Maybe I was in my own mind. In level two, since I’d survived the glass box. This was an odd way to begin.
Something squeaked across the room, and the tight clicks of something sharp hitting the paved floor echoed around me. A door, I thought, and shoes. Heels.
Her face came into view, and I felt a moment of relief. “Dr. Loveless,” I said.
“Number Nine, you’re awake,” she replied.
Number Nine? Why wasn’t she calling me by my name?
“How are you feeling?” she asked.
“Where am I?”
“You’re at site CX4-B, known to most as Xerox.”
I looked back and forth for anyone else. “Where are Agent Seeley and Zoe?”
“Close, don’t worry. You’re safe here. This is where you were born.”
“I don’t understand what’s happening.” I could feel my panic growing. This was wrong. Something wasn’t right. “And why am I restrained?”
“It’s for your own safety and the safety of everyone else,” Dr. Loveless said.
“Agent Seeley said you were compromised.”
“Agent Seeley lied.”
No, I thought, this can’t be real.
“Is this real, or are you in my head?”
“Oh, this is very real, Number Nine.”
“Why are you calling me that?”
“Because that’s who you are, who you were created to be. You will see.”
“I wanna see Zoe. Where is she?” I asked, all of my warning senses firing at once.
“Fair enough,” Dr. Loveless said, and as she lifted her hand another spotlight flashed to life. Beside me on a similar table, Zoe lay strapped down just like me.
“Zoe,” I called out. “Zoe!”
She didn’t respond. Her body stayed still as stone. Unlike me, she hadn’t been cleaned or changed, and she had thick black wires like tentacles clinging to her in a dozen places. Little round suction cups pressed tightly against her flesh.
“Zoe!” I cried again. “What did you do to her?”
“Nothing,” Dr. Loveless said. “Yet.”
For the first time, I saw her as monstrous. “Who are you?”
“Who I have always claimed to be, just with different motivations than I let you see. I needed you to trust me, Number Nine. I needed your help in your own memory recovery.”
“My name is Lucy.”
“No, that was a title given to you by Olivia Rivener. You are Number Nine, the last of your group. And the only one remaining, but you know all of that. Agent Seeley told you.”
“Where is he? What did you do to him?”
“Agent Seeley? Nothing. How do you think we found you to begin with?”
She was claiming Seeley had been working with them the whole time. “No,” I said. “You’re lying.”
“Believe what you want, it makes no difference to me,” she said. “Either way, you and I have a common goal: to get your memories back. And together, we’re going to.”
“I won’t help you do anything.”
“I doubt that very much. With the help of Agent Seeley we discovered something about you, a breakthrough in understanding your memory recovery.” She came closer to the side of my table and sat delicately on the edge. “How did you break out of the glass box?”
I tried to inch away from her, but I was tightly secured in place.
“DOT showed very different neurological activity that time. Instead of the irrational scattered sense you usually display, there were collective thought patterns, which resulted in illuminated memories. So, tell me what happened.”
“I had to get back. We were under attack,” I said.
“Yes, and maybe we could think self-preservation was the cause of such focus, but you’ve clearly displayed that self-preservation isn’t key. So something else was being threatened that caused the breakthrough.”
I knew where she was going before she said it. All the pieces started to click. Snap. Why I was fastened to this table. Snap. Why Zoe was strapped down beside me. Snap. What was to come for us. Snap.
“You’re a smart girl, I’ve seen your file, so I imagine you know where I’m going with this,” Dr. Loveless said. “The idea that the one person you love was being threatened gave you the strength to break free from the glass box. She is the key to unlocking what you’re hiding behind the facade of Lucy.”
“If you hurt her—”
“No,” Dr. Loveless snapped, “you misunderstand. I will hurt her until you succeed. You will remember who you are, Number Nine, but as long as you believe you are Lucy, your weakness lying there beside you will serve as proper motivation for remembering. Do you understand?”
“But I can’t remember.”
Dr. Loveless raised her hand again, and I heard the charge rumble through the thick cords that covered Zoe’s body. Before I could protest, voltage scorched her skin. Her eyes snapped open, and her mouth emitted a guttural scream. Her lower back arched off the table, her neck craning and contorting against the ravages of electricity.
“Stop!” I screamed over the pulsing buzz. “Stop!”
The sound cut out, and Zoe’s body fell limp back to the table. She was gasping for air, her eyes still wide, and turned her head to look at me. Her eyes were filled with terror. She was trying to say something but couldn’t get her words past her throat.
“Zoe,” I called, tears filling my eyes.
“Lucy,” she weakly huffed.
“We will begin like always,” Dr. Loveless said.
With her words, a white-coated tech rolled in DOT, and another followed with a simple medical cart, a blue cocktail of capsules inside a white paper cup.
“The more you resist, the harder and longer this will be for Zoe,” Dr. Loveless said.
“And what if I can’t remember?” I asked as Dr. Loveless connected DOT to my scalp.
“You will, Number Nine. Zoe will ensure it.”
I knew from her tone that all she could see were the end results. She didn’t care whether it cost Zoe her life. Dr. Loveless would do whatever was necessary to get what she wanted. That made her the worst kind of threat.
“Are you ready?” she asked as she held out the small cup. I took the blue pills without water and felt the cold steel of the table against the back of my head as Dr. Loveless lowered my skull. I could feel the drug’s effect almost immediately.
The doctor pulled a simple black stool forward and placed it beside me. She sat and began, as the heaviness of blue heaven took me into darkness.
I GASPED, DRAGGING air deep into my lungs, and my eyes shot open. My heart was racing. I could hear it thundering against my eardrums. My breathing was short and crisp. I wasn’t where I’d expected to be.
The place was dark, black, from the firm place under my feet and as far as I could see in all directions. It was cold, like an icy wind moving across my skin, but everything was still.
The only thing besides me here was too far in the distance to make out. But it stood out against the darkness. I moved toward it, my bare feet making zero noise as they met the surface. The sound of my pulse was all there was. It sent a shiver down my spine.
As I approached the object, its features started to crystalize. It was a wall. Tall, triple my height, made of vertical wood panels and stretching several yards in either direction. Along the base, running as long as the wall, was a line of doors. All identical, with small round cutouts at eye level.