Oriehn

Chapter 5- Alice

Chapter 5- Alice

"Are you too scared, Doctor? Can't even go into the room since you're so paralyzed with fear?" Sin taunted Dr. Prose.

"That's it!" The Doctor pulled the trigger, and I watched as a dark stain appeared on Sin's shoulder like an upset inkwell. Another shot was fired, and the stain was mimicked just slightly below the original. Sin fell down onto the tiled floor with a sickening thud, and the wardens clad in white stormed into the room to carry him away.

Standing still, brow tensed, I clenched my fists. "You shot him!" I accused. "What ever happened to preserving his life force, Dr. Prose?"

I looked over to the man, who, for the first time in our short acquaintance, looked unsettled. His breathing was labored, and he ran a hand through his receding hairline.

Weary. He looked weary. He exhaled a heavy sigh, "It was just a flesh wound— no major damage done. It's certainly not fatal."

"Indeed?" I raised an eyebrow, looking him up and down. "You look as pale as death."

Stepping over the broken glass and through the frame, I turned to face the destruction of the examination room from inside the observatory. Left trailing on the floor was the mooring cord. Having been ripped out when Sin leapt from his chains, the circuitry at the end of the wire sparked and popped as electricity crawled across it. "I am sure that session revealed much about our captain," I said, walking over to the small sink and mirror to cleanse my throat of the blood.

I watched in the reflection as Dr. Prose nodded. "Much. Before you provoked it and it tore out the mooring cord."

I hid my grin by leaning my head down and focusing on cleaning out the blood from under my fingernails. "At least we were able to come to a conclusion," I dried my hands and sat on the side table. "While feral aggression does make him more effective, it is much more easily evoked through compassion than torment."

"Indeed," Prose derided, "We will have our wardens engage in compatible conversation before they whip him. What are your thoughts on the experimentation so far, Miss Proctor?"

The doctor's words bounced around in my head as I whipped out a notepad. I scribbled down my observations in a slanted, unreadable jargon, my hand moving as quickly as my heart pounding against my chest. I let the scratch of the pen on my pad come to a rest before I looked up to answer. "It certainly seems as though you now have an effective way of finding out whatever it is that you want."

"Yes," he hesitated slowly, tapping the pad of his forefinger to the side of his nose as he looked at the now empty observation room. "It— the previous subject, I mean— has a certain stubborn streak. I was, however, quite impressed with your interpretation of the situation. Treating it with kindness has sent our results off of the charts. Especially when the context of the situation is taken in to sight."

His clarification caught my attention, and my breath hitched. "What do you mean?" I asked, "What makes Taliesin so special?"

At my use of the subject's name, the doctor scoffed, but nonetheless, he answered. "He is a captain— one that was caught when Oriehn occupation of Earth was at its peak."

The room started to sway in front of me as understanding dawned on me. "He lead the massacres?" I turned frantically on my heel to face the mirror once more. I had washed the blood away from the minor scrape that Taliesin had left on me, but the gash was still visible. Thin, straight, mechanical in appearance, it looked out of place on the pale stretch of skin across my neck.

"He may have been the one to order them," the doctor shook his head, lips pursing in anger, though his eyes expressed a greater anguish. "He may be the very one responsible for all of their deaths— our families' deaths."