Chapter Twelve. 12
( that won't save us! ) ━━━━━━━━
↳ is it real? ↲

❝ DID YOU SEE HER DEAD BODY?❞

↢ ❦ ↣

HUMAN
christina perri

i can do it
but i'm only human
and i bleed when i fall down
i'm only human
and i crash and i break down
your words in my head, knives in my heart
you build me up and then i fall apart
'cause i'm only human

1:20 ────⊙────── 4:04
↻ ◁ II ▷ ↺

↢ ❦ ↣

     ROSIE LOST TRACK OF TIME. Minutes, hours, days—none of it made sense anymore. The room had deprived her of all of her senses. It had left her in a sea of nothingness. There were no windows, no furniture, not even a door she could see. The information Gally had provided her was making her doubt. Had she imagined the entire time with him? How long has she been in this room for? Hours? Days? Months? She didn't know.

     Time was the only thing she had and somehow she lost it. She would count the seconds, whispering the numbers to herself in the hopes of maintaining some grasp on reality. But after an indeterminate amount of time, she couldn't remember what came after four thousand. Her voice had grown hoarse and dry, her lips cracked from dehydration. Eventually she stopped counting.

     Her body was lying on the floor curled up with her cheek pressed against the cold, hard surface. Her body felt heavy and weak. The lack of any stimulation made her muscles feel like jello. She couldn't remember the last time she was able to properly stand up on her two feet. Every inch of her body ached and discomfort continued to grow.

     Rosie couldn't trust herself. Her mind kept drifting away in and out of strange imagination and reality that had been blurred together. She didn't know if anything she could possibly remember was real or not. There was no way of confirming it. There would be times where she'd see faces she recognized like her father and mother and other times like teen boys on a field she didn't remember ever seeing. She could hear faint whispers near by but could never decipher what they were saying. Each time she tried to focus on it, the voices would vanish. It left her alone in the white void.

    She couldn't remember why she was put here in the first place. There were snippets she thinks are real that mentioned words like "cure" or "antidote" in hushed tones when guards dressed in complete black would enter to check her vital signs. They needed her for something but what had she done to be rewarded with such torture?

     The method was complete. Rosie's sense of self was deteriorating. She would stare at her hands for a long periods of times watching them blur and fade against the white background until they seemed like more figments of her imagination. She was driving herself insane almost believing she wasn't real. She could no longer be certain of her own existence.

     In the absence of any external stimulus, Rosie's mind began to create its own. It started slowly as most terrors do. A shiver down her spine, a prickling sensation at the back of her neck, as if someone or something was inside the room with her. It was during one of her fragmented dreamlike states that she first felt it. Something was watching her. Lying on the cold floor, she was drifting in and out of consciousness when she became aware of a presence. Her skin tingled with a creeping sense of dread it made her bones tighten. Her breath caught in her throat as the sensation grew stronger.

     She lay still, every muscle rigid with fear, her eyes darting around the stark white room. There was nothing to see, nothing to hear, yet the presence was undeniable. It was an oppressive weight, pressing down on her chest, making it difficult to breathe. Her heart pounded against her ribcage, each beat echoing like a drum in the silence.

The room, previously just an empty, sterile void, now felt evil. The white walls seemed to close in, suffocating her with their starkness. She sensed a darkness lurking just beyond her field of vision, a shadow that flickered. It was as if the very air had grown heavy with malice.

Rosie's mind raced, grasping for an explanation. Was this another cruel trick of WCKD, a new form of psychological torture designed to break her? Or had her prolonged isolation finally driven her to the brink of madness? She squeezed her eyes shut, willing the sensation to disappear, but it only grew stronger. It was as if it were studying her, feeding off her fear. She could almost feel its gaze boring into her soul. Every instinct screamed at her to run, to escape, but there was nowhere to go.

Panic set in. She forced herself to sit up, her movements slow and shaky. She scanned the room again, more frantically this time, but the emptiness mocked her. Rosie began to whisper to herself, desperate for any sound to drown out the silence. "You're not real. You're not real. You're not real."

But the whispering didn't help. The presence seemed to grow stronger. It felt closer now, as if it were circling her. Her skin crawled with the sensation of invisible fingers brushing against her, trailing icy paths along her arms and legs. She swatted at the air, a futile attempt to fend off whatever it was, but her hands met only emptiness.

