Challenged (Mates for the Raskarrans #8)

Chapter 3

CHAPTER THREE

Angie

I only have dreams of Screening when things in my life are bad, so I know the sense of foreboding I feel is more than just a memory from my six-year-old self. My heart pounds as I wait in line, my mother’s hand clenched around mine, crushing my little fingers. She’s perfectly presented, hair and clothes immaculate, make-up somehow contouring her face into an entirely different shape while also looking natural enough to fool a man into thinking she’s not wearing much. The black eye is healed enough now that it doesn’t show through the concealer even a little.

The other mums in front of and behind us are equally immaculate, though I don’t see any that I think are as beautiful as my mother. They’re all soft featured, their eyes and smiles empty. My mother’s face is proud, though she tries to keep her eyes soft, her lips un-pursed. She’s not very good at it, has never been very good at it.

It’s a trait I’ve inherited.

Bored by all the standing around - preceded by a morning of being poked and prodded, combed and scrubbed into submission - I fidget with the hem of my dress. A checkered number with puffy sleeves and lots of ruffles. My hair has been spritzed and sprayed and baked into ringlets, the ends of them tickling at my neck and shoulders. I feel like a poodle and I hate it.

“Angelita,” Mother hisses through gritted teeth, keeping her voice low so it doesn’t carry.

I drop the dress, square my shoulders, try to slip back into the visage of the dutiful daughter. Even as the reality of it scratches at every part of me. Back then, I still wanted to play my part.

We creep forwards, inching closer to the front of the line, my sense of foreboding increasing with every step we take. I shudder, and it takes me a moment to realise it’s not entirely apprehension causing it. Gooseflesh breaks out on my arms and I resist the urge to wrap them round me.

I’m cold.

Really fucking cold.

I look round, meaning to see if the other little girls in line are equally chilly, but they’re gone, vanished. It’s just me and Mother, standing together before the entrance, fat flakes of snow drifting to the ground around us. They don’t seem to affect her, even as they touch gently down on her face, her arms, her neck.

“Next!” a voice booms from inside.

We step through the door. The snow stops, but I don’t warm up. My teeth are chattering and that pervasive sense that something is wrong just grows stronger. I’m dreaming, but I’m aware of it. Just not aware of it enough to wake up, or recall what has me so wound up.

The Assessor sitting behind the desk is large, tall and broad shouldered, with features to match. Swollen, bulbous nose, bushy moustache, heavy brow with eyebrows like exotic caterpillars. He smacks his lips and chews on the end of his stylus as he considers the tablet in front of him. There’s a food stain on his tie, a bit of coffee foam congealing on one side of his moustache.

“Take a seat.”

He gestures towards an armchair for Mother, guiding me to a high stool. Measuring instruments are laid out on his desk, along with a spotlight and camera. He picks up a smooth, oval object, pressing it to the spot near the crook of my elbow where my ID Chip sits beneath the skin. It’s cold, despite the chill that’s already set in my skin. His smile is even colder.

He stares at me for the full three seconds it takes to complete its reading.

It feels like an eternity.

“Angelita Ramirez,” he says, as my name and my vitals, my grade history and whatever other information is programmed on my chip, flashes up on his tablet.

“You know why we a re here today,” he continues, no hint of a question in his tone. “Then let’s begin.”

I gasp as I wake. It feels like I’ve been underwater, like I’m sucking down air into oxygen starved lungs. My heart pounds so hard, my chest hurts, and my vision is narrow, blurry, the panic making my head light, woozy.

Breathe, just breathe.

I count my breaths in and out, closing my eyes against the outside world for a moment. Try to pull myself out of the fog of sleep and into reality. Recall what drama or deadline is causing me stress enough to trigger the familiar Screening anxiety dream.

Nothing rises to the surface of my mind, leaving me all the more uneasy and strangely disoriented. My bed doesn’t feel right underneath me. The chill in my dream has followed me into real life. A low thudding sets in at the base of my skull, radiating up through my brain.

