Mute

[1] Welcome to Syrus

 [Welcome to Syrus]

     I wake up to a pool of sweat and the sound of my frantic breathing. Stillness settles across the barrack and my heart clangs against my chest, disturbing such a sweet and peaceful silence. One of my hands slides up my chest to soothe my erratic heartbeat as I fall back onto my pillow to try to recollect my wits.

     “It was only a dream,” I murmur reassuringly to myself, careful not to disturb the sleeping bodies around me. I curl into the grooves of my mattress and chant the phrase over and over again until it’s permanently engrained in my brain and I almost mistaken it for the truth. The blinking light at the end of my wrist cools down a bit and settles into its normal color and I convince myself to relax. The last thing I need is to send myself into overdrive.

     My eyelashes scratch against my cheeks as I try to dedicate the remaining ten minutes of freedom to sleep.  Darkness envelopes me like a soft blanket, welcoming and comforting in a world far too bright, and for once in my nineteen years of living, I feel free. The overall numbness, the tranquility, the silence is something too sweet to even believe and yet every day it’s rudely interrupted. Someone or something must always drag me out of hibernation and continue to drag me back to the Incubation Center.

     Today it’s Loki.

     The smell of cigarettes lingers on his breath as one of his calloused hands rests against my cheek. He smacks my face several times before I swat his hand away with the flick of my wrist. “If don’t know which is going to kill you first: the officials or the ‘rettes.”

      The edge of the bed croaks underneath Loki’s weight as he chuckles softly while puffing away at his cigarette. Several toxic clouds later, he decides to extinguish it on the metal frame of my bed. “Another nightmare?” he exclaims nonchalantly, stretching his long legs out in front of him.  

     “You could say that,” is my brisk reply as I coax myself into sitting up. The wires protruding from my inner forearm poke out and I instinctively clutch my small blanket to my chest to conceal them. Loki’s moss green gaze shifts between the blanket and his hands.

     “It was about the surgery, wasn’t it?”

     He peels back the blanket and cradles my forearm in his hand. His arms are smooth, olive toned with the exception of the barely visible scar that protects the chords underneath his skin. Mine, on the other hand, loop upward like angry waves 'til they meet my bare shoulder.

     “You’re unique,” Loki says with a teasing smile, letting my arm flop back into my lap. “Be happy. Before the Revolution, I heard girls would kill to be the definition of that word.”

     “Very funny,” I snap back. “I look like a monster.”

     “You almost died, Cor. Cut yourself some slack.”

     The statement swirls in my head as images from my previous nightmare resurface. The rotting stench of blood, the frantic pleas of doctors all while trying to battle the anesthesia that threatens to pull me into unconsciousness. Three days later the nurse welcomes me and tells me that I died.

     A shrill beeping noise echoes in the corner of my mind and interferes with my thoughts. I sigh heavily in response. Our time is up and in a synchronized motion, everyone in the barrack rises, bleary eyed and discombobulated. Loki’s face twists into a bitter expression as he gets up and motions for me to follow.

     “I hate that noise,” he says. The urge to correct him sits on the edge of my tongue; we’re the only ones that hear the noise. The officials never hear it, the doctors never hear it nor does the Council. The alarm has been ingeniously embedded in our ears so that every time it rings, we jump to our feet like a bunch of Pavlov's dogs and trek to the Incubation Center to begin our training.