The Machine

Blurry blobs of bright light flashed across Iris’s field of vision before she slid her eyes closed again. Wait, what? SHe tried to open her eyes back up but they felt as if they weighed a million pounds. Did I. Did I just see that? How did my vision come back? She tried again to desperately open her eyes but it was to no avail.

“Shmsadkj what shheweewwldfkro wedo wisahth sjasjhidder?” Iris couldn’t make out what the voices around her were saying so she tried to focus.

“We should frg gdhg hdfs hurt her in dash thdjdkse James jdhoodshs behere dhs djk.” SHe could make out a few more words but it was still not enough. James? What are they talking about? 

She strained as hard as she could to make out anything, any full sentence that could help her understand what was going on.

“No. We should mover her showdown stadler's so they will never be kseb schools fishskin.” She knew that voice. The authoritative, finalised, cold voice of Dr. ANderson. He must be the one making sure she was taken somewhere. But where? And why?

Iris was finally able to peel back one eyelid and take a quick glance around ehr. She was moving, that’s for sure, she saw the iridescent glow of the overhead lights fly by her. SHe was able to get oriented enough to realise that she was lying on her back, strapped down to a gurney. She slid her eye back closed as she felt herself coming to a stop. She focused with everything that she had to understand what was being said around ehr.

“It’s now or never. This is the last shot we have at keeping her hidden.” Dr. Anderson’s voice boomed out from above her. Finally. She tried to keep her concentration but it was quickly broken when her head was filled with the screeching wail of an alarm siren.

“Quick get her into the bunker!” He yelled and she felt herself being moved very fast. She listened intently to the sound of distant yelling and running footsteps. SHe hoped that she would be able to get out of this mess, and that this wasn’t the last time she would be moved from her cell upstairs.

She heard the distinctive ping of an elevator door opening and then closing. SHe didn’t dare open her eyes again, not until she knew she was out of this confined space.They would see her fro sure if she opened them up now.

The ping sounded again and she felt herself being moved again. Slowly, she opened up one eyelid and peeked out. All she could register was the fact that the iridescent glow of the fluorescent lights was no longer visible. All she saw was dull, flickering lights and dark walls. It smelt damp and musty, like a basement deep in the ground, and the air temperature had dropped by several degrees.

She came to a stop at the same time that she heard the creak of a rusty door hinge. Then she was moving again, this time though, she was only rolled a few feet into the room before the rolling came to a stop.

“Iris.” SHe heard from above her. “Come on, I know you’re awake. You’ve been awake this whole time, haven’t you?” Dr. Anderson’s voice rained down on her.

Reluctantly, Iris opened her eyes and looked him square in the face. Her reaction threw him slightly off guard, he was expecting her wandering, blank eyes. Not this fiery stare of determination.

“Ah, so you can see me. This is even better than I had ever imagined. You are ready, Iris, and right on time I must add. Your little friends have infiltrated the labs upstairs, and it looks like you are going to be able to take them down.” He smiled maliciously at her and waited for her expression to change. It never did.

Iris gave him the most steely stari she could and stood her ground. “You can’t use me to do anything.” Her confidence never once wavered.

“Really? Well how hypocritical of you my dear. The people you so honestly want to protect, are the ones who first wanted to use you. That’s all they ever wanted from you my dear. They wanted to have you on their side so that they could take over and have all the power they ever wanted.”

“What? No, that’s not true. I don’t believe you.” She stared him down, trying to pull the truth out of him.

“I’m afraid it is. You have no reason to trust me, I know. But believe me, we never had planned on using you to our advantage, not until we realised that the resistance had gotten wind that you were alive. Surely you remember what it was like before the experiments, back before they found out. SUrely you remember that."He looked at her with something she had never seen before, she didn’t understand what kind of emotions were running through his head.

“Well, surely YOU remember the experiment that took away my memory. You know I have no memory of anything from before I was twelve. Don’t use it as an excuse to try and fill my head with lies. You’ve always done the experiments, nothing has ever changed.” She began to regain the feeling in her arms and legs and tried desperately to loosen her restraints.

“I guess it is better that way anyway.””he motioned for one of his assistants to move closer. As he did so, Iris caught glimpses of bright, shiny metal and smelt the burning smell of iodine and alcohol.

“Wha...What?” SHe stammered out, but her breath got caught in her throat when she realised what was happening, what was going on. There, right in front of her was The Machine.

“No….” She whispered. “No no no no no.” SHe began to struggle against the restraints even harder and began to yell in protest.