I nearly groan. Clearly, I’m coming down with something, and I just do not have the time or energy to be ill right now. Not with so many proposals on my desk, so many projects to filter through.

Even as I think this, something in the back of my mind tickles at me, the sense of foreboding, of wrongness, ratcheting up again.

I need to get up, get a hot shower. Take some aspirin. Shake whatever the hell this is off.

I stretch my arms, then push myself upright, rolling my shoulders and neck before opening my eyes.

Except, what actually happens is my eyes blink open and nothing else moves. My whole body is frozen in place, my arms and legs barely registering in my awareness. Only the thundering of my heart makes me certain I still have a body beneath my neck at all. I just lie there, staring up at a dark ceiling overhead, the strip lighting dim as though running on backup power.

Not my bedroom. Not even my house.

Where the fuck am I?

My heart pounds even harder. I still can’t move anything except my eyelids, and I blink them rapidly, as if that little movement might encourage the rest of my body to wake the fuck up.

Then a face peers down at me. A young woman, blonde, pretty. Her eyes widen, and she glances back at someone else.

“Uh, I think she’s awake.”

Footsteps. Another person approaching. The chime of electronic buttons being pressed, and then a flood of warmth rushes over me. It should be pleasant, but I’m so cold it burns.

I try to open my mouth. My jaw moves, but the only sound that comes out is a low moan.

“Hey there, try to stay calm. I know it doesn’t feel like it right now, but you aren’t hurt. You’re going to be okay, I promise.”

The voice is brisk, no nonsense. Female, again. I try to look in the direction it came from, and my head twitches a little, just barely turning.

“It’s going to take a little while for movement to come back,” the voice continues. “Your body needs to finish warming up. You might feel some pins and needles, and it might get quite intense, but it will pass. It’s just your circulation restarting.”

It had stopped?

I think of that breath I took on waking, like I hadn’t taken one in a long time. The ache in my chest from my pounding heart - or perhaps from something else. Have I been resuscitated?

What… what the fuck has happened to me?

I’m breathing hard, my heart racing, the only way my panic can manifest while I’m still frozen. Some machinery starts beeping, loud and insistent and medical sounding, which does nothing to reassure me.

“Hey, try to slow your breathing down,” the no nonsense voice says. Footsteps rush to my side, and then she’s leaning over me, looking down into my eyes. If the buzz cut wasn’t giveaway enough, the size of her makes it obvious she’s military tier. At least six four, and filling out her clothes with pure muscle. I’ve only ever seen military tier people from a distance. Guarding events, patrolling political buildings. On TV. I’ve never spoken to one of them before. Her presence only adds to my confusion.

“That’s it. Just look at me and breathe. In two, three, four. Out two, three, four. Okay? Breathe with me.”

She lifts her hand towards her face and pushes it away again in time with her breaths, accentuating them for me. I follow her, and by the third or fourth breath, I feel a little more in control.

“I know this must be confusing and frightening for you,” she says, touching a hand to my arm. It scorches my cold skin. “But you’re safe here. You’re not hurt, no matter how much it might feel like you are right now. My name is Brooks, okay? I’m going to look after you through this process, and you’re going to be just fine.”

She keeps talking, a constant stream of reassurances and pleasantries as she taps on buttons on some computer just outside of my field of vision. I can hear the clack of keys pressing, hear electronic beeps. I try to turn my head and I’m rewarded with the tiniest bit of movement. Enough that I can see I’m lying in some sort of metal tube. Electronics run down the inside of it, pulsing with soft blue light.

“Wha…” I try to speak, but my lips feel fat, like I’ve been punched in the face. Little more than a puff of air escapes them.

“We’re going to get you comfortable first, then we’ll explain, okay?” Brooks says, reappearing in my field of vision.

I glare at her, or at least, I try to. I’m working on furrowing my brow when the pins and needles start. At first, it’s just a tingling in my extremities - fingers and toes, then up into my feet and hands. Then it’s like waves of hot agony all up my legs and arms.

