Reaping What Grows

Vivi breathes, and breathes. She's not going to die!

But awareness of the other aches and pains comes crashing down on her, and her relief only lasts a few moments. What the fuck was in that thing? What's happening to me?

She's only barely aware that she's being moved.

 

It’s much later that word of what’s happened gets back to Katters, and the mild celebratory atmosphere between her and her subordinates comes crashing down around them.

“What is it?” Katters demands, reading the hastily-written report. “Is it an allergic reaction? What?”

“Don’t ask me!” Baines says. “I know exactly as much as you do about it!”

“Just, fuckin’,” Katters continues, gesticulating angrily. “Poison? Did we just fuckin’ inject her with poison? Is that what happened?”

“The sample is still fine,” Noel says. “But the report says she was asphyxiating?”

“Her god damn throat turned into a balloon animal,” Katters confirms.

“Well, the skin sample doesn’t have a throat.”

“Tell me something I don’t know — like why our specimen is currently dying, that would be great information to have.”

 

Everything is blank and sterile. Vivi doesn't feel up to moving at all, which is probably a good thing, since she's pretty sure she's strapped down.

Where am I? she thinks. "Gh," she says. Oh. So her throat still isn't working right. But she can breathe, so she's alive.

"Hwuh," she tries again, and then decides to rest instead of forcing it.

 

“What do you mean I’m not allowed to see my specimen?!”

“You’re not allowed in,” the guard repeats. “And that comes from higher up than you wanna know.”

Katters recognises him from D-Wing, and that’s already a bad sign. What he’s doing over here in B, besides acting as an incredibly muscular wall between her and her subject, she doesn’t want to know that, either. She’ll probably find out anyway, and very soon.

“I need to see it, if I’m going to fix it,” Katters insists.

“Send someone else. Anyone else you want,” the guard says. “Just not you.”

Katters tries to remain calm — well, as calm as she has been — and barely succeeds. Her neck spasms anyway, twitching her head and shoulders in a way that probably doesn’t improve the guard’s impression of her.

“Fuck!” she says, and that probably doesn’t help, either. “Fine. Okay. Fine.”

 

Vivi can hear shouting from just beyond where she can see. She closes her eyes and waits for it to stop.

When it does, she opens her eyes and tries to take in her surroundings properly. It seems...like any hospital room. Almost normal. But there's a guard, and there was the shouting, and she's strapped down. No, not normal. That would be too much to ask for.

 

“Alright,” Katters says to her subordinates. “We have to work off of the doctor’s report — they won’t let me in to see Thirty-Fifty-Nine.”

“What?” Baines asks. “Why?”

“I don’t fucking know, because they’re assholes. But you know what, it doesn’t matter — there’s enough bad news in the report to last me a lifetime, we don’t need to go dig up more.”

“Okay. What are we looking at?”

“For a start, there’s no reason to believe it wasn’t C-25 that fucked her up,” Katters says. “No change in diet, no change in environment, they didn’t switch the detergent out on us.”

“So when we’re all fired we can rest assured it was our fault,” Noel says.

“We’re not getting fired,” Katters says. “Well, you’re not, anyway. The good news is that it appears stable, right now. Throat’s still closed, but it can do that all it wants so long as we keep that pipe in its airway. Bleeding’s stopped for no good reason, but it also started for no good reason so maybe it’ll stay that way.”

“Which means,” Baines says, “that we’ve got time to undo whatever it is we did.”

“Bingo. So let’s get on that — where’s that skin sample?”

 

She tries to turn her head more, to see if she can see the guard more than just out of the corner of her eye, and the world goes sideways and fuzzy. She turns back, but she does so too quickly and nausea swallows her thoughts.

She's passively aware of the straps. All she wants is to curl up until this passes, but even if she were untied, she couldn't do anything. Every part of her aches. Moving her head at all had been a terrible idea.

 

Another man in a white coat walks in, carrying a clipboard which has most of his attention. He does look up at the girl as he enters, and smiles, before turning to the machines surrounding her bed.

 

Vivi can barely see him, but she's glad it's not the regular doctor. The one who - who poisoned her? She's not sure, but it must have been the doctor's fault.

She doesn't try to move, but she does try to follow the new doctor with her eyes. Even if it makes her feel worse, it's still better than nothing.

 

The doctor writes something down, turns back to the girl, small smile still on his lips.

“Can you write?” he asks, offering her a pad of Post-Its and a pencil.

 

She moves a few fingers experimentally. They're slow, uncertain, but maybe...but she still can't talk to tell him either way. She meets the doctor's eyes, not sure what to do.

 

“Oh,” the doctor says, “of course.”

He unclips the restraints around the girl’s wrists and re-offers the pad and pencil.

 

Vivi takes them carefully, and tries to write. It's hard to do without moving her head to see, and her hand slips more than once, but she's reasonably sure it's legible.

Where m I? What happenned to me?

 

The doctor frowns at the note, leaning over the girl to read it.

“You’re in a laboratory,” he tells her. “You’ve had a negative reaction to an injection, but we’re doing what we can to mitigate it. How are you feeling?”

 

Scaredd dizy sick

She hesitates a moment, then continues:

Throat feels funnny. Why

 

“Your throat’s swollen closed. We had to put a tube in it, so you can breathe. We’ll take it out when you’re better.”

He writes something down on his clipboard.

 

Bettr with the sun

She stares at him desperately.

Don't want to die wthout seing tthe sun

 

The doctor sags a little, shoulders slumping. “That’s—” he says, and then he composes himself, straightening. “I’ll try,” he says. “I’ll talk to your — I’ll talk to someone.”

He writes something else down, something brief. “But you’re not going to die,” he adds. “We’ll see you through this.”

 

Ok

She lets go of the pencil and closes her eyes. Writing is hard enough when she can see, and she's exhausted.

 

The doctor takes the pad and pencil back, and leaves.

Katters is waiting for him outside his office, having planted herself in front of his door.

“Dr. Park,” she says as he approaches.

“Jones,” he replies.

She doesn’t move, even when Park reaches past her for the door handle.

“I need to see Thirty-Fifty-Nine,” she says.

“Good luck.”

She shifts, positioning herself in front of the handle, and Park is forced to give up and step back.

“That guard won’t let me in to see it,” she continues. “He’s got orders.”

“They didn’t come from me.” Park decides he doesn’t need to be in his office, right now, and starts walking away. “Which is nice — saved me the time.”

Katters follows him. “I’m sure you can get me in,” she says. “It’s — she’s your patient, your word has got to mean something.”

“That’s possible, but why would I want to?”

“Because I want to save her as much as you do.”

“Really? You’ve got an odd way of showing it.”

She grabs his arm, stopping him. “Listen—”

“No,” he says, shaking her off. “I don’t want any of you knock-off sawbones anywhere near her, but I especially don’t want you in there. If you manage to convince whoever banned you from the room to lift that ban, I’ll do my damnedest to bring it right back down again.”

“Okay.” Katters raises her hands. “You’ve made your point, I’ve got it. But are you really going to let her die because I leave a bad taste in your mouth?”

“No,” he says, and he’s back to walking.

“Okay,” Katters says again. She follows, but she hangs back a little, staying a few steps behind Park. “Okay, look — I need a tissue sample, from her right arm. I won’t go after it myself, but I need it, either way.”

Park’s walked a circle through the halls, and now he’s right back at his office.

“She’ll get better faster if we work together,” Katters says.

Park enters his office, and locks himself inside.