More
Now
I slipped my arms around my husband’s waist and pressed my face into his shoulder, squeezing him tightly. I felt him relax within my arms, and then gradually he turned, resting his chin on my head and slipped and arm around me.
“Jackson, I wish you would relax,” I said, letting out a slow sigh. I spoke softly, though we were in a separate part of the hotel from the other operatives and none could hear us through the deceptively thin walls. “We’re different. We’ve been different. Why is this taking so long for you to get accustomed to?”
It had been three years since the treatments began, and somehow he still couldn’t grasp that he was different - better. It was perhaps because he was older than I, or set in his ways, or maybe because he was just stubborn. He planted a gentle kiss on my forehead and began chastising me about how I was too rational sometimes. It was in jest, though.
Jackson and I had problems seeing eye to eye on a lot of things, but rationality was his department more of the time than it was mine. I was the one who was more inclined to rush into a melee head first with no readily available weapons. Just because I could. He didn’t appreciate the fact that I took my new abilities as immortality, and maybe I shouldn’t… but it wasn’t his decision to make.
THEN
He’d made a face when I’d stuck him with the first injection. He didn’t like needles - I could tell by his stance. I sat him down on the exam table, though he still managed to be above my petite frame. I picked up a cotton swab and rubbed his inner elbow with it gently.
“Is this going to hurt?” he asked. I glanced up at his dark eyes, and felt a small bit of sympathy for him. I hadn’t liked needles either, but once you acquire a certain amount of tattoos in your youth, you aren’t allowed to use the fear of them as a defense for necessary shots.
“Yes,” I said. I couldn’t lie. The first time Walker had injected me, it felt as though my entire body was on fire. Like every cell split a thousand times, and my blood turned to razors. I remember he left me on the floor, convulsing, clicking his tongue at me and telling me he was “disappointed” in my reaction. I didn’t elaborate any further. “If you start to feel pain, don’t fight it. This is very important, so you must listen. Don’t fight it, it will only hurt worse. Just… hold my hand. It’ll be over soon.” I skipped the part about the 24 hour period where we didn’t know if you’d live or die. That wasn’t important.
My assistant Sophia opened the door and I jammed the needle into his arm in his moment of distraction. It was a full dose I’d given him, calculated by his basic vital statistics and his psychology reports. I was honestly afraid, though. This was a crucial stage where he could reject the entire injection. He’d go comatose and die, worst case. I was always the optimist.
“How do you feel?” I asked him carefully, letting go of his arm and taking his hand. I put my other hand on his face. He was cool to the touch, room temperature, if you will. His pupils were fine, his breathing seemed normal… From what I could hear, his heart rate was stable.
“I don’t know,” he said, swallowing. “Am I allowed to have a drink or is this like surgery where I can’t eat or drink for a day or two?” He made a face as I poked around on him, as though I were pestering him somewhat. The man who had first intimidated me seemed to be acting more like a petulant child right now. It was the needles, I knew. He had a bad experience with an infirmary before, I was willing to bet. The man was out of his element.
I released his hand. “I’ll get you a cup of water. Stay put,” I ordered, my tone firm. I turned around and set my chart down just in time to hear a loud thudding noise from behind me. I didn’t have to guess by the expression on my assistant’s face what had happened. I tossed her the chart that was in my hand, and the small Japanese woman caught it effortlessly.
“Should I get someone?” she asked, moving for the door quickly.
“No, no,” I said, my voice forced. I waved her off. “Just bring some blankets if you could, and make it fast.” I immediately went to the source of the noise - Jackson was curled into a ball on the floor, his entire body trembling. I knelt down by him, putting a hand on his arm.
“Listen to me, St. James. You have to get up, okay? I need you to stand up for me just long enough to get you layed down on the bed.” I rubbed his arm gently, trying to bring him out of the place he’d just put himself in his mind. We all did it when we were in extreme amounts of pain. Somewhere in his mind, he was in Hawaii on a beach with his family, and I was far away.
When I saw that he was trying to fight out of it, I began to worry for his safety. “No, St. James. Remember what I told you, I said ‘Don’t fight it’. You need to try and relax, I know it’s hard, but you need to relax…” I wasn’t getting through. He was starting to struggle on the floor as though wrestling some sort of monster, and I could feel his body temperature dropping.
