Budapest » [Clintasha]

Chapter Four: Assimilation

A bag over my head and the sweet scented sting of chloroform; that's what I woke up to. Scratchy fabric scraping my skin and a moist cloth clogging my airways, blinded, suffocated, disorientated - it was something no child was ready for or is supposed to be subjected to.

I don't remember fighting, I don't even remember screaming. I remember being stiff with fear and too shocked to emit anything more than a silent strangled wheeze. I do remember collapsing: helplessly, spinelessly, dependently; right into the hands of my captor. I tumbled like a wall and that was when my world began to crumble.

Then it was white light. My vision was a white out bleary haze, spotted with flickering specks. The world flashed as I blinked and my head spun like I'd just got off a round-a-bout.

My ears were dulled, as if someone had plugged them with defenders. Then everything drew into focus, as if someone had twisted a dial on a microscope.

There were a string of Russian voices coercing behind me. I was too dizzy to even recognise words, let alone listen. Everything was numb. My brain was foggy.

I tried to move my body, twisting and then looking down at my form. Then I managed to find my centre of gravity: I was on my back, cuffed to an operating table. I shook my wrists, rattling the shackles. It served me no justice and no freedom: it only drew attention to me.

The nattering stopped. I looked over in the general direction of the voices, and my eyes struggled to home in on the two figures. They were a smudge, but their outlines remained.

I looked around, twisting in the bindings and trying to figure my location out.

It was a dingy clinical facility. The walls and floors were tiled, all coloured in a vile faded clinical green. Above me was a panel of whirring bulbs, blasting harsh white light into my retinas, flickering in my eyes. If was dank and the stench of damp and - oddly - rotting meat teased my nostrils. The walls were splashed with unidentifiable fluids, congealed brown splurges and rotting dripping smears. But there was one substance I recognised, puddling on the floor not so far away; filled by the drips leaking off the table. Blood. Scarlet on lime.

That's when the fatigue faded and the panic truly set in. I writhed on the table, contorting and twisting, trying to free myself with desperate ardency. I struggled like my life depended on it. Tears leaked from my eyes and seeped into my debauched flame hair, bunched up and tangled beneath my head. I thrashed and whimpered and sobbed; hiccupping and blubbering.

"Enough, girl!"

The tears didn't stop. I couldn't stop them. They were pouring down my cheeks at an uncontrollable and alarming rates, moistening my cheeks until they glistened.

"Enough!"

Click. The safety of a gun was taken off right next to my ear.

That's when my lips sealed themselves, but noises still rattled around my mouth.

"I told you, you should have gagged her."

"The young ones always cry the most."

There was a flipping of paper, from a nondescript location. I took a risk, turning my head, then had the cold metal muzzle of a gun kiss my temple and nudged me back into line.

"Natalia Alianovna Romanova," my name rolled of his tongue curiously, and then he tsked. "Orphaned. Nine years old. Stalingrad. Do you know why you're here, Natalia Alianovna Romanova?"

"нет, сэр," No, sir. I blundered over the words clumsily, the words broken up by harsh sobs.

"Stop snivelling child, and speak up!"