"Yea…" Robert leant out of his chair just far enough to peek around the corner and see Iggy's feet. His expression was smoother now and a tiny smirk played across his lips. "Just. Another. Waste." He sat back, quiet, and the sound of flipping pages resumed.
Iggy hung his head low, and even so, his eyes were too dry to continue crying. The hours flew by, and Robert wasn't interested in him at all anymore. He watched a fly land on the wall and take off with more excitement than he had for guard duties, pondering how the fly had gotten in there in the first place and hoping it could find its way back out. If he couldn't get himself out then the least he could do is hope that someone else could. When the time came, he stood from his seat and hobbled to the main door. He unlocked it with a key and walked through the threshold.
Jay, the day guard, came in. He was so large that he could barely sit in the same metal chair. He moved the chair right opposite of Iggy's cell, where he ate prepackaged foods and candies all day while staring at him absently. Despite the sugar being crammed into him, he still smelled sour. He was plagued with rotting ulcers because the only time he ever stood was when he went to open and close cells as new specimens arrived, or to piss or shit in the toilet.
Throughout the day, a few prisoners were delivered. The first specimen was a young man who was practically dead by the time he was thrown into a cell. He hit the floor and then didn't move once, all the while his heartbeat and breath were barely audible. The second new addition was a woman strapped onto a gurney. Her eyes vibrantly gleaming with thirst, but her mouth was taped shut, and all of her breaths roared through her nose. When Jay opened the door, tilted the gurney forward, and released the straps, the woman tapped the ground and bounced right back onto her feet. She flung herself at the closing door, but it slammed shut before she could escape. Her nails scratched the tape off of her mouth and she opened her mouth wide, gasping for air. Her teeth were sharp, long, and wanting blood more than anything else. She stood by the bars trying to push herself through.
The guard exchange came around again, and when Iggy saw Robert enter the corridor with a stinky meat sandwich in his hand, he felt a twinge of relief. Robert's limp was obvious now more than ever as he walked past the barred doorways and peered inside of each cell. He stood before the woman's cell and met her blood thirsty glare indifferently. Continuing on, he paused only a half second before the next cell, acknowledging the young man molted to the floor who had been dead since the morning shift. Robert would have to clean him out. Eventually.
Then, he stood in front of Iggy's cell and looked in. Seeing just the vague outline of Iggy's body in the farthest damp corner, he was unsure if Iggy was still moving or even alive. He narrowed his eyes in for a better look. Iggy's eyes glowed through the darkness like gems in an unexpected flash.
Robert startled back a step. "Holy shit," he gasped, clenching his sandwich tight in his fist. "Are you still there?" Robert looked over his shoulder at the hungry woman reaching through the bars of her cell who was trying to catch him, and then back at Iggy. He smiled widely, revealing the pieces of meat in between his teeth. "I thought that the monster in you would have taken over by now."
Iggy rested his chin on the top of his knee and let his gaze drift away from Robert down to the floor. "You have a limp," he muttered.
Robert took a deep bite of his sandwich. "I sure do." He chewed sloppily. "What about it?"
"Nothing," Iggy sighed. "I used to have a deformity, too. I understand the nuisance."
Robert's shoulders perked up and he looked at him even more directly. "Oh, yeah?" he pried. "What kind of deformity?" His eyes searched Iggy's torso area mostly, where he already knew that he was injured, however Iggy's knees blocked most of the view.
Iggy withdrew his hand from the pit between his stomach and thighs and held it up. "My hand," he whispered. "Right here on my wrist. I couldn't use any of my fingers, and it was bent forward like this-" -he twisted his wrist in toward himself, trying his hardest to imitate the condition that he had spent his whole life getting used to.
"You were born that way?"
"No." Iggy lowered his hand and tucked it back away against his aching stomach. He looked past Robert at the drooling woman across the way. "I think I was bitten. I must have been a little kid at the time."
Robert glanced back at the woman, too. "Must be hard for you to be looking at that devil all day, then." He swallowed the last bits of food out of his cheeks and slapped his hands together. "Oh wait," he laughed, "you're not human! How stupid of me." He cackled under his breath and walked away from the cell to sit down in the metal chair. He left it across from Iggy's cell, staying within view.
Hours went by and Robert finally stood to use the toilet. His left leg limped terribly, so much that he leant the opposite way, making his shoulders appear lopsided, too. An injury not from birth, but still not fresh either. The starving woman's flexibility to reach out for Robert as he hobbled by was lessening within each hour to the point that she wasn't able to extend her limbs anymore. He was desensitized to it. Accustomed to the process. And he returned to sitting.
Iggy gathered himself up to standing. His steps shuffled across the floor and he leant his shoulder against the bars. "Sir," he said quietly.
Robert jumped in his seat, again. He pressed his fingers hard into the pages of his book as if he were going to run with it. "God damn it!" His voice was hot from the anger of embarrassment. "You scared me! When the fuck are you going to phase out? It's been two days already! Get to it!"
Iggy returned the surprise, "what do you mean?"
Robert opened his eyes disbelievingly wide. "Phase. Out. Like that animal right there!" He jerked the book in his hands toward the woman hanging her limbs through the bars with the blackened mask of thirst around her eyes.
As Iggy looked across at her, a sudden feeling that there was something missing arose, like there was something that he lacked, then he realized that certainly it was his thirst reflex that was gone. As terrible as it had been, he couldn't help seeing it as a disadvantage without it, because now he was had to be conscious.
"It happens to every single one of you," Robert continued. "So get to it already!"
Iggy admitted with a tone of longing in his voice, "I don't have that anymore."
Robert slammed the book shut in between his palms. In one clumsy stride he came to standing directly in front of Iggy's cell, out of arm's reach, of course. "I should beat you for speaking, as per protocol…" he growled. Iggy cowered away from the wall. Cowering was not a behavior of a typical infected monster, especially one who hadn't been fed in two days. "But... I can't help but enjoy the fact that someone else here isn't drooling or crying. So, tell me…" Robert leaned forward, "how someone like you, who is claiming to be so different from the rest, is lying here in the Base Prison waiting to die just like everyone else?" To that, Iggy had no answer, and Robert knew he wouldn't have one. Robert paced back to his chair and sat down. "Come on," he pressed, holding up one hand and waving it toward his own ear. "Keep me awake with your lies. I've been aching for a new story."
Iggy shook his head and looked down at the ground between his two bare feet. "You don't believe me."