Chapter Text
“Who are you?”
Slowly, painfully, she is dragged out of the warm darkness. Her mouth tastes like metal.
“Who are you?”
She’s not sure where she is, exactly, or why her head is pounding like that. She decides that she’ll open her eyes.
Blinding light, filling her vision. Her head pounds and swims. She blinks once, twice. Okay. Now she’s going to figure out where she is. Somebody was talking to her, right? Let’s start there.
“Hello?” she croaks out. It sounds wrong. Very, very wrong. She shuts her mouth. She’s on a table, she’s gathered that much at this point. A table in a conference room of some sort. There’s a speaker on the table with her. It crackles to life.
“I’m sorry. I got ahead of myself. Hi there, you on the table. I wonder if you’d mind taking a brief survey. Five questions. Now, I know you’re sleepy, but I just bet it’ll make you feel right as rain.”
She doesn’t want to speak again, to confront whatever is wrong with her voice. And yet, this mysterious voice is really pissing her off.
“Who is that? Who’s speaking?” She strains in a whisper. It’s just as bad as the first time.
She schleps herself off the table and crumples limply to the floor. Did they–whoever they are–drug her when they brought her here? Where is here?
One thing at a time.
There’s a door at the end of the conference room. She shakily gets to her feet and stumbles over to it.
“Hey. Let me out!”
The door doesn’t respond. The speaker does.
“I’d be just thrilled to chat once we’ve run the survey. Shall we begin with question one?”
She screams. The sound tears through her throat and it is disgusting . Unhelpfully, she gags. Something is wrong with her . She kicks the door. Kicks it again.
“Let me out of here!”
She slumps down to the wall. Whatever. There’s a path forward here, and she’d be stupid not to take it.
“Hey,” She rasps.
“Hello,” the voice says.
“Five questions?”
“Five questions.”
“What do I get at the end?”
“Depends on your answers.”
She doesn’t like this voice very much.
“Okay,” she says.
“Great. Off we go. Now to start, who are you?”
“That’s the first question?” She can’t help it, she feels a smirk dance across the corners of her mouth. Don’t be stupid, you’ve been kidnapped. This is not the time to question their methods.
“First name will do.”
Okay. Okay, whatever. She’ll tell the mystery voice her whole life story if it gets her out of here. Her name is-
Her name is- is-
Oh, what the fuck.
“I don’t…”
“It’s okay,” the voice croons, “if you can’t answer the question feel free to say “unknown.”
“What is this?” She practically begs, “What’s happening to me? Why do I sound like this?”
There’s a long pause. The speaker turns back on and for the first time the voice sounds genuinely confused.
“Sound like what?”
“I- uh, I can’t…” Damn, the kidnapper makes a good point. Sound like what ? She considers it for a moment, before the speaker crackles on once more.
“I know you must have a lot of questions, but hold your horses, bucko. After these five questions, we can answer all the questions to your heart’s content.” She could’ve sworn he, and it is a he, is suppressing a smile.
Okay. No name, fucked-up voice, five questions. Let’s do it. The voice interrupts her psyching herself up.
“So, uh, can I put you down as ‘unknown’?”
There’s a camera in the corner. She glares daggers at it.
“Okay, unknown. Question two. In which US state or territory were you born?”
Fuck. She doesn’t know. Her breathing starts to speed up. She idly wonders if this is a panic attack.
“Alright, unknown. Question three. Name any US state or territory.”
“Where-”
“First one that comes to mind.”
“Fuck, I don’t know. Delaware. How did you-”
“Delaware. Question four. What is Mr. Eagan’s favorite breakfast?”
“I don’t- what? Who?”
“I know, right?” the voice says, and the shit-eating grin is evident. “Unknown. Question five. To the best of your memory, what is or was the color of your mother’s eyes?”
Her head pounds. The wall she’s leaning against feels much too hard. Her breath pulls in and out, in and out. She’s too big, she’s taking up too much space in this room, she sounds wrong. Something is wrong. Something is very, very wrong. She shudders out one long, awful breath. The voice takes that as an answer.
“Unknown. So that’s unknown, unknown, Delaware, unknown, unknown.”
“What the hell did you do to me?”
Next to her, the door swings open. There’s a man, and when he speaks it’s the voice on the speaker and some part of her knows she’s going to die.
“That’s a perfect score.”
Her vision clears. Her heart is still pounding, but this man certainly doesn’t look like he’s about to murder her. In fact, he looks kind of goofy. What’s up with his hair? He extends a hand. She considers her options. Ah, what the hell. She takes his hand and rises to her feet. He’s a little shorter than her, kind of scrawny, too, and she has to laugh. She doesn’t think this man could kill her if he tried. He leads her over to the table and gently guides her down into a chair, before walking around and claiming his own. She realizes he’s been carrying a large binder, which he sets down in front of him. He coughs, adjusts his tie, and begins to speak once more.
“Now, I think I know where our disconnect is coming from.”
“What?” Disconnect?
“Well, there was a preamble”--he gestures to the binder–”which I was supposed to read before the survey, to lead into the questions, but, y’know, I sort of skipped that and went straight into the survey.”
She’s not really listening.
“Am I a clone for lab testing?”
“I’m sorry?” He’s smirking. She feels a little stupid.
“Like, did you grow me to test, like, genetic modifications on, and that’s why I have no memories? And you’re gonna harvest my organs to test them?”
“You think we grew a full human, gave you consciousness-”
“I don’t know-”
“Combed your hair-”
“I don’t know. I don’t know you.”
“No, we are not harvesting your organs . Good lord.”
She stares at him, fully looking him over for the first time. He’s an odd combination of unkempt and put-together. His dark hair looks like shit and his eyes are kind of puffy–has he been crying?--but his eyes are alert and he looks generally pretty easygoing. She doesn’t detect maliciousness in his eyes, so she considers her questions, and decides on her top priority.
“Then what’s my name?”
He smiles. This, he can answer.
“Eli. Your name is Eli J.”
She raises her eyebrow at him.
“Really?”
He tilts his head, a slight smile dancing across his lips.
“Yes?”
“You’re not fucking with me?”
“No, I’m not fucking with you.”
“That’s a man’s name.”
He seems genuinely taken aback for the first time. He appears to scan her face for mirth, cunning, some sort of sign she’s playing a trick on him. Evidently he finds none, because he begins choosing his words, his mouth feeling out the statement he’s going to make. All of a sudden, things start falling into place. Her height, her voice, her name. She reaches up, slowly, and touches her face. It’s rough and bristly, a thousand tiny knives stabbing much, much deeper than the skin.
Oh no. Oh fuck.
“Yeah,” the man slowly says, “You are one.”