(Yet.)
A chair stood in the center of the room, a chair with straps by the places where arms and legs and necks and torsos could be inserted, though Everly didn’t take any of that in.
Right next to the chair stood a table with a wide assortment of tools varying in length and shape and quality and sharpness. Primarily sharpness. Everly also didn’t take this in at the time, which was probably both a blessing and a curse. Maybe she would have been better prepared. Maybe it would only have made it worse, the anticipation of it.
What Everly did take in was a large, clunky machine that was set up behind the chair with the straps and the table with the tools. For whatever reason, her eyes latched onto that machine and remained latched even as Jamie took her arm, even as he guided her (forced her, shoved her) toward that chair, even as he locked her in and pushed her head back and chuckled darkly, though she did not hear because her attention was so focused, so precise, so wholly trained on that machine, and it was calling, calling, calling to her, and she could almost hear it, almost understand it, almost feel it there with her, like a physical presence, like a long-lost friend, like a lover in desperate need of attention, of care, of help.
And then:
Steel on flesh on flesh on steel on—
Hot, burning, searing, cleaving, tearing, heaving, fighting, clenching, falling—
Beauty, some would say.
Horror, most would argue.
Death, Everly would have said, if she could have said anything, if she could have strung two thoughts together, if she had been able, after the fact, to retain any of the memories of that room, that chair, that machine.
It’s a blessing she can’t.
It’s a blessing the instant the first edge of the first blade licked the skin of her flesh her mind turned in on itself.
It’s a blessing it’s a curse it’s a blessing it’s a curse it’s a—
She didn’t ask for—
None of them asked for—
The building. The building asked for this.
But it didn’t.
But it did.
But it just wanted to exist, and it was people, greedy people, power-hungry people, people who thought they could change the way of things, curious curious curious people.
Everly doesn’t remember what happened in that room. She never will.
Others are not always so fortunate.
Chapter Thirty-Eight
Everly awoke to darkness.
That’s not right. Everly awoke to a gray room that was lit by the single fluorescent light above her head, but when she opened her eyes all she could see at first was darkness.
She could not move—only her eyelids, which fluttered open and then clenched tight when she still couldn’t see anything and then opened again and fear: Where was the light? Fear: Why couldn’t she see? Fear: Where was she?
Blink blink blink blink blink blink blink blink.
And then, as though from far off, a pinprick, small and distant and faint, oh, so faint.
The light grew and grew and expanded and formed, eventually, into the shape and texture of the fluorescent light that hung above her head, and she blink blink blinked at it, and then finally was able to squint around the rest of the room.
Her room. It was her bedroom.
It was—she tried to sit up and—
Flames, up and down and through and within the veins of her arms, legs, skin, bones—
Everly froze. Remained immobile in her thin, gray bed. Tried to remember.
She couldn’t remember.
She couldn’t remember, but the others could: the invasive memories that flooded her mind then, that told her what must have happened to her, even though she could not recall, even though she had not been there, even though she must have been.
The memories that weren’t hers, that had to be hers, that belonged to someone else, but were still there inside her.
The memories told her about the chair that she must have been strapped in.
They told her what must have happened to her while strapped in that chair.
She could not move, could not sit up enough to look down at herself and confirm, but what she could feel told her enough of what must have transpired next.
She could not see her arms, but she could see someone else’s—they must have been someone else’s—she could see someone else’s arms and they were covered in cuts and welts and bruises and burns and they were her arms and they weren’t and she could feel it.
Whatever they did to her.
