CHAPTER 18

REECE

I scrunched my eyes shut as tightly as I could, wishing I could do the same to my other senses. I didn't want to feel the agony throbbing through my broken body, the burning sensation emanating from my bones excruciating and unbearable. I didn't want to clench my teeth together so hard to avoid screaming for Adara's sake as whatever they did to me took root. Nor did I want to lay here naked with my gaping wounds exposed to the air. I also didn’t want to watch what they were doing to Adara,but I could hear her flesh tearing, the squelching of her insides as they dug around inside her, or the sickening sound the needles made as they were inserted into her bones, but I heard it regardless. They were viciously wrenching screams from her throat, the sound incomparable to the woman I knew.

It was another form of torture that they made us witness them performing these procedures on us, and without anaesthesia. I’d been awake for the entire ordeal when it was my turn, Adara’s desperate, tear-filled begging the soundtrack to my suffering. Now it was her turn to suffer while I lay on the other side of the room, bound and unable to help her. I couldn’t even imagine how terrified she’d been watching them do this to me and knowing she was next.

The experience was indescribable. I just wanted to die, if only so she wouldn’t have to watch again. But I couldn’t do that to her. I couldn’t leave her alone in this.

The doctor had informed us that we were now partners in their latest trial. They claimed our ‘participation’ would lead the way for groundbreaking discoveries and medical breakthroughs. They worded the statement as if we were heroes. No, martyrs.

But if we were so important, if we were so vital to their progress, why were they keeping us conscious through the process?

Because they wanted to hear our suffering. They got off on the pain they were inflicting. It didn’t matter if the results were revolutionary, they weren’t doing this to be the good guys. They were doing this because they were evil. It only took one session under their so-called ‘care’ for me to figure that out.

A squelching noise drifted over, horrifyingly sickening and reminiscent of what they’d just done to me. It was chased quickly by another of Adara’s soul-destroying screams, and I couldn’t do it anymore.

The fresh memory of them cutting into me, digging around under my skin, stabbing needles into my bones and injecting my marrow with some unknown substance bombarded me with so much intensity I couldn’t stop the vomit from surging up my throat and trickling out of my mouth. They had abandoned me, still splayed open on the table without stitching me up, and I was terrified to look at the mess they’d made of my body.

My own plight combined with Adara’s current torture was too much for me. I threw a silent apology at her, the words barely more than a shaky tremble of my lips that I knew would never reach her, and I succumbed to the numb but welcoming embrace of insentience.