The Unlicensed

It was the mechanical clicking of locks disengaging that flooded my waking senses. My eyes fluttered open and flickered around, searching for something to focus on, but the area around me looked no different than having my eyes shut. There was only an endless abyss, and my body was completely unresponsive to my urges for exploration. My heart began to pound, as I couldn't manage to move my arms or my legs. It wasn't until I heard a cold, calculated voice that I was aware that I even had the capability to hear. “Commencing initial bootup.”

I could feel my body being shifted around, likely on some sort of bed, but I couldn't tell what direction in all of my loss of spatial recognition. My heart carried the weight of the world, and my lungs were filled with the screams of terror that my body couldn’t release. Suddenly, in front of me, a tray slid open to let in a rectangle of light from the outside world. My eyes shrunk back behind my eyelids, and a voice spoke from beyond my encasing. “I can’t believe it’s come to this..”

Everything came to a halt. That voice, familiar and sweet, tinged with hurt and exhaustion, sounded momentarily alleviated and almost happy. I couldn’t put a name to it, but I knew who he was. The more thought I gave it, the more my lungs wanted to release the sound “dad”, but my lips wouldn’t part for the action. More mechanical clicking gave way to my encasement peeling away to the side. The flooding of light impaired my vision once more, but my eyes grew accustomed to it fairly quickly to be able to make out his scruffy face. He looked unkept and exhausted. His glasses were thin-framed and halfway off the bridge of his nose, magnifying his tears underneath. It was almost a minute before he spoke, crying with an expression that conveyed both uncontainable jubilation and absolute mourning. Eventually he wiped his tears and looked me in the eye.

“Your mother… She would hate me so much for this, but it had to be done… I hope she'll forgive me... I hope /you/ can forgive me... I'm so-” His apologies were cut off by the sound of guns smashing like battering rams against the door on the left side of the room. My father scrambled over to a blue, translucent control panel and mashed in a few buttons. I could hear the bed begin to move again and the encasing started to come back over me. I wanted to scream, tell him to stop and explain what was going on, that I didn’t want to go back in, but I had no voluntary movement available to me save the movement of my eyes. In all of the lack of expression I had, I could at least cry as I watched my father scramble out of the room. He glanced back at me just as my encasing consumed me once more. I wanted to shout, to have him come back and let me out, but nothing I wanted to do was under my control.

My heart stopped as I tried to listen to the outside world. For every ram against the door, my heart beat and sunk, sinking a little deeper with each hit. I could hear the muttered voices of the men outside, but couldn't make out what they were saying. The door finally gave way, and a stampede of footsteps burst through the left side of the room and through the right, to an adjacent room.  After the footsteps came to a halt, one man called out as uniformly as i'd ever heard before, "target acquired."

All silenced after that, save the raising and readying of guns, and one much slower footstep following up. These steps were at the pace of someone on a leisurely walk, someone who was not in a rush to get to where they were going. A cold and calculated grumble came from what sounded like a man in their late twenties, deep voiced and certain of his place.

“Well, i’m afraid we’ve trapped you like a rat. I do offer my sincerest apologies for what happened to your daughter. However, I do believe you’ve broke one of the cardinal rules for the E.A.T… Do you know what rule that is?” He asked smugly, bored even.
I was unable to hear the answer that was given, but based on the next thing the strange voice had to say, I assumed it was all in understanding.

“Good… Then you won’t hold a grudge against me. It's just business.”
Silence for one split moment - just one, blissful moment - and then the terrifying and absolutely gut-wrenching sound of gunfire made my blood freeze. After what seemed an innumerable amount of shots, it finally stopped. The sudden ceasefire left only the dropping of shells to echo throughout the room, then the sound of a scoff from their leader. He muttered one last thing before he left, and then turned to leave with the other men following close behind. Some of them laughed, some of the spoke amongst themselves, some of them were silent. I remained in my capsule, utterly clueless and helpless for another three or so minutes after the men left when a stoic voice came from what sounded like inside the capsule.

“Automated initial bootup commencing; Booting up remaining voluntary and involuntary actions in 5…”

I was entirely in awe at whatever machine was speaking to me, where it was, and what it was speaking of. Anxiously, I waited for it to finish counting down from five. Each number felt like an eon in its own respect, until it hit one.

The capsule doors disengaged from in front of me once more, and I felt several mechanisms all along my body unlocking and ejecting themselves. The room made itself apparent to me finally, a small, dimly lit space with what looked like a bed for surgery in front of me, several machines pushed against the wall used for Praxia knows what kind of experiments and procedures, but as I looked around a sudden pain jerked my neck. It wasn't unlike the kind of ache you get after you've spent too long looking down doing work. Slowly after that, I began to explore more of what it was my body was both capable and incapable of. I could move my arms, but they were numb and heavy, and they barely moved on thought. It was difficult to maneuver. The legs would come next.