Brooks’ hand grips my arm. “It will pass soon. First time coming out of cryo is always the worst. I’m sorry.”

I’m groaning, I realise, another involuntary sound escaping my mouth. I grit my teeth - against the pain, against the show of weakness - and my jaw actually responds. Surprise pushes out some of the pain, and I try wiggling my fingers and toes. I wouldn’t call what happens full wiggling, but there’s some definite twitching.

“That’s it,” Brooks says, smiling at me. “Good. Keep trying to move. It will make the discomfort end quicker.”

‘Discomfort’ is not the word I would use to describe this.

But then, just as it started on a rising wave, the pain starts to crest and ease back down. A few tingles remain, but they’re ignorable. I try to move my arm and it flails. Brooks catches it, reflexes as sharp as I would expect from someone in her tier, before my hand connects with her face.

“Easy,” Brooks says, grinning. “You’re going to feel a little like a rag doll at first. Think small movements. Get those fingers wiggling, then start with your wrists.” She pats the side of the metal tube I’m lying in. “Watch yourself on the pod.”

I do as she says, wriggling my fingers and toes again, before rotating my wrists and ankles.

“What… happened…” I try talking again. My tongue is thick and slow, but the sounds are recognisable as words.

Brooks gives me a look of alarming sympathy.

“I’m going to help you sit up now.” She slides a hand under my shoulders. “This will probably make you a little dizzy. Maybe even nauseous. That’s all normal.”

Then I’m being lifted. My head spins, my eyes struggling to focus as the world around me shifts. My gorge rises, but I swallow it down, pinching my eyes shut until my stomach settles, breathing as slowly as I can manage.

Brooks rubs my back. It shouldn’t be comforting, but it is. She has big hands and they’re still a hell of a lot warmer than I am.

“Going to puke?” she asks.

Shaking my head makes the whole room spin, but I push through it. “No.”

“Did you have to go through all this when you woke up?” The pretty blonde sounds horrified.

“The first time, yeah,” Brooks says. “But your body gets used to it after a while. Part of our training was to get used to it.”

The blonde makes a sound that’s half sympathy, half disgust. I can’t imagine ever getting used to this. Whatever this is.

I move my hand, groping for the edge of the pod. When I find it, I grip it, putting some weight through my arm. It holds, the last of the tingles fading away. My legs don’t quite feel awake yet, but I roll my shoulders, rotate my torso a little. Feel my way back into my upper body.

“That’s perfect, small movements,” Brooks says. “You look like you’ve done this before.”

“What exactly is this?” I say, the weight of apprehension that’s lingered from my dream settling on my shoulders once more.

“What’s your name?” Brooks asks.

“Angie,” I say, before it occurs to me that lying might be a good idea.

“Okay, Angie. What’s the last thing you can remember?”

My dream rises up in my mind, the Assessor looming over six-year-old me as he read my chip. But that was a long time ago. When I try to think of something more immediate, things are blurry. Incoherent.

“I…” Fear makes my throat grow tight. Why can’t I remember?

“It’s okay,” Brooks says, her hand finding mine. “I was expecting maybe you’d have some memory problems. It’s a side effect.”

“A side effect of what?”

She hesitates a moment, her expression going gentle. “Look, I don’t know who you are, what level of education you have. I’ll do my best to explain, but ask me questions any time if I’m not making sense, okay?”

Question number one: Why is she explaining anything to me when clearly I should be under the care of a doctor? But I say nothing, just wait for her to talk.

“You’ve been in cryostasis, Angie.”

I blink. I don’t know what I was expecting to come out of her mouth, but that definitely wasn’t it. It’s bullshit, of course. We don’t have that level of tech yet. I would know if we did, I read every damn proposal that lands on Baxter’s desk, I…

A memory hits me like a punch. Andreas fucking Baxter - spitting mad, impeccable suit all dishevelled, yelling at me. His voice echoes in my ears.

