![]() ![]() Had she had siblings? That was the word they used. If there were an afterworld, what a crowded place it must be now. Yes, but he was gone, long gone, beyond their reach, beyond their prison. Was she still only twenty-six? How long had they held her captive? They would not say. She had asked her captors when they began, finally, to talk to her. Perhaps people stood above her looking down through one-way glass or through some video arrangement. She imagined herself to be in a large box, like a rat in a cage. The entire ceiling seemed to be a speaker and a light-and perhaps a ventilator since the air remained fresh. There were no visible speakers of any kind, just as there was no single spot from which light originated. She remained sealed in her cubicle and their voices came to her from above like the light. Her captors spoke when they were ready and not before. There had not been a whisper of response. ![]() She had pounded the walls until her hands bled and became grotesquely swollen. Receiving no answer, she had shouted, then cried, then cursed until her voice was gone. At her first Awakening, she had called out during her search. Then she began the oldest and most futile of her activities: a search for some crack, some sound of hollowness, some indication of a way out of her prison. Finally she sat on the bed and ate her bland meal, finishing the bowl as well, more for a change of texture than to satisfy any residual hunger. She rubbed the scar, tracing its outline. It enraged her during later Awakenings that there had been moments when she actually felt grateful to her mutilators for letting her sleep through whatever they had done to her-and for doing it well enough to spare her pain or disability later. Even her flesh could be cut and stitched without her consent or knowledge. What had she lost or gained, and why? And what else might be done? She did not own herself any longer. She had acquired it somehow between her second and third Awakenings, had examined it fearfully, wondering what had been done to her. Opening and closing her jacket, her hand touched the long scar across her abdomen. It was a false security she knew, but she had learned to savor any pleasure, any supplement to her self-esteem that she could glean. Dressed now, she felt more secure than she had at any other time in her captivity. She had pleaded for it, but her captors had ignored her. She had not been allowed clothing from her first Awakening until now. The way they came apart reminded her of Velcro, though there was none to be seen. The jacket adhered to itself and stayed closed when she closed it, but opened readily enough when she pulled the two front panels apart. A light-colored, thigh-length jacket and a pair of long, loose pants both made of some cool, exquisitely soft material that made her think of silk, though for no reason she could have stated, she did not think this was silk. She snatched it up, dropped it in her eagerness, picked it up again and began putting it on. Unable to see it clearly, she touched it.Ĭloth! A folded mound of clothing. It was the usual lumpy cereal or stew, of no recognizable flavor, contained in an edible bowl that would disintegrate if she emptied it and did not eat it.Īnd there was something beside the bowl. It could have been used as a table, though there was no chair. There was another platform perhaps a foot higher than the bed. This one had not only a toilet and a sink, but a shower. ![]() ![]() She went to the doorway, peered through the uniform dimness, and satisfied herself that she did, indeed, have a bathroom. Twice she had not been, and in her windowless, doorless cubicle, she had been forced simply to choose a corner. There was, across the room, a doorway that probably led to a bathroom. The bed was what it had always been: a solid platform that gave slightly to the touch and that seemed to grow from the floor. The walls were light-colored-white or gray, perhaps. She sat up, swayed dizzily, then turned to look at the rest of the room. It could not matter while she was confined this way, kept helpless, alone, and ignorant. It had occurred to her-how many times?-that she might be insane or drugged, physically ill or injured. At an earlier Awakening, she had decided that reality was whatever happened, whatever she perceived. The room did not only seem dim, it was dim. The room seemed dimly lit, though she had never Awakened to dimness before. When her body calmed and became reconciled to reanimation, she looked around. Circulation began to return to her arms and legs in flurries of minute, exquisite pains. Lilith Iyapo lay gasping, shaking with the force of her effort. It was a struggle to take in enough air to drive off nightmare sensations of asphyxiation. ![]()
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