Don't be a silent reader 🖤
Chapter 3
Left alone.
Still strapped to the hospital bed, the lost girl was consumed in deep thoughts. Even though she was quiet, her face said a million words.
Confusion.
.
Depression.
.
Anxiousness.
.
Anger.
.
Revenge.
.
And so on.
~'W-Who are these people... How did they escape from those guards...?'~
~'There were over 100 guards..?'~
But before she could get too deep, she started hearing voices outside of the room.
"Wait! What? You can't just do that! Lock her up in an Isolation Room??" a voice rose up.
"It's just a suggestion on what to do with this problem-" another raspy, old voice tried to reason with the other one.
"But an Isolation room?? It's an all-white, reinforced tile room that's scary as hell and proven to drive people insane!"
Pain struck her heart as feelings of fear overwhelmed her. Her chest slightly heaved up and down in worry as her thoughts pondered on Henry's idea.
Tears stung her eyes and she once again began to cry. ~'P-please no--o, n-no I-I can't g-go b-back- I-I c-can't go back-k-'~ her head began to throb as she started rocking back and forth in her reclined bed.
The voices outside her room continued.
"I know, Gabe. Just lis-"
"No, Henry." Gabe, the first voice, demanded. "You can obviously see how she is hurt."
Henry sighed, being irritated while rubbing his head. "Gabe, we followed through with the correct medical procedures so she should be fine by the end of the day-"
"No, I don't just mean physically. You can see the pain in her eyes. She needs help."
"Oh, great, your a psychologist now-" Henry slipped in his sarcastic comment during Gabe's rant.
He ignored it, "She needs us. We have to help her. We can't just throw her out like tras-"
"And we're not! For goodness sake, boy, would you shut the hell up for one damn second so I can speak?"
Gabe immediately lowered his head, his eyes staying caught on the ground, as he surrendered his moment to speak to Henry.
"We're not going to throw her out. We just need to reevaluate what happened the night you found her and see if we can get some information out of her to fill in the pot-holes. Okay?"
Gabe nodded in response, "Yes, sir."
Henry sighed again, feeling bad about how he lashed out at the boy, "I understand you for some uncertain reason care so deeply about her-" he implied, sarcasm and irritation tracing his words.
Gabe's face flushed slightly at his comment as he tried to suppress it with a glare.
"Oh, c'mon. Take it easy, kid, you know I'm kidding."
"Yeah, sure you are." He scoffed, turning his attention towards the wall instead.
Henry lightened up, a smile rising on his lips, but he immediately went back to his normally cold expression. "Since you care, the girl is your responsibility until we figure this whole thing out, okay?"
"Yes, sir."
"And if she kills you... well, just remember I told you so," he smirked like his comment was funny but in reality, Gabe could die.
Henry saw Gabe's shocked face, "Loosen up, kid, she won't kill you."
Gabe released a stress-held breathe and smiled.
"At least I don't think so," Henry added the last minute to tease Gabe.
"Ha, ha, funny, yeah, just absolutely, hilarious," He rolled his eyes sarcastically. "I'll take it though. Deal."
As he headed his way towards the door, the girl was in deep thought again.
~'Why would he stand up for me? But they think of me as a threat?' ~
He finally opened the door and came into the room.
Absolutely terrified she sat there in silence. A thick layer of awkwardness settled in the atmosphere between them.
"Uh, hey. How do you feel?" Gabe stuttered, brushing his hand through his shaggy yet styled, dirty blonde hair.
She expected to be filled with fear because that's her natural response to anything and everything in her life, but there was a weird warmth in his voice that made her feel... welcomed.
~'N-no, I can't be fooled. That's what they want... I have to escape.'~
"F-fine." She stammered. She thought for a moment about what that scary man said to him in the hall, "I... I won't kill you. Just so you know." she stammered looking down.
"Ah, kill me? You- you heard that?" '
Gabe fixed his brows. ~'How did she hear that? We were in another room.'~
The girl gently nodded and looked back down.