You’ll pay for this, you little bitch. I will make you pay.

His outrage made me smile then. It almost makes me smile now.

“Does that make sense?” Brooks says, snapping me back into the present moment.

“What?”

Her expression is infinitely patient. “Cryostasis. It’s a…”

“I know what cryostasis is. I know we have teams within science tier looking into it. I also know that none of them have been successful yet. So why don’t you try again with the truth this time?”

Brooks blinks, eyes widening with surprise. “Uh, I’m not lying to you, Angie.”

She continues talking, probably trying to come up with some bullshit explanation, but my mind is firing on all cylinders now, that memory of Baxter dislodging the last of the brain fog.

I pissed him off. He vowed to make me pay. I didn’t take him seriously.

Apparently I should have.

What did you do to me, Baxter? What the fuck did you do?

Brooks is still yapping, so I have a look around, first at the pod I’m sitting in, then the environment around me. The pod is a work of art, high-tech looking, but not so high tech that it looks like a piece of science fantasy. It hums and whirs with electronic energy, something like steam rising out of it around me. There’s monitoring equipment attached to my legs, my arms, my chest that I hadn’t noticed before, and I rip them off now, causing the incessant beeping to stop. Some functionality as well, then. Just to add to the illusion.

The room around me is dingy. There are two other women besides Brooks - the pretty blonde, and a dark-haired woman. Both of them are quite obviously pregnant. I can see at least five more pods, but unlike mine, they’re closed, vertical. In the closest one, a female face is visible through a small window at the front of it. A shudder goes through me. It’s all a little too well done.

Why would someone so convincingly fake…

It hits me before I even finish the thought. Doctor Novak. This reeks of Doctor Novak and his creepy as fuck social experiments. That weirdo loves to dump people in wild fictional scenarios and see what they do. And for reasons I haven’t figured out yet, Mercenia's big wigs just fucking love to give him funding to do it.

“What’s the scenario?” I say, ignoring whatever Brooks is babbling on about now.

“Umm?” she says, clearly floundering.

“No, go on, tell me. I’m curious. What’s the scenario? Frozen for a thousand years, it’s a post apocalyptic wasteland out there? Last survivors of the human race, but we have to stay indoors in this closed environment because of what, radiation? Deadly super virus? Brain eating zombies?”

Brooks frowns and, damn, she’s a good actress, because she looks utterly confused. “Angie, I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“Of course you don’t,” I say. “I suppose you aren’t prepared for this. Doctor Novak’s stuff only works because the people he’s running the experiments on don’t know they’re in an experiment, right? Well, I don’t know who you think I am, who you were told I am, but I’m not supposed to be here, okay? I’m not a suitable candidate for this, because I’m aware of Novak’s work. So you can stop trying to convince me this is real and skip straight to removing me from this little experiment and sending me back home.”

The silence that rings out after my words is vast.

“Do we know who Doctor Novak is?” Brooks says, looking at the other two.

“No,” the dark-haired woman responds, the blonde shaking her head.

Their confusion is very convincing.

I don’t like that it’s very convincing.

After a moment, the dark-haired woman steps forward.

“Angie, I don’t know what you think is happening here, but I’m afraid you’re wrong. You can’t go home. Even if you could, it wouldn’t be the home you left. You’ve been frozen in that pod for nineteen years. While you were frozen, you were brought out here by a science tier team. For some reason, we’re not sure why, the base was abandoned by the team. You and all these other women were left behind. We found you, and we’ve been looking after you ever since. Guarding the base to keep you safe, trying to figure out a way to wake you up. And that won’t stop now you’re awake. We’re going to help you through this, and you’re going to be okay.”

There’s a lot to unpick in all of that, but one question jumps to the front of my tongue.

“Where’s here?”

The dark-haired woman hesitates a moment. “An alien planet.”

That line, delivered with such awkwardness, is just too much.

I can’t help it.

I burst out laughing.