Click-shuffle-tap…

Click-shuffle-tap…

His voice whispered in her ear, close enough to feel his warm breath. “Good afternoon, Miss Lindsey.”

Sapphira’s eyes shot open and she was immediately blinded by the light in the room. She squeezed them shut again.

You are safe. There is a purpose.

Something told her this couldn’t be further from the truth.

“Crawford, dim the lights for the Subject!” the Doctor barked hoarsely.

The fluorescent lighting had been a sudden barrage that caused a dull but harsh pain to surface behind her eyelids, even after she sensed the room darken. Soon enough it disappeared, and she opened her eyes again, slowly.

The room appeared to be a dome from her upright position. It was white, of course, a harsh whiteness that covered the tiled floor and plastered walls. She was laying slightly tilted back and strapped in a device that she immediately recalled as the cryochamber, a box inlaid with a spongey mold that comfortably fit her form and had once been soaked in a fluid that preserved her body. Various pieces of strange apparatuses were strewn about the room, some attached to her chamber by tubes or wires. A full medical suite was assembled before her, and behind all of this equipment the room was full of people. Twenty-nine people in white lab coats of varied ages, about half in their twenties to thirties and half in their sixties to seventies, maybe older. All had crowded around to observe, eyes young and old fixated on her body.

Then she realized she was naked.

Good afternoon, Miss Lindsey.

Pushing her vanity aside, it took an immense amount of concentration to focus on what was possibly one of the worst outcomes she could have predicted to occur after awaking from a century-long slumber: not only was that twisted fool of a doctor still alive, but he stood right before her own eyes. He was grinning, exposing eerily perfect teeth, and though her body was shivering with cold and a terrible sense of frailty it was that man’s presence that set her blood boiling.

“What is…” she tried to say. She was drained of all energy and her words dripped out as more of a whispering moan. A hundred years frozen in a coffin would do that to a body, she thought grimly.

“There she is! Bravo, Miss Lindsey,” the Doctor cackled. By the sound of her voice he appeared invigorated, and he attempted to twirl around to face his motley-aged subordinates, nearly sprawling on his face in the process, waving his cane madly about and knocking a platter of glimmering surgical tools to the floor. He regained his balance as the clattering subsided, resuming his original, stooped posture. “Congratulations to all members of Project Glass!” he declared, ignoring the freshly displaced clutter. “You have successfully revived the corpse of a twenty-first century legend. Take pride, my friends, for we have together done what has been previously impossible! With every step we are seizing control of our future. We have fought off death, disease, corruption! Who needs a God when we can each transcend as one!”

This particular speech was enormously lost on its audience. They maintained an attentive, polite silence, though their blank expressions were hardly changed by his ridiculous sermon.

“But our work…” he coughed ferociously, “…is not yet finished. Fear not, my fellow Washingtonians!” They indicated no sign of fear whatsoever. “The hunt is over! The hunters have succeeded in their patience, have observed the deer emerge from the foliage, have held their finger to the trigger, stock pressed to shoulder, breath held steady, steady… fire!” The Doctor paused to raise his hands, bordering on pure theatricality. “The deer is down, heart ruptured, eyes glassed, and the hunter moves in to part flesh with his blade!” He lowered his hands, which had begun to tremble. “And now we work to reap our rewards. The corpse must be dragged home, skinned and stripped of worth. The expended casing retrieved, the rifle dismantled, cleaned and polished. It is your duty now, ladies and gentlemen, to take the lead. Write your reports, complete your paperwork, and do what needs to be done.” He stopped with a rather anticlimactic pause. “But not in this room. Leave. Now.”