“Oh, Jesus Christ,” I said to myself. I loathed a gross display of power from myself, but there was no way he was getting up at this point. I could see the blood on the floor that had steadily been pouring from his nose. I stood slightly and half-crouched, trying to get my footing, and slid my arms underneath him. I still can’t believe it happened, but I actually managed to pick him up on my own, and set him down on the cot that was in the corner of the room. I thank God today that nobody saw me doing it, because it was one of the more awkward lifting jobs I’ve done. I just wasn’t cut out for being a mommy, I guess.
I managed to pull off his shoes and prop his head up a little as Sophia came back in the room with blankets. I had gotten some clean cloth and was dabbing at his nose, but it was hard to say when it would stop bleeding. I checked his ears, eyes, mouth, and even his fingers and toes for blood after that - my own fingers had begun bleeding from underneath the nails on my first treatment. I still can’t remember if it was from clawing the floor or if it was naturally occurring, but I checked just in case.
Once we got the blankets on him, I got a monitor on him. I walked around the room once or twice after he had seemed to stabilize, if you could call it that, and stopped convulsing. Sophia helped me clean up a little, and then got both of us some bottled water from a nearby drink machine.
“What now?” she asked. My assistant hadn’t been given these treatments yet - just the vaccine. She hadn’t seen too much of these, but I enjoyed her as my own personal worker bee because she was very non-reactive to rapid, exciting events. She looked back over to his still form. “Do you think he’s going to make it? The last one didn’t.”
She spoke of Saunders, and I let that one go. Walker hadn’t selected him personally, so when the man died within 24 hours of taking the shot, none of us at the lab were surprised. Walker was a creepy old man, but he had a knack for picking the special ones out of a group.
I set the bottle of water down on a vacant counter and walked to the cot where Jackson was bundled up. We’d finally given up and stuck tissues up his nose - even in a high class medical lab, sometimes the most childhood remedies seem to work in a pinch. I tested one with my fingertip, and upon feeling no moisture, gently removed it. They were dry. “I don’t know, Sophia.” I glanced up at her. “I hope so.”
After everyone had long since vacated the lab, I had taken off my lab coat and forgone the button down shirt for my white tank top that posed as an undershirt. I sat in a chair by the cot, hair pulled back into a bun and held in place by a pen as I went over some formulas. The monitor was steady, and I checked the numbers every few minutes to make sure there were no changes. The last thing I remembered was setting down my formula to rest my eyes, and then I fell asleep in the chair.
I woke up to someone nudging me. I sat up abruptly and looked around, trying to collect my thoughts. It was… I actually didn’t know what time it was. The blinds to the room were closed, care of Sophia if I had to guess, and I was sitting in a chair by Jackson’s cot, with an awful pain in my back from where I think I may have leaned over on some of the blankets to go to sleep. The nudging, I realized then, was from a very awake man in the bed who was trying to push me around with his foot.
“Morning, Princess,” he said wearily. “You don’t mind if I have that water now, do you?” His voice was scratchy and hard to understand, but I managed. I stood, getting dizzy from the quick motion, and got my water off of the counter. I poured it into a small cup after a moment of debate on whether or not he could lift the bottle and get it in his mouth without dumping it all over himself.
I handed the cup to him. “Can you move okay?” I asked before letting it go completely.
He reached up, though it was painfully slow, and took the cup from my hand firmly, moving it to his own lips to drink. I watched his motions, looking for any sort of muscle spasm that might cause alarm. Satisfied so far, I took the empty cup back and threw it away.
“So… I feel like I got hit by a truck. And, since I’ve been hit by one before, it’s safe for me to say it. What was that stuff you gave me?” He followed me with his eyes as I began to wake up fully, moving more fluid than I had moments before. I was fully functioning now. I took his arm and gave him small instructions as I spoke.
“We don’t actually have a name for it, yet. Bend your wrist, please. Walker and I came up with it a while back, and I was the first lab rat. It makes you… better. Different. Stronger. It also makes you completely immune to the infected in all forms. Bend at the elbow, please.” I sat down on the cot for more comfort as I worked with him.
I didn’t feel any abnormalities, though he was extremely tense. “I may have to get you into some light training, a little different than what you’re used to, so you can grow into yourself a little. Please don’t ask me to explain it, Jackson, because I can’t at the moment, and even if I did, you wouldn’t understand until you saw it for yourself.”
I could see his lips twist as he tried not to protest. He didn’t like the order, but he obeyed. It was an area I was somewhat lacking in, but I kept my thoughts to myself. I stood again. “You’re going to sleep for the rest of the day. I’ll be in and out, but Sophia will be here most of the day to check on you and make sure you don’t get dehydrated or anything. This first treatment can be… taxing.”
