The Loyal Alone

Chapter Thirteen

I will learn, here soon, that darkness is my friend. But now, naively, I seek the comfort of others, even though I know that something bad will happen the next time I see Dr. Olly. It doesn't matter. You see, this time, I knew when I woke up. It was like a soggy weight that was molded over my body had slowly been lifted, a feeling of relief. In my head, I'd thought about Cole and Ulric, and how Ulric's first thought when he saw me was to imprison me until he knew I was no longer a threat. I thought, that if I could just show Olly that I would participate, I wouldn't need to be harmed.

I was wrong.

From overhead, I heard the loud 'thrum' that caused the lights to bolt on in a flash of over exuberance. My eyes didn't adjust until Dr. Olly was standing over me.

"Good morning." He glances at me before moving to the other side of my bed, he pulls back my jean flaps and has scissors in his hands, he's cutting the gauze to reveal nearly healed skin. "Glad to see you are healing," he says as he runs the back of his hand over my lower thigh.

I glance down, the skin is red, it will most likely scar, there are bullet sized divots were the teeth sunk into me, but they were small, not deep, like the rivulets on a golf ball.

"Quite quickly, I might add," he says as he prods a finger into the flesh around the healed wound. The medicine had worn off a while ago, but my body felt weak and numb, I barley felt him touch my leg.

He moves the bed to sit me up as he comes around to my other side.

"You've been very still," he says, "no jerking, or shaking. I think you've come to understand our relationship here. Johnson told me that he explained our work to you when he fed you. I take it that means you now understand my work, and why it is that we are looking for a change trigger. My hopes, are that we can reverse it."

"He mentioned it was a curse." It didn't feel like the words were coming from my tongue.

"Do you not think it is?"

"I've spent my life hiding because of it." I'd never thought of it as a curse, but I liked that word now. It was a curse.

He smiles smugly. "So, a curse then. Are we agreed?"

I say nothing, I simply flex my hands as I start to regain some sort of feeling, I noticed that my fingertips weren't numb like they were when a first woke.

"Seeing as you haven't been moving, have you noticed your new binds?" He trails his hand down my arms which are still limp at my side, unmoving, not because I couldn't move them, but that my body seemed to tell me that it wasn't important to move them.

I glanced down, it takes a moment for my eyes to adjust I noticed first that the leather was gone, and at first, I thought he was letting me go because I had been so cooperative. But then my eyes focused on the dark and chalky metal that was protruding from my wrists and my stomach churned.

My wrists were no longer bound with leather, instead there were chains connected directly to me, wrapping around a 'U' bolt like hoop that was attached to a flat bar which was being held into my skin by thick shiny screws.

"I figured you didn't notice." He smiles, his fingers lingering on the bolts in my arm. "I point it out, because if you struggle, it will hurt worse than your leather binds. It's been screwed into your Ulna, straight into your bone. This makes it harder for you to run, to fight, but it also moves with you as you change, whereas the leather binds could fall off during a shift." He tugs them gently and it hurts.

I've never felt a pain so deep like it, bone deep. It made me shudder and I nearly felt the need to vomit.

"I do not like using such inhumane treatment, but I felt it necessary since you state that you DO have the ability to shift." He tugs on it again and makes an unhappy look. Just then, the gray bearded man came into the room with another small tray. "Johnson, breakfast time already? I was just telling Subject Four about her new binds. You did a good job here," he says, but he reaches across me and grabs a screw driver from the tray, "just need to tweak it a bit."