“Iris, please, don’t make this any harder on yourself. It has to be this way, we can’t risk you falling into the wrong hands now that they are so close. It’s better this way.” To Iris, almost sounded like he was trying to convince himself more than he was trying to convince her.

“Please,” she muttered out between the sobs that now racked her. “Please don’t do this. Please, you don’t understand. I never asked to be made this way, it’s not my fault!” Iris continued to stare at The MAchine. It was the same machine they had used four years ago. The same machine that had unsuccessfully tried to terminate her. The same machine that had taken her memory in the process. This time though, she didn’t think it would allow her to live.

“Iris, my dear, I am truly sorry that it had to end this way. If it was all up to me, those horrid experiments would have stopped years ago, when we originally found your source of power. You would have lived a normal life and you would have never ended up in this situation. We never would have ended up in this situation. BUt none of that was up to me, it all comes from corporate. Same as how these orders have come from corporate.” He walked up to her placed the thin needle against her arm. 

“Please…..” She whimpered.

“I don’t think I can save you this time. I’m so, so sorry Iris, my child.” And the world began to swirl into darkness as Iris tried desperately to understand the last two words he had just said.

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Lily moved stealthily through the dark corridors of the empty lab. She could still hear the vivid sounds of battle coming from downstairs on the main two floors. The power had been cut, but it didn’t affect her much. Living out in the woods where you had no lights on after dark for fear of being discovered, gave you plenty of time to learn how to adapt to seeing in the dark.

“Now, where are you?” SHe whispered out to herself. Just then, she turned a corner and came face to face with two rooms. THey weren’t just any ordinary rooms though. They were made of some kind of clear glass like material.

“Oh Iris, where are you?” SHe placed her hand on the cool glass and peered inside. It was a tiny cell, barely 64 square feet. On the far wall was a tiny cot with a single bed sheet crumpled on top. And, much to Lily’s dismay, in the opposite corner stood, right out in the open, a tiny sink and toilet, with only a flimsy partition to cover it, you could clearly see the shadows on the other side.

She jerked around when she heard the sound of glass breaking. Quickly, but silently, she slid under the nearest table and crouched, ready to attack. Finally, after a few minutes of tense waiting and after quite a few more broken beakers, the source of all this trouble appeared.

Lily let out the breath she had been holding and chuckled to herself. “SIlly little thing.” She bent over and picked up the solid white rabbit. “The power outage must have released all of the locks on the animal cages. How did you manage to make it all the way in here?” The rabbit just looked up at her and squirmed in her arms.

“Okay, okay.” She set him back down on the floor. “No need to put you back where you came from, this place is probably going to be halfway to destruction by the time this is over.” She walked out of the room and snuck down the dark corridor, hoping to find some kind of clue as to where Iris was being held.

She came to a stop at a stairwell. “Well,” She said to herself. “Looks like it’s either up or down. Now, if I were trying to hide from a grand battle, would I go up stair and be trapped, or downstairs and be trapped.” SHe said to herself as she looked both ways.

“ONly one way to find out.” SHe went with her gut instinct and took the stairs going down below the basement level. She slowed down as she came to the end of the stairwell and ended up in a big, open space. SHe stopped and listened very closely.

“Ah ha.” She whispered to herself when she heard the sound of soft whispers floating down from one of the hallways branching off of the main room. SHe followed them down to a rusty, industrial looking door with a small slit in the top.

Carefully, she stepped up onto her toes and peered inside of the room. The first thing that she saw was the large, ominous looking machine in the center of the room. Then, she saw a girl laying on a table right next to it. Lily inhaled sharply as she took in the young girl before her. Her long, light brown hair and pale skin was an almost exact copy of her own. The only difference was the dark swirls encompassing the girl's face. Iris. she thought as she stared hard.

Quickly, she turned her focus away from her and tried to focus on everyone else in the room. SHe took a quick head count and found that there was four other people crammed in the tiny space, all of them working around the machine in the room.

“What is going on in there?” She whispered to herself. 

JUst as she was preparing herself to open the door and make her presence know, she saw something that she would never in a million years think that she would see.

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Dr. Anderson looked solemnly to the assistant on his left, the one who was prepared to operate The Machine. He had a choice, one very, very difficult choice. BUt he knew, his mind had been made up ever since the first time they had labeled her for elimination. If it ever came a time like this, he would rather be dead and having tried to save her, then live knowing that he had been the reason that the only thing, the only person that could ever possibly reunite this country after the great war, was destroyed.

