She'd waited, watching carefully for every car that drove by, listening to every set of footsteps in the hallways and apartments, above and below. The paper itself was surprisingly hard to come by (there wasn't really a reason to have any), but she had managed to grasp a few take-out menus from various places in the earlier weeks. Not that she was hungry enough to try them... nor would she ever be left alone long enough to enjoy much in the way of new tastes. It was a little piece of "freedom", though. Little bits and pieces of culture that she was otherwise steered away from.
It wasn't as if they just handed over any money, either. They paid the rent, they left groceries outside the door. They'd once offered to set her up with a job... but that was before the whole... incident. She could feel her jaw clench with just the thought of it...
Grasping a lone pen from the drawer, she began to write. It was neat, clean, small and elegant script--the only way she knew. Writing in English had not come easily to her, at first. Speaking it seemed to flow nicely, but the written word seemed more... more... If she felt more capable of it, she'd laugh to think of the word "sinful".
She paused only long enough to rest her hand of an unfamiliar writer's cramp, pondering how old the milk was in the refrigerator. And how little she cared for it, anyway. Thoughts floated on to the larger picture: where she lived. Or, where she'd been assigned to live. The apartment complex they kept her in smelled of a different kind of human sickness than the sort that causes them to vomit. No, it was a deeper sickness... a scent of desperation. Alcohol, drugs, bodies rotting from the inside--it was the scent of trying to escape by running into a wall, over and over. The dead mortals were walking. And speaking. But not thinking.
It should scare her more than she let it, she realized. She was not... "one of them". But they could not tell. They were too blind to tell. She herself had nothing to do with religion... nor spirituality. But perhaps all it took was one glimpse and--
The thought stopped cold in favor of writing again. It he wanted a complete list... she would give it. A second menu from the drawer, and it was on to page two.
Another
less
than stellar visit to the waiting room found only one more
patient.
He was unfamiliar at first, though that could have been because of the
facial bandages and the clearly new scarring... and then it hit
her.
That was the boy she'd seen, the one that had distracted everyone and
allowed
her to make her plea to the only worthwhile human in the building.
She
shivered and backed into the corner as slowly as she could
manage.
It'd been a long time since she'd seen the results of that kind of
surgery
so soon afterward. The face... the eyes... the everything... so
bruised,
shattered and empty. He looked like he'd been enjoying the finer
tastes of chewing glassware before taking some sort of chainsaw to his
own face. A very weird thought to have, she reflected... or would
have been, had she not so recently discovered the movie genre known as
horror. Somehow it was so much worse in "real life" than it was
on
the screen.
Worse,
though... much worse than the gore and the stomach-churning properties
therein... was knowing that the boy had been mentally damaged on
purpose.
They always were, when they'd gone wrong... and exactly why
that
was...
Familiar
footsteps graciously destroyed her thought process. She glanced
up,
trying her best not to have the wide-eyed look of fear and disgust that
she was sure she must have let surface for a moment.
"Kara.
Come on back." Robbie nodded with that same charming, easy-going
smile she knew.
Except
for the hardly perceptible shiver in the corners of his mouth.
Nevermind;
she followed with a good distance between herself and the destroyed
boy.
It
was
planned. He'd planned it out and timed it to perfection
thanks
to his lunch time and the "assistant's" being so close. The
moment
they entered the exam room, he pretended to have accidentally kicked
the
door so it swung closed--and was overwhelmingly grateful that she was a
quick study. Immediately she pressed into his hand a thick but
neatly
folded pile of paper.
Yes,
he should have simply slipped it into his pocket and been done with
it.
But there was a curiosity. A quick one, but a strong one,
regarding
her handwriting. Then he saw it. A menu. It was a
Chinese
menu. That fact alone almost made a powerful belly laugh
surface--but
it was controlled. It absolutely had to be silenced. She'd
discovered, either by careful planning or by complete accident, the
perfect
cover. He was nuts about Chinese food.
With
a quickness he even surprised himself with, he kicked the door back
open
and hoped no one was any the wiser. In fact, he barely missed
nailing
the "assistant" in the head with said swinging door... and wished he'd
waited just a millisecond longer. He'd developed a distaste for
the
woman long before he knew she was part of this... "project". It
just
became more intolerable as time wore on. Not that his voice nor
expression
gave that away. "Oops, look out."
She
gave him a glare before turning her attention to their "patient".
She was looking healthier than she had in quite some time,
actually.
The pale skin was more lively than it was powdery--she grasped the
folder
and made a note. Perhaps another step could be taken in the
process.
Kara felt the
woman's thoughts as if she'd spoken them out
loud.
She tried not to make a gagging sound at the very idea of yet more...
then
tried
to clear her mind of the whole thing when Robbie grasped her
arm carefully for the blood test. As much as she hated
the
feel of metal piercing her flesh... it was better to concentrate on
than
the mere possibilities of her future.
As
Dr. Ward labeled the vials and made another short scrawl on her chart,
he took quick stock of what the "assistant" had written--and marked it,
mentally. They were planning to do more with her. That gave
him less time to act. Preparing another saline injection, he very
carefully pocketed the vial of what he should have been giving
her.
It might pay to keep a sample. At the same time, he palmed his
own
piece of paper to hand back to her.
She
felt the press of it as he held her arm out and got her to make a loose
fist, and held on as inconspicuously as possible. Another needle
gratefully over with, Kara slipped the note into her sleeve and was
immediately
ready to go. The sooner she was gone, the sooner perhaps
something
could be done--
"Wait."
It was the "assistant's" order.
The
sentiment made her cringe, but she did as she was told. As much
as
she knew better.
"Something
wrong?" Robbie asked, his heartbeat beginning to speed up regardless of
his careful breathing.
"It's
time to get her weight and blood pressure." The "assistant"
responded,
none the wiser.
How
either of them had held in a sigh of relief was beyond them.
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