Wilder Girls(31)

I barely have a second once the buckles are undone before they’re gripping me tight and lifting. They swing me onto the table and stretch my arms out, strapping them back down. I wince, the ridge of bone that runs like a second spine grinding uncomfortably against the table. One of the doctors wraps a blood pressure cuff around my left arm, and as it tightens, the other settles an oxygen tube under my nose and adjusts it. After that come sensors, stuck to my forehead and chest, and I watch as the screens start to show slices of me, to record the beat and wave of my heart.

   “It’s all right,” someone says, and it’s Paretta, bending over me. She pushes my hair off my face. “You’re here to help us figure out what’s happening, and how to fix it.”

The other three doctors are stepping back slowly, until I can’t see them anymore. It’s just me and Paretta.

“We’ve been working with some of your friends,” she says. “And we think we’re nearly at a point where we can make real progress here. But I need your help. Can you do that for me, Byatt?”

My friends? Have there been others here? I open my mouth to ask, to say something, but Paretta claps her hand over my mouth.

“Remember?” she says. “Stay quiet. This will be over before you know it.”

After a moment she lets go, grabs a nearby tray, and wheels it over. Silver on silver. Bouquet of scalpels, wrapped in plastic. I start to struggle, the sight of the blades sparking a gut-deep fear. Something writhing in my stomach. It takes everything in me not to yell.

   But it’s not the scalpels she reaches for. It’s something else, lying small and innocuous next to a bottle of water. A round yellow pill in its own clear sleeve.

“This is all it is,” she says, tipping the pill onto her palm. “Nothing to worry about.”

“RAX009” I see, labeled clearly on the discarded sleeve, before Paretta takes hold of my jaw and pries it open. The pill is on my tongue then, dissolving bitter and slow.

009. The ninth version of that pill, maybe. Or the ninth girl strapped to this table.

I swallow, gagging as the taste hits the back of my throat. Paretta watches me carefully before reaching for the bottle of water, the brand the same as we get back at Raxter. She undoes the cap and props my head up as she pours a little into my mouth. There’s a clump of powder stuck on my tongue, and it takes a few tries to get it down.

I was expecting something to happen right away—for the bones down my back to melt, for my voice to be back like it was. But one minute, and then another, and another. Paretta disappears, and I crane my neck to watch her join the other doctors leaning against the wall. They’re waiting. Just like I am.

More time slipping by, and I drift off, come in and out. I’m so tired. My whole body aching, second spine tender and bruised. Maybe this whole thing isn’t so bad if I’m getting a chance to rest.

And then. A sparking. I know this feeling.

   Just before a flare-up, there’s a moment. Hard to describe, hard to pin down, but for me it almost makes it worth it. The pain and the loss, all of it a fair price for this. This strength, this power, this eagerness to bare my teeth.

I wait for it to fade, the way I’m used to, wait for it to turn into blinding pain. Instead, it builds, ricocheting through my body, shredding my insides, and I feel my hands clench into fists, nails biting deep into my palms. The heart monitor starts going haywire, the room full of beeping and alarms.

“What’s going on?”

“Get a readout from the monitor.”

The doctors are rushing to gather data, their silhouettes blurring around me. I shut my eyes. This is my body. It will do what I ask it to.

Calm down, I think. Hold it in.

Only part of me doesn’t want to. I can hear it, snarling and low, telling me to let go. Telling me this has always been inside me and that these doctors are trying to take it away.

My back arches, eyes slamming open. Thrashing against the straps pinning me, throwing my weight from side to side. Paretta, at the foot of my gurney, saying my name, but she’s the one who did this to me. I scream.

Blood dripping from my nose, agony lancing down my back. Paretta clamps her hands over her ears and falls back, and so I scream again, pull with everything I have against my restraints. Still the strength thrumming through my body, still the gift the Tox gave me. One of the restraints rips free.

   I scrabble at the other buckle and leap from the table, but the other doctors are there. They grab hold of my arms. Drag me back, and I kick, scratch tears down the front of their hazmat suits.

“Byatt!” Paretta yells. “Byatt, you need to calm down.”

And I want, suddenly, not to escape, not to be free. I want to hurt her.

I only make it a step before they stick the syringe into my neck and the world goes dark.





HETTY





CHAPTER 9


I wake up with a headache. Throbbing at my temples, sharp behind my blind eye. It leaves me clutching at the edge of my bunk, body braced for a flare-up. Since my first, they’ve all led with a pain like this, and followed with something worse. Last time it was wet webs of tissue, so thick in my throat I couldn’t breathe, each fresh with blood, like they’d been ripped from the inside of my stomach.

A headache like this could mean my next flare-up is coming. Or, I know Byatt would say, I could just have a headache.