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Melissa sits on her hard slab of a bed, staring into space. Her body aches, the remnant of some punishment. Her eyes sting with unshed tears.
She flinches when she hears footsteps coming down the corridor. She doesn’t want to be alone, but she hates being around her captors more. She hates the constant corrections, constant reminders of how inhuman she is to them. She hates the pain.
Brick and Savannah step into her view. “Up.” Savannah orders, unlocking her cell. She strides over, and roughly takes her arms. Brick unlocks the chains around her wrists.
“Where am I going?” Melissa asks, trying to sound tough but mostly sounding nervous.
She is slapped right across the face, and has to bite the inside of her mouth to muffle her cry of pain. “You’re a cyborg.” Brick reminds her sternly.
“Not a human.” She repeats back, her voice a furious, humiliated whisper. “So I can’t speak out of turn.”
“Good cyborg.” Savannah pats her on the head once. Melissa had gotten good at staying still, at accepting touch even when it sends shivers down her spine. “Come on.”
She follows them out of her cell and down the corridor. Her head is bowed, her arms straight at her sides, her legs moving robotically. She is every inch the perfect cyborg, the perfect tool. It makes her feel sick, makes her stomach churn. And yet, she complies.
They take her to a familiar corridor- her training room is here, where she practises her aim with her arm. But they don’t enter that room, instead opening a different door. Her eyes widen.
This room is huge. It looks like her old school gym hall, but even bigger. It is all grey, with no windows, and the air inside is chilly.
But the huge room isn’t empty. She looks around at what looks like a running track drawn on the ground. Then gymnastics equipment, which somehow looks far less fun than the gymnastics equipment she used at school. It looks imposing, and the ground looks like it would hurt to fall.
That isn’t the most interesting part of the cavernous space. When she looks up, her eyes widen even further. Because the most important part of the room is clearly above her head.
She can only describe it as a mix between a children’s playground, a high ropes course, and a parkour course. But all suspended in the air, either screwed to the walls or hung with ropes.
And below it all, a safety net. Which is clearly needed, because if you fell from that height? She winces at the thought. Bones would be broken, certainly, it would mean weeks of recovery.
She looks up at Savannah to ask a question, then flinches and looks back down at the floor. Be a good cyborg. Be a good, silent, obedient weapon.
Even her internal voice sounds like her captors sometimes.
Thankfully, Savannah doesn’t punish her momentary lapse. And after a few moments, she relieves her curiosity. “This is a training room.” She explains. “You are generally fit and healthy, but your physical skills leave much to be desired. You are slow, weak, and nowhere near agile enough for our needs.”
Melissa’s insides burn with indignation. She’s ten! She tries, but how is she supposed to keep up with adults? No ordinary child could meet their impossible standards.
And she is at a disadvantage. Sure, her metal limbs give her an advantage. But the rest of their cruel treatment has done nothing other than ensure that she is weak. She was starved, and she still hasn’t recovered to the weight she was before.
And she is constantly in pain, constantly recovering from a beating or tasing. How she is supposed to meet their ‘standards’ when she is in so much pain, all of the time?
But she doesn’t say any of that. She isn’t that stupid. She just nods. “Yes, ma’am.”
“You will begin training today, and spend every day where you aren’t on a mission training.” Brick takes over from Savannah. “First, running.”
They make her run around the track as fast as she is capable of, until she collapses from exhaustion. She curls up on the ground, being ruthlessly kicked, while insults are yelled at her. She is told over and over how weak and useless she is, how lucky she should feel that they are keeping her.
And then she is yanked to her feet and forced to run the track again. Her legs hurt, her lungs hurt, but she runs. She runs and runs, then goes back to her cell, then gets up and runs again.
After a few days of torturous training, she is allowed a break. One day of lying in her cell, nursing her bruises and recovering.
And then they move on to the gymnastics equipment. She already struggles with it, falling regularly, with no padding to break her fall. She struggles more because whenever she makes a mistake, a metal baton is slammed against her leg.
Still, over and over she follows their instructions. She walks along a beam, she bounces on a trampoline, she swings on bars and rings.
Her body is covered in bruises, even her metal parts have a few dents. She flinches every time she makes a mistake, preparing for the pain in her leg, from the baton.
But as days pass and pass, days that she can’t see and can only assume are passing, she can tell that she is getting faster. Getting stronger. She begins to see muscles on her skinny flesh arm, on her bruised legs. She is exhausted after each session- which only makes them push her harder.
Every day, she becomes a more effective weapon. And she hates it.
Finally, they decide she is ready for the training course above. She has to climb a ladder up to a small platform, which isn’t fenced in. There are no ropes to save her- the only thing between her and the pain of a very hard landing is the safety net.
“Follow the arrows, we will time you.” Savannah calls. “Begin… now.”
Melissa jumps onto the next platform, then the next. She runs along a narrow beam, then grabs a rope to swing to the next section. Then she crawls through a narrow tunnel, and jumps again.
Then she makes her first mistake. She slips as she runs along a beam, and plummets downwards. A yelp of surprise is torn from her throat as she falls, but she lands safely in the net.
The punishment for failure hurts worse than the fall.
She climbs back up the ladder, and starts again. This time she more carefully walks along the second beam, which earns her a yelled reminder that she is being timed.
The next obstacle involves jumping from a lower platform to a higher one. It is tricky, but she is able to pull herself up.
But when she has to swing from one rope to the other, her metal hand slips and she plummets into the net.
