Chapter Six
When I woke, I could tell that I had been asleep for some time. My biohazard suit was gone and a table had been placed next to the chair with a glass of milk and a bowl of porridge on it. I moved to the chair and tasted the breakfast. Cold. Great.
"Thanks for waking me up," I moaned to no one in particular, though I hoped they were listening in and I wasn't just starting to talk to myself.
After draining the milk I paced the room for several minutes. I glanced into the washroom and noticed a small bag of toiletries that hadn't been there yesterday.
I brushed my hair, then brushed it again. When I finished, I examined the large amount of hair left in the brush and felt a cold sweat prickle along my spine. I pulled some of it from the brush and let it run through my fingers and drift to the floor.
I looked at myself in the mirror and turned my head to get a look at my scalp. I ran my fingers through my brunette curls and let them fall flat again. A single hair came loose and landed in the sink. I stared at it for several seconds before turning my attention back to my reflection. I reached up and took hold of a lock of my hair. Steeling myself, I tugged on it. It didn't fall out, not a single strand. I laughed shakily, sank down onto the bed and crawled back under the covers.
The table had another glass of milk and a cold soup on it this time. I drained the milk again but I wasn't going to lower myself to eating cold soup. My stomach growled in protest but I held firm.
"Can I have something hot?" I looked directly at one of the camera lenses. No response.
My mouth felt dry, chalky. I moved to the washroom and peered into the mirror. I caught hold of my tongue and pulled it out for inspection. It looked bumpy and a little white.
I couldn't remember how it had looked before. I paced back into the main room and ran my tongue back and forth along the roof of my mouth. I was probably just a little dehydrated. Fatigue hit me again and I lay back down on the bed.
I was fairly sure it was the desperate pleas of my stomach that had roused me. The table now held a glass of milk and a large sandwich. At least it didn't matter that it was cold. Maybe someone had been listening to my request. I practically inhaled the sandwich. My stomach was placated but I could have eaten twice as much.
"Can I have any more?" I asked the same camera.
I paced the room again for a while, waiting for a response, but none came.
I wandered into the wash room to have another shower and saw a nice new tracksuit waiting for me. Things were looking up. I let the shower go on until the water ran cold then brushed my hair until it was practically dry. I examined the brush again but this time there was nothing abnormal the amount of hair I found there. I glared at it as if it might contradict me.
The new tracksuit felt soft against my skin as I wandered back to the main room. Unfortunately I was wide awake and out of things to do. On the plus side, a new sandwich awaited me. I tucked in eagerly with the slightly uneasy feeling of knowing someone had been in the room whilst I was naked next door. I downed the milk and started up my pacing.
The hairbrush taunted me from the washroom.
"Would it be too much bother to get some entertainment? Some books, or a TV, or a crossword puzzle even?" I was starting to build up a picture of a friendly helper sitting and watching me somewhere and decided it wouldn't hurt to be polite.
"Please?" I added. I would ignore the fact that my tongue felt chalky again.
A wave of dizziness swept over me and I sat down on the bed, in moments I felt myself falling unconscious.
"The milk." I realised, as the blackness took over.
There was an itching inside my right elbow. On inspection I found a small puncture hole.
I pulled my arm up as close to my face as I could get it. It was a little hole, the blood had congealed to fill it, but how did it get there? My mind filled with images of bugs crawling out of it.
I shuddered. No. It looked like the mark left by a needle.
"So you're drugging me and stealing my blood? You know I'm happy to cooperate, you don't need to do that."
I looked around. There were three sandwiches on the plate this time and a book next to it.
The hairbrush mocked me from its perch on the sink.
I took my time with the sandwiches, pushed the milk aside, and spent the rest of the day reading. The book was a soppy romance novel with a dreadfully pathetic leading lady who seemed willing to undergo any humiliation for a chance with a guy who didn't seem to care about her one bit.
Eventually, I couldn't stand it any longer.
"Not to be fussy, but this," I waved the offending book towards the camera, "is trash. Could we try for something a bit more interesting next time? Please?" I grinned up at the camera.
Not feeling like pushing on with the book, I took another shower and drank the water rather than the tainted milk. I didn't brush my hair.
I finished the book with a scowl and tossed it down on the table. With nothing else to do, I lay back and slept.
I strode across the room and knocked the hairbrush off of the sink. It clattered noisily and a few hairs were knocked loose. They challenged me from the tiled floor. I turned on my heal and returned to the main room to inspect the new deliveries.
This time there was a new book on the table with the sandwiches and a small chocolate muffin. I devoured the sandwiches but kept the muffin for later, repeated my shower-drink to avoid the milk and had a look at the book. It was the follow-up to the book I'd read yesterday. Awful, awful, awful.
"Karen was miserable," I read aloud. "She had given up all of her friends, fallen out with her family and changed her job just to keep Eunice happy, but he still hadn't stayed with her. She reached for the phone. Begging hadn't worked yet but she had only tried a few times-" The suction noise from the door seal made me stop mid-terrible-sentence.