"Ah, jeez. No, Henry was just a little, um.." Gabe faltered. He took a deep breath and continued. "I'm going to be straight forward, okay?" He stated gently.
His voice was slightly deep but also had an elegantly soft pitch to it that began to relieve the girl's stress.
~'No! Dont be caught off guard...'~
"So far, no one here really... trusts you."
'Not the first.' The girl's eyes announced as she continued her eye contact with the boy.
"Because we don't really know you that well. So, if you want us to trust you. Then you have to help us out a little bit, okay?"
The girl pondered on what he said. ' ~How can I help him out? They all want to kill me for all I know.' ~
But the strange girl was curious about who they were. So with a lot of hesitation, she said, "I'll answer y-your questions. Only i-if you answer mines."
"Okay, then," He smiled brightly, "let me get those straps off."
Walking over to her bed, Gabe grabbed the strap on her left arm and slowly started to unlatch it.
He stopped. Completely speechless- in a 'bad' way.
Unbuckling the strap slowly, they both froze as he stared at her wrist. 'Several' needle marks punctured her arm.
Some were fresh and some were scarred over, and under them were black and purple bruises- 'deep' bruises that latched around her left wrist.
They looked new.
Only a few soft green and brown bruises laid on her arms, but it was mostly the newer bruises.
He quickly shot his eyes around the girl's body and looked at the other bruises.
~'Ive rarely seen something like this... All discovered drugs at WWIDI are made to show little to none outward damage to preserve the look of the subject...'~
The marks weren't just on the left wrist, but in the creases of both her elbows held 'even more' needle punctures and bruises.
Her right wrist mirrored the bruises on her left wrist, but since she still had straps on the right wrist, all that could be seen was a few bruises creeping under and out of the straps.
~'Meaning... Did they used unclassified drugs and off-record experiments?'~
He glanced at her in remorse. As if he felt her pain.
Her cheeks immediately flushed in embarrassment, causing her to look away.
Tears stung her eyes, but she forced them down
"P-perhaps, um, I may get a shirt with sleeves..?"
"Oh, of course." He didn't question her but proceeded to the closet at the back of the room to retrieve a sweater for her.
He lifted a huge, over-sized sweatshirt that looked the size of 3x large.
"I hope this is okay. It's the only size we have right now in the room, and I wouldn't want to leave you here unatten..." His voice trailed away. "Alone... I wouldn't want you to leave you alone."
"It's fine." She brushed off, reaching with her free hand for the shirt he handed her, "T-thank you."
"Sure." He struggled a smile, which was strange considering it was always something he did.
Not wanting her to feel uncomfortable anymore, he finished unstrapping the restraints while she slipped on the white, soft sweatshirt.
The outfit swamped her entire upper body from how big it was. It looked well long enough to drop to her knees, way pass the hospital-like shorts she wore.
Gabe held back a chuckle as she gazed at her over-sized attire that went several inches past her hands, covering it.
Taking a deep breath the girl slowly moved her sore legs to the side of the bed and let her feet dangle.
She first looked at her knees.
They were bruised over just like her wrists.
Scratches on the first few layers of her skin hid under bandages that strapped on her knees.
It didn't look as bad as before.
The little wounds were cleaned up while clear stitchless stitch-bandaids pulled together the skin of bigger cuts on her knees, legs, or feet.
Her eyes soon drifted down her legs.
She looked at her ankles. The first few layers of her skin being a peach red and rubbed raw from the restraints.
Barely visible blood and mud stains stretched down her shins to her feet. Which had been covered in medical wraps from the various scratches and wounds from her running barefoot through the woods.
The girl took another breath.
Her weak arms grasped the railing of the bed and they began to shake. She quickly glanced at the boy hoping he won't see her struggle.
Then she lifted off and placed her feet on the ground. Just after, the bottom part of her sweatshirt fell down to its full length- just four inches above her knees.
