My nerves give a sudden jolt that throws me to the ground. Electricity starts at my wrist port and seers through my veins. My vision goes white. Please don't let me wake up back in the methylation room. Please don't let me wake up back in the methylation room. Please don't let me wake up back in the methylation room. Please Bump Nose, don't do it. Please just don't. Just disassemble me, but not that room. No not that room. Please not that room. I'm being polite, please listen. Please. Something, someone please. God? Please don't let me end up back there. Tears flow from my eyes for a moment before angry fists scrape them away. Wait?!?? I can move my arms!
I open my eyes to find myself curled up in fetal position under my desk. The smell of burnt hair lingers around me. Everyone is gone, everyone but Bump Nose who stands five feet away from me, arms crossed and stoic. He notices the flutter of my eyelids and meets my gaze with a sharp, icy glare. Anger bubbles through my veins with increasing pressure. How dare he do this to me? Foam threatens to form, but somehow I remain calm. He regards me with impatient disgust. "Come on Seven, get up, I would like to speak with you." I do nothing. "Seven, I'm not going to ask you again." I scarcely breathe, let alone humor him by moving a single millimeter. This pattern continues 13 more times, until finally, exasperated Bump Nose walks up to the desk I am under and kneels down. I shake as foam finally begins to pool in my mouth. His right hand heads for my shoulder, but as soon as his thumb nears my mouth my teeth snap down.
He lets out a high pitched yelp extracting his finger from the point of danger just in time. I vaguely wonder what the severed appendage would have tasted like, the sweet burning taste of revenge or the heavy metallic taste of blood. He stumbles back in an attempt to regain his footing and falls down, landing on his butt. He makes a noise that is somewhere between a groan and a scream before grabbing on to his desk and pulling himself upward. His left ankle is bent at an unnatural angle. How fitting! Now he can suffer for the rest of his life from the same injury that plagues me! I wonder if they disassemble the teachers who injure themselves like this?! I finally get up and sit on my desk, legs crossed elegantly. I want to bite.
I let out a single laugh which blossoms into a chain of giggles and then an uncontrollable wave of laughter. "I hope they stick you in a room full of a million monsters who look just like you, I hope your limbs shrivel and swerve at odd angles and your skin turns translucent purple and your eyes become so ugly, so incredibly and impossibly hideous that never again will anyone ever doubt the saying that the eyes are the windows to the soul." For one beautiful moment I am deaf and blind to everything but my own laughter, my own beautiful psychosis. I want to bite.
"Are you quite alright Seven?" His words are as soft and as gentle as the first tiny wisps of falling snow. I stare at him blankly, my rage fading as a final glob of foam dribbles down my chin and onto the table. I just lost control again. I tried to bite off his finger. I was wondering how it would taste. In an instant I recoil from myself. Get me out, just get me out, out of this skin, out of this flesh, just get me out please get me out. I start to breathe fast, I can't take it any longer. My fingers start to desperately scratch at my own skin. Get me out, just get me out "GET ME OUT!!!"
Bump Nose grabs my arms and shoves them down by my sides. "No Seven." he speaks calmly, but deliberately. "There is no way out, I am sorry it has to be this way, I am really and truly sorry. Breathe, calm yourself and we can have a conversation about this." For a moment I just look up into his dark grey eyes. I am full of fear and something else, hope? trust? It sickens me. Finally I purse my lips, nodding slowly. "You shocked me, through my wrist port to get me to stop talking, was it because I was right?"
He sighs and rubs his eyes. "My apologies Seven, I had no choice. I feared I was losing control of my little group; I had to do something to reassert my authority, especially over you. You know about the books, about the ideologies I have been preaching, you are absolutely right to assume their harm. However I believe the value of this experiment as a whole is greater than the value of a few human lives. You see Seven, Titles are becoming more and more complacent with every generation. They are undoubtedly intelligent, but their minds have simply become computers to be programmed. They will believe anything we tell them, no questions asked." I remain straight faced thinking back to my conversation with Eight.
