THE FREE FALL ⇘ Bellamy Blake. [1]

| lv. JUS DREIN JUS DAUN

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CHAPTER FIFTY FIVE;

JUS DREIN JUS DAUN.

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        STEPPING INSIDE ABBY'S MAKESHIFT MEDICAL WING MADE HAVEN WANT TO RIP HER SKIN OFF. It was a place that shrieked of discomfort and disarray—a hellscape of surgical trays and towering shelves of medical supplies, far removed from the small confines of Jackson's Med-Tent. Though it wasn't the clinical, high-tech environs of the Go-Sci ring, still orbiting distantly in the vacuum of space, the familiarity of this portion of Alpha did little to ease her discomfort.

        On Go-Sci, appointments were typically fraught with high-tech surveillance and heavy security . . . almost always heralding bad, bad news about Haven's stenosis that she and Bellamy had come to expect. Here, however, the visits were supposed to be mundane—standard tests like EKGs and blood draws, the ordinary fare that never used to raise an eyebrow.

Yet . . . even the ordinary had its secrets.

Haven already understood that Abby had been using her body as a test subject long, long before the hundred were consigned to the dropship's metal tomb. But she still struggled to wrap her mind around the reality of it all. Unfortunately, the mad doctor's methods were insidiously brilliant; it was as if Abby had carved her initials into Haven's heart herself. The abnormality etched into her valve became a signature of ownership—a marker of experiments that had pushed far beyond the boundaries of ethics or reason.

The constant cycle of resuscitations, monitoring, EKGs, and CAT scans—these tests, at least, made some fraction of sense. A guise of necessity in Abby's relentless pursuit to keep Haven viable, a living subject ripe for study. But the depth of Abby's interventions—the invasive bloodwork, bone density tests, and the looming specter of a dialysis shunt . . . these procedures haunted Haven with doubt.

         Had they truly been necessary to keep her alive—?

". . . Bloodtype proven to withstand chemical radiation . . . "

         . . . Or had Abby merely been chasing shadows, experimenting with Haven's blood in some mad quest for survival on a dying Earth? Was it all just an elaborate smokescreen, a way to mask the truth that she had been reduced to little more than a living hypothesis? Was there any method to this madness, any fucking humanity, or had she simply just been a casualty in the war waged against nature itself?

        Haven wasn't sure.
        
        All she knew was that standing in the corridor felt like being swallowed by a living nightmare. The cold, clinical stench of antiseptic clung to her skin, her lungs, burning and bitter. It forced her to grip the doorframe as if it were the sole thing anchoring her to reality. Even the walls themselves seemed to recoil from the ghosts haunting them . . . five different effigies of herself, each a harrowing reminder of the times her heart had failed.