Christina’s mom was sick. She had been for a long time, ever since Christina was old enough to remember. Genetic, the doctors said, she needed gene therapy. Of course they couldn't afford that, not on basic, and Christina could barely hold down a job.
That’s when Smith Shimano Corp came knocking. They promised to heal her mom, make her better, if Christina would only sign right here. Of course she signed, there was no other option, she barely even read the pages and pages of legalese they thrust under her nose.
SSC whisked her away to Kalimnos, with 1000 assurances and promises that her mom would receive the best of care in SSC’s top gene clinics. Later if Christina would recount this story, she would always say they came and snatched her away, she said nothing of the contract, nothing of her mother.
At first the planet was nice enough, more than enough food, a nice place to live, she didn’t even need to work. Then the experiments started. One of the same people who had shoved a contract in her face showed up to the door of her apartment in Kalimnos City, saying something about “fulfilling her end of the contract”. So she followed him, they got into a car and drove out of the city, into the mountains, into a cave, into a bunker. Only later would she learn of it’s actual name, Site-Alpha, until then she would only know it as The Bunker.
She was strapped to a table. She asked what was going on but the blank masked faces only stared down at her, like she was a partially feisty dog and nothing more.
They carved. Peeled her layers back. Took things out and put this in, sometimes they even put things back. Pulled her apart. She screamed, of course she screamed, she could do nothing else. So they took her voice. They kept her in the blinding, sterile room for maybe minutes, maybe years. Eventually they closed her up, put things back in their proper place. Sent her back.
The next day the man came again, she could have run, maybe she should have, but then her mom wouldn't get her treatment, so she got back into that dark car and rode back to that accursed place.
She screamed until they took her voice. She died.
Twitch woke up in a vat. She masked people called her Christina and Ms.Ratly, but she knew that wasn't true. Of course she had all of her memories, even remembered Christina’s death, her death, she remembered the pain, every neuron crying out as each connection was severed, but Christina Ratly had died back in that room, that horrible white room.
She had to escape, damn her mother she could not spend another day in that room with it’s masks and blinding lights.
She found a forum. One where people shared stories, print codes, and other things. Hoping, praying, that she might find someone or something to help her.
Nothing, there was nothing. Countless more times in The Bunker. After one such time, she was brought back to her apartment, she couldn’t call it home, not after everything. A message blinked out at her from her terminal. The sender encrypted, the only identifier was a strange T, a symbol she would only later learn the meaning of. The message was only two lines of text.
Go Now
>5389 13th Street
She ran. Out the window, and down the fire escape. She didn’t know where she was going, or even what would be there, she only knew it would be better than here. Boots pounded on the pavement behind her. Voices yelled for her to stop, threatening all manner of terrible things should she refuse to comply. None of them as terrible as that room. The address led to a warehouse. She ducked inside, praying they didn’t see her. It was pitch dark. She made it, she was here. And now she had no idea what to do next. Did they send her here to die, was this a trick to test her loyalty, then she had surely failed.
Yelling, boots, the metal clicking of guns being prepared. One of them must have found a lightswitch as the lights clicked on one by one, revealing her pursuers, big burly men in dark suits and sunglasses, despite the growing darkness outside.
Something was watching her. Not the men, but Something Else, Something deep and ancient. She turned around, maybe to try and find it, maybe so she wouldn’t have to see the bullets that would kill her.
A sinuous metal elk, stood almost the height of the room. He had to run, to get away from it, it was Hungry.
She turned back to her pursuers. No longer where they buly men in black suits and sunglass. They were piles. Piles of bone and blood and gore. She heard a hiss of escaping her behind her as she turned back to the Elk and saw it’s chest open to what could only be a cockpit. Voices grew louder outside as more security forces arrived. With no other choice, she climbed in.
The next several days where a blur. She never knew how she’d gotten off that planet, that hell.
She tried to go home. Her mother was dead, just as she had feared. Not killed in retaliation for her escape like she had feared. She had died soon after Twitch had left, never receiving the treatment Twitch had been promised for her.
She wandered. First to the Dawnline shore, then to Atlas Line and the Oasis. She took to the omninet, live streaming her adventures and telling, a version of her story, no one would ever, could ever, know what truly had happened there. Maybe she was ashamed, maybe because Twitch herself, was never sure.