlyn get to be the ones who’ll take us there. The future starts soon. We’re almost ready to begin.”