Cobwebs and Flies

Ch9• Bone Sorrow

Murphy's eyes opened, darting from side to side only to find himself in the same white room, alone. He pulled his hands trying to loosen his wrists from the cuffs but it was useless; they didn't budge and neither did the ones on his feet. He took a second to catch his breath, his body wanted to scream but he knew it was no use and would only hurt him in the end.

He remained patient, afraid of what they would do to him next. Murphy's heart skipped a beat when the doorknob jiggled and eventually turned, the door pushing in while a few people rushed inside. He remembered Cage and Emerson, but there was another doctor there too who he hadn't seen before. For the last 24 hours, people had been in and out of here each taking something from Murphy without his consent. It began with blood than biopsies until they numbed his body and stole his bone marrow and stem cells from his spine.

Before Murphy could scream, another guard came in rolling a dying girl on a hospital bed. Her skin was infected with radiation and Murphy only knew this after seeing Mbege die when he broke his ankle running away from the acid fog a few days after they had landed. They placed her beside Murphy and plugged a tube to the wall which was connected to her heart. In that time, they had inserted a large, thick, silver needle inside his vein, causing Murphy to wince in desperate pain. Dark blood was flowing out of his body and towards the wall where it was exchanged with her infected blood that was making its way to Murphy's bloodstream. He wasn't sure what to expect but it certainly wasn't a warm feeling flowing to his brain.

"We've given you some Morphine to help you relax." The doctor told him as she discarded a needle into a yellow sharp's bucket attached to the wall.

Murphy was too high to process what happened next; the girl beside him recovered miraculously fast - within the hour - which had never been seen before. The doctor took this opportunity and with Cage's help, they drilled inside Murphy's arm until they reached his bone marrow. The drill reached down into Murphy below his collarbone on his right shoulder then, with a syringe, she extracted the bone marrow without his permission.

Murphy had occasional spasm due to the pain but they injected him with a dangerous amount of drugs in order to keep him quiet. His pain must have followed through the halls yet not a single soul appeared to rescue him; that's when he understood that he would most likely die here. When they finished taking what they needed they let his body flop back down to the bed, Murphy screaming in agony as the blood poured out from his shoulder. Cage at least had the decency to bandage him up before leaving the room with the girl who was slowly coming to.

They rolled her back to the infirmary and left Murphy, a prisoner to the walls, there to wallow in his few memories he had left of when he felt most alive. When he was in the cold stream, his head underwater and his arms wrapped around Bellamy was the only time he could recall ever feeling content.

***

As Bellamy wondered the halls, he came to a door that read INFIRMARY and pushed it open, sneaking in by dozens of sleeping patients. He was quiet enough not to wake any as he turned and took the first door he saw. He followed the dark tunnel to a lower floor eventually finding another door marked CAUTION: DANGER and KEEP OUT. Bellamy was tempted to back away, respecting the door's orders but something inside of him told him that he must keep going. He opened the door slowly and cautiously, only to realize it was filled with cages. As he got closer, he noticed the cages were full of people, naked to the bone except for some gauze wrapped around their genitalia.

Most of them were too weak to respond to Bellamy's presence and as he continued to walk further into the large underground room, he noticed these people were grounders. Bellamy was terrified of what he'd landed upon but it wasn't until the bumped into the hanging corpse of a man who was being drained of his blood while his feet were bound to a hook that he truly felt terrified. As Bellamy got closer to the dead man, the corpse opened his eyes wide, his mouth begging for help. Bellamy jumped, not realizing they were still alive and he felt sick to his stomach.

He looked in each and every cage but there was no sign of Murphy. Bellamy could only imagine what they were doing to him; if they bled grounders and warriors than what the hell could they do to the kids who grew up in space? He felt weak and fell to his knees in the middle of the room, looking everywhere for there were cages hanging from the ceiling along with several cages piled on one another, each containing a tortured soul.