I gave him a reassuring pat. “You’ve made it past the most difficult part. Everything now is just realizing what new potential you have.” I stood to leave, and I felt him catch me by the forearm as I turned. I paused, turning back. For a moment I had almost ripped my arm away from him - it was second nature. The infected would grab, and you had to move.
“Can you stay for a while?” he asked.
Now, I am not an emotional person often. I allow myself some outbursts and light humor to make sure I have some humanity left in there, but the actual gesture of someone who, given the same treatments, or, stripping us both of them, could thoroughly beat me into the ground, was sort of startling. He reminded me of a small child for a second, and since I had never had children, I didn’t know how to react.
He released my arm quickly upon seeing the confusion in my face, my eyes. “Sorry,” he grunted. I could see the testosterone working its way around inside him, making him wall up. “I don’t really care for these places is all.”
I was conflicted, now. I didn’t feel guilty so much as I did empathy - I could easily see myself where he was, though I’d have been much too stubborn to ask for any sort of comfort. “No,” I said softly. “No… it’s quite alright. I can stay. At least until you fall back asleep again. I have another lecture in a few hours.”
I sat back down slowly, and plucked the edge of the blanket up, pulling it across his chest more. “You’re going to get cold,” I chastised. I went through the motions of tucking him in, almost, and then felt his face. “Hm. You’re a little damp, too. Don’t worry, it’s normal. Your body is trying to sort itself out.” I plucked a damp cloth from the counter and folded it over once, lightly pressing it against his forehead. “Better?” I asked.
He nodded a little. He watched me with lidded eyes, and I knew that something was happening here. He was studying me. Trying to decide if he trusted me. A creature in a position such as his, where his defenses were down to almost zero, with someone near them. I did the same thing when I had been worked on during my beginning of the treatments.
He, I thought bitterly, was lucky to have me. I had nobody. I had been a rabid dog, slinking around Walker’s lab, wondering if they were going to kill me. The man was intelligent… but insane. The thought had to have crossed his head, that I may be more valuable alive than dead. I would never discount something such as that to cross the Dr.’s mind.
“St. James, it’s okay if you go to sleep. I see you’re fighting it. You’re in and out of it, and it’s going to do more harm than good.” I paused. “I’m not going to let anything happen to you. I promise.”
I slipped my arms around my husband’s waist and pressed my face into his shoulder, squeezing him tightly. I felt him relax within my arms, and then gradually he turned, resting his chin on my head and slipped and arm around me.
“Jackson, I wish you would relax,” I said, letting out a slow sigh. I spoke softly, though we were in a separate part of the hotel from the other operatives and none could hear us through the deceptively thin walls. “We’re different. We’ve been different. Why is this taking so long for you to get accustomed to?”
It had been three years since the treatments began, and somehow he still couldn’t grasp that he was different - better. It was perhaps because he was older than I, or set in his ways, or maybe because he was just stubborn. He planted a gentle kiss on my forehead and began chastising me about how I was too rational sometimes. It was in jest, though.
Jackson and I had problems seeing eye to eye on a lot of things, but rationality was his department more of the time than it was mine. I was the one who was more inclined to rush into a melee head first with no readily available weapons. Just because I could. He didn’t appreciate the fact that I took my new abilities as immortality, and maybe I shouldn’t… but it wasn’t his decision to make.
THEN
He’d made a face when I’d stuck him with the first injection. He didn’t like needles - I could tell by his stance. I sat him down on the exam table, though he still managed to be above my petite frame. I picked up a cotton swab and rubbed his inner elbow with it gently.
“Is this going to hurt?” he asked. I glanced up at his dark eyes, and felt a small bit of sympathy for him. I hadn’t liked needles either, but once you acquire a certain amount of tattoos in your youth, you aren’t allowed to use the fear of them as a defense for necessary shots.
“Yes,” I said. I couldn’t lie. The first time Walker had injected me, it felt as though my entire body was on fire. Like every cell split a thousand times, and my blood turned to razors. I remember he left me on the floor, convulsing, clicking his tongue at me and telling me he was “disappointed” in my reaction. I didn’t elaborate any further. “If you start to feel pain, don’t fight it. This is very important, so you must listen. Don’t fight it, it will only hurt worse. Just… hold my hand. It’ll be over soon.” I skipped the part about the 24 hour period where we didn’t know if you’d live or die. That wasn’t important.
