Glitches

Chapter 36 - Open up

I woke up in a small room, the light from a lamp blinding me. What surprised the most was the fact that I was still alive. Well as alive as I could be, by the fact that I was just metal and plastic that could breath and think.

Slowly, I got up in a sitting position, my back resting against the wall. I suddenly hissed, when a sharp pain shot through my back. My body was heavy, and it hurt everywhere on it. I rolled my shoulders slightly to ease the pain. When it helped, I massaged myself where I could reach until my body didn't hurt as much as it had done when I woke up.

When the pain in my body had faded a bit, I took my time to take in my surroundings. I was clearly in a cell of some sort. There was nothing else but a bottle in the corner beside the thick metal door, a lamp that was turned on and my own sore body. The room was around 10 feet each way, making it very small and claustrophobic to be in.

As I sat there alone in the room, the questions began to pop up in my head.

Why was I alive?

Where was I?

What time was it?

My head spun with thoughts and questions and it began to physically hurt. I squeezed my eyes shut in a way of clearing my mind, and unfortunately it worked.

Okay, someone must've talked to Alan about keeping me alive. Or the scanning must have failed or something. Yes, that must be it. The scanning must somehow had failed, and that was why I am kept here, with a bottle of gandolie.

I looked down on my arm. The scar reminded me of why I was here. But I couldn't do anything before I knew what was going on.

So, I took in a deep breath, trying to calm my racing heart. My eyes landed on a security camera in the corner of the ceiling. They didn't even tried to hide that they were keeping an eye on me. I rested my head against the wall, my eyes not leaving the device.

And I waited.

. . .

It felt like hours had went by when the door opened into the room. I had already emptied the bottle with gandolie, drinking being the only entertaining I got in the small room. On the bright side, my body didn't hurt anymore. It was just incredible sore.

It wasn't Alan that had opened the door, but a guard. He escorted me out of the room, making sure that my hands stayed behind my back so I couldn't lash out or try to run away. I had decided that whatever was going to happen, I refused to talk.

Being left in a room for hours – and more if you think about the time I had been unconscious – makes you think a lot. And I was tired of talking. So, I just let the guard lead me into the same room as before.

Alan looked at me in surprise, maybe because this was the first time he had seen me conscious since he threaded to shut me down.

We looked at each other, none of us saying anything. He made a short command to the guard, and I was strung up in the machine. This was the answer to why my body felt so sore. All the times I must have been strung up with the weird wires fastened to my body, must have worn it out. I wondered how many times I had been strung up while I was unconscious.

I think it surprised everyone how cooperative I was. I didn't fight them when they strung me up. And I didn't yell at them. You could say that I finally had given up at this point. It didn't matter if I fought them. I was tired and beaten. Both physically a mentally.

A tickling feeling ran down my spine when Alan wrote a command on the computer. I could see my coding on the screen. It turned out that scanning my whole system takes longer than you think. Hundreds, maybe thousands of small details you have to look out for. Even the smallest anomaly couldn't be overseen.

Again, I wondered how many days that must've passed. Three? Four? I could only guess.

But I had to find out. I had to find out how much time I had left. If I had any time left.

"How long have I been away?" I asked.

My voice were a bit scratchy.

"Fifty-seven hours," Alan muttered, his eyes not leaving the screen.

Fifty-seven hours. I still had time left. But as long as I was strung up, I couldn't do anything.

As the hours went by, I began to become very bored and antsy. I just wanted to be thrown back into my cell so I could activate the device. While I waited, I kept my eyes on the clock on the wall, counting the hours.

After ten hours Alan sighed tiredly, rubbing his eyes.

"Alright everyone, go home. It's late and we have work to do tomorrow."

All around the room, people began packing their stuff. I got detached from the machine and led back to my cell.

"Sixteen hours," I mumbled as the door to my cell got closed. "Sixteen hours."

I glanced at my arm again. I had to do it in here and pray to the gods that I would be strung up soon.

Resting my back against the wall I pondered on how I should make this work without getting caught. I could easily break the skin by either biting or scratching in open, but I still needed something hot to melt the skin again.

My eyes searched the room, when they landed on the lamp. It stood in the corner of the room right under the camera. I crawled over to it, laying on my side beside it. It hadn't been turned off in a long time.

Slowly, I reached my hand up to touch the lightbulb, but I quickly pulled it back when the soft skin got burned by the bulb. Hopefully it would work.

I turned off the lamp, leaving the room in darkness. My fingers caressed the forearm with the scar, while my heartrate increased a bit. But I had to remind myself that it wouldn't hurt for more than a moment or two. I had to remind myself that I wasn't human.

Closing my eyes, I squeezed my fingers into the skin as hard as I could. I clenched my teeth as a sharp pain shut up through my arm, but I kept tightening my grip, my nails slowly breaking the latex. I moved my hand up and down, my nails cutting the skin open, as the pain slowly melted away.

I opened my eyes. Not that it helped. The only light source was turned off. I had to do this in darkness. My fingers fumbled inside of my now opened forearm, trying to find the device between the two pipes. I quickly found it and ripped off the tape that fastened it. The difficult thing was to find the two cables and plug them into the two holes in the device.

My insides were not cold but a normal body temperature. I found out that must've been because of some rubber-tubes that laid along the pipes. They contained something warm in them that heated up the pipes. I let my fingers rest on one of them for a moment, feeling them getting warmed by the tube.

It didn't last long though. I had to keep searching for the cables. My fingers ran over the smooth surfaces of the pipes and wires in my arm, when they got stopped by something close to where the forearm and upper arm meets. It was flat and round like a plate, and it was surprisingly soft. Wires stuck out of it. I let out breath I hadn't realised I was holding, carefully pulling the two wires out of the device as Paul had told me.

When I'd plugged them into the device, I reached for the lamp and began screwing the light bulb out of it. It was still burning hot and I bit my lip. I just hoped that it was hot enough to melt the latex. It wouldn't be as pretty as it was before, but I doubted that Alan would recognise it. I placed the metallic end of the lightbulb against the skin, waiting patiently for it to melt it. It took some time, but eventually the latex was soft enough for me to mould it and make it stick together to fix the hole.

I kept going, the process taking longer than I had expected. But eventually the hole was closed.

I once again ran my fingers over the latex, feeling the rough skin where the scar was. It was now way bigger than before, but there were no holes so it was the best I could do.

I quickly screwed the lightbulb back into the lamp, before I let myself rest.

Now I just had to wait until someone came an escorted me back into the room to get strung up again.

Hopefully it wouldn't be too long.