Dead But Alive

chapter sixteen: threatened

I wish I could talk. I'm longing to ask him to help me. I would beg him to let me out, free me so I could escape. 

He watches me for a long time. "I'm sorry," he says finally, turning away.
I panic. I need to escape. I need to get away.

"I can't help you get out," he says softly. "I can't. Not now, Reid. Just stay alive. Be patient." He turns back, facing me again, murmuring to himself. "They shouldn't have done this. It's not ready. I don't know what they thought. Selfish, the lot of them. It'll kill us all." He sighs. "I pray you'll be alive when they're done with you. I hold out hope, Reid, but I have my doubts. What they'll do to you, Reid...you'll wish you were dead." He leans close. "But I'll do my best."

I am helpless. I can only lie in silence, fear in my anti-freeze blood.

I lie that way until I fall asleep.

Little parts of my memory start to return. I recall Dr. Terrance explaining the process, and I am able to pick out what's going on. I'm transported for several hours in a dark box, and then wrapped in an arctic sleeping bag and cooled in nitro gas. My organs are starting to shut down, slowing and giving up.

Honestly, I can't for the life of me figure out how I'm alive.

I'm just in a state of hibernation I suppose. My brain is alive, but nothing else is.

And I'm not entirely sure how that happened, but it did.

So far, nothing awful has happened. Nothing has justified Shadow's threatening words.

You'll wish you were dead, he had told me.

This scares me, greatly.

But for now, nothing's happened. I'm okay.

The cold no longer bothers me. It's normal. Either my body has gotten quickly adjusted, or I no longer have a body.

Equal possibilities.

Then one day I wake up with entirely different surroundings​. I'm not horizontal in an ice crate any longer. I'm suspended vertically in bluish liquid, and I'm actually wearing some kind of black synthetic jumpsuit. I still have a body. But I'm just floating, immersed in weird fluid.

How did I not notice them moving me?

It's a question nobody can answer.

I stay in the liquid for what seems like years. Since I don't breathe, it's not a problem that I have no oxygen. But the liquid stings my eyes and nose, and my skin starts to burn the longer I stay in the stuff. After a while, it's causing me pain, deep inside me. I spend my time locked inside a dying body, a living mind inside a human being eaten away.

The Ridley boy is gone.

But Reid is still here.

Deep inside the broken, tearing shell of who he once was, Reid is alive.