Codex

Chapter 2

It was day two of the next week. Surgery day. Today I would be sent to the lab, placed on a col, hard table, and have my vitals checked. Then, one of the guardians, whom I suspected was the boss around here, would command something or another to one of the other guardians, and the surgery would begin.

I had gotten used to the pain of having myself cut open and dissected. It didn’t bother me anymore. Sometimes it even tickled. I couldn’t laugh, though, they had a retainer in my mouth.

Today they opened up my chest. I suspected that maybe they would give me the ability to prolong my breathing underwater, but a quick check of the surgeries in the past told me otherwise. Once they opened you up in one place, they never operated on that part again. They had already worked on my lungs. I know because I can now breathe underwater for eight minutes without going up for air. Instead, they cut a rib or two out and replaced them with some kind of metal rib. I thought that by the end of this I would become a machine.

While they sedated me for a second time, I thought what that meant. The end. What was the end? When was the end of all this? What was the purpose for all this? What is a purpose? I could only ask questions and never receive answers.

☣

I must have fallen asleep even after the sedative weared off. They didn’t care, though. They just sent me back to my bed in my cell. The dim light and the white walls welcomed me as I sat up. I clenched my shirt. My chest hurt.

The thing about sedatives, at least the ones my guardians use, is that they make you forget what happened for a while. In a few minutes I remembered they did surgery on my ribs. I unzipped my shirt, inspecting my latest set of scars.

On my chest was not just stitches, but the outside of the ribs were showing. I ran a finger on one of the silver-colored ribs. Why were they exposed? Were the ribs so big they couldn’t fit them through my skin? I chuckled at the thought of them not knowing what to do. They always knew what to do, no matter what happened.

I zipped up my shirt and lay back down on the cot. I closed my eye, watching the colors move every which way they wanted as I tried to go back to sleep. I heard a creak in the door. I figured it was the food tray, and got out of bed to grab the food.

It wasn’t my food.

Instead of their being a tray full of packaged food, there was a piece of paper. It was odd that I even knew it was paper. I hadn’t seen that kind of material in a long time. I picked up the piece of paper and inspected it. It was the size of my palm, and it was folded in half. I opened the fold and noted that there were words written in a dark ink. 

I couldn’t read as well as I wanted to, but I needed to find out what it said. I scurried over to the brightest part of the room and held the paper to the light. Very carefully, I sounded out each word on that paper in my head, until I could tell it read:

Get ready. We are coming for you, ALX.

ALX? Who or what was an ALX? Was this even meant for me? Did someone mistake my tray door for a trash can? It had happened once.

A deep part of me shivered, despite it being a neutral temperature. There was something about this note that wasn’t right. What did it mean by “we are coming for you”? Once again, so many questions, so many things that would never be answered. I decided to keep the note inside my shirt and not mention it to my guardians. Whatever that piece of paper meant, I knew that I couldn’t let anyone else know about it.