Exhaustion and his unsatisfied thirst were killing him. His limbs were clenched so tightly that he felt as if he had gone back in time to the night that Baine infected him. Then with a little more time, his muscles became solidified. His mouth and stomach cracked from dehydration, and he lapped at the bleeding crevasses on the inside of his mouth, uselessly. Salty, it made him thirst even more. The only way he could stop the progression was to drink, but there was nothing to drink and no escape.
Now, he couldn't smell, blink, or swallow, but only lie against the gurney, as good as dead. He hated himself for not concentrating all of his strength and will to escape while he still could move, but he couldn't have known that the concoction of drugs dancing in his system made him as weak as a normal man, either. In this time with just a shred of conscious thought, he vowed that if he got out of this, that he would live, and not only live, but also die and when he chose to die it would be him who called all of the shots. Not these doctors or his brothers or his friends or anyone else, except for him.
Jim and Maria returned and observed him through the barred wall. Maria's voice seemed to be trapped behind her pessimistic lips. "Hmmm… Not looking too good," she said. "We should do vitals to make sure he isn't dead."
"Let's try this instead." Jim reached to the wall for a small control panel on the side of the cell. With the press of a button the images on the screen vanished. The black sheet of glass reflected Iggy's horrid image back to him, an image that he'd fight to forget. But finally, he shut his eyes for the first time since the experiment had begun, and the hot grinding between his eyes and eyelids made most of the liquid in his head collect there. Water moistened the dried spheres and dripped out of the corners of his eyes. He gasped with relief.
"See, he's still responsive," Jim noted. "We need to wait for the reflex to die out and his brain to regain control."
"It's already been about thirty six hours, now. How much longer can this go on?"
Jim looked down at her and sighed. "He will die in about two more days… give or take twelve hours, or he'll be cured of this terrible illness and move on to the transplant series." He tapped the button on the control panel and the screen flickered red again. He sang, "only time will tell."
As soon as Iggy recognized the red, his eyelids pulled up and he couldn't force them back down. An empty, silent sob pulled his diaphragm in and out, causing his abdomen to quake with desperation, because he was now certain that he was going to die there.
Jim's laugh rolled out of him like thunder as he observed Iggy, insensitive to the horrible images playing on the screen. He pointed his finger toward the TV and looked over at Maria. "Do you know where these clips came from?" he asked her.
She glanced at the video and cringed. Her lips slanted to the side, disapprovingly. "They're sick."
He nodded. "Yes. To us they are. But for the infected? They love them. These videos came from the Silgria house after the invasion last month. They had many videos. We took all of them, and have been using them here. I see a lot of irony in that." She sighed, unenthused, and Jim scoffed and lifted his hands up so his palms flashed. "Don't you see? We're using their evils against them to better them. That's ironic! Wouldn't you say?!" Maria didn't respond whatsoever, so Jim shrugged his shoulders and turned away from the barred wall. "If this works, everything will change. The world will be a much better place. Imagine a world in which the virus is truly our friend. Our people will be safe from the horrendous brutality that the virus has brought to us, and in the future perhaps we'll coexist or even merge."
"Sorry doctor," she looked down at the clipboard in her hands, scanning the daily plans. "I'm not the philosophy type."
"Hmmm…" he hummed, bringing his thumb to his chin. "That's fine. Let's go see how BF15 is doing with his treatments, then."
Together they marched away, leaving Iggy completely alone once more.
A long time had passed when suddenly he heard a harsh cry echoing down the hallway. By this time, he was practically dead. He hadn't had anything to drink for eight days, nor had he moved since day one. His muscles were stiff as wood, much like rigor mortis, and he had become so numb that he could not feel much on the outside of his body. Inside, he was in so much pain that he would have done anything to make it stop. If not dead, he was losing his mind from sleep deprivation, so he didn't get too excited by the screaming.
It was a woman's voice, pleading with all of her life, emptying all the air from her lungs with each word. "Please let me go! Forgive me! Forgive me! Give me a chance!" If Iggy had been able to smell, he would have found her scent familiar, for she too feasted on the same harvested potatoes and carrots as he did no more than one month before.
He could see her figure in his peripheral kicking and pulling with all of her might. Her clothes were of dark colors, mostly from grunge stains, and they were loosely fitting. Tears ran down her bruised bleeding cheeks, and with every word she cried, Iggy heard the extra beat that her heart made. Her voice even had the embodiment of blood.
A large dark figure escorted her through the hall by the nape of her neck. He was huge in comparison to her, especially tall. "There's no way out of this," another voice responded. The other voice was familiar, too. Iggy even recognized it! It was deep and full. Shockingly so!
It was Amare!
"Amare?" Iggy whispered. His voice was so fragile that it remained unheard.
Amare and the woman came to a stop before Iggy's cell. "You were caught in enemy territory," Amare stated. "The rules are simple. Stay in your own land and they'll stay in theirs."