3. The Plastics Man

Ada journeys again through the fever dream video game and meets a man named A. Dmytryk.

3

 

The next time Ada woke up, she instantly recognized it as the same. A fever dream, she thought. She was actually excited at the prospect of having another chance at this video game level, in that way it’s always thrilling to find oneself in a dream one had been previously unable to finish. The bands that held her down now crossed her torso, and encircled her wrists to hold them at her sides. Dream-Ada strained at them until they too popped with the most satisfying of pops. It was much harder this time. It took her a while to tear the bands from her torso, waist and legs, but eventually she was able to swing her legs out of the bed and hop to the floor. The lights flicked on again, and she blinked until she could see clearly. She’d been lying in the last bed in a row of six, but one of the other beds was empty. A young man lie in the nearest bed, head framed by a halo of dark wavy hair. While she’d been strapped down with thick leather bands, he was hooked up to tubes and wires. His skin looked pale, as though he hadn’t seen the sun in a while.

 

Ada walked the short distance from her bedside to his and traced a line across his open palm. Was he part of the video game? He was clearly unconscious though, perhaps he was just part of the backgroud. She turned and saw a man in a labcoat running towards her, a syringe in hand. No, that meant game over. She swatted him aside like an obnoxious fly and walked to the door. The man struggled to get up. The door was bolted and barred shut from the outside and she couldn’t open it. Maybe it was just stuck.

 

The man in the labcoat was saying something into a wristcuff, and she correctly guaged that he was calling for backup. That would ruin the fun. She took a few steps towards him and punched him in the head, satisfied when he stumbled back and fell to the floor. Enemy grunt defeated. Dream-Ada returned to stand before the door and examined it another moment before she leaned and pushed against it until she heard something pop, then stepped back to reexamine. Finding the door very obviously bowed out from where she’d pushed at it, she gave it another shove and grinned as it came off its hinges and hit the floor with a booming thud.

 

Shouts, pounding footsteps. She took off running down the hall in the opposite direction. Last time she’d played this level she’d gotten out, but then she’d been brought right back to where she started. She must have missed something she was supposed to do. Through her feverish haze her brain struggled to reason with her surroundings, and she held to her conviction that this was merely an entertaining fever dream. The blur of flashing lights and the incessant alarms didn’t sway her. There was nothing here that felt real the way everything in her life had felt; it was all harsh, white, steel, cold. None of it felt any realer than a fever dream. No closer to reality than a video game.

 

As she rounded a corner she saw a heavy metal door sliding shut. Lockdown. The level was trying to keep her in. An additional burst of speed allowed her to slip through just before it sealed shut with a boom and a whoosh of expelled air. She took an immediate right into the stairwell, already a full flight down before the hydraulic arm on the door eased it shut behind her.

 

The entire compound was mazelike in layout, which unbeknownst to Ada was actually an intentional feature. She took each intersection as she came to it, heading in random directions but always deeper and further down. She passed through another heavy metal lockdown door which had just begun to scrape shut as she passed through it, but then skidded to a stop too floors lower in front of a sealed door. Dead end. She turned around, the murk of her brain making it hard to think far ahead. There was a door to her side and her fingers pried at the handle, managing to turn it to open the door and she slipped inside just before the mid-level videogame grunts that pursued her rounded the corner.

 

 

The room was dimlit, with rows of shelves above rows of black lab counters. There were hundreds of wires in all colors running everywhere. She had to duck a few like hanging vines as she made her way deeper into the room. There was a man there, in a white coat. Was he one of them? Well, obviously, but was he one of the ones who would try to get her on sight? Too late to be sneaky, the man looked up and saw her, his eyebrows shooting up in surprise.

 

“Hello?” His voice cut through the haze. He had a plastic name badge with a picture of his face on it clipped to his white coat. A. Dmytryk. Junior Plastics Engineer. Level 12. Fourth point clearance. The numbers and letters swam as she tried to read them. He was standing right in front of her, confusion laced with concern painted across his sharp features. “How did you get in here?”

 

“What?” The longer she stared at his face, the clearer it came into focus.

 

            “Where’s your id badge?”

 

            “My what?”

 

            “Who are you?”

 

            “I’m Ada.”

 

            “Where did you come from Ada?”

 

            This was weird. He didn’t feel like a video game. “Am I dreaming?”

 

“Are you… what? How did you get in here?” He was looking at her like she had too many heads. She turned to check her reflection in the polished steel sheet leaning against the wall just to make sure. Were there reflections in dreams? She just saw herself. In a hospital gown. It slowly dawned on her that she must be in a hospital.

 

Her head snapped back to look at him intently, eyes clearer and more focused now. “Where are we? Is this a hospital? There’s no windows though, or, I haven’t seen any. And the numbers go higher the farther down, so we must be underground. Where are we?” The words came out slow at first, but marched forth with purpose. The man’s eyebrows slowly climbed as she spoke, and she wondered if she was saying something weird, or if he knew english.

 

“This isn’t a hospital… wait. You came from the upper level?” Dmytryk’s heart was suddenly pounding. If she’d come from the upper level, she was probably from the biomorph department. Which meant she was certainly dangerous. Except everything he’d seen from biomorph, which admittedly wasn’t much, was clearly fucked up. Humanoid beasts with too many teeth. That’s what they did up there. This was just a girl. In a hospital gown. She was a test subject. And she didn’t know it. She must have escaped, must be the reason the alarms were going off. Multiple levels of the compound was in lock down because of the girl standing in front of him.

 

His palms itched to hold one of the prototype stun guns or tranquilizers from down the hall, but he’d left them at the other end of the room. This girl had to be dangerous if she came from biomorph. “How…” he started, then realized that asking how many teeth she had was the stupidest question ever. The fact that she was here and the alarms were sounding was proof enough she’d come from biomorph.

 

The door slammed open and before she had the chance to turn around a tranquilizer struck her flush in the shoulder. With a yelp she whirled around, eyes wide. “F**k.” They’d found her. She jumped to the side to hide behind the nearest lab bench, but not before another tranquilizer found her thigh. Instead of landing gracefully as she’d intended, she flopped to the floor behind the bench with a huff. Her limbs felt like overcooked noodles, she couldn’t lift her head more than an inch off the floor. The men in body armor came in, tranquilizer guns trained on her collapsed figure as Dmytryk stood speechless and frozen. They dragged her to her feet and half-carried her out, drunkman style. She managed a look over her shoulder at the young man in the labcoat.

 

As he watched the men from biomorph carry the girl out, Dmytryk’s frown deepend, his heavy brow shadowing sharp blue eyes. So biomorph was testing on humans. That was unsurprising, if he really thought about it, but this girl didn’t seem to have any idea where she was or what was happening. Either whatever they’d done to her had addled her so much she’d forgotten volunteering, or, more likely, she hadn’t volunteered for this at all.  

 

One of the men stayed to explain, told him that the primer process confused the subjects, and that at times the nervous system went into panic mode. They had to be kept sedated during the process, the man explained, for their own safety. Dmytryk nodded. Of course, he said, though he had no idea what the primer process was, and could only vaguely guess what the girl was being primed for.