➹ ➹ ➹

The next time she woke up, things felt different. Foreign. Drowned in darkness. Though the room was still sterile white.

In front of Kate, an unknown woman with a sweet voice glided into the room. "Hi love. I've brought you some food," said she.

"What food? It's a bit early isn't it?" Kate rubbed her temples, disorientated and feeling like there was a thunderstorm in her brain. It felt as if she'd had one of the worst sleeps of her life. Yet she had slept- hadn't she? So she must be at home. 

Kate examined the woman as best she could through partially blurred vision. She had the same green eyes as her mother. 

So was it just a dream? The image of a needle piercing her skin was just a mirage? A hologram of the heart? She started to panic in her confusion. Kate reached out to her mother for comfort, but as the woman came closer Kate's vision corrected itself, and presented to her a woman that wasn't Kate's mother at all.

Before the lady could take hold of her hand, Kate flinched and moved away.Her hands were no longer shackled.

"Nothing to worry about. It's just the usual meal- chicken." Liar, Kate thought to herself, chicken meat had been contaminated months ago...or maybe it was weeks ago... She wasn't sure anymore.

The only thing she did know was that the amount of questions circulating her brain were growing fast like a tumor, making it hard for her to focus on anything at all.  

The lady stared at Kate, both expectant and concerned.

I need to find out where I am.

Eyes scanning the room, Kate noted its bareness. As well as the button in the corner which flickered red- the colour of one of those danger signs you see on the roadside. 

In a flash, the memory of the doctor shifted back into her temporal lobe. The way he threatened her with his sharp words and an even sharper needle . His speech echoed definitively in her ears, like shouts in the darkened damp cave of her skull. 

"So would you like the chicken?" 

Kate shook her head, quickly saying "No," then adding a contrived "Thanks," as she realised this was a sort of game the lady must've been playing, in pretending that this room and what had happened was normal.

"Have the water then, dear. My name is Melantho. I'll be your unit carer." Kate felt stupid for thinking this woman was her mother. Melantho's voice was as cloudy as the green mist covering her eyes. 

Kate sniffed the water and pretended to drink it. She had no reason to trust anyone.

"I'm Kate," she mumbled through the glass cup as a matter of courtesy. The nurse smiled knowingly behind her oxygen mask, her figure became distorted through the curves of Kate's glass as she held it against her dry lips. Distorted and disgusting, thought Kate in spite. 

Finally she realised what she had been missing. The glass slipped from her hand, tumbling through the air with the aim of shattering. But the Nurse caught in unsuspected skill.

Where was her oxygen mask?  

Her lungs were burning before, when she had first awoken. It was a harsh but nevertheless real pain. 

Now Kate couldn't feel her body working to sustain her. The rise and fall of her chest had flattened. No air tickled her cupid bow lips. Though her heart throbbed violently, as if mocking her, saying: at least I'm still alive. Now look what you've become. 

"I'll be back in a few hours. Oh, and welcome to Project Synthesis," said Melantho, who had placed the glass against the chair and started to walk away.

Panicked, Kate stood up to try and stop Melantho but it was hopeless. She fell to the floor. Her muscles ached in agonising pain, as though they had gone unused and she gasped for breath but it felt foreign inside of her. Her lungs- they were ghostly still like the wheels of a childhood bike; cracked by sun strain and ivy vines. 

It felt like she hadn't moved in a long time; she could barely feel her legs at all. When she looked at them they bore no resemblance to her own. They were too long. Too fragile. 

"No wait! I mean...Please wait." Kate tried to hide her terror but failed. She felt like she was a stranger in her own body. 

It wasn't even hers anymore. Her body was someone else's, with a skeleton that had been lost to time. 

Melantho paused, facing the door still. "What is it?"

"How long have I been in here?"

The nurse paused. She turned around. "The year's 3071, dear." 

Then the door closed. What was left of Kate's stomach flipped. She was no longer a 13 year old girl. She counted the numbers on her too-big trembling fingers. She must've been asleep for 4 whole years. 

In desperation she shakily stood up and ran to the door to open it, but her attempt was futile.

On the metal exit, she saw reflected back at her a girl she didn't know, with tired eyes and a black scar, on her right forearm which should've hurt.

The unrecognisable image of herself, reminded Kate of the last time she saw Tom and Jasmine. The way that they bore no resemblance to the happy children they once were together.

She felt as though she should be hyperventilating. And she would've given anything to do so in that moment. To feel the physical pain of being restricted of oxygen rather than restricted of years.

But when Kate tried the second time to take in a shaky breath, she felt too numb. Too frozen from shock to even try stirring her lungs back to life again.

*

Project Synthesis...

Something about the word Synthesis threw Kate back in time. To the moment when she and Jas were walking together, and Jas was whispering in her ear quietly, so that the guards behind them couldn't hear what was being said. 

A kid had just been suspended for asking how plants grow - this ignited blazing rumours among the rest of the students.

Law 1: Never talk about the growth of nature. Nature is illegal and to talk about nature is to break the law. Kate recalled the laws they had been taught in her head. 

"My Aunt Nyaga told me about Photosynthesis yesterday!" Jas said, excitedly. "Do you want to hear?"

"Do you even need to ask? Of course. But say it quietly." Kate leaned closer to Jas, until there was only a small space between them. She recalled smelling Jasmine's sweet natural smell and her heart shrank. 

"Aunt Nyaga said that trees take in the carbon dioxide from the air and replace it with oxygen. So we can breathe. And that now they're all gone, we have to make oxygen for ourselves. That's why we need to carry these oxygen tanks."

"Wow! Trees? Are you sure?" Kate wondered excitedly.

"Definitely. My Aunt's Mother was a biology," Jasmine replied.  "No, a biologist," she corrected herself. Kate nodded, marveling over what it all meant.

"Aunt Nyaga loves trees. She calls them spirits of life or geeste van die lewe in Afrikaans."

"Geeste van die lewe." Kate rolled the words over on her tongue in awe.

"She called them that because no mere mortal human could be as selfless as the trees. They used to spend all their life looking after us,"

And so, from that very day on Kate decided she would find the trees. She would ask them to help her, so that she could breathe once again like her ancestors did. 

But, like a derailed train, the journey didn't go to plan. Her fingers traced the black scar on her arm as a conformation of this.

Putting the pieces of the painting together Kate felt she had a basic idea of what the Doctor had done to her. As he had so proudly told her the last time they spoke.

I wanted to breathe like people did before Kate thought as she backed away from the door and sat, exhausted, on the chair in the white walled room. But not like this... 

I'm the deformed one. 

I'm a monster. 

A/N; Hopefully you guys understand a little more about the dystopian world Kate and her friends are trapped in! Thanks for staying and reading another chapter. In case you're wondering- Jasmine's Aunt Nyaga is from South Africa. I don't speak Afrikaans myself so there's probably a better way of saying "spirits of life." If any Afrikaans speaking folk know that there is please let me know!

Ideally I'd love to have at least a few comments and likes on this chapter before I upload the next one. The next chapter is called: Germination and I can't wait to write it. Thanks to my mum for proof reading this :D- hippywitch