Chapter Six

The machines of the laboratory did not make a lot of noise, but were unsettling enough to draw Clio from his sleep. He awoke feeling heavy, groggy, as though stuffed with cotton, and considered falling back into a slumber.

The voice in his head, that dark and insistent touch, kept him from doing so. 

Annoyed and upset, he blinked further into consciousness, noticing that he was in the lab he frequented, strapped down to a table with padded restraints for each appendage.

The other presence that sometimes greeted him in his mind, was very insistent at the moment, coercing Clio to blink into the demanding brightness of the fluorescent light aimed at him. He had, at some point, begun to call the voice ‘Other’ which the voice then tried to mimic, the voice surprisingly infantile in his pronunciation of the single, simple word, as though constructing syllables was a new task he was acquainting himself with (which made sense given his lack of understanding to English). The resulting pronunciation made it sound like the voice was saying ‘Otto’ rather than ‘Other,’ and so Clio had named him as such.

“Go away,” he couldn’t help but speak aloud, as he sent the sentiment to Otto.

The presence, and his memories of what had happened before he had fallen under, kept him from his peace.

Agent Jackson. Why had he done that to Agent Jackson? 

A horrified shudder ran through him as he recalled the look on Agent Jackson’s face as he was made to take a sip of the blood-tainted water. It was a look he had never given Clio before. One of distrust. One of disdain.

What did you do? Agent Jackson had asked.

Clio didn’t know what he had done, or what had compelled him to do it, though there was a part of him, that monster inside, that did. 

But he wasn’t ready to meet that monster to find out.

Otto was there, distracting him from despair, showing him images once again. Otto, on a table, strapped down to contain the movement of every muscle, as doctors cut into his scalp.

“I said go away!” Clio shrieked, fists clenching. In anger, he began to rip at his own restraints. His right arm was loose in its strapping—an oversight. Clio had never attempted escape before, he was a good boy, so whoever had restrained him may not have taken great care in the consequences should Clio attempt freedom.

With his right arm free, the left came next, followed by his feet until he was pushing himself off the lab table, panting.

He didn’t have time to be shocked with himself, so on edge was he and distressed by the hideous raincloud that Otto was. “I do not want to hear you ugly thoughts,” he said, in almost a plea. They bring out the darkness in me, he did not add. The darkness was hard enough to maintain on its own without being taunted.

It took Clio a moment to realize that he was alone in the lab. The doctors were not present, making Clio wonder about the hour. 

They had strapped him to a table and left him there. 

He tried not to feel hurt by the lack of care that had been taken towards him. The PCA is always right, he chanted to himself. They’re always…

Wrong, Otto finished for him, for once using his words correctly. Look. Otto showed him an image of a computer, blinking and flashing.

It took Clio a moment to figure out what Otto wanted, and when he looked over to one of the random computers within the lab, a rush of determination met him. Yes, urged Otto, go.

Clio was about to counter the demand, but didn’t at the last moment. He was too tired and distressed to fight any battle, so he followed the instructions and made his way over to the computer.

Except he had no idea how to use a computer.

What now? He shot Otto irritability, trying to fight back the wrongness he felt for approaching something without explicit permission. Perhaps the reason he didn’t know how to work a computer was because he wasn’t allowed to.

Otto sent him memories of how to use the mouse, what buttons to press, and what to type.

Eventually, a screen pulled up filled with files all with bright thumbnail images.

Otto told him which one to click on, and another screen, a media player, pulled up. The bright image, he knew immediately, depicted the laboratory, the same lab he was in at the moment. People he knew well crowded the area, including Dr. Connors.

There was another person he recognized, strapped to the main operation table, obviously unconscious, as well as naked.

Two-One.

But Two-One had been released, so this couldn’t be right, so what was she doing…?

Before Clio could wonder further, on screen, Dr. Connors was handed a scalpel, which he used, without hesitation, to slice a clean line from Two-One’s chest to lower abdomen.

It took a few seconds for blood to leak out of the open wound, making Clio imagine, hope, that an actual cut had not been made, but eventually the blood did. And when it came, it ran in rivers.

Then the doctors moved to open her up further, extracting from the cavities of her chest, all sorts of things inside of the witch that should not have been touched. Things she needed, but they took away as easily as if they were passing plates around a dinner table.

They’d gutted her.

By the blinking vital signs on the screen, she had been alive through it, though asleep. Alive, until she was not. 

When lines appeared across the vital screen, Clio stumbled back, his thoughts finally catching up to him.

They’d killed her. They’d killed her.

The PCA…?

But they said she’d been released!

What was going on?

Clio didn’t realize he was shrieking on the floor until Otto urged him to be quiet, insistently, until the voice came through.

SHHHHHH, it insisted.

Clio wiped his runny nose and stood up shaking. 

He didn’t understand what he had just seen, he didn’t understand, but he knew wrongness, and what the PCA had done could not have been anything but.

Don’t think, Otto urged, not through voice still but his calming intentions. Focus.

Whatever energy was leaked to him through the bond calmed Clio, keeping him from his panic attack that hovered on the border of his wits, and he focused, no longer attempting to push Otto out of his head, but let him flood in.

That will happen to me next, Otto did his best to explain through images. Help.

“How?” Clio wondered, wiping away more tears.

Find me, Otto urged, and then began giving out the instructions that would lead Clio to him.

Helplessly, confused, Clio followed them.