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THIRTEEN

CIPHER

“Hello?” I called out.

The room was dark but not pitch black. I heard the quiet hum of machinery and what sounded like the steady cadence of a heart monitor. Smooth white walls, an IV in the back of my hand, a clean white cast on my arm, something stuck to my neck, and leather cuffs around my wrists. I was wearing a hospital gown and nothing else. One of my legs was missing. What the fuck?

“The fuck’s going on?” I called again.

“Hello, Cipher.”

Cipher? Was that my name or theirs? I searched the four corners of the room, but I couldn’t make out where they were hiding. It was all just stark shadows and ominous medical equipment.

“I’m speaking to you via intercom. My name is Dr. Aparna Godara,” the voice said.

“Where’s my leg?” I asked.

“That was a previous injury, I’m afraid, but your prosthesis is in the chair in the corner of the room.” I glanced over to where she’d directed me and immediately felt comforted by the sight of it. Maybe she was telling the truth–about that at least.

“Amputations are quite common these days and judging by your scar, I’d estimate you’ve been an amputee since you were about fifteen years old?” the voice said.

That sounded kind of right, maybe. “I’m Cipher?” I asked. The name did sound familiar.

“That’s what your friends called you. We were also able to track down your birth name, Nikkō Kanemoto.”

Nikkō Kanemoto. That name felt jarring, part of a painful past. Did I have parents? I must have, but they were dead now, I knew that for certain. And my sister… Aiko? Aiko was dead too. The grief of losing them–and especially her–washed over me, stealing my breath for a moment, but I couldn’t dwell on that right now. I had other things to think about.

“Where am I?” I asked because I still had no idea why I was here or how I got here.

“You’re in a military base in South Carolina, also known as StarChem Laboratories. Your friends brought you here after you contracted the virus.”

The virus?

“Rabbit Fever?” I asked.

“That is the colloquial name for it.”

The same plague that took out my parents, even Aiko in a way, and my leg too. I must have been bitten by a Rabid. But why the fuck had they brought me here? I might not remember much but I sure as shit knew the government couldn’t be trusted.

“You’re with the United Forces?” I asked.

“That’s right.”

“Am I a prisoner?”

“No, Cipher, you’re a patient.”

“Then why am I strapped down?” I tugged on the padded leather wrist cuffs again. They were thick and snug and well- made, attached by chain to the stainless steel railings on either side of my bed. I could slide them up and down along the bars, but I couldn’t touch my face or reach the other side of my body to unfasten the cuffs.

“Until you shed the virus completely, the restraints are necessary to ensure the safety of our staff who are treating you.”

“Am I Rabid?” I asked.

Silence and then, “We prefer not to use that term here. You were infected with Lyssavirus cuniculus five days ago. Your friends brought you here when you started showing symptoms, and we’ve been treating you ever since. Your body is responding well to the treatment.”

“Treatment?” I asked.

“Yes, would you like to know more about it?”

“Okay.” Seemed like as good a place to start as any.

“The first thing we did was administer anesthetics to induce a coma. That’s to slow the spread of the virus and stabilize your condition. Then we began injecting you with a pharmaceutical serum developed here on base which triggers the virus to cannibalize itself. You’re currently in that phase of treatment now. We have to go very slowly in order to give your body the chance to repair itself. But trust that we have been keeping your friends informed about your progress.”

I wanted to know more about these “friends” she kept mentioning. Could I trust them? There were so many holes in my memory. Was this person really a doctor? What if I’d been perfectly healthy and they simply needed a body to experiment on? What if I’d been captured and sold to this lab?

“What friends?” I asked.

“Excuse me?”

“You said some friends brought me here. Who are they?”

“You’ll see them soon enough.”

“Do you know their names?”

“Yes, I do.” A shuffling of paper. “Joshua Perrin-Rogers and Hudson Clarence Holt were the two gentlemen who brought you here.”

Neither of those names meant anything to me. I repeated them in my head a few times, trying to attach a memory or a face to either one, but I came up empty.

“Can you prove I was sick?” I didn’t care if she knew that I doubted her. If I was a prisoner, I’d rather know now instead of being lured into complacency by pretty lies. There was a long pause on her end, and I worried my worst fears might be true. Then her voice came back on the intercom in that same unaffected voice.

“I can prove it, but it might be upsetting to you,” she said.

“It can’t be as upsetting as this,” I replied.

“Very well.”

A moment later, my door opened and a man in scrubs, gloves, and a full face shield entered, went over to a TV mounted on the wall, and turned it on.

“Brace yourself,” said the voice on the intercom.

The TV screen came to life, showing a young man in street clothes strapped to a gurney, similar to how I was currently restrained. He was writhing as if in extreme pain, his skin pale with nasty bruising on his neck, eyes cloudy. The movements of his limbs were jerky and uncoordinated; clearly he was losing control of his body. It looked as if he’d pissed himself as well.

“Who’s that?” I asked. The voice didn’t respond right away, so I kept watching. The man was shouting for something or someone. I didn’t know what he was saying because the sound was off, and I was sort of glad for it because the video was unsettling enough as it was. The man was definitely Rabid completely out of his mind. And then the camera zoomed in.

“Fuck, is that… me?” I asked, my breath going shallow as my heart started racing. I tugged at the restraints on my wrists as my fight-or-flight instinct took hold.

“Yes, Cipher, that was you five days ago, at intake.”

I could hardly believe it. On the screen, my jaw was slack with spit drooling over my lips, so much that it dripped onto my already wet shirt. My teeth were bared like an animal’s, mouth gaping as though trying to bite at the air. The bite on my neck–I could see it plain as day now–was an angry red and covered in yellowish slime. The veins around it were weirdly visible through my pale skin. I tried to reach up to feel it for myself, but the restraints prevented it. They must have bandaged my neck, which was for the best. I didn’t want to see it.

But the worst thing to witness was the crazed look in my eyes–desperate, wild, unrecognizable. Completely, utterly Rabid.

“What am I saying?” I asked the voice.

“You’re saying, hungry, ” she said.

Then it hit me, the not-so-distant memory of a hunger so all-consuming that it erased all rational thought or reason. No body, no mind, no sense of anything other than that insatiable, savage hunger.

“Okay, that’s enough,” I said. My stomach turned, and I worried I might be sick. I believed her that I’d been Rabid, still was, I guessed, but how did I end up this way? The nurse–or orderly, I wasn’t sure–clicked off the television and left the room in a soft swish of medical scrubs. I sat there in silence, replaying the video in my mind, trying to piece together the events that led to… that.

“I know it’s a lot to process, Cipher. You’ve experienced a lot of trauma in the past few days, mentally and physically. It’s important that you not concern yourself too much with the things that might upset you, but instead, try to rest and allow your body to heal.”

She stopped talking. I didn’t get the sense that she’d left, but that she was waiting for me to respond. I lay there in the hospital bed in a cold sweat, disoriented and alone. I couldn’t conjure the faces of my friends–Joshua Perrin-Rogers and Hudson Clarence Holt? Hopefully they were friends and not slavers. They wouldn’t betray me, would they?

“Will I get my memories back?” I asked the voice. I’d rather know what I was up against than be hit with a surprise later.

“Hard to say for certain. The virus affects every patient differently. The good news is, your friends brought you here as soon as the infection had taken over. That gives us reason to believe you’ll make a full recovery.”

“So, I’m going to live?”

“Your chances of survival at present are quite high.” She sounded proud, as if my continued existence was a personal achievement for her, which I supposed it was.

Drawing in a shaky breath, I tried to focus on the positives. I was no longer… that , and I was probably going to live. Good news, right?

Now, if only I could figure out who the fuck I was.