Chapter 2: A Quiet Conversation

Chapter 2:

She had dripped blood all over the stairs. Obviously she hadn’t meant to, but there’s little time to be concerned about clean floors with a knife in your chest.

 Anya had figured out a system to deal with that awful intrusion, a way to keep her from blacking out from the pain, a way to keep her placing one shaking foot in front of the other until she reached the top of the stairwell and locked her trembling, tear-stained eyes with Kai’s cold, hollow ones.

First, she had crawled, on her hands and knees, keeping the wound as steady as possible as she passed though stone corridors she had little time to take in, the pain blurring any recongizable edges into oblivion. Once she had reached the stairs, with that blessed handlebar, she had forced herself onto her feet, breathing heavy, head screaming as the delicate flesh already healing around the knife was sliced and torn anew. The steady flow of blood down her front was nothing new, the light gray of her clothing turning a deep brown-red from hours of shed. 

At some point, all the hours of pain had bleed together, as she dragged herself up, up, holding onto that blessed handlebar, that biting cold piece of metal like her life depended on it. Every muscle in her body screamed in harmony as she forced her legs to move, to bend and climb up. It felt like trying to swim against the current, like trying to hold ground against a hurricane. But she did it. 

She collapsed on the floor next to the stairwell, her back hitting the floor with a dull thump that almost felt pleasurable compared to the hours of sharp agony she had endured.

Kai smiled, walked over, and pulled the knife from her chest in one fluid motion, earning her a weak yelp from Anya.

“Sorry, Doc said I can’t give you anasthesia. Something about how you might get addicted. But it doesn’t really matter anyway. Look, it's all gone now.”

Anya looked down. Where the knife had been seconds before, there was nothing but clean, cream-and-coffee-brown skin. The pain had receded into a dull thud, then a second later, it vanished entirely. She took a deep breath, her hands still shaking, and pulled herself up so she could sit and face Kai, who had already plopped herself on a chair, drumming her fingers on the table and was observing her with quiet interest.

“So…” Anya really didn’t know what to say. Kai was a wild card, just as willing to give  her answers as to stab her again. “I was wondering--”

“Don’t.”

“What?” Anya was taken aback by her response. “What do you mean--”

“Don’t wonder. Don’t ask. I’m only allowed to answer a few questions that will be of use to you, or more accurately to the scientists. By the way, you saw that shock back in the cell? When I hit the floor? They can do that to you too. They probably won’t for a while, since it’s waaaay more painful than being stabbed or shot, but they’ll do it eventually. It’s a good way to keep us imoblile, since at a certain point there’s no other way to.”

Kai talked quickly, deliberately so, but there were clues in her words. She mentioned multiple scientists, which meant there were more than just the robotic-voiced woman, the one Kai called “Doc”. And Kai was deliberately separating herself from the scientists, talking about them as an “other”. With that and her comments in the cell, Anya could piece together---

“So you’re like me, right?”

Kai nodded. “Yep.”

“And what does that mean, exactly? Why didn’t I die when you stabbed me? Why didn’t you die when you were shocked?”

Kai’s smirk was omnipresent, as always, but Anya could see that she was genuinely delighted Anya was catching on as fast as she was. “Well, I don’t actually know, but that’s the reason we’re here. The scientists here want to study the effects of our bodies, make sure it's not linked to a disease, see if they can replicate it to save lives or something noble like that. This facility is “top secret”, so they wipe our memories before coming in here. From what they told me, they find people like us through blood tests or accidents, and they get sent to facilities like this. We’ll get released and our memories restored once they figure out what makes us tick.” Kai wasn’t looking at her, gaze intently focused on the window, showing the view of a dreary red brick courtyard and the faintest sliver of a slightly darkening blue sky.

Anya nodded, but Kai’s words clashed with what she had said earlier, if only slightly. “Is that what you meant when you siad earlier that “policing someone’s thoughts is a little harder than you’ve led me to believe?” The fact that I can remember that I have a family? Did something similar happen to you?”

Kai's smile stretched wider, mirth dancing in those cold blue eyes-- and then her body went rigid and convulced, the zap of electricity tearing through her body again. 

“D-d-dangerous question, kid.” She laughed, holding up a finger in warning, and Anya noticed an odd blotch on her right wrist. It looked like the number 1, but Kai dropped her shaking hand too quickly for Anya to catch. “Doc d-doesn’t like questions. All you need to know is that you need to comply. Just do what they say and no one gets hurt. And who knows? They might even let us die one day.”

“Why would I want to die?” Anya asked, incrediously. Kai only laughed, the sound horrible and hoarse rumbling down her twitching throat.

“Trust me, the longer you stay here, the less afraid you are of the pain, the more you’ll hunger for it. It’s the last and only choice you’ll ever get to make for yourself. Isn’t that glorious? Like a tantilizing bowl of fruit just out of reach. By the way, have you noticed your wrist yet? It’s quite a shock once you first notice it. I wonder if tattoo ink works on our skin anymore? I would like quite something pretty on my back or on my leg. Maybe some flames, or a nice flower.”

Anya’s hands and arms had been covered in blood for hours, an unhappy consequence of dragging her knife-sheathed, shaking body across the downstairs floors. She spit on her hand, rubbed it on her wrists.

The numbers 07 stared back at her, tattooed on her right wrist. 

“Wh--?”

Kai shrugged, held up her wrist to show her own tattoo, hers displaying the number 18. “Lucky number seven. Yeah, I don’t know what they mean either, except they correlate with those stupid numericals Doc likes to call us. I’m Y-18, and you’re AC-07. Best guess I can give is that the letter represents the year. Y is the 25th letter in the alphabet. If you keep on going after Z and go to AA, AB etc. AC would be the 29th. I’m four years older than you. You’re twelve, by the way. As for the numbers? I have no clue.” Again, Kai’s eyes darted away from Anya’s face, focused back on the window, now darkened. In the time they had talked, night had begun to form outside the window.

“Alright.” Anya said, trying to ignore the absurdity of her new reality, stuck with amnesia, rooming with a sociopath in a secret facility, unable to die or be seriously injured. “Is there any place I can clean all this blood off? I feel a lot better, and I can walk fine now.” She stood up from where she had been sitting on the floor to prove her point.

“Well, at least you adjust quickly.” Kai smiled. “Helpful. Shower’s down the hall and to the right. They set up a bed for you, we sleep next to the bathroom. We’re the only people living here so far, so spread out. I’ll wake you up tomorrow morning to train.”

“Train what?”

Kai had already turned away from her, walking down the hallway towards what Anya assumed was the bedroom Kai had mentioned. “Your pain tolerance.”

Anya watched Kai turn a corner, saw the little bit of light of the sunset recede into the dark. She all too clearly remembered the sharp bite of the knife in her chest, and according to Kai, that would only be the first of many.

“Ahh.’ She whispered to herself, alone in the dark. “I’m screwed.”