Chapter 1
There is a small, heavy beat in her chest. One that she does not know. It is quick, heady, like when the sharp things slide under her skin and try to slice away at her essence. The beat is steady in its swiftness, like an unwavering drum, never faltering, never straying from its melody.
It feels strange in her chest.
Alien.
Like it didn't belong.
Ba-bump. It goes. Ba-bump, ba-bump, ba-bump.
It is almost lyrical in its frequency, as if telling a story from start to finish in those single instants. But she knows it still doesn't belong. She likes the beat, likes the steady, constant sound against her ribcage, but it doesn't belong.
It feels wrong under her skin, like the viens it sounds from are trying to carve their way out from under her flesh and leave the sack of muscle and meat behind. She does not like it--this feeling. The beat makes her feel naked, vulnerable, like someone is probing around under her skin, making her body react without her permission.
The beat isn't supposed to be there. She knows this because at first, it wasn't. There was no beat, no sound, only darkness. It was still and quiet, never making a sound. There was no ba-bump, no steady hiss of blood in her veins, no trickle of sludgy fire under her skin, permeating her muscles.
With the beat comes fire and blood and heat.
There is no noise, not at first. Only the steady hum of the beat in her ears and the rush of her mind, telling her that she was awake now; from what, she did not know. But then, slowly, her ears pick up the sound of hissing and shifting and slurring. Not at first though. It is gradual, edging its way into her skin, bones, until it works its way into her mind, ringing out against the silence she bathes herself in. The sounds...the hissing...sound strange to her mind, and sometimes--only sometimes, she gets tired easily--she tries to follow the sounds, curious.
("--she's moving--reacting to sound--look at her, what a beautiful, beautiful girl--")
With the sounds come the feelings.
The sensation of tingling and suddenly, the awareness that she is not simply an essence, an awareness. She is something...maybe even a someone. What a someone is, she does not know, only that she heard it once, a stutter of words, a gaggle of incomprehension--("Operation Seven, Subject Eight, Number 80398. July 10thshe reacts to sound. Heartrate above--someone's excited today--")--an unknown.
With the tingling and the sounds; the rush, the hissing, the shifting and slurring comes the sludge. The first time she feels the sludge, ("Inducting chakra now--careful, careful--ah there we go, she's acclimatizing--go on, my lovely. You be good for me now."), she jerks, ("--Oh, would you look at that, a work of art!--she's moving, she's moving--!" ) and opens her mouth to cry out.
She chokes on something, spine stiffening, and then the awareness sets in. The slow, careful ebb of something curdling in her veins, the steady, constant essence that is slowly, carefully, seeping into her skin, oozing into her bones. It slides under her skin like a snake, sinister and roiling, like it wants to tear itself away from her and leave--
It hurts.
It aches--like fire and pins and all of the bad things in the world--she just wants it to stop. If she could, she would tear it out from underneath her skin. She wants to burn it all and take it away; wants to beg and beg and beg until someone stops. It feels like someone--something--is pinning her down and making her boil alive; as if someone is peeling the skin from her muscles, carving a path into her core, alien fingers gripping her little pool of slick bubbles that rests in the middle of her chest and flares when she hears the sounds.
She sobs when they give her the sludge. She even screams, she thinks, thrashing. The sharp things under her skin jostle and she tries to move, tries to tear them out, because they hurt--
("--just a little more--
--Are you sure--sama--?
--A little more--!)
Then, one day, the sludge settles inside of her like silt on a muddy bank.
It mingles with her own little pool of bubbles, and slowly, carefully, it mixes and mixes and mixes until she can no longer tell them apart. The shift to match each other seamlessly, and suddenly, she realizes, that she doesn't have a little pool anymore, no, what she had was enormous and suffocating--like--like--
Something else.
It did not belong to her.
After the sludge settles and shifts, and shifts, and shifts, she begins to move.