My assistant Sophia opened the door and I jammed the needle into his arm in his moment of distraction. It was a full dose I’d given him, calculated by his basic vital statistics and his psychology reports. I was honestly afraid, though. This was a crucial stage where he could reject the entire injection. He’d go comatose and die, worst case. I was always the optimist.
“How do you feel?” I asked him carefully, letting go of his arm and taking his hand. I put my other hand on his face. He was cool to the touch, room temperature, if you will. His pupils were fine, his breathing seemed normal… From what I could hear, his heart rate was stable.
“I don’t know,” he said, swallowing. “Am I allowed to have a drink or is this like surgery where I can’t eat or drink for a day or two?” He made a face as I poked around on him, as though I were pestering him somewhat. The man who had first intimidated me seemed to be acting more like a petulant child right now. It was the needles, I knew. He had a bad experience with an infirmary before, I was willing to bet. The man was out of his element.
I released his hand. “I’ll get you a cup of water. Stay put,” I ordered, my tone firm. I turned around and set my chart down just in time to hear a loud thudding noise from behind me. I didn’t have to guess by the expression on my assistant’s face what had happened. I tossed her the chart that was in my hand, and the small Japanese woman caught it effortlessly.
“Should I get someone?” she asked, moving for the door quickly.
“No, no,” I said, my voice forced. I waved her off. “Just bring some blankets if you could, and make it fast.” I immediately went to the source of the noise - Jackson was curled into a ball on the floor, his entire body trembling. I knelt down by him, putting a hand on his arm.
“Listen to me, St. James. You have to get up, okay? I need you to stand up for me just long enough to get you layed down on the bed.” I rubbed his arm gently, trying to bring him out of the place he’d just put himself in his mind. We all did it when we were in extreme amounts of pain. Somewhere in his mind, he was in Hawaii on a beach with his family, and I was far away.
When I saw that he was trying to fight out of it, I began to worry for his safety. “No, St. James. Remember what I told you, I said ‘Don’t fight it’. You need to try and relax, I know it’s hard, but you need to relax…” I wasn’t getting through. He was starting to struggle on the floor as though wrestling some sort of monster, and I could feel his body temperature dropping.
“Oh, Jesus Christ,” I said to myself. I loathed a gross display of power from myself, but there was no way he was getting up at this point. I could see the blood on the floor that had steadily been pouring from his nose. I stood slightly and half-crouched, trying to get my footing, and slid my arms underneath him. I still can’t believe it happened, but I actually managed to pick him up on my own, and set him down on the cot that was in the corner of the room. I thank God today that nobody saw me doing it, because it was one of the more awkward lifting jobs I’ve done. I just wasn’t cut out for being a mommy, I guess.
I managed to pull off his shoes and prop his head up a little as Sophia came back in the room with blankets. I had gotten some clean cloth and was dabbing at his nose, but it was hard to say when it would stop bleeding. I checked his ears, eyes, mouth, and even his fingers and toes for blood after that - my own fingers had begun bleeding from underneath the nails on my first treatment. I still can’t remember if it was from clawing the floor or if it was naturally occurring, but I checked just in case.
Once we got the blankets on him, I got a monitor on him. I walked around the room once or twice after he had seemed to stabilize, if you could call it that, and stopped convulsing. Sophia helped me clean up a little, and then got both of us some bottled water from a nearby drink machine.
“What now?” she asked. My assistant hadn’t been given these treatments yet - just the vaccine. She hadn’t seen too much of these, but I enjoyed her as my own personal worker bee because she was very non-reactive to rapid, exciting events. She looked back over to his still form. “Do you think he’s going to make it? The last one didn’t.”
She spoke of Saunders, and I let that one go. Walker hadn’t selected him personally, so when the man died within 24 hours of taking the shot, none of us at the lab were surprised. Walker was a creepy old man, but he had a knack for picking the special ones out of a group.
I set the bottle of water down on a vacant counter and walked to the cot where Jackson was bundled up. We’d finally given up and stuck tissues up his nose - even in a high class medical lab, sometimes the most childhood remedies seem to work in a pinch. I tested one with my fingertip, and upon feeling no moisture, gently removed it. They were dry. “I don’t know, Sophia.” I glanced up at her. “I hope so.”
After everyone had long since vacated the lab, I had taken off my lab coat and forgone the button down shirt for my white tank top that posed as an undershirt. I sat in a chair by the cot, hair pulled back into a bun and held in place by a pen as I went over some formulas. The monitor was steady, and I checked the numbers every few minutes to make sure there were no changes. The last thing I remembered was setting down my formula to rest my eyes, and then I fell asleep in the chair.