Rosie's rational mind struggled to assert control, to convince her that this was all in her head, but the terror was too real. She curled into a ball, rocking back and forth, her tears mingling with the cold sweat on her skin. She could feel it now, the evil energy, seeping into her, a darkness that threatened to consume her entirely.

In her weakest moments, she felt herself slipping, her grip on reality loosening. She would catch glimpses of movement out of the corner of her eye, shadowy figures that vanished as soon as she turned her head. She heard footsteps that weren't there, soft, steps that sent chills down her spine. She felt it watching her as she slept, felt it caress her skin with phantom touches that made her shudder. She couldn't escape it, couldn't hide from it. It was a part of the room now, a part of her.

So she snapped.

Rosie screamed a raw sound that echoed off the walls and came back to her distorted, mocking. "Leave me alone! Leave me alone!" But the presence remained, silent and unyielding, a dark specter in her prison of light. "Stop it! Get me out of here!"

     "Rosie," soft voices started to surround her causing her to freak out more. The girl shut her eyes closed and screamed Bloody Mary swatting away whatever she could feel near her. "Rosie, Rosie, Rosie,"

     "Rosie!" The voice yelled stopping her screams.

     Rosie snapped her eyes wide open confronting whatever she thought was trying to kill her. In front of her stood a familiar girl who seemed quite worried for her. The girl's hair was tied up into a bun and she wore a nice black pant set with a white lab coat over it. Her eyes were what captivated Rosie and made her silent.

     Teresa stood in front of the deprived Rosie who seemed to have no idea of who Teresa was. "Rosie," Teresa began crouching down to her level, "hey, the trial is over. Come on, I'll help you get up. Let's get you out of here."

     
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     "TELL me about her." Eirene suggesting catching Gally off guard thinking the girl was crazy for that suggestion.

      "Why?" Gally asked

      Eirene smiled and shrugged her shoulders replying, "because, I'd like to meet her one day. Wanna see what's so great about her that's made you this determined."

    Gally nodded letting out a little sigh before starting, "her name's Rosie." Eirene's smile faltered thinking in the back of her mind the possibility of that person being her dead best friend. "It's been awhile now but we were in the glade for about eight to nine months I think. Maybe ten."

     "She was the only girl until Teresa showed up two days before they left." Gally explained. "I don't know, there was just something about her I don't know how to explain. Nothing matters without her. Life is depressing without her. Like she's the sun, the moon, the stars, everything combined, does that make sense? Without it, there'd be no life. It's pointless if im not in her presence."

      Eirene could physically feel her heart ache from the way he's describing his feelings for another girl. "She made me happy but we were only friends. I never had the courage to tell her and when I gathered up the confidence to do it, someone else beat me to it. But I swear to you, Eirene, I know she felt the same way. We just never told each other."

"Are you sure? How do you know she felt the same way?" Eirene asked

The boy shrugged his shoulders, "she saw me when no one else did." Eirene's lips parted in slight disbelief as she saw him when no one else did but Gally never gave her a proper chance.

     "I used to know someone with the same name." Eirene replied switching up the conversation not wanting to hear more about how the other girl made him feel.

     "Really?" Gally asks, "were you close?"

     Eirene nodded, "we were best friends actually, well more like sisters. Her family found me abandoned at a gasoline station right after the catastrophe. They took me in, taught me a lot and made me a part of their family. I was very close to her. At some point, some of the family started getting sick so we had to leave them behind. We got separated from the family but I was able to stick with Rosie. We've been surviving together and joined Lawrence a few years ago. We were sent into the city on a mission over a year ago and shit happened, things went down, and WCKD killed her. I wasn't able to save her." Eirene summarized the entire story without giving much away.

     "I'm sorry." Gally sympathized feeling quite doubtful as he started to overthink. What if it was the same girl they were both talking about. It made sort of sense. "Do you remember how long ago it was when the mission went wrong?"

     The girl furrowed her eyebrows nodding, "it's been over a year now. I know what you're thinking. Trust me, Gally, I've searched everywhere for any signs that she might be alive. But I haven't been able to find anything about her. I doubt it's the same girl."

    "But are you sure she's dead?" Gally asked. "Did you see her dead body?"

