Reaping What Grows

Vivi takes a couple seconds to take in everything that's just happened, and then she grabs the scissors off the floor. It could be only moments before someone comes back to do something to her; she looks around wildly for a hiding place. She can't hide it in the bed, that's the first place they'll look. What if...?

Her shirt is already ripped, so she tears a strip off. She lifts the lid off the tank behind the toilet and sets it down. It only takes a moment to tie the scissors to something inside it, and then she puts the lid back on and stands back. They'll be back soon, but that's okay. She's one step closer to getting herself out of here.

 

Not long later, a new women in a labcoat arrives with a new pair of scissors. She’s a little shorter than the doctor was, but much broader — much more muscular.

The same guard accompanies her, and holds the girl while she takes a square inch of the girl’s hair.

 

Vivi's eyes tear up as the scissors slice through the leaves she knows look like hair. They don't know it's not hair, though, so she bites her lip and tries to contain her reaction. It hurts, but she manages, and it's over after a moment.

 

The woman puts a hand on the girl’s shoulder — an absentminded but compassionate gesture — then leaves.

 

Vivi startles at the unexpected touch. It's a change from all the poking and prodding, but not a welcome one. She'd rather believe everyone here is terrible and cruel; that's what they'd all proved to be until now.

Unsettled, she sits down on the bed.

 

Noel returns to the workstation, bag-of-hair in hand. The lab is quiet, tense, after the scene which resulted in Jones being ejected from the building. Whether or not she’ll come back is still up in the air, and will soon be the subject of gossip and debate.

“This is the dumbest idea,” Noel says, brushing root hormone onto the hair. “There’s no way this is going to work.”

“Yeah,” Baines says. “Sucks that Jones is gonna get fired for it.”

“You don’t know that.”

“Well, what do you think is going to happen? Slap on the wrist?”

Noel plants the hair in a small pot and covers it in plastic wrap. “I don’t know. I hope she’s not fired.”

Baines shrugs. “Maybe they’ll give her job to one of us.”

“No chance, we’ll just end up under someone else.”

“Maybe someone who doesn’t get pissed and try to kill the specimens, though.”

Noel frowns. “Someone with less of a temper,” she says.

“Yeah.”

“That could be nice.”

“Yeah.”

 

She can still feel the hand on her shoulder, no matter what she does to clear it away from her mind.

Maybe there are people here who would help her? The new doctor - she might look the other way for some things. Maybe -

But it's too much to hope for. Even if the new doctor is willing to help, it's too much risk to even ask her. No. She'll stick to what she's been doing. The new doctor can take her weird compassion somewhere else. She's going to fight whoever gets in the way of her getting out of here.

 

A choice, wherein one of the options is termination, is not really a choice at all.

So, Katters returns to work two days later with a fresh scar crossing over the first, poorly hidden behind her pony-tail.

Her co-workers are split on whether the appropriate reaction is to ignore her and pretend nothing happened, or to enthusiastically welcome her back as though she’d been on a very brief vacation. Katters prefers the former, but both are awkward.

“Alright,” she says as she approaches the workstation. “What have you got for me?”

“Jones!” Baines says, clearly surprised to see her back.

“Welcome back!” Noel adds.

Baines pulls the pot of hair off the shelf and sets it on the station. “Uh,” he says, “not a whole lot.”

Katters peels the plastic off the top of the pot and looks inside. After a while, she sighs. “This was a stupid fucking idea.”

“It could work,” Noel says.

“Have you looked at the hair?”

“Yeah. Um. It’s hair.”

Katters re-covers the pot and pushes it aside. “It’s not going to work,” she says. “Not with hair.”

“So, what are we going to do?” Baines asks, putting the pot away.

Katters thinks. “Well, if it’s not going to work with hair, we need something else.”

“Like a kidney?”

“No, it won’t work with a kidney, either, not the way we want it to. We don’t want to grow another CH-FP-3059-B — I mean, we could, but that would be kind of inconvenient.”

“But if we clone Thirty-Fifty-Nine,” Noel says, “then we’re going to get another Thirty-Fifty-Nine. That’s how cloning works.”

“I know! That’s the problem.” Katters scratches the back of her neck. “If we try to clone it from human parts, we’ll end up with more human parts. It’s too human.”

Baines frowns. “Well,” he says, “can we make it less human?”

 

Vivi sits and thinks. She's not very big and she's not very strong; she did, however, break the doctor's nose. She's not completely helpless, as long as they don't tie her down. And she has the scissors. They're probably sharp enough that she can stab people through the eye with them, and long enough that they might do more damage. As long as she doesn't have to fight more than one person at once, she should be fine. Attack the guard first, and then the doctor? And what about alarm systems? How many people will notice if she gets out of the cell? How far away is the outside world?

If she makes it halfway and then fails, she's not going to have the chance to try again. She has to make this work the first time. She's going to need to do some more planning.

 

Katters follows the guard into CH-FP-3059-B’s cell, this time, a small plastic case in hand and a bandage across her nose.

 

Vivi grins despite herself. "I see your nose is still stuck on your face. I didn't hit hard enough, huh?"

 

A spark of anger catches in Katters’ eyes, but she calms herself before she can lose her temper again. A deep breath — in, out — and her face resets itself to vague annoyance.

The guard takes the girl’s arms, holding her still, but she notices that most of his attention is on the doctor.

Katters opens the case and pulls out a syringe.

 

Vivi tries to pull away. "What is that? What's in there?" Stabbing her with needles and taking samples is one thing, but this is something else entirely. "What are you putting into me?"

 

Katters depresses the syringe to eliminate any air bubbles, a smile creeping across her face.

The guard keeps the girl in place, and Katters stabs the needle into her arm, injecting about a cc of clear fluid.

She sticks a spot band-aid over the injection site, and locks eyes with the girl. She grins.

Then she leaves.

 

Well, that didn't go so well. She runs a finger over the bandaid and waits. She doesn't feel any different, except that her arm hurts a little where the needle went in, but that doesn't mean it didn't do anything.

Hours pass and nothing seems to be happening. The next meal doesn't have any meat in it, which is nice, and after she's done eating she comes to the conclusion that if something were going to happen, it would have happened already.

She sits on the edge of the bed and works on making her escape plan better. She'll probably need someone who knows how this place is laid out, or a map, or maybe...

 

For the day that follows, CH-FP-3059-B is on display. Scientists arrive and observe the girl through the glass walls of her cell, looking away only to take notes.

Sometimes it’s the first doctor, sometimes it’s the second. Sometimes it’s doctors the girl has never seen before.

 

Vivi stares back at them, trying to decide what to do. She sits on the bed hugging her knees to her chest until that gets uncomfortable, and then she looks around. The doctors have been coming and going and watching for a long time now, and show no signs of stopping.

She walks over to the toilet and wraps the privacy curtain around herself. It's not much better, but at least she doesn't feel so exposed.

 

Some time later, the guard — the woman — enters the cell and pulls back the curtain. Katters is with her, notepad in one hand and box in the other.

 

Vivi backs up instinctively, but there's only so far she can go. "Leave me alone."

 

The guard pulls the girl away from the toilet and holds her in the middle of the room.

Katters rolls her eyes. She stashes the notebook under her arm and pulls out a stethoscope — once it’s in place, she listens to the girl’s chest.