WHAT’S IN A NAME? | Pt. 1
Warnings for Medical atmosphere, Psychological Torture, Child Abuse and Gaslighting
“The Tower? Kit, what was the Tower?”
She barely remembered it, a nightmare long past, but the word brought the taste of copper to her tongue, and she cowered before it like a frightened child.
She woke up freezing, wearing nothing but a hospital robe that barely covered her knees. She was lying on the familiar post-operative gurney feeling as sluggish as she usually did after her surgeries. The scanner against her skin was just as cold, clutching to her temple and forehead like a head-sized wrench.
Every thirty-seven – she’d counted – seconds it beeped, a noise that gratingly echoed in her ears like a knife being stabbed into them. Too tight and too loud, the girl wanted nothing more than to rip the contraption from her head, but the operation had made her tired. She literally didn’t have the energy to move. Moving her hand – which she hadn’t noticed she’d been doing – took everything out of her.
The girl heard the sounds of pen scribbling on paper, the movement of a rolling chair across the floor. This wasn’t the first post-operative recovery she’d had. She knew right now they were watching her vitals, watching her brain waves, making sure everything in her brain hadn’t turned to complete mush.
It felt like it. Her brain felt like cotton and her vision blurred as she stared at her splayed fingers.
“Subject Zero? Is something wrong?”
Subject Zero…No that wasn’t right. No. Her name. Her name was something else. She had a name. A real name. Not just a title, not just what Oliver liked to call her. A real, true name.
The nightmares lately had been getting worse. Another name on her lips when she wakes. She was starting to get confused about a lot of things.
“My name…” she murmured.
“Subject Zero, look at me.”
A light flashed in her eyes checking her pupils. She assumed they worked properly by the way the doctor ‘hmmed’ above her.
“My name is Sophie,” she finally managed, “Sophie Poole.”
The doctor froze, lips pursed tight. “No, it’s not,” he said, in a way one chastises a child. “Subject Zero, can you sit up?”
“I…don’t think I can.”
She tried anyway, because the doctor would force her into the position whether she liked it or not. It was like moving through water or perhaps more like mud, sloshing around and struggling to move forward. But she made it into an upright position, though she swayed in place, nevertheless.
The girl looked around the room but everything was too blurry to make out.
“I don’t feel so good.”
“Post-op fuzziness – it will pass.”
She stared again at her fingers, counting them as if expecting one to be missing. Her name…Why did she keep coming back to that? The beeping behind her ear seemed to drown out any other thoughts, bringing her back around to the same thing. Who was she? Subject Zero? No? No!
“My name is Sophie,” she said again, firmer and this time she made eye contact with the doctor as she said it.
“You are not Sophie,” the doctor chided, peering over his glasses as if she was doing something wrong.
“I was….,” she trailed off, staring at her fingers again, mulling over the cotton that was her brain, “I am. I am Sophie.” She let the words fall from her lips softly as if it could call her old self back to her body, as if she’s been lost to the stars and nothing more.
“Subject Zero—”
“No—I don’t want to do this anymore.”
She knew she’d said something wrong the minute the doctor paused in his movements. “I’m tired,” she added, in some attempt to lighten the words coming next.
“Just a little more Subject—”
“I’m Sophie!” she protested loudly.
The beeping behind her ear was growing more incessant and Kit felt the need to raise her voice to be heard over it. “I’m Sophie!” she repeated, “Sophie. Sophie. Sophi—”
That was the last straw. The doctor slammed his clipboard down onto the counter making the young girl jump. She stumbled to the floor fueled by pure adrenaline and childish rage, but her muscles could barely hold her upright. Her eyes were wide with fear, breath coming quickly – wild like a cornered mouse as the doctor approached her.
The scanner was so loud now it was practically one singular stream of static.
“Sophie Poole was a disobedient little nuisance whose parents didn’t want her!” the doctor snapped, grabbing her by the arm, “Do you want to be disobedient? Do you want Dr. Kendrick to send you away where no one will ever want you again. He can you know.”
The girl snatched the scanner forcefully from her head with her free hand feeling it scrape some skin as it went. She ignored the pain, in simple euphoria from the relief of the lack of static. “You’re a liar! Dr. Kendrick would never—”
“He will if you don’t stop this nonsense, SUBJECT ZERO!”
Kit screamed at him as he clung to her by the arm, slamming her fists against his chest. The movements were too slow and sluggish to do any real harm, her body too exhausted. “Liar, liar, liar!”
She could not say when she actually collapsed to the floor or when she started convulsing and which one happened first. She probably fainted long before either started, the last of her energy seeping out of her with her short-lived spat at the doctor.
By the time the convulsions ended, she was trying to move again, babbling incoherently. The doctor had hit the red emergency button and a new wailing sound had begun. If she’d been more coherent, the girl would have covered her ears in annoyance. As it was, she curled her legs towards her stomach, moaning. Everything in her body felt wrong, it didn’t feel like it belonged to her, too far away.
The convulsions started again, conscious lost in a tirade of darkness.
As several agents flooded in the doctor directed them to get the girl off the floor and back onto the gurney as he readied what he needed for an IV. “After I get her stabilized, she needs to be put through conditioning again.”
One of the agents – newer to the crew and possibly on his last day – had his eyes glued on the seizing child, frozen, horror evident on his features. The Commander pretended he did not see, pretended everything was fine, pretend, all he had to do was pretend he was apathetic and all would be okay. For everyone.
“Conditioning? Sir, in her state?”
“This, Commander?” The doctor quirked his head towards the girl as her second set of seizures came to an end. “Is simply a child throwing a tantrum.”
The doctor gestured at the commander to hold her arm up for him. Preston hesitated before moving forward and doing as he was directed. Stay quiet, keep your mouth shut. That was the way things were done here. No one asked questions about the tiny girl seizing on the table. No one protested what they were doing. No one—
“Sir, please…Conditioning? After an operation?”
“Commander, need I remind you what happened the last time someone started asking too many questions?”
“No…sir.”
“Good. Anyway, she will be more moldable in this state anyway. Perhaps it will finally take. Perhaps she will finally learn what she is now.”
Kit was still now, breath coming in shallow gasps, face white as a sheet. She did not move as the doctor had placed the IV or when he hung the fluids above her. Her eyes were opening, blearily trying to take in everything around her. But it was far too bright and she shut them again. Shut it all out.
The last thing she heard were the doctor’s words, “Give her an hour for the fluids to get into her system then escort her to the Tower.”
She didn’t have the strength to panic or run. Only slip away yet again into darkness.
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