The noise is clouded, but the girl is still aware of it, shrouding her in hushed voices and the constant stoic beep of machines. The silence bothers her more, in the end. She knows that when the silence falls, when she is alone, she will be able to sense the blankness that bothers her the most.
The lack of a heartbeat.
“They won’t be able to understand it,” the first voice promises. It is raspy, soft, the sound of disused wires and cords, something that was once appreciated but left behind and forgotten to rust. Something about the voice soothes her, like a familiar lullaby in a strange key.
“Scientists tend to become more attached to things that they don’t understand,” the other voice snaps back, rough and impatient. “What if they become more vigilant as we wait? We need to strike now, while they aren’t expecting it. Listen to the silence.”
They both hush. Still lying on her mattress, her hands wrapped her knees, she listens too. She knows what she will hear, and what these strange people that only she is able to hear will be aware of as well.
“Yes,” the first voice hisses. “Yes, that is a problem.”
The nurse that is adjusting the needles piercing her delicate skin pauses, tilts her head as though she hears something. She won’t hear anything, though. The girl is sure of that. Normal people, ordinary and wrapped up in their hazy worlds of work and home – and their machines, always clicking on keyboards and checking monitors, making sure they still had command over the creature called technology they could barely understand – were too focused to notice the smaller details around them.
“We take her now,” the second voice presses again. There is an edge to his voice, a pained sharpness to his tone, like he has been waiting for something for months, and now that it is in sight, he cannot bear to wait any longer.
She understands that.
She has been waiting for years.
But she will not have to wait any longer.
The nurse wraps the sheets around her, pats her chest awkwardly, but pulls her hand away quick. None of them are sure what to do with her. She is an abnormality, an arrhythmic heart beat on their monitor that they could not seem to smooth out.
Anomalies are not appreciated, not in this time.
That is how she ended up here in the first place.
“Do you need anything?” The nurse asks. She is pudgy, doughy red face and fingers that the girl sometimes imagines breaking off, one by one, wondering if they would feel like Play-Doh in her grasp, if she could roll them out and press them back onto on the woman’s hand.
She tried it once, with one of the girls in that place she couldn’t remember the name of. It was no different from these rooms she was locked in now, all whitewash and starched uniforms and rules that weren’t meant to be broken.
She didn’t mean to break any of them.
She didn’t mean to break the girl’s arm off, either. She promised to fix it, but they wouldn’t bring her glue. They brought her another needle though; another intruder to pierce through her defenses and leave her in a dim, glowing state.
The nurse’s face floats in and out of vision, like a camera focusing and blurring with the twist of a finger.
“Anything?” She repeats.
Another voice, from the past, seems to add onto the sentence.
Beer, drugs, sex? You don’t have to be afraid here, girl. Nothing is taboo. You can have anything you want here.
She doesn’t know that voice, so she ignores it. She ignores the nurse too, and after a moment the woman sighs, a deep breath that deflates her slightly. She is gone then too, and the girl is alone in the dark, glowing slightly, hibernating and waiting for the touch to wake her up.
It comes gradually, the hand stroking her face, the other touching her wrist.
She smiles.
They have stayed.
They will take her with her, the way that they promised.
“It won’t be long,” the second voice, so harsh and angry before, now soft and cooing, seems to spread over her like a warm blanket. “I’m sorry you had to stay here, my child. It won’t be long now.”
“It’s been damaged,” the first voice hisses. “What now? She is useless without activation.”
There is silence, and then the hand covers her eyes, whispers words that she understands and remembers.
And then the girl is dead.
“State your name and code,” the voice says gently.
The eyes open, liquid gold – utterly blank.
The heart monitor’s beep slowly picks up speed, faster and faster until it is a blurred hum around them. There is the vague cry of nurses and outraged doctors, feet racing down the hallway.
“ALICE,” the voice comes, dead, hollow – the voice of a robot. “Prototype A, Model 5.”
The first voice chuckles.
“She will do,” it says softly. “She will do.”
And then, it is black, and silent.
She doesn’t mind at all.
The living dead don’t mind the night.
