A R D E N
The stranger at the door pauses, but then he steps into the room tentatively. The shadows from the hall draw back, and I see the guy from my history class. 0725. “Arthemis?” He crosses the room, getting to her as she’s climbing down from the table, and gives her a big hug. “I thought you died!”
“Bear, you’re crushing me!” she laughs, wriggling out of his grip and sitting back on the table.
Seeing her face illuminated in the faint light of a lamp in the room, his smile drops. “What did they do to you?” he asks quietly.
“I’ll explain everything once we’re done here,” she replies. I can feel the mood between them sobering, turning more serious.
The guy -- Bear, as Arthemis called him -- turns to me. “How do you know 9412?”
She waves him off. “You sound so formal when you use that name. Nobody calls me that anymore, Bear. Not even the Masks.”
“I met her a few weeks ago,” I tell him. “At least I think I did.”
She sighs. “They must’ve wiped parts of your memory. Assholes.”
“But you weren’t here a few weeks ago,” Bear says, turning to her. “Wait -- you guys met outside of the Core?”
“Yep. And she got me into all this trouble, it seems,” I reply.
“Anyway,” Arthemis says, tying her hair out of her face and turning to show Bear the device, “we need to get this thing out of my neck. Arden was going to do it, but if you’re up for it…”
“...I would be very grateful,” I finish, cringing at the tools and my gloved hands. “I am… not prepared for this, to say the least.”
Bear comes and inspects the tray of tools. I hand him some gloves and am taking my own off when he stops me. “I might need your help with a few things.”
I groan. “Fine.”
He pulls his own pair of gloves over his hands and turns to Arthemis. “Now, I’m not super experienced in this. But as my extra course these past few years I’ve been taking medical and surgery lessons. I think I can get this out, but I can't guarantee it will be super clean and perfect.”
“That’s alright,” she replies, lying back down on the table thing, which I’m pretty sure isn’t actually a table and is some sort of flat surface to operate on. “As long as you get it out. Or stop whatever is controlling me from working.”
“That I can try my best to do. Arden, can you pass me the moonflower?” I hand him the vial and he fills up a needle with it. I see Arthemis tense up as the needle goes in, but soon enough she relaxes and Bear starts arranging the tools he needs. I hover close by, perching on a rolling stool, while he gets to work. He covers the area around her neck with some sort of absorbent fabric and gets to work. I don’t see much of what he does and I don’t try to look either, but his hands get bloody pretty quickly. The extract must not be completely working because I see Arthemis scrunch up her face a few times. Bear comforts her as best as he can, reminding her to breathe. At one point there’s a scraping sound and a fresh trickle of blood starts running down Arthemis’ neck, staining the table below her. Bear curses under his breath and dabs it up with a cloth, comforting Arthemis who has just yelped in pain. After what feels like hours but probably isn’t, he pushes his stool away with a final-sounding sigh and throws his gloves across the room and into the garbage.
Arthemis groans. “Can I get up now?”
I help her up, seeing that not only has Bear removed the device, but he’s sewn up the wound that it left behind. The stitches are uneven and crooked, but it’s not like I could do any better.
“Do you think it did anything?” I ask. “Taking out whatever that was?”
“I guess we’ll find out,” she replies. “I’m opening my eyes. Be prepared for Masks to come storming in here.”
She gives us a countdown and I arm myself with the sharpest-looking tool from the tray Bear was using. We wait for a few seconds, muscles tense, staring at the door. But no one comes and nothing happens. Arthemis requests a mirror and I don’t understand why until we find one and she holds it up to her face. She opens both her eyes wide, rolling both around, blinking fast, closing one and then the other. Satisfied, she turns back to us.
“My eyes are no longer green and there’s no pain in the back of my neck anymore,” she says, a huge smile on her face. “It worked.”
YOU ARE READING
The Normals | ✓
Science FictionWhen Arden stumbles across a half-conscious, bloodied girl at his local train station, he doesn't know what to think. But once she tells him what happened to her, he gains a whole new perception of his world. Arden lives in pretty much the perfect s...