    Eirene shifted in her seat because she had already accepted a few months ago that her best friend died. Eirene had searched through compounds for any sort of evidence that her friend was alive but there wasn't any.

     "No." Eirene mumbled looking down at the ground contemplating everything before looking back up to Gally. "How does she look like? How tall is she? Her eye color, hair, describe her."

     "Brown wavy hair, brown eyes, medium to tan skin, around 5 feet and like 4-5 inches maybe? She looked older than most of us. She's definitely outspoken and rarely ever lets anyone talk down on her. She can fight, throw knives, can cook, bandage, and lead." Gally explained, "she has a little freckle on her right side of her cheek."

     "She has a freckle? Does she have a birthmark on her neck? A little one?" Eirene questioned and slowly Gally nodded.

     "Yes."

↢ ❦ ↣

     "How are you doing?" A voice brought Rosie back from her horrifying thoughts.

     The girl had jumped in her seat when she saw Teresa standing next to her. She hadn't heard her come in nor feel her presence like she was used to doing. Rosie looked over at her trying to find any sort of remorse but that's what Teresa was good at, faking. "Just peachy." Rosie struggled to muster looking away and deciding to stare back at the wall in front of her.

     "We have the results of the experiment." Teresa stated holding a beige folder with the current information they had of her. "The data wasn't very clear and we weren't able to find anything too valuable. They sent me here to ask you some questions. Maybe it'll help us get further into the process."

     Rosie didn't respond, all she did was breathe and concentrate on the similar white wall she was accustom to look at for the past few weeks. The trial seemed to be successful for Rosie but apparently not enough for WCKD. It seemed they hadn't been able to access her memories like they were supposed to.

    "Do you know what Malakai put in that serum?" Teresa began her questioning.

     Rosie shrugged her shoulders, "I don't know who that man is."

     "Rosie—" Teresa spoke but stopped herself as she didn't want to trigger any disrupting memory especially the last one she had of him. The one where she found him lying in the pool of his own blood. "There was a serum you were given and injected yourself with. That serum stopped the infection to grow, any clue to what ingredients it might have contained?"

     "No."

     Teresa let out a small sigh, "hey, I know this is hard for you but we need to know, Rosie. The sooner the better. Whatever he might have put is blocking our way into your memories. We need your help."

     "For what?" Rosie questioned back not understanding why she was so important to them.

     "To access your brain—"

      Rosie shook her head, "why don't you try the same way you removed my memories? Wait—wouldn't you have my memories? You people took that away from me! Where are they? How can't you access it?"

     The blue eyed girl avoided eye-contact and stared at the floor before responding, "um, from what I can gather is that when they performed the procedure they placed a block so you wouldn't be able to access it normally. Now to remove that block it would take a lengthy difficult and risky procedure or you could undergo a few experiments and hope that with these trials you would unblock it yourself."

     "So that means your lazy coworkers took the ladder?" Rosie asked astonished as to how pathetic these people were. They were too lazy to unblock her memories so they rather put her through several experiments. "What's so important about me? Huh? That my infection stopped spreading? I have no idea why! You're not going to find anything or get anything out of me because I don't know shit! There is nothing you or your pathetic doctors can do about it. You haven't found a cure because there is none!"

"There's always a cure—"

"Not everything has an answer."

"Yes, yes it does."

"Shut the fuck up!" Rosie yelled hurting her own weak throat from how loud she was being surprising Teresa whose eyes went wide, "let me go! I've wasted my life here! You've gotten nowhere with me! What's the point of dragging me through this? I don't know anything and if I did I wouldn't tell you! You can put me into the worst trials you can think of but I'm not going to budge."

Teresa shook her head somewhat pleading to the girl in her chair, "but you're my only hope."

"You're out of luck, Teresa, because you're not going to find any with me." Rosie stated and extending her arm towards her. "Just inject me and get out."

"You'll spend a night here and then we'll continue with the second phase." Teresa informed grabbing Rosie's arm and injecting her with an unknown serum. "I'm trying to help you. I really am. But you need to trust me on this. Please just let me in. At least once."

Rosie tilted her head back shutting her eyes closed feeling the serum move throughout her body. The girl ignored her hoping she'd be able to resist whatever trials they had planned for her.