project janus, 𝘳𝘰𝘨𝘦𝘳𝘴¹

fifteen

"Subject One is ready for insertion."

Memories visited Eli in her dreams that night.

The blonde woman known only to Eli as Dr. Matthews stood over the girl, who wore nothing save for a couple of surgical drapings placed strategically over her breasts and pelvis, both coated with nervous sweat that had trickled down the subject's body.

Eli, cuffed and restrained to the procedural table, looked up at the woman. Sweat trickled into Eli's eyes, down the column of her throat, as she did so, breathing hard.

Dr. Matthews stared blankly at her, eyes surveying as if she was some lab rat, some kind of science experiment, some kind of toy. In a way, Eli guessed that she was.

"Quiet, please," Dr. Matthews instructed, writing something down in her notes as Eli stared up at her even still, too weak to fight back.

"Dr. Matthews." A man in scrubs, stationed somewhere near Eli's feet, spoke to the blonde without fear. "Shall we begin?"

"Inject the paralytic, please."

Another man, this one stationed next to a machine Eli couldn't begin to describe, pressed down on the plunger of a syringe, and Eli's limbs became leaden. She couldn't move, couldn't speak, couldn't do anything but breathe and blink, and even that was sluggish, slow, stunted.

"Subject One is paralyzed, doctor."

"Perfect. Scalpel."

A nurse handed Dr. Matthews the scalpel, and so Dr. Matthews used one hand to hold it and another to keep herself steady, and then she began to cut.

Eli thought that, since she couldn't move,, since she was paralyzed, she wouldn't be able to feel anything that Dr. Matthews was doing.

She was wrong.

Eli felt everything.

Dr. Matthews sliced into the hollow between her collarbones, steady, even as tears welled up in Eli's eyes and a nurse leaned over to wipe them away so that they could not contaminate the surgical field.

"The device, please." Dr. Matthews held her hand out and one of the nurses placed a small, rectangular piece of technology into it. With no regard for Eli, she made the incision wider and wedged the device between the flaps of skin, just above the bulk of the muscle. Only when Eli was sewn up did she speak again, and only to tell the nurses to bandage the incision and make sure that it couldn't be contaminated. Trials would be conducted two days later, she said.

The next morning, Eli remembered waking up to a soreness in her limbs and a sharp, intense pain in her throat. It wasn't so much the incision as it was the device inside of it, jabbing sharply into Eli's surrounding tissue. It was unbearable.

So Eli did the only thing she could think of.

Peeling the bandage off and biting her lip to keep her scream buried, Eli raised her other hand. Gently, she pulled at her stitches.

She was greeted with black spots in her field of vision and such an intense wave of pain that it made her eyes water.

It's like a bandaid, she told herself. You just have to rip it off; you just have to do it quickly.

So Eli did. She made it through the entire line of stitches before leaning over to vomit, black spots everywhere, her hand against her throat to stop the blood from dripping.

When she was done, she used the other hand to wipe her mouth, wiped that off on her paper-thin hospital gown, and brought both hands back to the incision to press down, pull back, and pry the skin apart.