Tommy looked down at me, his eyes thoughtful. “Well, she sure is pretty enough. Except for her messed up face.” He laughed, tracing a finger lightly over the curve of my scar. I reached up to smack him, but my arm wouldn’t move. It lay curled against my chest, useless.
The other guy, who still remained nameless to me, continued to work on the touch screen for a few more moments before we departed the room. Tommy held me in his arms as we traveled down the hallways to the elevators. I watched the numbers as we moved upward. We had been on the second floor. I stored that away for later, thought I didn’t know what good it would do me. We traveled only a few floors, the doors opening up at the 5th floor.
They took me through another series of long hallways before coming to a pair of double doors. The other guy (I had taken to calling him that, like it was his name or something) pulled a keycard from a key ring on his waist and ran it through a scanner. The door automatically opened, and we went into a very large room.
The room was massive. It alternately looked like a doctor’s office and a gym. There was medical equipment everywhere, but there was also a treadmill, a stationary bike and a lap pool. There was a small group of people that looked like nurses or doctors, wearing the same uniform that Tommy and his companion wore. In the middle of them, looking quite pleased, was Dr. Razi Cylon.
Tommy carried me across the room, depositing me on the hard, paper covered medical bed. There was a tingling in my fingers and toes as whatever Tommy had injected me with started to wear off.
Razi leaned over me, examining me from head to toe with her careful eyes. “Did you inject her already?”
“Yes, ma’am,” Tommy said. “I was going to wait but given her tendency to fight, I thought it best to do it when she was cooperative.”
Razi nodded. “That’s perfectly adequate, Mr. Riviera. You are dismissed.” Tommy and his companion nodded and exited the room. “How are you feeling?”
I opened my mouth to speak and nothing came out. It was too dry, my lips nearly welded together from the lack of use. I felt like the Tin Man from the Wizard of Oz.
Razi waved to someone, and they brought over a bottle of water. She unscrewed the cap and handed it to me.
I grabbed it and gulped down the entire thing, the plastic crinkling to nearly nothing under my palm. I wiped the corners of my mouth with the back of my hand, letting the bottle fall to the ground. “You’re strangely nice for a kidnapper,” I croaked finally.
She sighed, her shoulders rising up and down delicately. “I am not a kidnapper. Soon you will understand that I am only trying to help.”
“You locked me in a room for days,” I remarked, running a hand through my disgusting hair. I hadn’t bothered to use the shower in the room, afraid that they would be able to see me through the camera. “I don’t see how that’s trying to help.”
“I was…” she paused, mulling over the words, “preoccupied and could not come to you sooner. That won’t happen again. You are very important to me and to everyone here at Sekhmet.”
I looked around and saw that she was not lying. There was a group of five adults in the room with us, the nurses or doctors I had noticed before, and they each had their own expression of eagerness on their faces. I shook my head. “Why? Surely you have managed to track down other survivors.”
Razi laughed, and the other doctors were a beat behind her. “Well, of course we have. But you are special to us.” I opened my mouth, but she cut me off. “You will find out in due course, I promise you this.” She stood up, offering me a hand.
I stared at her hand with disgust and kept my hands folded in my lap, clenched tightly together. I would not punch her again, not now, not when the game was so obviously in her favor.
She raised an eyebrow at me. “It would do you quite well to cooperate.” She held out her hand once more, and this time I took it, allowing her to lead me across the room.
The doctors tittered around me, helping me to lift off my scrubs and replacing them with a hospital gown. I felt a dark flush go through me, at these strangers seeing me in my underwear, especially my dirty underwear, but it didn’t seem to register on their faces. I might as well have been a golden retriever in a vet’s office.
They took my weight and measured my height. I gaped at the numbers at the scale; I had lost a considerable amount of weight since leaving New York. I ran my hands over my body, feeling more bones than I ever had before. My hands cupped my breasts and I sighed. Even now they remained a ridiculously large size.
They poked and prodded me, taking my temperature and my blood pressure. They looked in my ears, up my nose, down my mouth and made me take a vision test. One doctor took blood, missing the vein in my arm several times before finally securing the needle. Another doctor conducted a full reproductive exam, including setting up my feet in stirrups. I ignored the flames that were licking at my cheeks, and stared at the ceiling, hoping that it would all be over soon.