Slowly and cautiously, I put my leg forward on the tile in front of me, but my body fell like a building collapsing to meet the cold, rock solid surface of the floor. I lay there, face down, trying to pick myself up with my upper body. Suddenly supporting my weight made everything ache. Suppressing grunts of pain the best I could, I managed to lift the up half of me into an awkward position, just enough to be able to hoist myself off the ground using the procedure table in front of me. I could have made it to my feet by sheer willpower using the table, but my weight and struggling made it roll away, giving me no hope. Laying back on my side once more, my head swirl and ache. The pain would have been enough to put a grown man into a state of sobbing, and for me it was so painful I couldn't manage a sound. My jaw was dropped with the temptation to scream out, but instead I cried silently and brought my hands up in attempts to tame the beast that was loose in my head. Unconsciously, my knees came up to meet my chest as I sobbed silently, hoping that this ache would go away. Just as I was about to scream, it stopped. My hands slowly made their way away from my face. For a moment I laid there, in complete and utter bliss, ready to fall asleep like a baby, when my chest tightened and squeezed like my heart was being pulled out of my chest. The pain sent me rolling onto my stomach, again with tears streaming down my cheeks, and I brought myself up on my knees, grabbing my chest. I was certain that i'd die here, just as I was released from the darkness. It felt as though I were drowning, like I couldn’t breathe, and my lungs were tightening and ready to collapse on themselves. Eventually, my mind gave into the pain. I stopped fighting. I just let the pain take its course. My body slumped down to the ground once more. My tears pooled around my head, and my vision began to darken. Then I heard his voice.

“Just breathe, don’t fight it…” He called out weakly. As much as it hurt, after having had my darkening vision shaken from me, I forced my body to breathe correctly. It was a painfully sluggish process, but it began to normalize, albeit I sputtered with pain here and there. After regaining my composure, I slowly lifted myself up to my feet and began walking very slowly, leaning and supporting myself on any object nearby so I could get to my father.

When I finally was in the same room with him, he was mortally wounded. I panicked and tried to hurry myself over him, stumbling all the way there, and when I did I knelt down and tried to keep him with me. His gunshots were scattered. There were a couple in his stomach, one in his rib, and one close to his collarbone. His clothes were absolutely soaked in his own blood - seemingly flooding out of his body - and I knew it was going to be hard to recover from this if not impossible. His body seemed to grown weaker by the second, his arms and legs going limp, his neck unable to carry the weight of his head.

“No, daddy, don’t… Please, you have to stay with me!” I said hoarsely. He chuckled a bit, as though something were funny, and began coughing. I begged him to stop, and told him over and over i’d get help, but then I realized no one would even try to help us. I could feel his blood beginning to pool around my knees on the floor, and his eyes told the tale of a tired man who wanted rest.

“Just tell me what I can do, what can I give you to make it better, how do I fix it?” My heart pounded enough to rattle my ribs. I thought if he’d just tell me how, I could become a doctor in that instant, or even an engineer, and save him. He shook his head, and my blood grew cold. It was hopeless, I was helpless, and I was going to watch the only family member I had left die right in front of me. This wouldn’t be the first time for me, but it was certainly my last. His body began to slump off of the wall he was leaned against, and I tried to support push him back, but my lack of strength couldn't manage it.

“No, daddy, don’t go, please…” I sobbed, frantically glancing around the room for an answer. My vision was almost entirely compromised from the lake of tears in my eyes, but still I glanced around, though I knew there was nothing that could help him. It was too late. His body slumped completely against mine, and all I could manage was to cry. After everything that had happened, I was the only one left now. For a few moments I sat, hugging him, sobbing into his shoulder. I knew I couldn’t stay here though, I couldn’t stay and mourn, or even give him a proper burial. I had to leave now. Slowly I managed enough strength to push him back up to the wall. I looked at him enough to start sobbing again, and I kissed him on the cheek.

“Goodbye, daddy…”

Bringing myself back up to my feet, I supported myself along the wall and searched all of the lockers and cabinets in the room. It looked like the other surgical room, but surely there would be something useful I could use. Aside from medical equipment,chemicals, and medicines, there was nothing useful save for one small box stuffed in the back of one of the lockers. I recognized this box immediately. It was my mother’s jewelry box. Slowly I drug it out - my body hardly even strong enough to manage that - and brought the box onto my lap. When I opened it, there was a picture inside the lid of me, her, and my father playing at our old house. It was from the day that both my mother and father discovered that their big project was becoming recognized as a true scientific breakthrough, and their moods were never better. We played all day that day. Again I began to sob, bringing the box up to my chest and holding it for a minute until I regained my composure. Going back to the contents of the box, my tears were still silently falling into the box, splashing some of the jewelry inside, and then I found a little hook that looked like a latch for a secret compartment. Still sniffling, I curled my finger through the silky hook and found a gun inside. To my absolute shock, it was in my mother's jewelry box, of all places. I suddenly had a swirl of questions floating in my head. Why did my dad have the box, who put the gun there? I knew I would probably need it, but I had also never held a gun in my life. Still, with all of my confusion and utter dismal, I took the gun out and set it aside in order to say my goodbyes to everything I once knew. I said my farewells to mother for a second time, and tucked the box back into the locker. I knew I had to put my feelings behind me just long enough to find my way out of this hell. It was time to face what this place had planned for me.

Reviews

[Sophia Bar-Lev]

Very engaging first chapter. I can't wait to read the rest of the book. The reader is very quickly brought into the mind and emotions of the central figure. The descriptions are pointed and specific and the suspense factor is high. Couple of minor typos but overall, a great read.

[Jennifer E. Whalen]

Great read, some typos, but great read. More please!