ERASED

Welcome

Ezra scribbled on the paper after taking my pulse. I was still trembling, even after damning myself to be strong. I had been strong my whole life, I had sucked up every hard situation and had held my head up high. But this was different.

This felt like a nightmare.
This felt like I was drowning and, for the life of me, couldn't get to the surface and breathe.

I was sitting on the bed. Ezra had me changed into a hospital robe for some reason. I had to swallow up my pride and my need to scream at every minuscule thing he did and said, and just do as he told me to do, since I figured the only way to stay sane was to act it.

I looked at the robot-like man as he turned around to swiftly reach for something inside the suitcase he brought with him. Every move he made was perfect, like a real programmed robot. Some sort of computerized animation.
I wondered just how inoffensive he actually was. He didn't have any morals, and he didn't feel empathy either. The only thing that would prevent him from hurting me was Aris' orders or whoever was in charge. It sent a chill up my spine.

I swallowed the sudden urge to cry and send everything to hell again.

Calm down, you are okay. Right now you are okay.

Ezra turned to me with a thermostat in his right hand. His green eyes gazed at me and it occurred to me I had never seen such emptiness before.

Whatever they did to him, it undeniably drained him of any humanity, and that was the scariest thing I had ever witnessed.

"Open your mouth, please" He said in a monotonous voice again. He was strangely respectful for a guy whose brain had been washed into not being an actual guy anymore.

I opened my mouth as he carefully placed the thermostat inside and pushed my jaw closed before I could. He was respectful, but not patient.

After a few minutes of more silence, which felt like was ripping my head, he took the glass stick out, not even checking his watch. I looked at his wrists and realized he didn't even own one.

"You can put on your clothes now" He said as he added my temperature onto the form.

He hadn't even flinched or even glanced at me the first time I stripped in front of him, so I just slid out of the robe, this time a little more careless, but still struggling not to let any other tear fall from my eyes, weighing into the realization of the fucked up situation I was actually in.

I was stripping in front of a non-human human, in a small windowless room in the middle of god-knows-where, facing an indefinite amount of time trapped, unable to escape, unable to live.

I gulped again.

You are okay, Logan, you still have your mind, remember.

I put on the dreadful blue dress I had picked up so wholeheartedly just a few... hours? Days? Weeks ago?

The thought made me want to puke right there onto Ezra's perfectly clean black t-shirt, but I figured, he wouldn't even flinch, so why bother.

"You seem to be in the process of experiencing emesis, Miss Mercier. Your face seems to have been drained out of blood" He spoke as his green Terminator eyes traced my -predictably- greenish face.

"I'm fine, I just need some... water" I said, for the first time actually realizing I still worked as a normal human being unlike my new roomie.