[Original Novel] Pressure 3: Beautiful Corpse, Part 14
Previous parts: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13
She recalled Dr. Bizen’s own mixture of frustration and confusion as he described his difficulties determining why Violet wasn’t simply a corpse. As if reading her mind, the surgeon went on: “The good doctor had a handle on why you don’t decay. There’s precedent in nature for that. But it’s completely impossible for you to move, to talk, to do much of anything. Yet there’s God knows how many like you out there walking around wearing some kind of illusion we don’t understand yet, contradicting everything known to medical science about how living things function. Since none of you will enlighten us as to how your bodies work, the best we can come up with is to take you apart and destroy the pieces one at a time until you die. Process of elimination. Can’t imagine what that’s like for you, but you had your chance to stop it. If one of you would just fucking spill it already I wouldn’t have to do this.”
Olivia heard distant gunshots. The assistant looked worried. One of the men who’d helped wheel her in returned, sweaty and visibly panicked. “The stronghold in hydroponics isn’t answering. Tried to raise them over intercom and terminal. Heard a lot of screaming over the comms and that was it. We have to assume they were overrun.”
Oppressive silence permeated the room. The man, who she could now see was wearing body armor and bandoliers of ammunition, covered his mouth and nose with one hand while struggling not to retch. He repeatedly stared at Olivia, spread open as she was like a fish being cleaned, then looked away. “Oh for fuck’s sake” grunted the surgeon, “You’ve seen me do this a dozen times now, harden up already. Wish I could tell you I’ve made progress but this one’s just like the others.”
The man decked out like a mercenary settled on closing his eyes, but kept speaking. “The other strongholds are still standing but if we lose another, we won’t have the numbers to assault level 20. That’s where the new ones keep coming from. Raised Zach in engineering on terminal, he says the door code should still be 6184. Who the fuck knows what they’ve got down there. Portal to Hell? Some kind of hatchery?”
The surgeon waved him away. “You won’t be able to get close until I can work out how to kill these things. That’s when we make our final push, not before.” The merc nodded, and backed out of the room. “Damndest fucking thing. Thought I’d seen it all, stitching up our boys in Syria after their limbs got blown off. Whatever your secret is, I could’ve used it then. None of that motorized myoelectric prosthetic bullshit. Just pick up the first arm or leg we find in the rubble and stitch it on. However you do that, I can see why the doctor was obsessed with it. Soldiers who can take a bullet to the head or heart and keep fighting. Fuck, let’s call it what it is. A cure for death.”
If she weren’t so scared she might’ve laughed. She recognized in him the naive excitement she’d felt before realizing the steep price of her deathless condition. If only the room weren’t so thoroughly lit. Not a single shadowed crevice anywhere.
He followed her gaze. “Oh yeah. Saw some backed up footage of what you did to Dr. Bizen. Don’t really know what to say about that. I’m in no way a superstitious man but I’ve never witnessed anything like that and I’m damn sure there’s nothing in our understanding of physics that allows it. I’m inclined to guess it has something to do with whatever animates you but you know what they say about assumptions. You’ll learn that I’m a very thorough, methodical person.” The way his eyes wrinkled at the corner gave away that beneath the surgical mask, he wore a wide grin.
“You know, we haven’t tried the muscles.” He glanced at his assistant, who shrugged. “Maybe they generate the ATP they need to move directly inside the muscle where it’s then used.” He made along incision down her thigh, worked his fingers inside and began spreading open the stacked layers of skin, fat, then muscle tissue until he reached bone. Olivia dry heaved.
“Hey Dan, I think I’m gonna need the rotary saw to get her skull open.” He dug through the lower shelf of the table and heaved out an exasperated sigh. “You left it in cold storage didn’t you? I hate going in there for anything. Besides it’s two modules over, it’ll take me at least-” The surgeon snapped at him. “Well then you’d better fucking go get it for me as quickly as you can, hadn’t you?” The assistant scowled and retreated from the operating theater.
The surgeon stared over his shoulder until it was certain the other fellow had left. Then he took a long look at Olivia’s insides spread out all over the operating bed. “You know, some people go into this line of work out of the goodness of their hearts. Others have...their own reasons. Decades of cutting people apart and stitching them together again can warp...certain drives…that were healthy before.”
She wondered what in God’s name he could be talking about until he stood up and began unbuckling his pants. “I’ve always had a certain fantasy. But she would need to be conscious for it. I knew that was impossible….until now. “ Olivia resumed her silent screaming. Mouth and eyes wide open, low pitched gurgle coming from deep in her throat. She couldn’t feel any of it. But with her head bound as it was, neither could she look away.
At some point she passed out. The respite was profoundly merciful. As soon as she awoke within the abandoned school, she began screaming and writhing about on the ground. There was no stopping it until she went hoarse. Here, at least, her tear ducts still worked. It turned out she could also vomit.
For most of an hour she lay on her side, whimpering and convulsing. Whenever she thought she’d recovered enough to get up, the memories returned. As fresh in her mind as if it were still happening. Her legs buckled, and the cycle began anew.
Her mind, blasted apart by indescribable revulsion, finally put itself together enough that she could stand and begin moving around. It was a constant struggle to steer her own thoughts away from what happened and was most likely still happening on the surgical bed.
Surveying the hallway revealed much had changed since her last visit. The floor tiles were gone, replaced by worn, cracked concrete. The ceiling was made from dusty wooden planks, with long rusty pipes fixed to it at intervals. More piping ran along the walls at various levels, as well as vertically. Here and there a valve protruded from a pipe juncture. She knew better than to inspect the logo on it.
“It’s taking over. Making more and more of itself until everything is consumed” she muttered. “What can it mean…” Her only basis for comparison was piping, valves, wood and concrete she’d seen in the Foundry. As if it were slowly creeping into other dreamscapes. She thought back to her sessions with James, when he’d first told her about the Foundry and its intrusion into his own dreams. How many were afflicted in total? Did this sickness extend beyond the Belusarius?
“The Foundry goes before the master.” The voice came from all directions and echoed through the corridors. “Violet?...Vivian? Who’s there?” Olivia cried out. No answer was forthcoming. The more she explored, the less of the school she found. Everything else was indistinguishable from the Foundry. The lockers remained, and the crystal orb within. But upon venturing to the deserted island, she found that it had not been spared the corruption.
Rusty pipes jutted up out of the sand, snaked along the curvature of the shored, then delved back into it. Valves sprouted off these serpentine pipes like flowers from a vine. They were everywhere. “The skeletal substrate is laid down first. The flesh then follows.” Again with the voice, sounding distant and muffled like a defective intercom.
Olivia knew she wouldn’t find Violet in the library. So this time she instead searched for a different orb. It was no small task as there were hundreds, but finally she located the one through which she could see a familiar industrial facility. Horror her mind could not accept lay behind her in the waking world. Horror she at least had intimate understanding of lay ahead of her. No way out except in.
Setting foot on the concrete floor of the Foundry filled her with an uneasy mixture of anxiety and comfort. But a splinter in her mind drove her onward. “Behind the puppets”, she thought. “At the end of every umbilical.”
On her way down the spiral stairwell, the moans and murmurs of entranced captives surrounded her. All hopelessly immersed in the master’s best effort to simulate their heart’s desires. There was a sense in which she envied them, but she refused to succumb until she’d at least rescued Violet. Just then, she heard that name spoken.
Stay Tuned for Part 15!