She woke up chained to a table. The light bulb hanging above her head glowed and fear was etched into her features. Above the hanging light bulb, wires ran rampant across the ceiling. Trying to get up she was rooted into a laying down position. Her wrists and ankles were cuffed with metal shackles.
Panic began consuming her and pulses of energy surrounded her hands and wrists. The shackles melted off. Getting up, she breathed a sigh of relief as she rubbed her wrists and saw that she was clothed in jeans and a t-shirt.
In front of her were heaps of dirty clothing in front of an unused washer and dryer. Shaking her head, she didn't understand how she was restrained to such a high tech table, and yet she was in a standard American middle class family basement. 'Maybe not standard,' she thought to herself as she looked at the dirty piles of clothing with disgust.
She walked to the stairwell that was next to the table. Lifting an eyebrow, she thought better of ascending the steps and looked for another alternative. Nothing. The stairwell was her only option in the concrete floored basement.
Hesitating, she took a deep breath and slowly counted backwards from ten. As she ascended the staircase, anxiety grew in the pit of her stomach. Something was clearly not right. There was no telling what to expect but she knew staying in the basement wasn't an option.
At the top of the stairs, she placed her hand around the doorknob and gulped. Opening the door, she stepped out into a white walled hallway. There were pictures aligning the walls of bald woman in white shifts and circuitry attached to their heads and bodies. Her mind spun, trying to take this.
Using her hand to lean on the wall, as she passed the pictures, she walked into an open kitchen. This new information still didn't make any sense to her. A few man were already gathered around a table, playing a card came. Judging from the chips and card piles, she assumed they were playing poker. One of the men folded his hand of cards on the table and looked at her.
“Glad to see you made it this far, Lila,” he said calmly as the other men turned around to look at her.
“What do you mean?” Lila asked.
“None of our cyborgs make it this far,” the man answered as if he was speaking to a child. “You're our greatest improvement.”
“I-I'm a cyborg?” she asked in disbelief.
“Yes. You're number 247 in our series. The only one we tried to develop psychic powers with. You're a remarkable success but we have to put you on injections so you can control your powers for the time being.”
Lila processed this new information. Confusion swept her mind as she wanted to trust this man, but at the same time something was telling her not to. She searched around the room with her eyes, sizing up each man she laid eyes upon trying to remember something. Flashes of memories played before her. One where she was kidnapped by the man that spoke to her and forced to undergo a surgery she didn't want. As the new information was piecing itself inside her mind, her eyes widened and the man sprang up and grabbed her. As Lila struggled, the man pulled out a syringe containing a muddy brown liquid. He injected it into her neck and dashed back to his seat.
Immediately, she began to feel a tugging sensation at her chest and Lila fell to the floor on her hands and knees. Clutching her chest, she didn't understand. She couldn't. Everything was starting to blur. Inside her body, it felt like she was being eaten alive. Through her tear-stained eyes she tried to look at the man who did this to her.
“Why?” she pleaded.
“You're too much of a success,” the man said. “We want a cyborg we can control, not one who can outmaneuver us. We want someone a bit more passive than you but still strong enough to take our orders.”
Looking around at each man as they nodded their heads, she was disgusted. Among the pain she was feeling, she forced herself to look at the man that injected her.
“You're all sick and evil,” she shouted with her remaining strength.
She wanted desperately to get out of there. To be away, from these sick men that did nothing as she wallowed in agony was a goal she would never reach. Before Lila could do anything more, she rapidly transformed into a liquid mess on the floor.
