Specimen(75)

“Specimen seven-two-eight-nine: Caucasian male, one hundred and eighty-three centimeters long, weighing eighty-nine kilograms. Vital signs normal; temperature thirty-six degrees centigrade, blood pressure one-twenty over seventy-six.”

She pulls out a vial marked Furioquel-gamma and inserts a needle into the solution.

“Administering first round of FOG.” She taps the needle to bring the air to the top, expels a slight amount of the liquid concoction, and slowly feeds it into the IV tube.

I see my hand clench and then release, spreading my fingers out wide before relaxing them again. My eyes open, and I look at my arm, pausing for a moment at the IV needle, and then gaze at the woman beside me.

“Where am I?” I hear myself ask.

She stares at me for a moment.

“You were very aware,” Riley says softly. “You shouldn’t have been so cognizant so quickly. I knew there was something wrong immediately. It was too early for you to be asking rational questions.”

“Can you tell me your name?” Riley in the video asks softly.

My throat bobs as I swallow before answering her.

“I…I’m not sure.”

“What’s the last thing you remember?”

“Galen.” My head rolls toward her. “Galen Braggs. Am I still locked up?”

I don’t miss the shocked expression on Riley’s face.

“Don’t you worry, Galen,” she says quietly. “I’m going to take care of you, all right?”

“Am I sick?”

“You’re going to be fine.” Riley smiles down and takes out another syringe. She injects it into the IV, and I watch as my body slumps back on the bed.

She stands, her expression concerned, and walks over to the computer.

“Terry,” she says, “I need you back here. Get the other techs. There’s a problems with these implants. Hopefully, we’ll still be able to use this specimen.”

Riley stops the video.

“I nearly had you voided,” she tells me without meeting my eyes. “It was Terry who convinced me he could fix the implants, and you wouldn’t have to be destroyed. It took seven surgeries before you finally woke up without memories. At least, I thought you had.”

“Things kept changing,” I tell her. “I remembered shaving the night before, but then I suddenly had a beard. I’d wake up with shorter hair than I had the day before. I had the feeling my dreams were the key to that. When I stopped telling you about them, I stopped losing time. I don’t remember what’s on this video though. The first time I remember waking up, I was alone in the lab.”

“That was the fourth time. I miscalculated when you would regain consciousness after surgery. If I had been there, you wouldn’t have been so frightened.”

“And perhaps less destructive.”

“True.” Riley offers me a wry smile. “The video was the only time you knew your name right away. I remember now that you asked about being locked up. At the time, I thought…well, I’m not sure what I thought. I was so shocked you remembered your name that I didn’t take what you said into account. If I had asked then, questioned you, I might have known the truth, but I didn’t. Even so, when you told me later what you were dreaming about, I should have looked into it more.”

As quickly and easily as my partially electronic brain computes battle tactics, infiltration, and escape routes, I can’t seem to pull all this information about Riley’s prior knowledge together enough to make sense of it. I want to believe everything she says. I need to believe it, but there is a bubble of mistrust deep in my gut, and I don’t know how to reconcile it.

“Is this the worst of it?” I ask. “You heard me ask if I was still locked up and didn’t look into it?”

“I was focused on getting my first specimen working, using my new techniques,” she says. “I was more concerned about that than anything else at the time.”

“What about now?”

“Now…now I don’t know what to do.”

“You helped me escape. You took me out of the facility and helped me steal a helicopter. What position does that put you in now?”

“I have no idea,” she says. “I don’t care about that anymore.”

“Why not?”

“I only care about you.”

I’m her specimen, her life’s work. Her very best lab rat.

I bite my tongue. For the moment, it doesn’t make any difference. Before long, someone is going to be looking for me, and I can’t allow myself to be captured.

“It’s not safe here,” I say.

“At some point,” Riley says, “they’re going to realize the helicopter never made it to Highland Hospital. We can’t stay here much longer.”