Footsteps, thumping above her head, bringing a second, deeper hiss. A pressure valve letting off steam?
“‘Lo?” she slurred, voice ragged and hoarse.
Something wet landed on her sternum. Heavy. Pinning her flat.
She squirmed. “Noo…”
A wordless snarl reverberated through the air, doubling the weight on her chest. Compressing ribs and forcing the air from her lungs. Still beneath the assault, so as not to provoke further retribution, she waited. Counting the seconds.
With a chuff that reverberated the air in her ears, the weight lifted, leaving behind a sticky moisture coating her breasts. Trickling over her sides to pool beneath her armpits. Tingling as it mixed with the chill in the air, it stank of damp, dark things. Neither molding nor rotting, but… musty. As if in need of a good spring clean.
Certainly not something found in the pristine sterility of a modern operating room.
She took a breath, trying to peel her lids apart as feet scuffed the floor by her head.
Picking up a melodic tune, her captor began to hum, voice deep. Masculine. The song unrecognizable, but it was the metallic clink that gave her involuntary shivering new life. “Oh, god… Pl-please… let me go…”
The song stopped, mangled by a stream of harsh, guttural words she couldn’t comprehend—answered by an airy, light voice hovering by her feet. A voice thick with boredom and contempt, though she couldn’t understand the words. But when careless, rough hands found purchase on her inner knees, she knew another sort of instinctual language. Primal.
Terror.
Blood rushed in her ears, drowning out the foreign conversation going on above her.
Two. There were two people in the room with her, and the latter stood with what must be a spectacular view of her spread nudity. With a squeal, she bucked, trying to pull her knees together by sheer force of will—a useless action driven by panic. She knew that. Understood the mechanics of her organs reacting to the terror signals her brain was sending them. By this point, her adrenal glands had dumped enough hormones into her blood to help her lift a car, or run flat out until she’d beaten every Olympic world record for sprinting and distance ever held.
Useless here, while she was tied to a gurney not located in a hospital operating room. Blind and naked. Helpless to resist the man tinkering above her or the woman holding her knees apart as if the cuffs binding her ankles were insufficient. Couldn’t fight or flee. No, the adrenaline did nothing but cloud her judgment, when what she truly needed was a plan. A weapon. Some way to get leverage on her captors. Fool them into complacency so they’d give her a chance to fight.
Forcing her muscles to still, she exhaled through her nose, focusing on the high-pitched whistle as two streams of air passed over her upper lip. Tickling the tiny, fine hairs on her skin. The tide of rushing blood receded enough that she could pick out the conversation going on around her, punctuated with the clink and shiiiick of steel on steel.
Was he sharpening a blade? Preparing to slice into her though he knew she was conscious, knew she’d feel it? Was that what he wanted?
Breath in. Breath out. Master the panic—don’t let it be the master.
“Please,” she whispered, licking dry lips, eyeballs rolling behind fused lids. “If you can—can understand me, I have money. I-I’m pretty sure I’m a doctor,” she rasped, seizing at the tiny crumb of her broken memory. Not caring whether or not her words were a bluff. “I have a savings account, and—”
Fingers pried her lips apart, plunging past her teeth, palpating the flat of her tongue, then going deeper. Rushing past her gag reflex, in spite of her effort to bite through flesh and bone to stop it.
Slimy.
The wandering digits coated her lips, tongue, and throat in a thick, viscous slime. Probably the same gunk spread across her breasts, though she couldn’t see to confirm. She gagged again, abdomen and ribs heaving against the invasion, unable to scream as impossibly long fingers burrowed deeper. Stretching her throat. Making her jaw ache with the force.
Eyes burning, she writhed, trembling beneath him even as his partner moved to pin her hips. But her tears wouldn’t fall, trapped as they were behind her eyelids. Which made no sense. Her tear ducts should have been free to function, unless her eyes had been sealed shut. Glued.
Giving one final, feeble attempt to dislodge his fingers, her diaphragm convulsed, trying to bring oxygen past a blocked airway as carbon-dioxide built up in her blood. Behind her lids, shadowed, brilliant stars glittered in the dark. Her brain firing helplessly as oxygen depletion began to settle in.
He withdrew, voice rumbling low and insistent above her as she gasped. Upper back thumping against the gurney with the force of her coughing.
“Unnngh—” She retched, bringing up a mouthful of slime and bile—though she couldn’t taste it. Couldn’t feel it as it splashed down her chin and chest. Numb. Her tongue was numb. Lips, throat, chest, everywhere the man had touched, everywhere her skin was wet with slime, she was numb. Blessedly so.
Topical numbing agent. Lidocaine, though it didn’t taste or smell anything like the product with which she was so dimly familiar. Something similar, perhaps. Something… better. Faster acting. More thorough, for her vocal cords were all but useless now. Paralyzed, barring the smallest, most senseless sounds. Jaw working on wordless air as she tried to force the tiny muscles to work. Tried to scream, to reason with them, to do anything but gasp like a fish.
The man laughed, flicking her nose with the tip of a wet finger, cooing and hissing nonsense as he swiped at the mess she’d made of her front. She felt the impact of fingers on her lips without feeling much of anything else. Couldn’t stop him when he pried her jaws open once more, tilting her head back and fitting a bit of metal between her teeth. Opening her airway and straightening her throat.
She moaned, trying to shake her head, even as he fitted a clamp around her temples. Pinning her truly immobile and utterly at his mercy. Couldn’t move, scream, or thrash.
A shrill, two-toned beep brought a hum from the man and a silky chuckle from his partner. Whatever they were planning, whatever device they were preparing to use on her chirped twice more, then went silent. Leaving a tense, heavy moment in its wake, in which the only sound was her own labored breaths.
When those hated, slender fingers slid down her throat a second time, she could do nothing but take it. Even her gag reflex couldn’t be bothered to react to the intrusion, subdued as it was by the slime.
But she could feel him moving inside her. Two long, nimble fingers searching for something. Agitating the delicate cartilage that, if broken, would mean her death.
A click echoed inside her, and for one heart-stopping moment, she assumed it was the sound heralding the end. When that shrill, two-toned beep came from within her, however, she knew.
The device—whatever it was—was inside her.
Grunting, the man shifted his weight, what might have been his belly brushing against her forehead, though whatever caught at her hair was rough. Not skin, then, but something else. A belt, perhaps? Utility pants? Certainly not scrubs she was accustomed to wearing in the operating room, memory intact or not.
The woman murmured something low and soothing, cool, wet fingers tracing the backs of her knees as the beeping started anew. Picking up the pace, chirping a rhythmic tune in place of her voice. Speaking for her.