Marionette (A 'The 5th Wave' Fanfiction) [COMPLETED] #wattys2017

8. Humanity; Chapter I.

    The images wink out on me and I'm back in the tiled room with damp cheeks and sore arms and legs from fighting against the restrains. Dr. Pam walks to me from behind the one-way glass and releases me. "You're clear," she informs me. "There's one last thing that has to be done."

    I'm about to argue—wasn't this supposed to be the last?—when a wave of nausea washes over me. It takes a lot of my willpower to not throw up. "Wha . . . What t-the bloody h-h-hell was t-that?" I stutter like a moron.

    Dr. Pam takes my hand and helps me stand up. "We call it Wonderland. It maps all your memories and everything that ever happened to you," she explains, leading me out of this room and into another one. Everything is blurry.

    She sits me down onto a similar patient's bed from the previous rooms. There's something blocking my view and it takes me a moment to realize she's showing me a small and thin object, like an SD card. "This is a microchip. I'll have to implant it here,"—she points at the back of her neck.

    "It has two major purposes. One is so that we can keep track of you. We're down to small numbers and must take all the advantages and opportunities we get. The second is that it prevents you from getting infected."

    She stays quiet for a moment, letting me contemplate the information. "Like I said before, the Others are inside all of us, in the brains. When they wake up in a body too weak to host the intruder, it kills them slowly. We believe that could be the cause of the plague. The other case is that the intruder is in your brain and by awakening it takes control of the host, since the intruder is at the thinking part of the brain. The best scenario is that the intruder didn't wake yet, thus meaning we can prevent it from ever doing so, simply using this chip. You are one of the lucky," she says, and I remember how I thought only the dead were lucky.

    My throat goes dry at the sight of the syringe in her other hand. Well damn. She turns me around and a new sort of sensation goes over me—much more on the side of physical pain. I clam my eyes shut.

×××

     The procedure ends and Dr. Pam cleans her hands after wrapping the wound up with a bandage. I can still feel the sting on the back of my neck like an aftershock. Miraculously, she smiles. "Tell me, Rose," she starts, "would you like to see inside the head of an infested? Do you want to see an Other?" she clarifies.

    I nod slowly. I trail behind her and she lets me in to another room, identical to the Wonderland room. Except now I'm behind the glass, watching a person in the chair. I don't recognize him.

    Dr. Pam closes the door and lights turn on, reflecting off of buttons on a keypad beneath the glass. She presses a few of the buttons and dims the lights.

    Through the glass I see the boy is till there, but around the area of his head is a soft green smudge, almost like a mockery of a halo. The part where the brain should he is the scariest. Sick smudges of neon green spider-web across the brain's surface, with a green blob, like a deformed egg, at its center. It's all gooey and makes me dizzy.

    I realize that thing is also inside me, trying to feast on my brain. I gingerly touch the lump on my neck where the implant is. I hope this works. I hope that thing never wakes up. I would rather die than have that thing controlling me against my will, making me do horrible things, killing innocent people.

    There's a quiet creeeeeek! sound and the door at my back opens.