Who We Are [Bellamy Blake]

Chapter 51

The more Athena fought against her restraints, the tighter they seemed to feel. As a woman who was free, free to breathe and live and fight and survive, it felt wrong to be bound like this. Weak people stood above her, pulling out sharp tools, looking menacing in the glimmering light above. If they were face to face, and Athena had her weaponry, and they had theirs, it would not be even. She would have the advantage. Her swiftness and experience in battle would prevail, but this was not an even playing field.

Dr. Tsing leaned over Athena, using a pair of silver scissors to cut away at her shirt. When she was freed from her shirt, the doctor stuck a needle in her arm. It didn't hurt, and she was only drawing blood, but Athena tried to jerk her arm, hoping that she would nick something and the would have to stop the procedure; if she was giving them too hard of a time, they might send her somewhere else. Somewhere that she had a better chance to escape, and find Bellamy. It chilled her to the bone to know that he was being blooded, trapped in some cage waiting to be chosen, to have his blood filtered into the body of another.

"Should we sedate her?" Someone asked.

Athena didn't know that word, but she didn't trust that anything they wanted to do to her would be good.

"No, I don't want anything in her blood stream. Not yet." Dr. Tsing gripped Athena's forearm and held her down as she drew the blood from her. The dark red substance filled the needle and she withdrew it from her arm. Popping the vial from the needle, she put another one in, and drew more blood. After five vials, she seemed content. "I want her marrow, but that can wait."

"What should we do with her until then?" Her assistant asked.

Athena hated it when people talked about her as if she were not there, or as if she did not understand them. If they decided to move her, she had a plan to attack. Only two of them were in the room, and she could handle them easily if she caught them off guard. Their weapons were stronger than her, but if she played weak, too tired to fight, they might misjudge her foolishly, and she could end their lives. She loosened all of her muscles and closed her eyes, as if she were trying to fall asleep and forget that this was happening to her, but she was carefully listening to their movements.

She tuned into their breathing and could tell that they were in their realm, they were not worried about her being in the room with them. Their shuffling and clattering of tools made her heart beat harder, but it did not show on her stone cold face. Dr. Tsing spoke again, and Athena's eyes remained closed. "I don't trust this one to be in the cages; I feel like she could cause a stir. Leave her here, but I want a guard on her at all times."

Athena slept very little while she was tied up, flickering lights over her head distracting her, making her pupils respond every three seconds even with her eyes closed. It was not easy to sleep, but there was nothing she could do to get out, and she needed the rest if she was ever granted a chance to fight her way out. The longer she laid there, the more she realized how much her body ached from everything, starting from the first hike down from the mountain, to being thrown into an unfamiliar torture chamber where her life might possibly end.

The doors opened hours later, and Athena suspected that it was morning. Hopefully the army would be advancing, moving their players to the edge of the Acid Fog reach, and Athena might be saved. She opened her eyes, expecting Dr. Tsing, but it was a man. His skin was deathly pale, something Athena found repulsive. He had a scar above his lip, and eyes that looked sunken in. Perhaps it was living underground his whole life, longing to reach the surface, but never being able to. He was so close, it was clear that he was not sleeping with the desperate need to use the bone marrow of the youths to reach his ultimate goal.

"You've been sent in, haven't you?" He asked.

Athena made no expression; did they have Bellamy? Were they asking him the same questions? Had he already told them? She knew that he would die before letting his friends be slaughtered like sheep in a pen. That thought comforted her, because if he had somehow made it out alive, he would come back for her.

"Your little leader, Clarke, told us there is an army that can't be touched by our weaponry." He looked at her, "I'm wondering if that 'army' is you. Sending one person but making us think the bigger picture. It's smart, I'm not going to lie. However, you got caught. And you can be touched by our weaponry."

Athena simply raised a lip, showing disgust.

"You see... bows and arrows can't hurt us here." He continued, "You're army out there is sitting ducks; one push of a button and I could obliterate them all. Funny enough, that is what I am doing tonight." He reached down and grabbed a scalpel. It glimmered dangerously in the light, but Athena showed no fear. "All your leaders, and then some, are going to be dead by nightfall. And you can't do a thing to stop me."

He brought the scalpel down to her stomach, pressing against the flesh lightly and yet causing the skin to split and blood to seep down her sides. The blood tickled her, the blade sunk deeper into her and she had to gasp at the pain.

"Cage!" Dr. Tsing called, "Stop."

"I'm just having a bit of fun, Lorelei." He put the blade down, wiping it with a cloth, the whiteness of it stained forever with Athena's blood.

"You think she was sent in?" Dr. Tsing asked him, walking over to them. "Let me find out my way, go play with your missiles."

When he was gone, Dr. Tsing was standing over Athena again. She studied her briefly, and then turned her back for a minute. "Unfortunately your blood is no different than the rest of your kind, which means your marrow is useless to me as well. That means you have nothing to offer me but one thing..."

Athena already knew, and she pulled against the restraints, trying to pull her way out. As Dr. Tsing turned around, she had an all too familiar gun in her hand, a red vial at the end of it. She walked towards Athena, "We've never used females as our Reapers before, but you are in perfect health, aside from minor bruising. I've always wanted to try this."

The needle slid into the flesh of Athena's neck.

Still so far behind on my writing, this is as far as I have written! I was intending to write more this morning, but I start work an hour earlier than usual. Hopefully I have some time off between jobs tonight or tomorrow.