Thinking she was stable, the girl released a big sigh.
But instantly, her legs fell limp and she dropped to the ground. Midway, Gabe quickly caught her and held her up for support.
The girl was very uncomfortable with how close the boy was to her, and she was scared. Scared that maybe she could get hurt.
"Are you okay?" He questioned compassionately.
But the sound of his voice washed that thought away as she gently nodded.
He was close, but she liked the support. Something she hasn't felt in a while.
He stood her back up, and so was too scared to look up at him. So she looked down at her feet. She noticed her legs looked rough and she began to get insecure.
"Um... C-could I maybe get some pants please..?"
"Oh, yeah of course." before leaving, Gabe reassured she wouldn't fall by placing his hold of her next to the bed so she could hold on to it instead. Then he walked to the room's closet to retrieve some baggy sweatpants, which thankfully for the girl, was smaller.
She slowly, one leg at a time, slipped her legs through each leg whole and pulled them up. They were still big but they fit better than her shirt.
So finally, once she was done changing and stable, they walked out of the room with the boy close by.
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"Sir, there's something you need to see." A lady said motioning Henry to come over.
"What is it?" Henry replied.
"While she was unconscious I took a blood sample..." she explained leading him to the computer, "She had Epiynefrin in her bloodstream as well with a lot of other chemicals."
(Ep-ee-nef-er-in)
They both took a look at all the information on the screen running through the list of chemicals.
"Wait...I haven't seen that one before," Henry questioned confused. "Or any of those."
"Me neither, sir. It seems her body is composed of several types of these chemicals," she explained walking over to an x-ray machine with the girl's x-ray on it.
The doctor walked over to the wall, hit the room's light switch off. Then walked over to the machines and flipped a switch making a fluorescent, blue light shine behind the X-ray.
There were five pictures of her X-ray on the X-ray machine that hung on the wall.
Individual photos of her skeletal system, nervous system, respiratory system, circulatory system, muscular system, and the immune system showed on the screens.
Red plastered all over her blueish skeletal system while blue, crackling electricity creased into her bones.
Small, goldish-yellow balls sparked in her nervous system uncontrollably while scattering throughout her body.
A silver, somewhat see-through, force rested on her lunges like a shield.
Orange and purple streaks laced through the girl's bloodstreams and lead to her heart, which was glowing gold.
While black wisps compressed every muscle in her body.
"She should have died with at least one of these new chemicals injected in her system, but there's more than eighty on this list-"
"-Meaning they had to giver her a lot of System Strengtheners and other body-beneficial chemicals so her body can learn to adjust to any and all foreign drugs." She faltered taking a closer look at the chemicals.
"But even then, they would have to weekly or even daily inject her with a powerful and painful serum so her body doesn't forget what has been in it and reject any other drugs and chemicals." She glanced as her screen once more and then at Henry.
"Meaning..." She led on, her eyes sinking deeper into Henry's eyes in worry.
"Meaning she should be dead." Henry finished her sentence and continued, "Her body should have failed by now or had several organ failures, her veins and arteries should've ruptured a long time ago..."
"This is impossible... There is no way to have a body strong enough to hold these injections yet weak enough not to reject them, which would kill her." The
The lady looked back at the screen, "So we have a walking corpse?"
"Yeah..." Henry didn't have the words to explain what he was feeling from the new discoveries he had found. So he simply walked away.
He didn't fo far before the nurse stopped him, "Could... Could she be the one, who we heard the rumors about?" The nurse proposed fearfully, biting her bottom lip.
Henry gritted his teeth and took a heavy breath. He started to rub the side of his face with his hand in thought while pacing around the room.
"No. No, I doubt that." he shook the thought out if his brain. "As you said, she should be dead." Henry reasoned.
"I think our guest should stay with us a little longer." He reached for his walky-talky and warned security about what they found out and told them to find the girl.
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