A woman walked in, she had long yellow-blonde hair pulled back tightly behind her head in a harsh ponytail and wore a figure-hugging, powder blue power suit. She was followed by a young man with round glasses who was carrying two chairs. I didn't recognise him but she was familiar somehow.
"Hello, Maya. Please make yourself comfortable at the table, we just have a few questions for you." Her voice was clipped and business-like.
I moved to my seat and waited while they arranged themselves opposite me. I couldn't decide how old the woman was. She looked as though she wasn't adverse to a few youth prolonging injections at the least.
The man looked like he was just trying to blend into the background. He kept his head down, not looking at me, arranging papers and a tablet on the table in front of him.
"My name is Lucretia Scorin. We are sorry to have kept you waiting, Miss Summers, we had to be careful about possible contaminants. Fortunately, all of our tests have come back negative, both from the testing zone and from yourself," the woman began.
"So, can I go home now?" I asked.
"I'm afraid that that's not currently an option we can offer you," she said, smiling. I was fairly sure her facial muscles were having trouble remembering what shape a smile should be.
"Why?"
"You broke the law, Miss Summers, that can't simply go unaddressed." She fixed me with a hard stare. "You put the needs of yourself above the needs of the population, and we have to account for that somehow."
The silence stretched on for long enough that I was sure they could hear the pounding of my heart. I slowly caught onto the fact that it was my turn to talk again.
"I didn't even know what was happening. My helmet malfunctioned. I couldn't breathe."
"We have been given a full account of the event by Mr Jackson. He told us it seemed likely you would die and he was acting in the interest of preserving your life. He also mentioned that your helmet did not simply malfunction, but was damaged when you engaged in dangerous activities which were not necessary for the work you were sent to do." She rapped her nails, which were painted powder blue to match her suit, against the table.
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I silently cursed Taylor's trusting nature.
"It didn't specify that we weren't allowed to sit in hanging seats either," I said finally, not that I expected to get away without punishment based on a technicality.
"A smart mouth won't help your case here, Miss Summers." Lucretia gave me a thin smile, or maybe it was a grimace. "The directions did specify that you should do your utmost to take care of yourselves and your equipment at all times. And, in the case of an emergency or injury the first response should always be to radio back for direction on how to proceed." She rapped her nails on the table again. I wasn't sure if it was meant to be irritating or intimidating. It was a bit of both.
"I wasn't really in any state to be radioing people. I was blacking out from lack of oxygen at the time." I scowled at the wooden table top.
"Mr Jackson mentioned that the damage to your helmet was noticed long before you began to have trouble breathing. At which point, if you had followed protocol, a unit could have been dispatched to aid you and none of this would be happening." Again with the nails. Maybe she was using the noise in place of fullstops.
"But it wasn't causing any trouble at that point," I protested weakly.
"It says clearly here-" she held out a copy of the directions we had received before setting out into the inspection zone, "-if the integrity of your biohazard suit is compromised you must radio it in without delay." She looked at me expectantly, her nails poised above the table ready to strike.
"I just didn't think."
"And that is obviously the problem. Neither of you stopped to think. And like I have said, if that were the extent of it maybe this wouldn't be a problem but we have to consider the possible implications for the population." And the nails made it to the table once again.
"But you said I was all clear of contamination."
"Irrelevant I'm afraid. The lack of an actual risk after the fact does not negate the risk you posed when we couldn't have known that contamination wasn't a threat." And again with the nails. I found myself wishing her polish would chip.
"So what now then?"
"Do you accept that you took the wrong course of action and placed the lives of everyone within the city of Harbour at risk due to negligence on the part of yourself and that of Mr Jackson?"
"I didn't mean to." I bit my lip.
"That is why we are calling it negligence as opposed to deliberate sabotage." Lucretia fixed me with a piercing stare. She placed her palms flat on the table and leant forward as if preparing to pounce.
"I suppose so then." I couldn't help feeling that I had been backed into a corner without knowing at what point I could have changed the course of the conversation.
"Sign here to that effect then please." She snatched the tablet from the silent man, turned it around and handed it to me. He had been filling out a form with everything we had discussed written down word for word.
At the bottom of the page were the words 'I, Miss Maya Summers, agree that this is a true representation of the facts as I understand them.' And underneath that was a box for my signature. I used my finger to trace my name onto the tablet and it was instantly pulled back across the table.
"Thank you, Maya, you have been most cooperative." She smiled predatorily at me.
They both stood, wooden chair legs scraping along the tiles. The man gathered everything, including the two additional chairs and headed back out through the sealed door. Lucretia paused to look down at me where I still sat in front of the empty table.
"So when will I get to leave?" I asked, hoping my ordeal was finally all over.
"Someone will come to escort you to a hearing where we will come to a conclusion about your punishment in due course. Please try to remain calm and relaxed in the meantime." She turned on her heel and headed for the door.
"Punishment?" I asked in a small voice. She hesitated by the door, one blue-taloned hand clutching the frame.
"You broke the law, Miss Summers, and we have your signed confession to that fact. There must be a punishment for endangering all of our lives wouldn't you agree?" I listened to the clicking of her high heels as she disappeared down the hallway and out of sight. She was gone, and I was all alone again.