Chapter 27: Chapter 27: Of Broken Palaces… Part 2

When Chleo awoke next, it was a quick jerk to awareness.  It took a second to identify what snapped her awake.  A low keening filled the room, intermittent shrieks interrupting it as someone screamed in agony.  Yellow flickered, and dimmed with each yell torn from the person’s throat.

Her first reaction was to run.  She tried to fling herself off the bed and out the door.  A sharp tug and clink of cuffs on rails reminded her she was attached to the bed.  Someone had re-tightened the slack while she slept.  She collapsed back to the mattress.  

Another shriek ripped through the air.  She tried to curl herself into a ball.  Again the cuffs prevented it.  Unable to hide, her eyes locked on the source, her vision thankfully back to normal.

A make-shift curtain cordoned off her corner of the infirmary.  Five beds lay in a line, a small cabinet between each complete with a sink and a set of, what looked like, surgical instruments.  Three beds were empty.  The last before the curtain wasn’t.

A boy, not much older than her, strained against his cuffs.  The rails bent and waved with his agony, ready to snap at any moment.  His skin pulsed a sickly yellow light, filling their section of the room.  The panel of the man with an axe flashed through her head.  She longed for the throne room if only to escape the sounds filling the infirmary.

The boy’s eyes locked with hers clouded in pain.  Pity filled them.  He looked on the verge of consoling her despite his situation before a spasm rocked his body.  His eyes found her again and focused.  They changed, grew hard and angry.  She’d seen the same expression from the mob of Scorps… hatred.

The boy’s screams became words, a language she’d never heard.  His tongue lilting through sounds as his voice sang in sweet torment, each phrase finishing with a hum.  It was as beautiful as his shrieks were terrible.  His eyes burned into her as his body language contradicted the tone in his voice.  He raged at her, singing his displeasure.  He reached a crescendo and spasmed.  The yellow radiating from his skin dimmed, giving barely more light than a birthday candle.

His head collapsed back into the pillow.  He glared at her.  “You fault.” He sneered.  Chleo stared at a loss.  

“He blames you,” someone said.

“I’m getting that,” she replied watching as another spasm rocked the boy.  She glanced toward the speaker to rid herself of the image.  The man in black from her father’s memory stood quietly in the corner, unmoved since the last time she’d spotted him.  “You know my father.”

She watched something flicker across his face, a crack in an otherwise blank mask. “I do.”

When he offered nothing else, she prodded, “How?”

“It was a long time ago.” The words slithered across his lips.  “We had common interests at the time.”

“You don’t anymore?” Her voice lilted at the end making it a question.  He stared, giving her nothing.  She tapped a finger on the rail as the silence stretched.  Giving up on an answer, she let her eyes wander the room, thinking.  The boy’s spasms had quieted, his shrieks becoming whimpers.  His light pulsed dangerously low as he drifted in and out of consciousness.

“Are you here to guard me, then, to question me about where my friends are?” Her gaze drifted back to the man.  He cracked the hint of a smile.  She felt mocked.

“You think me so unimportant?” He lifted an eyebrow.  “I see you’ve inherited your mother’s disrespect.”  Chleo’s eyes narrowed. “No, child, you’re no longer in the Seventh Point’s custody.  I’ve, shall we say, commandeered you as my next project.”

She looked down in thought.  “You know what they did to me, then.”  Her eyes snapped back to his.

He nodded, his lips twisting into a smirk. Her jaw clenched, her hands curling into fists. “I assume, despite living on this backward rock, your parents didn’t neglect teaching you the history of Luna and its origin?”

She glared as she answered, something childish in her unwilling to let him think poorly of her parents.  “Of course, they did.  The Seventh Point objected to the experiments run by the other six.  The others refused to listen so she staged a revolt, the Five Year Discord.  Her focus was on Astronomy so the other royals offered her Terra’s only moon as a peace offering.  In exchange, she would leave Terra and remain uninvolved in their research.  She and those who agreed with her cause, tired of the fight, accepted and moved to Luna ending the conflict.”

“Very good,” he praised.  His voice thick with sarcasm. “And what experiments did she deem too horrible to continue?  What caused her to turn her back on the others in her family?”

Chleo shrunk into her bed.  “I… The books were redacted.”

“And your parents never told you?”  he asked, his voice high in a mockery of innocence.  “How… predictable.”  He turned his attention to the boy twitching in his bed, his yellow light too dim to reach either of them anymore.

“He blames you,” the man in black said again, his smirk firmly in place. “He blames humanity, and why shouldn’t he?  We’re so fickle.”  He turned to her, his eyes boring into her own. “The Seventh Point objected to experimentation on Neons, much like the one he’s undergoing.  They’re superior, you understand, stronger, faster, and their medicines react with their physiology in ways that see them healed in hours rather than days, weeks, months.  We want what they have.”  

His eyes travelled to the boy, still as stone, his light barely a whisper across his skin. “Unfortunately, for our glowing companions the path to discovery is either fast or kind, and I’m an impatient man.”

He turned his attention back to her.  She had the irrational urge to slap the smirk off his face.  Her hand twitched with the thought, her cuff rattling against the bed rail. He noticed.  Amusement crinkled his eyes.

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“Luna, created as a haven from the very same torture that brings it notoriety today, has more breakthroughs on Neon physiology than any other Terran settlement.  One must admire hypocrisy at work.”

Chleo’s mouth fell as his words registered.  Her eyes dropped to her lap, thoughts running through her head, dots connecting. “The Guilds,” she mumbled. “They were established by…” her eyes flew to his seeking confirmation.

