--XXXVIII--

I shook my head, and as I felt the coldest shiver- colder than anything that the human imagination can possibly even conceive- run through me, I remember I had one thought.

Kaylee read it; perhaps the man did, too- but I spoke it aloud.

"I will not dance for a devil."

Nightingale

Day #16

Subprocedure Twenty

I will not dance for a devil.

My eyes hyperfocused on that blinking white light.

One of our ex-survivors, a boy now mutated and completely brainwashed, spit some kind of acid at me- it was a projectile spray that I just barely avoided by swinging off of an exposed brass pipe of some kind, attached on to one of the pillars in the hippodrome.

That was when the pipe burst, searing off the entire fingernail off my little finger and about half of my left hand.

Some of my skin was still on fire. I tried extinguishing it by waving my hand freely as I ran toward the lever at full speed- but it didn't work. It burned into my flesh, burned deeper and deeper until tears sprung from my eyes and I wanted to beg our kidnappers and torturers to stop, to beg them for mercy and cry; to tell them just I wanted to go home.

Even if "home" just meant being prostituted, and/or being surrounded by abuse, or drugs.

I also knew, that if I did that, and got on my knees, begging while very clearly showing that I was in an atrocious and immense amount of pain,

1) That would very likely would only give the man above me a hard-on,

and

2) I'd just be admitting weakness, which I generally was okay with, unless I knew- such as in this case- knew that the person I was exposing weakness to or vulnerability to would only use it to later harm me and manipulate me.

It was day sixteen, but I read him from day one.

One of my abilities: read people without the mind reading.

Though eventually I got mind reading, too.

Besides, he'd hurt me enough- and would keep hurting me. No need to give him any more leverage over me if I didn't have to.

The burning was unnatural; unnaturally painful.

In a moment of sheer insanity and desperation combined, I used the razor blade given to me earlier to rip the skin straight off my hand- the skin that was on fire, the skin that burned.

But what happened next was almost as unanticipated as what happened with Charlotte Miller- and was not nearly as painful as I'd thought or expected.

Upon contact with my burning skin, the razor blade morphed- MORPHED- into some kind of gold substance, gold-colored, almost like a liquid metal or steel or something, combining itself with the fire and then molding itself back onto my flesh. The gleaming, lustrous transformation was mesmerizing to me.

Maybe a little too mesmerizing, because I was still staring at my scarred, but now un-bleeding hand, when a girl from school grabbed me by the leg, pulling me off my standing position. I almost didn't even notice because while I wasn't bleeding anymore, there was still some kind of burning sensation in my hand; I couldn't make sense of it. She grabbed my calf with both hands and simultaneously someone behind me grabbed my right arm- and someone else punched me in the nose, hard. Blood instantly poured down off my face and onto the floor.

The story has been illicitly taken; should you find it on Amazon, report the infringement.

I was wrong- it wasn't three people, it was the same girl.

But clones of the same girl.

Up until that point, I'd heard of "double-teaming" only from books or from magazines that talked about video games I'd never played.

Totally freaked out by the fact that one of the school bullies was now not only about twice my size but now also three or maybe even four times more powerful, given that there wasn't just one of her, I started wildly flailing about like a cat (or a clownfish) tossed into water (or maybe out of water if you're thinking the clownfish?).

Without really meaning to, my left fist collided into her jaw- at least the jaw of the clone behind me, who had punched my nose earlier- and the next moment I was on the ground and the clones were gone, it was just me and this big girl that picked on mostly girls and also sometimes boys like me, saying that we were "too pretty" and threatening to steal my nonexistent lunch money.

If I think about it, she wasn't that different from Wyatt.

With my right hand I pinched the flow of blood shut, from the bridge of my nose- not exactly caring much to defend myself at that moment as Kaylee, at least in my eyes, was doing a pretty good job with the Plants vs. Semi-zombies, and this girl in front of me was busy making these really, really weird zombie groaning noises, both her hands pressed to her face.

I remember thinking there was no way I'd hit her that hard. I was tiny. I still am. At that age I was, what? 78 pounds? Maybe even less?

"I-" I said. "I'm..." I slowly turned to run back again, and then find my way toward that flashing light- "I'm really sorry. I mean if I hurt your teeth, you broke mine and other people did, too, so they're really fucked now-"

I'd have continued, but she got up from her half-crouched position to put hands on me again. This time, not really knowing how she'd clone up or attack me, I let her throw her now-slightly-predictable punch to my face as I did a very simple sidestep to my right and and aimed my left fist where I taught myself to aim, if I could reach it: the solar plexus. I'd have gone for the groin- I do that, too, sometimes- but I knew that would have taken just a fraction of a second longer to land and make contact, given the sidestep, and given the body position she was in as well as mine.

And I'm pretty sure those weren't necessarily as effective on girls anyway. Not that I was assuming her gender or anything.

...I think.

But the minute my fist landed, exactly where I'd calculated, she puked on me.

It was so gross.

And then she started flailing around- kinda like I did but definitely much more clownfish there than cat, in my humble opinion- and then she started... maybe swearing? She had a Southern U.S. accent similar to Kaylee and Henry's- only maybe thicker. And at that point, almost zombified after the minor experimentations. I wouldn't want to know what she was swearing about or how, anyway.

I was surprised again. I didn't think I'd hurt her that bad. Not even close.

I performed a triple-front-handspring towards my destination not because it was less tiring- it wasn't any less tiring- but because to me it was more practical; I'd always relied more on momentum and swing rather than weight and muscle given my body type, something I learned which in my experience, was a big part of the reason I was still alive.

Only this time- it wasn't tiring at all. I wondered if it was, perhaps, just the adrenaline, or perhaps whatever took place there with my left hand; the scar and the burning? Did that have something to do with it? I didn't stop at triple, some kind of muscle memory combined with my intuition told me to keep going, and so I adjusted trajectory, with Kaylee and her Welwitschia arrows- which I eventually just started calling "arrowvines"- still around me and flying in perfect arcs. She was a sharpshooter, and that wasn't something I ever learned about her from partnering up with her in science class.

And a moment later, I learned I was a sharpshooter, too.

Still flipping, I calculated what line and what distance I needed to hit at least a foot below that mounted lever- the "handle" Kaylee told me to grab on to earlier- and, switching from forward to backwards with the stepout-to-roundoff to whip to back handspring, and back again to forward, using the whip with half-turn, I launched into an accidental skill I'd end up using not only in Nightingale but also when taking down abusers and criminals when I worked in the U.S.- my triple twisting front layout in, pike out.

But I didn't hit at least a foot below that lever. The flashing white light was at least thirty feet below me when I came out of the pike position. Only a yard away from the wall, I twisted, with my arms flared out to slow the spin, as I- seemingly in slow motion- descended onto that lever delicately, like a sweet pea flower petal made of cotton, hitting the grass but while spinning and yet still without making a sound.

I touched the lever, wrapped my left hand on it as I went down. It caught flame for some reason upon contact with my hand- as bright white lights from the ceiling far above us all turned on at once.

Neither Kaylee nor I looked behind us. We both waited still, standing like statues, until we were collected for the night. We both always refused to look behind us, wherever we were in whatever experiment or procedure they decided to perform on us on whatever day of that three-month child torture. Neither of us wanted to see the injured or the bodies; neither of us wanted to see who we hadn't killed, and who we had killed.

--