SONDER (IV): tmr thomas

001: I would protect them

Leo 1

I lie on the ground for hours before the door creaks open. The bright light gives me a nearly-instant migraine. I hold my head in my hands, pressing down on it tightly. The woman walks into the room, grabbing my arm to pull me to my feet. Looking down the barrel of her gun, I get shivers in my back. When they've transported me before, they never used a weapon like this. It's always been launchers. I can feel my throat tightening.

She gestures for me to move forward, so I do.

She walks behind me, pushing me forward. When this hallway crosses another she grabs my shoulder and shoves me in the right direction. I try to keep my eyes close, to avoid the bright light, but the electric buzz of the lightbulbs still rings in my ear. I think of Thomas Edison, and I think of Thomas. I think of all the technology made to make my life easier, and I think of the friends who have been named after them.

I am the only one of the girls in Group A to be named after an inventor. They get to be artists, and carefree, while I am tasked with the burden of creating a solution.

We get to a room where a man waits.

"You're late," he says to the woman behind me.

The woman grunts a response. "There was a complication. Her place was moved because of the interview with McCarthy. It was out of my control."

The man rolls his eyes but uses a keypad to press in a code. The door clicks, opening up.

There are six chairs. Dawn and Michelle are strapped into two, the one between them empty. Across from them are Jay, Sheil, and Lott, in that order. The woman guides me in and shoves me into the chair, where she straps me in.

Dawn looks up at me. Her cuts and bruises from the fight are beginning to blend into her skin. We've been apart long enough for the first few stages of healing to settle in. About three weeks, if I know anything about medicine.

Her frown deepens as the woman in front of me tightens the leather straps around my wrists.

When the woman steps back, a scientist I haven't met begins to poke wires into my skin. I ignore the urge to jerk away, since I know what is coming. All of have been hooked up to theses wires. I wonder if Michelle and Dawn know that these cables are here to torture us, like they did to me last week.

Michelle is next to me, with two black eyes. They look fresh, bright purple in colour. She glances at me, then glances at the floor, biting her dry lips. It seems being here has only made her sicker.

I wonder how I look. Since I've been here, they have taken me once a day to shower and use the bathroom, and other such hygienic things. I wonder if the cuts on my face are fading.

The scientist steps away, giving me a better look at Jay, Sheil, and Lott. Lott, across from Michelle, has bruises on his arms in the shape of hands. Jay's lip is split open and his skin has grown a sickly yellow. Sheil, across from me, is the only person who is free from injury.

The intercom buzzes above us. I wince from the high-pitched squeal but can't shield my ears from the sound.

There is a man trying to clear his throat. "Attention. This is the final step of phase three. You must identify each of your counterparts. False guesses will be penalized, increasing ten-fold with each mistake. To submit a guess, you must state all three pairings."

In the silence after he speaks, I look around. Dawn looks jittery, and I can't read Michelle. I wait for the man to continue, but he doesn't. All of us seem to have been through the works; I wonder if any of them want to even bother trying, or if they are done. At this point, I don't even care if I survive.