“King John’s pride and joy.” He let out a derisive chuckle. “We even let him think it was his idea, the Lunalit fool.” He took a moment to savor the insult.  His smirk slowly shrank to a line, blank mask back in place.

“Yes, child. I know what they did to you, what they will do to you… whatever I want.  You’ve become my life’s work until it kills you.”  Her stomach sank.  His smirk was back. “I really must congratulate you, the first to survive this particular cocktail, injuries healed and all.  I’ll be sure to let your mother know her experiment worked.”

Chleo felt air rush from her lungs. He knew where her mom was.  She was working with him.  There were too many things to consider.  Her eyes found the boy on the bed.  His glow was gone, his skin ashy and pale.  Her mom would never be a part of something like this.

“Odd that your parents never taught you about the Seventh Point’s objections when their time on Terra was spent so closely aligned with the experiments she hated.”  His eyes gleamed with cruelty.

“Where is she?” Chleo asked voice low with anger.  He raised an eyebrow. “My mother, where is she?”

“Ah,” he said as if just catching on. He was toying with her. “How commendable.  Still worried about her, are you?  I assure you, there are plenty of other things to occupy your mind.  She’s relatively safe… for now.”

Chleo opened her mouth to reply when the curtain rustled open.  She caught a glimpse of a much larger corridor lined with similar beds, most occupied by figures with glowing skin, a few blues and reds sprinkled between a plethora of yellow, before the doctor slipped through and snapped the fabric closed.

“How are our patients today?” he asked turning to scan the beds.  Face still hidden behind a surgical mask, she noted how his eyes fell when he spotted the boy, how his steps seemed forced as he made his way to the side of the bed.  He lifted the clipboard from its place on the rail and checked the boy’s bracelet.  She was loath to realize she hadn’t noticed when it stopped clicking.

“800 beats in under an hour,” he muttered.  He replaced the limp hand on the bed before marking the clipboard. “We’ll need to adjust the adrenalin dosage for the next one,” he said to the man in black.  His voice never wavered, but Chleo swore it sounded strained.  The man made a noncommittal sound of acknowledgement as the doctor abandoned the boy’s clipboard and walked to her bed.

“You’re looking better,” he told her. “How’s your vision?  Is the blindspot still there?”

“I thought it was always there,” she snarked.  He raised an eyebrow.  She rolled her eyes. “It’s back to normal.”

His eyes crinkled as his surgical mask shifted.  She assumed it was a smile.  “Good.” He made a mark on her clipboard.  “We’re going to run you through some tests to check your coordination.”  She stared at him, shaking her cuffs so they clinked against the rails.  He let out a kind laugh. “We’ll give you a bit more room to work.”

She let her gaze fall to her lap, biting her lip as she let her mind wander. The man in black said her mom was safe, for now.  They were forcing her to run experiments.  They had to be.  Her gaze flickered to the boy again, reaffirming her belief that her mother would never participate willingly. She wondered if she knew what they were doing to her.  Was that why the experiment had worked, her mom knew she was hurt and sent help?  

Chleo’s thoughts spiraled. They were mostly nonsense with no facts to back them, but the idea that her mom might have the power to help, provided some comfort.  Fearing for her life had become commonplace over the past few days.  Between her injuries and close calls, she didn’t expect to make it to the end of the week, but she never dreamed she’d go like this, a specimen in a madman’s quest for… she didn’t even know.  She wasn’t even sure he did. Indestructibility, immunity from disease, longer, stronger life, it didn’t matter.  Her expedition into the Steam Pits was starting to look like a cleaner death.  She was so lost in her musings, she nearly missed the doctor chaining her cuffs together and detaching them from the rails.

“There we go,” he said, lowering one of the bed rails.  She looked at him, digging her teeth into her lip.  Was he like her mom, forced to participate in something he detested?  His eyes seemed too kind to cooperate by choice. “Let’s start with trying to stand, shall we?”

She blinked, stealing a glance at the cuffs.  They gave her almost a foot between her hands and the same between her feet.  It was just enough to shuffle.  Running would be impossible. She swung her legs over the side of the bed and sat up.  Her movement was faster than anticipated, flinging her body too far forward and knocking her off balance.  Her hands flew to the side to keep herself from face planting on the mattress.  She took a breath, begging her nerves to steady.

Before the doctor could comment, she threw a question at him. “Do you know my mom?”  He looked startled, shooting a look at the man in black.

After a pause, he answered, “I do.”  She pressed her feet into the ground, careful to measure the strength behind it.  Slowly, she rose.  Standing was never a struggle, but it was easier than she remembered.

“Does she know I’m here?” she asked, again before he could question her, stalling for time and begging for information.  The longer they spent identifying the side-effects of the ‘experiment’ the longer she had before the next one.  Her teeth dug into her lip as she took her first step, measured, soft.  She refused to volunteer information if she could help it.

“I don’t believe she does, no.”  His reply was hesitant, searching.  She wasn’t sure if he was trying to anticipate her next question or read the answers in the man in black’s face.  A small part of her was disappointed, the one that was grasping at any sliver of hope she could find.  She’d told the king her friends were dead.  

It could be true.  Merk was in Timekeepers when it blew.  Her eyes pricked as she took another slow step.  She remembered Will, collapsed and bleeding as they dragged her away.  A tear made her vision swim as she fought to suppress it.  Her mother didn’t know she was there.  Eelock and the others wouldn’t either.  She was alone.  She took another step.

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