So over and over again, she runs through the course. She leaps from small platform to tiny platform, some so small that her feet hardly fit. She shimmies up and down poles, swings on ropes, walks on beams and even wires. She climbs and jumps and throws herself through obstacles that she never imagined that she could manage. If she could have done this before, when she was a normal child? She would’ve loved it. She would’ve found it so exciting.
But being punished painfully every time she fails just makes the course terrifying.
As she sprints along a platform, she hears the door open. She turns her head slightly to see Victor Verliezer walk in, a stern smirk on his face. She winces.
She knows that she needs to prove herself to him, knows that any failure will be punished ten times as harshly by him. But his presence throws her off of her game.
She leaps onto a swinging platform, and despite wobbling manages to stay on. But as she steadies herself for the next jump, she hears an impatient couch. She panics and leaps forward, grasping for the pole. She doesn’t manage it.
She hurtles downwards, landing roughly in the net. She rolls over, scrambles up, and hurries to climb down. “Sir.” She says to Verliezer, with a false respect.
“Don’t you sir me.” He slaps her across the face. She winces. “That was utterly atrocious! Do you want to end up in a scrap heap?”
She trembles. “No, sir. I-“
A taser is jabbed into her stomach. She cries out as she collapses to the floor, convulsing. As she lies limp, Verliezer looks down at her with an utterly disgusted expression. Like she is a piece of gum stuck to the sidewalk, a tiny cloud in his perfect, efficient world. “You are a failure. You are worthless, and you are lucky that I have decided to keep you. Because you deserve to be torn apart for scrap. You’re nothing other than scrap metal.” He suddenly kicks her. “Say it!”
She stutters it out, her voice breaking. “I- I’m scrap metal, sir.”
He kicks her again, right in the face. She is sure that she hears her nose crack, and pain shoots through it. “Remove the training net.” He says to her handlers.
“What?” Savannah says. “Sir, she is not yet able to reliably run the course without falls. A fall could put her out of commission for a few weeks, or even risk her lif-“
“Did I ask for your input?” He says coldly.
“No, sir.”
Brick and Savannah take down the net. And then Melissa is yanked to her feet. “Run the course, and run it perfectly.” Verliezer says, tightly grasping her face with his hand. Her nose burns with an aching pain, she is certain that it is broken.
She manages a nod. And then she clambers up the ladder.
Without the net below her, the drop looks even worse. She takes a deep breath, steeling herself. And she starts running. Running, jumping, swinging, balancing. She has done it over and over, she has the steps memorised.
But it is still so difficult. And she is in so much pain now. Blood from her nose is splattered all over her face, and her nose throbs. It is distracting.
Inevitably, she makes a mistake. She crawls through a tunnel, jumps on a swinging platform, then swings on a bar. And she mistimes the swing.
She flies towards the next platform, but she knows that she won’t reach it. She grabs at the edge of the platform, her hand scrabbling for purchase, her legs flailing.
Despite her efforts, she plummets downwards.
She hits the ground with a scream. Pain shoots through her, horrific pain. Sobs are ripped from her throats as she lies there, squirming as if she could escape from the pain. It hurts so much, like a giant is slamming a huge baton into her.
She feels a hand on her neck. “She’s awake.”
“Yeah, I got that from the screaming. Pipe down, it’s irritating.” A swat against her forehead. She whimpers. “Oh, don’t expect sympathy from me. It’s your own fault.”
She can’t stop crying. A piece of fabric is shoved into her mouth, muffling the noise.
“She needs to go to the medical suite immediately.” Savannah says urgently. “Sir.”
“And she has broken her mechanical parts, ungrateful brat.” Verliezer complains.
The world around Melissa is going darker and darker, the voices getting quieter. At least the pain is fading along with everything else.
“Sir, she needs urgent medical attention.” Brick insists.
“Fine. But she doesn’t deserve it.” Verliezer groans. “Useless scrap metal.”
———
Melissa wakes up in pain. Everything hurts, like she is one big bruise. Tears roll down her face, the salt making it sting.
She is restrained tightly to a table. People stand around her, bandaging her up, putting her flesh limbs in casts, and repairing her mechanical parts. She hates being awake for it.
But she has been awake for worse procedures.
The fabric is still stuffed in her mouth. So she closes her eyes and lies there quietly, docile despite the pain and fear. Or maybe because of it.
Finally, they finish with her. And she is dragged back to her cell, chained up tightly. She lies on the floor, unable to move to her bed, eyes shut.
Brick and Savannah come to bring her food. Accompanying them is Verliezer. Melissa flinches when she sees him. “You should be scared.” He says. “Your punishment isn’t done.”
She waits with bated breath. “You will have a break from both missions and training to heal, but you will still be beaten daily for your atrocious performance in training.”
She wants to cry. She is in so much pain! She hurts so much. Why can’t they just leave her alone? Why can’t she go home? She wants her dad. She just wants her dad.
The pain blurs her carefully built defences. “Dad…” She whimpers out, a sob breaking her voice.
“Oh, sweetheart.” Verliezer’s voice is a mockery of kindness as he bends down next to her, and grabs her face with his hand. He squeezes, and she whimpers. “You’re never gonna see daddy again, ok? Cyborgs don’t have dads. And he would hate you if he saw you now.”
As tears roll down her face, he steps back to let Brick and Savannah approach.
It hurts.
———
With her newly healed body, she runs the course. She successfully completes it, sliding down the final pole and landing on solid ground. She takes a deep breath.
She feels no triumph, just relief.