Grounded | The Trapped Trilogy

Four

Four

NAD

"Wait!" I cry as the alien slips the needle into my arm. "What-what are you doing to us?"

The alien looks down at me and smiles, the coldness of the needle sending a chill through my body.

I hate needles.

"We're Upgrading you."

My brain goes back to the night of Eenie's matching when the guys came in to snatch me up.

"Wait," I say, twitching under the straps holding me down. "I think I've already been Upgraded."

She looks me over for a moment, and pulls the needle out. All of the purple liquid is still inside of the tube, thankfully.

"Really?" She asks, looking at something beside her. "Okay then. Tell me, Nad Hemmings, does this flicker?"

She pulls a hologram out in front of her.

"No."

She smiles.

"Then you haven't been upgraded."

"What? But the guys, they..." I trail off in thought. "Four of the guys that barged into my house had pinned my arms and legs down onto the floor with their hands and knees, and the last one, who called himself Tanner, came in and hit on the wall above the door, I'm guessing to break the Home Camera, and he told me I was going to be Upgraded. How am I not Upgraded, if he said I was going to be Upgraded?"

Mer looks at me with curious eyes.

"Maybe you were."

"What?"

She walks away and grabs a clear tablet that looks like a slab of glass.

"Your data reads you were wiped to become someone named Sym Lation. There is no one in the database with that name," She pauses and looks at me. "That means that someone made the other person that was in your brain up. It's not an easy process, but for a Rethurp, it's easier. What did you say this fellow's name was?"

I blink and look up to the ceiling.

"Tanner."

"Of course," She laughs. "He was our second in command after Sier died."

"The alien in Eenie's head?"

She groans. "I'm afraid so. I was actually happy she was gone." She shifts her weight and taps on something. "Sym Lation is a programmable person, pretty much. You can give it multiple personalities and have trigger words to set one of them off." That would explain why Eenie tried saying my name. "You can even rename it if you want, but apparently Tanner didn't want to for whatever reason. We created this 'person' to fill in gaps in the society if any came up that didn't fit what the Government, or what we, wanted." She taps some more. "Ah. Sym Lation," She reads. "Government Official Analyzer. Eighteen. Obviously, Tanner was in a rush if he tried to pass you off as an eighteen-year-old human. Birthday: August twenty-second. Lives in Dame's Dome. Matched to Ron Dim." She rolled her eyes. "Ron Dim. Tanner, you're being a little obvious with your choices."

"What do you mean by that?" I ask.

"I mean Sym Lation is really the word simulation and Ron Dim is really the word random. He's a little retha sometimes.

"But what I was saying about being Upgraded," She continues, setting the screen down beside my head. "Now that I've gone off subject... He might have Upgraded you while you were being wiped. That's the easiest way to do things, and it won't leave holes in the memory, like being Upgraded before wiping will. It's also the subtlest because you can keep the person unconscious while they change because they're hooked up to a machine. No pain can be felt that way. That's how we do it here.

"Not every patient has all of the symptoms, like some don't have pointy teeth, and others don't have the purple irises. Those are the most common ones. But every one of the Halflings have been recorded to see through simulations except for you. If you have been Upgraded, and you don't have that ability, then it is possible that your brain is still processing."

"What does that mean?"

"It means it's best to get you into an unconscious state, unless you want to feel the immense pain of your bones, organs, teeth, and muscles growing and shifting."

"What about my friends?" I ask, closing my eyes. It's so much to take in, so much to analyze and figure out...

"They will be Upgraded as well."

"What about Ralph?"

"He's already gone through the complete process of becoming a Rethurp. All we have to do is make sure everything is okay inside of his system and that everything is functioning correctly."

"And Ream? The lady with the scar?"

"She'll be a little harder to Upgrade, considering her age. I can tell that her mental stability is, well, unstable, and that can cause a problem in the solution."

"Can you fix her? She wants to be fixed."

"Fix her?" She asks, looking down at me. "I shall try. Whatever is wrong with her will have to be fixed to make the serum work anyway. I think I'm going to get started on her after you."

"Are you going to knock me out now?" I ask, looking at her.

"Yes," She says, and I feel a different needle sliding into my arm.