“You’re in a military base in South Carolina, also known as StarChem Laboratories. Your friends brought you here after you contracted the virus.”
The virus?
“Rabbit Fever?” I asked.
“That is the colloquial name for it.”
The same plague that took out my parents, even Aiko in a way, and my leg too. I must have been bitten by a Rabid. But why the fuck had they brought me here? I might not remember much but I sure as shit knew the government couldn’t be trusted.
“You’re with the United Forces?” I asked.
“That’s right.”
“Am I a prisoner?”
“No, Cipher, you’re a patient.”
“Then why am I strapped down?” I tugged on the padded leather wrist cuffs again. They were thick and snug and well-made, attached by chain to the stainless steel railings on either side of my bed. I could slide them up and down along the bars, but I couldn’t touch my face or reach the other side of my body to unfasten the cuffs.
“Until you shed the virus completely, the restraints are necessary to ensure the safety of our staff who are treating you.”
“Am I Rabid?” I asked.
Silence and then, “We prefer not to use that term here. You were infected with Lyssavirus cuniculus five days ago. Your friends brought you here when you started showing symptoms, and we’ve been treating you ever since. Your body is responding well to the treatment.”
“Treatment?” I asked.
“Yes, would you like to know more about it?”
“Okay.” Seemed like as good a place to start as any.
“The first thing we did was administer anesthetics to induce a coma. That’s to slow the spread of the virus and stabilize your condition. Then we began injecting you with a pharmaceutical serum developed here on base which triggers the virus to cannibalize itself. You’re currently in that phase of treatment now. We have to go very slowly in order to give your body the chance to repair itself. But trust that we have been keeping your friends informed about your progress.”
I wanted to know more about these “friends” she kept mentioning. Could I trust them? There were so many holes in my memory. Was this person really a doctor? What if I’d been perfectly healthy and they simply needed a body to experiment on? What if I’d been captured and sold to this lab?
“What friends?” I asked.
“Excuse me?”
“You said some friends brought me here. Who are they?”
“You’ll see them soon enough.”
“Do you know their names?”
“Yes, I do.” A shuffling of paper. “Joshua Perrin-Rogers and Hudson Clarence Holt were the two gentlemen who brought you here.”
Neither of those names meant anything to me. I repeated them in my head a few times, trying to attach a memory or a face to either one, but I came up empty.
“Can you prove I was sick?” I didn’t care if she knew that I doubted her. If I was a prisoner, I’d rather know now instead of being lured into complacency by pretty lies. There was a long pause on her end, and I worried my worst fears might be true. Then her voice came back on the intercom in that same unaffected voice.
“I can prove it, but it might be upsetting to you,” she said.
“It can’t be as upsetting as this,” I replied.
“Very well.”
A moment later, my door opened and a man in scrubs, gloves, and a full face shield entered, went over to a TV mounted on the wall, and turned it on.