“Wait.” He said. “ I...I can’t let you do that, I can’t let you go through with this. You all know what she means, you all know what her purpose is. Why should we destroy that when we can use her to save us?” 

“I’m sorry, Dr. ANderson,” The assistant whom he had forgotten there name spoke to him in a very clinical voice. “We understand your… Um…. Connection, with her, but that does not change the fact that she could be used to destroy US if they get their hands on her.”

“This is not about her being my child. YOu should know that by now. WHat this is about, is the fact that she holds the power to fix everything. SHe can return the city to what it once was, she can bring back the outerland cities, the ones that were abandoned after the great war. SHe can save us.”

“Are you saying that you would rather have this...this….this defect of a human being lead us than corporate? Are you questioning corporate’s power?”

“Yes, as a matter of fact I am. They have done nothing but force us to bend at their will, to be their little slaves getting our hands dirty for them while they sit all nice and pretty at the top of a great tower somewhere. They have divided us and pit us against each other. All this time we have been trying to harvest the source of all the Marks power so that we can use it ourselves, when what we really should have been doing was raising up and training those who are born with them instead of destroying them so that we can use it all to ourselves.” With that, everyone in the room gasped.

“You are a traitor, Dr. ANderson.” At that, Dr. ANderson lunged toward the assistant and pinned him to the ground. One of the guards in the room grappled for him but was stopped dead in his tracks when he was stabbed in the back. Dr. ANderson looked up to see the other guard being apprehended by a slim figure dressed completely in black.

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Lily stared at the man before her, sitting on top of the chest of another stranger. He was staring at her, open mouthed, a look of horror on his face.

“I don’t know what on earth was going on in here, but I really don’t care.” SHe slammed the but of ehr dagger into the temple of the man and walked straight over to where Iris was lying, unconscious. 

“This is Lily, target has been found. Down below the secondary basement, requesting backup to get her out of here.” She talked into the tiny mic she had on her shirt collar.

“Alright Lily, we are coming right now, just sit tight and we’ll be getting her out.”

“Thanks. How are things going up there?”

“Nothing we can’t handle. You just need to focus on your task at hand.”

Lily reached down and untied the restraints on Iris’s hands and then her ankles. She looked into her face and tried to pick out anything that would help tell her story. She reached up and pushed Iris’s hair out of her face and reached down to pick her up. She was so light and frail, she was afraid that she would break in her arms.

“What have they done to you?” She whispered into Iris’s ear

“Lily.” She jumped at the sound of someone behind her. She turned to look into the worried eyes of……
“James?” She was very confused “HOw did you..”

“COmplicated.” Was all he said. “Is she okay? What happened?’ He reached for her and Lily handed her over.

“I don’t know. I think they just tranquilized her or something.” SHe followed him out of the room and down the hallway, but instead of turning and heading up the stairs she had came down, she followed him down the opposite direction to a separate set of stairs.

“Why are..” 

“It’s a back exit, it’ll be the safest way to get her out of here.” He answered her before she had even asked her question.

“WHat are you being so blunt?” She accused him.

“WHy are you asking so many questions?” He countered back at her.

“Fine.. Don’t answer me.” She mumbled to herself.

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James looked into Iris’s face as they walked out of the damp passageway and into the sunlight. They corridor had lead them to the back side of the building, closest to the East border.

“Once we cross into the woods, we can take a break.” He told Lily as she came up beside him.

“What? We aren't going to trade her off with someone there and come back to fight?”

“No. Most of it is over anyway. Our mission is to get her back to headquarters safely.”

They kept on walking in silence until they reached the edge of the East woods.

“ Alright. We can stop for a little while and take a break here.” He placed Iris down and pulled off his pack, rummaging through it until he came out with something.

“WHat is that?” Lily asked as she came and sat down beside him.

“Adrenaline. Now can you put her in you lap and hold her still so I can give it to her”

“Adrenaline?” Lily asked as she pulled Iris into her lap.

“Yeah. It’ll wake her up more quickly than just trying to let her come to on her own.” He placed the needled on the side of Iris’s neck and pushed the plunger.

“Why can’t we just wait for her to wake up?”
“Because, if anything is seriously wrong, we won’t know until she wakes up.”

Lily just looked down at Iris and pulled the hair away from her face.

“What makes someone so sick that they would do such thing to people. To children? I just don’t understand.”

“Lily, people will go to great lengths for power. They will do anything to take control and keep the control in their hands. It’s simply human nature, to want power.”