She woke up. Scared, confused, unaware. Ignorant to her past and ignorant to pretty much everything. She remembered her sister, dead in the kitchen, blood spilling from the area around her eyes, almost looking like tears. At least at first. She remembered screaming, her sister laying on the tile. She thought she saw a glimpse of hope for a second, her legs, they were moving slightly. But she wasn’t one bit alive.
She was cold. A metal table had been her bed, apparently. She was nearly naked, but a bra and underwear. They weren't hers. Definitely not. Where was she?
She looked to her left. Another table. Blood. A little boy. More blood. A steel rod, impaled through his neck. He had been dead a while, but not too long. An aura of death coated the atmosphere, yet a semblance of life still lingered.
His body lay in a bag, unzipped down to his knees.
She drew in her lips, and a tear rolled down her face. She didn’t panic. Not yet. She looked forward. A screen:
Venonae Inc. Exp. Room 3: Avian.
She sat up, arms supporting her. She drew her legs over the side of the table and laid her soles down on the cold tile. A broken flower pot laid beside her feet, dirt poured out. A plant, not any kind in particular, laid over the tile floor. Green stem, green leaves. She leaned down and took the plant in her hand. She brought it up to her face, examining it’s attributes. This seemed all too natural. But she had never done this before. Though, how would she know? She couldn’t even remember her first name.
In her mind, she had never done anything before, anything like she was doing now. She felt a sense of rebirth. Or maybe just an awakening. She was scared.
Mina. Her Sister. Her bloody tears. That’s the only thing visible in her memory.
“I miss you.”
“I love you.”
She dropped the plant by her feet, and cried her own tears. One after another, tear after tear. A waterfall, a tsunami. She wanted to leave, she wanted to be free.
She walked forward, eyes fixed on a table by the edge of the white painted wall. She gashed her foot, on the shards of terracotta. Blood spilled out onto the floor. Dark. Red. Nothing unusual. She gasped from the pain, and breathed out, strained. Still, she made her way over to the table, white and plain, the same as the rest of the room. A folder laid on the table, cream colored. She needed to leave. She could faintly hear Shostakovich’s 5th symphony playing throughout the building, or wherever she was. She didn’t know what it was or what it meant, but it reminded her of something. She took the folder in her hands. A piece of construction tape on the front:
The Hybrid Experiments:
Exp. E: Avian, 139
Dr. Resco
A stack of papers rested inside. Papers and papers, she read, of which felt like another language. In the middle of the stack, a paperclip held together a smaller stack of photographs.
❈
A woman laying on a bed of grass. Her eyes were closed. Maybe she was dead.
An angel in a tree. One wing was half gone. Cleanly half.
A young boy. No expression. A glass wall with nothing behind it but sky.
A book. A tattered and faded yellow cover. A title written in black pen:
Humanum Veritas
Dr. Elliott Parker
Skin. A back. The area on the shoulder blades had wounds. Red gashes that extended throughout. It really was repulsive.
❈
She stiffened. An unusual feeling. A shock throughout her body. She was upright in half a second. Her eyes widened and she swallowed. She breathed in and choked. Falling forward, she leaned her arms against the table. She looked down, breathing hard, heart racing. She reached her right hand across her chest and up her side, gently grazing her upper back. An intense pain soared throughout her entire body and she fell to her knees. She screamed, she couldn’t contain it any longer. She looked at the last photo in the stack. Her.
“What the fuck did they do to me?”
No really, what the fuck did they do to her?
A sound. A click. Air. She turned around.
“Elizabeth.”
“What?”
“Elizabeth.”
That was her name. She remembered now.
“Who are you?”
A full hazmat suit. Orange. She couldn’t see their face. She could tell by their voice it was a man. She squinted her eyes and leaned down, picking up a shard of terracotta before stepping forward.
“I don’t have a name.”
“Why?”
He ignored her question completely, acting as if it was never even asked.
“Mr. Four-Hundred will want to see you. You aren’t even supposed to be awake, let alone self-aware. Something must have happened.”
“Where’s Mina?”
She knew where her sister was. She remembered. But maybe she hadn't. Maybe she was dreaming. Just maybe.
“Who?”
"My Sister."
"Oh. Her. The little fledgling."
She could feel him smiling.
"I thought you already knew. We didn't think you would of lost all your memories, at least not that one."
Elizabeth walked closer to the man, stray tears wandering down her cheek. She swayed over to him on the balls of her feet and he stood standing still. She didn’t care anymore. She remembered enough to know things didn’t matter. Her actions afterwards spoke louder than anything she could of said to show how she felt in that moment. The orange hazmat suit, cut at the neck. Blood on the floor. Dark. Red. Nothing unusual. He gasped for air, falling to the ground, and she walked over his back. She didn't know what to do. She walked out the open doorway into a plain white hallway. She looked to her left, she looked to her right. She ran right. Everything looked the same, room after room, hallway after hallway. She entered another hallway, this time the wall in front of her was glass. A window. A city some miles away. She could see the skyline. Down below all it was, all she could see, was green. Grass.
“Elizabeth.”
“Elizabeth.”
She looked to her left, she looked to her right.
A woman and a man, masked. These people really were insane, weren't they?
A rabbit and a ram, they seemed to be.
The rabbit raised her arm, gun in hand, finger on the trigger.
The ram did just the same, and now she had two guns pointing at her on either side.
"What did you do to me?"
"What the fuck did you do to me!"
They both laughed. They laughed like it was funniest things they had ever heard. A hard, eerie laugh they both seemed to demonstrate.
They stopped.
“You can’t run. Mr. Four-Hundred is waiting.”
She sighed. She looked down at the vast green below. Another tear passed down her cheek.
And then a smile, a slight smile, passed her lips. Her first.
"Let him wait."
Maybe, this is what she wanted. Maybe, this is what she needed.
The glass broke easily, not much running space required. She breathed the air she had been desperately craving. Cool and crisp, possibly autumn. Or spring. Or maybe just a light winter. Or even summer, a cool summer that is.
She was falling. Some might even say she was flying, but she was definitely not flying. Just falling.
Falling and falling and falling. Still falling. And falling even more.
She didn’t have anything to lighten her landing.
She didn’t have a parachute she could pull.
She didn’t have gods, wanting to make sure she would land on her feet.
She just kept falling.
No wings to save her.
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