SONDER (IV): tmr thomas

28: I should exist outside a lab

Ella 28

I suffocate on the rough cloth of a bag used on a dozen heads before mine. In this small, confined space, I struggle to breathe. It's filling with smoke, which I had previously ignored as an issue. After all, it is not smoke necessarily keeping me from the Violet girl.

In fact, it has brought us together. The least I owe WICKED is my return, in thanks for her.

As they shuffle us forward, I can hear someone crying. Perhaps that is me, but I doubt it. Neither Emily nor Ella is the kind of person who cries at a setback. Both march forward, towards the Violet girl. However, it feels like they are spinning in circles because, like the Violet girl, everyone else is one step behind me.

Inside, they force us to shower before we can talk to any WICKED personnel. The water is frigid, thankfully. It reminds me that my heart is beating. It is not frozen in the seconds before I went up for the first time, like I too often imagine it is.

Later, they give us a medical exam. They scrape out the remaining dirt between my fingernails. The moment reminds me of something in another time. The concepts of mother and daughter are foreign to me, but what little I understand of them centers on this moment. A manicure, only we are not smiling and laughing. Only this scientist is stealing what little proof there is left that I have ever existed outside a lab.

It occurs to me that I haven't. Whether I am Ella or Emily or the golden girl, none of those people know what freedom feels like. The person who first met Eli would know and would know what his true name is. I know several languages, but I don't know any of their names. My brain exists to be prodded and after, dissected.

If they are going to name a specific form of epilepsy after me, what would they name it? None of the names sounds particularly appealing. I hope they name it after the smoke man. The Davis Disease. After all, I am nothing if not his creation.

After they have us cleaned, and our hearts monitored, and our breathing checked, we are brought into another laboratory. Someone looks at me. She is a girl with blonde hair. She looks familiar, but not quite enough that I catch who she might be behind the burn of sterilization which turns her skin red.

How odd.

In this new laboratory, they hook up pads to various locations across our temples. If I wasn't sitting, I would fall from my knees quaking. I can't tell if anyone else knows, but I remember these pads. They aren't the ones which tortured me. No, they are far worse. Perhaps less malicious, but significantly more harmful.

I can feel Dr. Davis breathing in my ear, maybe my ears are smoking in anger, but I doubt it. He is always here, watching and waiting for me to slip up. He finds me more interesting than he dislikes me, and I dislike myself for more than I find myself interesting. Yes, I am an experiment. Yes, I don't mind being watched, and they can do whatever they want with my corpse. I have already been damned to Hell in this life, I can be damned to Hell in death.

No, this machine is the one they use to create the chip, which can be inserted with a simple syringe, to rob me of my memories. Not that these ones are of any use, but I can't forget again. I can and will die first.

None of this would have happened if the betrayer hadn't thrown off our secret plot. Right?

Nothing can be my fault. Even if they try to blame me, they are the ones who fried my brain until I believed that sabotage was a bad idea. As always, I am the victim.

Notthe betrayer.