Reaping What Grows

Vivi relaxes, exhausted. She's still crying, but she's not screaming anymore. She's dully aware that her arm is cut open, but it's not being pulled apart, so it fades into the background. It's just pain. It's just blood. It's just bone.

 

Katters removes the clamps — an artery takes the opportunity to spurt blood across her leg — and pulls the edges of the wound closed. She picks up a swaged needle from the tray and starts suturing.

In. Out.

The needle, curved into a half-circle, leads a length of silk thread down the girl’s arm.

 

Just blood. Vivi stares blankly at the needle as the doctor moves it. It stings a little as it goes through her. Just thread. Just blood.

She closes her eyes and waits for this to be over.

 

Done, Katters breaks the thread with a sharp tug.

“Incision closed at 8:04 AM,” she says.

She stands, stretching, cracking her back, and then steps over to the sink to wash her hands.

The guard straightens and moves toward the girl, but Katters stops her.

“I’m not done, yet,” she says. “Hold your horses.”

 

Vivi stays limp, keeps her eyes closed. This'll be over soon, and she'll go back to her bed and her scissors and her plan. Soon.

 

The guard does not relax, but stays by the door. She watches Katters carefully, suspiciously.

Katters finishes washing her hands before wheeling a new tray around behind the girl, to the other side of the chair. There, she kneels, and takes the girl’s hand.

She also takes a pair of scissors from the tray, and she cuts the plastic off of the girl’s hand with slow, deliberate snips.

She looks the hand over, turning it palm-up and then back down. Satisfied, she puts the scissors away and picks up a warm, damp sponge. She wipes the hand down, avoiding too much pressure around the healing break. Then she wipes down the inside of the plastic and replaces it, taping it back to the girl’s hand.

She stands and waves the guard over, who unstraps the girl and escorts her back to her room.

 

Back in her cell, Vivi runs a fingertip lightly over the stitches on her arm. She wonders for a moment if she should look at them more closely, but it's all just too much for her now.

There are clean clothes on the bed. She pulls them on and lies down.

 

Baines and Noel have beaten her there, when Katters next arrives at work.

“Any headway?” Baines asks her. He’s excited about something, bouncing on the balls of his feet. Noel is leaning over the workstation, resting her crossed forearms on it, but she’s grinning, too.

“No,” Katters says. “C-24 looks like a dud. What’s going on?”

“Oh, that’s too bad.” Baines’ disappointment is patently fake.

Noel’s grin widens. “You should take a look at C-25,” she says.

“What?” Katters drops her things on her desk and rushes over to the plates. “No way.”

One of the skin samples is a different colour from the others — barely noticeable, but greener.

“Yes way,” Baines says. “We’ve got a bit of it under the ‘scope, check it out.”

She does, almost taking an eye out on the microscope’s eyepiece. “No way,” she repeats. “Those are chloroplasts!”

 

Vivi wakes some time later, still in pain and exhausted but less so than before. She sits up and hesitates before looking at her arm, turning it to test her range of motion. It isn't half bad, considering it was just cut open down to the bone, but it isn't good. She'll have to make sure she doesn't injure it further.

That done, she makes herself get up and make sure the scissors are still there. They are, and she sits back down on the bed, relieved. There's nothing to do for now but wait for food and water, and get better.

 

Her underlings’ excitement has infected her, and Katters hums to herself as she walks to CH-FP-3059-B’s cell. She’s carrying another syringe — its contents a dull, rusty orange.

 

Vivi looks up when she hears the door open, and as the guard and the doctor are walking in, a thought occurs to her and she glares at the doctor.

"Ever heard of anesthetic?"

She doesn't really expect an answer, but the doctor has made her go through more pain than she thought a person could go through, and she has to say something.

 

“No,” Katters says, uncapping the needle. “What’s that?”

 

"Something you're supposed to use so the people you're cutting open aren't screaming in pain." She tilts her head just a little. "Doctors should know that."

 

Katters sticks the needle in the girl’s arm that doesn’t have a still-healing cut down the length of it.

“I dunno, a gag would probably be cheaper,” she says, depressing the plunger.

 

Vivi doesn't have it in her to fight back right now. "Fuck you," she says quietly, and watches it happen.

 

Katters withdraws the needle. “You’ve got to get yourself a new line,” she says on her way to the door. “Starting to get tired of that one.”

She, and the guard, leave.

 

Vivi watches them leave, and then lies down again. If the injection is as bad as last time, maybe she should try to sleep through the worst of it.

She's almost asleep when she shoots back upright, gasping for air. Something went wrong. Whatever they did to her - ! She can't die here, not like this!

She has one broken and bandaged hand, and one arm she can barely move. She kicks at the door as loudly as she can, trying to get the attention of anyone nearby. It doesn't work very well, or at least she can't tell if it's working, and her foot hurts. She overbalances and stumbles backward. Her head is starting to spin again, and she sits down suddenly.

Breathe! Breathe! She can't die. Not here. Not now. She has to live to make it out.

 

Stellan Falk is in no hurry as he makes his way to CH-FP-3059-B’s cell. Cheiron guards are used to captives faking medical emergencies, and mostly Stellan is surprised that this one didn’t try this trick sooner.

Still, though, you’ve got to follow up on this kind of thing, because what if — but the thumping has stopped by the time Stellan gets to the door, which probably means it’s nothing.

He opens the door and rests his hand on his belt. “What’s the problem?” he starts, and then notices that the captive is struggling to breathe, starting to turn a shade of blue that he suspects has nothing to do with the tests they’ve been running on it.

He’s back out of the cell and hitting a button next to the door, summoning a doctor.

 

Vivi doesn't notice; she's too focused on trying to stay alive. Breathe, breathe... Everything seems fuzzier, farther away, and the world around her feels heavy. Breathe. Breathe. She doesn't notice when her nose starts to bleed. Breathe! If she can just get some air, any air at all...

 

Someone is cutting into the girl’s neck, and then something is jammed into the wound and down her throat, and then the girl can breathe.

People are shouting, and picking her up, and putting her on a stretcher and pushing her down the hall.