Tiny, insignificant jerks. Little jolts of movements that make her face scrunch up, her lips bunch in a snarl, her fingers twitch if only minutely. It still hurts. The sludge doesn't go away and it only itches now, but the movements ache. Like she's never been able to move before. Like her muscles aren't used to twitching or jolting or stiffening in release.
The sounds are still there.
Everything is so loud now. The silence has dissipated, and the noises feel like static against her ears, drudging up everything that she doesn't want to hear. The slurring and hissing, she finds out, are words. She doesn't know how she knows they are words. She only knows that that is what they are.
Slowly, slowly, she begins to wonder. She begins to imagine. Her mind wanders to faraway lands; filled with gold and blue, so much blue, and little sea turtles and animals that scatter around, their chirps and whirls and loops of the tongue winding around her mind.
She dreams.
She doesn't mind them--the dreams she means.
It is a break from the slow, dull agony of the sludge and the steady, insistent hum that thunders in her chest. The dreams let her think and play and stumble in her mind, and take a break from the awful hissing and the noise and slurred, hurried words that seem to echo all around her, as if in an antechamber.
They fill up her time, her mind, her thoughts until all she can think of, all she can dream of is--blue-yellow-green dapples on sand, little critters running around on water, tiny, insistent birds chattering around an island. She dreams of what she thinks is the sea, but she's not so sure so she calls it the Blue, because it is. So blue, she means. So, so, so blue.
She wants to touch it.
In her dreams she can never touch anything.
That's the only sad part.
Everything shines bright, brighter than bright, but she can never touch. Her hands swipe right through the blue, cleaving through brown and yellow and choppy earth until all she touches is the silt of her muddy bank, the slow, toxic sludge that roils inside of her.
It makes her whine.
("--reacting to stimuli--wonderful--fantastic, my little one--you will be fabulous--")
She's sitting on the yellow one day, watching the little scattered critters inch across the sand when it happens. One second she is leaning forward, trying to catch the chattering little thing and the next--
Pain erupts under her skin--
She screams.
("She doesn't like that--just a little more, a little more--don't you worry, precious child, precious, precious child--inch by inch, there you go, there you--did you see that--that--that right there--!")
It feels like someone is tearing her apart.
Something pushes and arches and suddenly, she twists, the yellow disappearing out from underneath her, the little critters and blue, (all of the blue, she croons, crying) is gone and she bellows in agony when something slides under her skin.
It is like fire. Like fire and pain and all the bad things in the world and all she wants, all she needs is for someone to stop--stop, stop, stop--please, someone stop!
She pants and arches and chokes on her own spit, eyes rolling back into her head. Something pushes down onto her chest and then another sludge is burning right through her, soothing and calming, but she can still feel--the insistent, rocky ache. Like pins and needles behind her eyes--
She opens her mouth--
Her eyes flutter open, for a second, half a second--
A pale expanse. Yellow blobs.
"Would you look at that," The thing pants. "She's awake."
What is a she?
The thing croons, long, meaty things from fat, pale squared circles descend upon her and she feels something brush the top of her head.
"Blue." The thing tuts, but she's already focused on it--it said the thing. The Blue. Where is it? She wants it now. She needs the blue. Needs the yellow and brown and choppy parts--the little critters that amble around inside the darkness and fill up the silence; block out the hissing and the slurring and the slow, steady thrum that's beating wildly inside of her chest.
"A shame. Hair shouldn't be as conspicuous as that."
What is hair?What is that thing? Why is he--
"A pity she's awake now, though," The thing creases. "Well. Let's hope you survive, little girl."
Her muscles twitch and something bunches in a contortion and then--
Something sharp gleams in its meaty paws and--
Pain shatters against her skin.
There is a startling realization that whatever is oozing from her skin is red, red, red, and then she sobs, trying to get the thing to stop--please--please stop!
The last thing she sees is the glint of something metal and the aching, searing pain that echoes across the chasm of her mind.