… not them again. They trust me. Leave me alone. I didn’t mean to hear ...
Choking. Swirling water sucking her down into a pit. Evil is there. Dangerous things. The voices resolve into muffled words.
She’s good.
Yes.
How long will she have?
Four… maybe five years…
And if she breaks?
It’s not ‘if’ it’s ‘when.’
You don’t think she can take it?
No one is that good.
Then she’s useless.
No. … she’s exceptional. If she’s alive, it won’t matter.
Thundering … squeezing pressure. A watery image begins to come into focus. It clears.
Noise. Washed out blue lights. Dripping... The room tastes of blood, smells of antiseptic and numbers. Hands covered in red blood. Boots thud against durasteel, pacing, pacing.
She cuts the heart out of the corpse and places it within the thermo-sealed container.
“Voice activate 6892D-V42,” she says. The box whines, priming. The heart twitches within, coating the white interior red.
“Seal, lock.” The lid on the box snaps shut with a hiss. Thud, thud, thud. It’s the boots, not the heart. She covers the body, and begins washing tools in the sink, counting in her mind the wounds, contusions, cut arties and shrapnel for the tenth time… 36 pieces from 0.28 to 0.61 centimeters…
“And we don’t know who he was,” a muffled voice said. The man with the boots. His image flickers, then solidifies.
“Could be syndicate… or SIS,” she says. The blood is off her gloves now. “JRI etched on the humorous, like the others.”
He hisses.
“Blasted rogues. Terminate the others. We can’t risk it.”
Her face twitches. “They’re innocent.”
“Yeah? Just do it. I’ll call you when I get the next batch.”
He walks out the door. It seals shut. The room turns shades of purple. Of black. She loads a syringe. Silent screams, like ringing in the ears. Gasps. The numbers ooze from her eyes like tears.
It was never meant to be this way. A voice.
She stabs a patient on the next stretcher with the syringe. The image chokes, breaks and spirals down a swirling drain, following a twisted path of numbers into darkness.