I woke up to someone nudging me. I sat up abruptly and looked around, trying to collect my thoughts. It was… I actually didn’t know what time it was. The blinds to the room were closed, care of Sophia if I had to guess, and I was sitting in a chair by Jackson’s cot, with an awful pain in my back from where I think I may have leaned over on some of the blankets to go to sleep. The nudging, I realized then, was from a very awake man in the bed who was trying to push me around with his foot.
“Morning, Princess,” he said wearily. “You don’t mind if I have that water now, do you?” His voice was scratchy and hard to understand, but I managed. I stood, getting dizzy from the quick motion, and got my water off of the counter. I poured it into a small cup after a moment of debate on whether or not he could lift the bottle and get it in his mouth without dumping it all over himself.
I handed the cup to him. “Can you move okay?” I asked before letting it go completely.
He reached up, though it was painfully slow, and took the cup from my hand firmly, moving it to his own lips to drink. I watched his motions, looking for any sort of muscle spasm that might cause alarm. Satisfied so far, I took the empty cup back and threw it away.
“So… I feel like I got hit by a truck. And, since I’ve been hit by one before, it’s safe for me to say it. What was that stuff you gave me?” He followed me with his eyes as I began to wake up fully, moving more fluid than I had moments before. I was fully functioning now. I took his arm and gave him small instructions as I spoke.
“We don’t actually have a name for it, yet. Bend your wrist, please. Walker and I came up with it a while back, and I was the first lab rat. It makes you… better. Different. Stronger. It also makes you completely immune to the infected in all forms. Bend at the elbow, please.” I sat down on the cot for more comfort as I worked with him.
I didn’t feel any abnormalities, though he was extremely tense. “I may have to get you into some light training, a little different than what you’re used to, so you can grow into yourself a little. Please don’t ask me to explain it, Jackson, because I can’t at the moment, and even if I did, you wouldn’t understand until you saw it for yourself.”
I could see his lips twist as he tried not to protest. He didn’t like the order, but he obeyed. It was an area I was somewhat lacking in, but I kept my thoughts to myself. I stood again. “You’re going to sleep for the rest of the day. I’ll be in and out, but Sophia will be here most of the day to check on you and make sure you don’t get dehydrated or anything. This first treatment can be… taxing.”
I gave him a reassuring pat. “You’ve made it past the most difficult part. Everything now is just realizing what new potential you have.” I stood to leave, and I felt him catch me by the forearm as I turned. I paused, turning back. For a moment I had almost ripped my arm away from him - it was second nature. The infected would grab, and you had to move.
“Can you stay for a while?” he asked.
Now, I am not an emotional person often. I allow myself some outbursts and light humor to make sure I have some humanity left in there, but the actual gesture of someone who, given the same treatments, or, stripping us both of them, could thoroughly beat me into the ground, was sort of startling. He reminded me of a small child for a second, and since I had never had children, I didn’t know how to react.
He released my arm quickly upon seeing the confusion in my face, my eyes. “Sorry,” he grunted. I could see the testosterone working its way around inside him, making him wall up. “I don’t really care for these places is all.”
I was conflicted, now. I didn’t feel guilty so much as I did empathy - I could easily see myself where he was, though I’d have been much too stubborn to ask for any sort of comfort. “No,” I said softly. “No… it’s quite alright. I can stay. At least until you fall back asleep again. I have another lecture in a few hours.”
I sat back down slowly, and plucked the edge of the blanket up, pulling it across his chest more. “You’re going to get cold,” I chastised. I went through the motions of tucking him in, almost, and then felt his face. “Hm. You’re a little damp, too. Don’t worry, it’s normal. Your body is trying to sort itself out.” I plucked a damp cloth from the counter and folded it over once, lightly pressing it against his forehead. “Better?” I asked.
He nodded a little. He watched me with lidded eyes, and I knew that something was happening here. He was studying me. Trying to decide if he trusted me. A creature in a position such as his, where his defenses were down to almost zero, with someone near them. I did the same thing when I had been worked on during my beginning of the treatments.
He, I thought bitterly, was lucky to have me. I had nobody. I had been a rabid dog, slinking around Walker’s lab, wondering if they were going to kill me. The man was intelligent… but insane. The thought had to have crossed his head, that I may be more valuable alive than dead. I would never discount something such as that to cross the Dr.’s mind.
“St. James, it’s okay if you go to sleep. I see you’re fighting it. You’re in and out of it, and it’s going to do more harm than good.” I paused. “I’m not going to let anything happen to you. I promise.”