Nox

... a hothouse plant in a hanging basket – the kind Marin loved, with the big white flowers, hanging in a sunlit corner of her studio...
... zig-zags of bright orange...
... images jumping and flipping upward like a rolofile in my head...
... more bright zig-zags that slowly died into a thin orange line at the edges of my vision...
... no more flowers...
... white walls speckled with peeling green and yellow paint...
... Marrin. Where was —

"Adjust zone 752."

... rapid zig-zags —

"Too far."

... Green paint on a wall in the distance. I could see every flake, every crack. That was impossible. How did I know that was impossible?

"Name."

I blinked slowly, trying to make myself focus on the blurry figure in front of me.

"Name," he said again.

Features came into sharp detail – thick, black eyebrows, the hair shafts of eyelashes, the tiny creases between the individual skin cells around an eye...

"Name."

I blinked again, then again, and looked away. I had a name. I knew I did. Everyone had a name...

Dr. Marodian clicked his stopwatch and noted something on his clipboard. I had seen him do that before, but he had been wearing a different vest beneath his blue laboratory coat. The memory overlapped oddly with what was in front of me, as if I were watching the two moments at the same time. I hissed in a breath through my teeth as my vision jumped and flickered between the two images. It felt like I was in two places at once. Nausea swarmed through my middle, sending ice through my veins.

No. It was fire. I was on fire.

But I was so... cold...  

I started shaking and couldn't stop, my muscles shuddering wildly beneath my skin while the quiet scritch-scratch of the doctor's fountain pen nib suddenly rose to a deafening thunder, pounding against my frayed nerves.

"Lets try this again," Dr. Marodian said slowly, enunciating each syllable clearly and loudly. Much, much too loudly. "Name?"

I closed my eyes, a white-hot throb starting just behind my eyes. "Ilfistu son mourir, arrinox gravidaros..." I jerked, panic slicing through me. I could feel my tongue forming words, but my voice wasn't mine. And what in all the seven blue hills was I speaking?

"Subject is displaying cognitive dissonance," Dr. Marodian said calmly. He was speaking to the tall man who stood behind a table full of blinking switchboards, rubber tubes and glowing electro-resistor jars. "Reset to forty-two-oh-nine."

I knew what that meant. I remembered it from some other time. I had no idea how, or why, but I shook my head, desperation clawing at my sluggish body. "Nau! Nau! Auroste mei -"

- a blinding blur of pain, and a flare of blinding blue, then... nothing.

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"Name."

I stared at the man in the laboratory coat. Dr. Marodian. I knew that. I blinked. Maybe if I just said something. Anything —

Dr. Marodian squinted at me, then brought up a magnifying lens on the oculafier strapped to his head, and peered into my eyes. "The code is running, but the secondary processor is caught on the language binary pin. At least it's just a physics problem. Reset to forty-two-oh-nine."

I wanted to scream, but no sound came out of my mouth. Then the pain began again, that searing ache in the back of my head, followed by the dizzying whirl of being sucked downward into darkness so deep there was no way ou—

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"Name."

I didn't open my eyes. I didn't want to see Dr. Marodian's face. I didn't want to know I was strapped to a tilt table. I just wanted to let go. To be allowed to stay gone...

"Subject is unresponsive following code overhaul. Reset to forty-two-oh-nine."

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"Name."

I kept my eyes shut.

"Vitals are stable," the man at the table called. "Brain function is excellent. He's awake. He's just ignoring you."

"Remarkable," Dr. Marodian whispered. He scratched at that blasted clipboard, but this time the sound didn't crescendo or fuzz into static.

"Name?" he asked again.

"You bloody well know my name," I muttered. I opened my eyes, stunned. My voice still wasn't mine - it was barely human, the sound of rocks in an axle bearing - but I was speaking words I understood.

The doctor stared at me for a moment, a slow smile spreading over his face. Then he let out a dry chuckle. His chuckle grew to a full on laugh, and then he turned in a circle, his arms held wide as if to embrace the entirety of the moment. "Ten years! Ten brutal, endless years, and that's what he says!"

I stared at him. "Why can't I move? What did you do?"

Dr. Marodian ignored me, his spin bringing him around to face the other end of the room. "Make a new return-to."

The tall man at the table began flipping toggles and pulling levers, then looked up at the doctor. "Mark at six-zero-zero-ten-eighteen."

"Begin the seventeenth protocol," Dr. Marodian said, turning to strut down the length of the room.

"Sir."

I didn't want a new return-to. I lunged against the restraints that kept my body upright on the tilt table. "Doc! This isn't what I signed up for! What's protocol seventeen?" I shouted after him. "Doc!"

The tall man said, calmly, "Intrusion process commencing in: five."

"Wait! Wait, this isn't -"

"Four."

I managed to yank a hand free somehow, and instantly stopped cold as I caught sight of my arm. It wasn't mine. It couldn't be. It was made of metal. Coils and loops and swirls of narrow silver bands, each one inscribed with foreign symbols, braided and meshed together in an intricate knot-work that shifted with my every movement.

"Three."

He had actually done it. "No," I gasped. But my fingers flexed just fine when I wanted them to, individual tendons rippling visibly beneath the surface of my wrist as metal muscles bunched and pulled. "What did you do-"

"Two."

"Wait!" I growled, and stopped gawking at my metal arm, using it to reach for the other restraint instead. I could feel the padded leather band around my left bicep. How was that even possible? "Please -"

"One."

Pain exploded through my skull, rupturing my nerves, streaking to every extremity, pouring down my spine in a river of fire. From a distance I heard the words, "Intrusion process initiated. Subject is now under human-interface control. Beginning step one of protocol seventeen. Transference in progress."

Then I was floating, my head throbbing, my vision blurring... I watched in disbelief as my body began operating on its own. My free hand found the buckle on the restraint and pulled the strap free, but not because I told it to. Another voice was in my head. Silent. Insidious. It stretched out dark, burning tendrils into my brain and told my hand what to do. It told my feet to step down from the ledge at the bottom of the table. It made me cross the platform to the short flight of steps that led to the laboratory floor.

It was in charge.

But I was still there. 

And like any good gutter-dog, I gave up what I couldn't keep, and hid what I could. 

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