Aogami Shin

The sound of the alarms echoed through the lab like a metallic roar, hurting the ears of everyone present.

Elizabeth opened her eyes inside her dark prison, feeling the vibration of the noise go through the gurney where she was strapped down. She had just awakened from another dream. She had dreamed of something sad. She remembered seeing two graves before her, and she must have been an adult. A memory of her adulthood. But before she could read who they were, the alarms had sounded and she woke up startled.

For a moment, she thought it was another experiment, another attempt to break her, to push her resistance to a new limit.

But then, she heard the explosions and gunshots approaching.

The rumbling shook the floor.

Voices filled the corridors, orders shouted with urgency, desperation, rage. She heard dry, terror-tinged voices vociferating all over the place. Distant voices came to her. Orders to burn the important papers. Orders to destroy the instruments and the recent results. She felt footsteps running near her. Tripping, falling. Sounds of heavy shoes rushing past. Then another order.

Get rid of the test subjects.

Nearby gunshots came next.

No, these were not tests. They weren't scientists testing their ability to heal. It was something else. Something that had sent everyone running and in fear.

Elizabeth felt her breathing quicken. Her legs felt wet. She had wet herself in the night because of the cold in her legs and, sure enough, that thing they called a urethral catheter had come out of her . But that didn't matter to her at that moment. Something was happening in that place.

Shouting. Rushing footsteps.

The sound of a body falling to the ground and then getting up while running.

Then, silence. A tense, restrained silence, like an animal crouching before pouncing on its prey.

And then, someone entered the room.

She did not see him. She couldn't. But she felt it. The air grew thicker, more dangerous.

Slow, careful footsteps approached her.

Elizabeth didn't move. She knew there was no point in resisting, not in her current state. She was still manacled, with the muzzle clamped over her mouth. Almost as if what she had been tied to for so long had become extensions of her body as well.

The footsteps stopped and the man spoke. "It's a shame, having to get rid of such valuable subjects."

For a second, all was silent. A shiver ran through Elizabeth.

Then, the chill of a gun touched her skin.

She felt the barrel of a gun pressed against her temple.

The man whispered something in a language she did not understand. His voice was tense, controlled, but inside there was something dark, resignation.

He was going to kill her. Not to save her, not to free her. To make sure no one else could take her. Elizabeth closed her eyes. Absurd, considering that she could not see at all.

Maybe this meant the end. The experiments would end. The torture would end. No more torture. No more hands groping her. No more cruelty.

It was at that moment that tears began to fall from her eyes. That was it? That was how her life would end? At that moment, where everything seemed to come to an end, she found herself crying. But not of resignation. It was bitterness. She didn't want to die. She should not die.

There was something she had to do. A promise.

To whom had she made that promise? Or where? Why, at that precise moment, did she have that feeling?

"Thus, I surrender myself to you; all that I am is yours, just as all that is yours shall be ours."

That phrase, spoken by several voices in unison, overlapping, hit her like a bucket of cold water. Her heart was pounding wildly. She must not die. She had to live. Even if it seemed impossible. She had to go on.

I want to live! That thought filled her whole being and, with a strength she thought was gone, she tried to clench her teeth so hard that her jaw dislocated. That had been due to trying to force the mechanism of that monstrous muzzle. But she didn't care about the pain. She wanted to live. That was the only thing that filled her mind.

And then, a gunshot echoed in the room.

But it wasn't the man aiming for her temple.

The sound of a body falling. A last gasp of surprise.

Then, more voices, more footsteps entering the room.

"Is she dead?" Asked a female voice in English.

"No, I caught him just right," replied a man in a strange, deep American English. Elizabeth gasped at the sound of that voice. She could have sworn she had never heard it before, but on the other hand she felt a pang in her chest at the sound.

More voices had joined in. Some in English, some in German, but they all spoke as if they understood each other perfectly. Unlike the deep voice, which seemed closer, all the others spoke farther away. From what Elizabeth had seen, on those occasions when her eyes had been wiped, the huge room had the exit located almost seven meters away. So those voices must have all spoken from the exit.

One man spoke in German. "That bastard tried to kill her before we found her."

"And what did you expect? He knew what she can do," someone replied in a British English that made Elizabeth nostalgic. She felt it had been a long time since she'd heard the accent that it was not in her dreams.

"Take those things off and let's get her out," replied the woman who had spoken first.

"You know very well it's not that simple. Look at her. Look at her head. Someone put those devices on her for a reason, they're keeping her different from the other prisoners," someone replied.

Elizabeth listened to everything in her prison of darkness.

She listened to the discussions, the mixture of horror and caution in their voices.

Some wanted to help her.

Others were afraid of what she was.

No one dared to make a decision.

Until the shooter spoke.

The atmosphere changed immediately. The tension, the indecision, the fear in the voices of the others. All that disappeared when he spoke.

"Out." His voice was firm, no room for argument.

"What? But..." a male voice in French had spoken.

"Out. Now! Move your asses outside. All of you. Let's go! Let's go! Take care of salvaging what you can. We don't have more than twenty minutes. We have to leave in ten at the most."

The narrative has been taken without authorization; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident. There was a moment's hesitation, but then there was only the sound of boots walking away. Elizabeth sensed something different in the air.

He was not afraid. She felt his footsteps approaching her. Despite the warnings of the others, he didn't stop.

She could sense him right beside her.

A right hand came up to her face and touched her head where the short hair was just growing. It had been a couple of months since the last time she had been shaved. It wasn't the rough movement she was used to. It was simply almost like a caress.

For an instant, there was hesitation.

And then, unlocking the locks at the nape of her neck, he removed the bandage and uncovered her eyes.

Pain.

The world exploded in light.

Elizabeth closed her eyes tightly, feeling a deep burning in her retinas. She had spent too long in the dark.

She blinked, letting her eyes slowly get used to it.

And then, she saw him.

He was a young man, with a sharp face, and a hard expression. He was very tall and had messy hair.

His eyes had two colors. One left eye was amber yellow, while the right had a cerulean color, almost as if he were blind. No. On closer examination, he was blind.

He was wearing boots, black trousers with suspenders and a gray shirt that had stains of other people's blood splattered here and there.

His left hand still held the gun he had used.

But what struck her most was not his appearance.

It was the feeling.

Something in her mind crackled, a memory buried too deep to surface clearly.

She knew him. She didn't know how, she didn't know from where. But she knew him.

A tremor ran through her body. And before she knew it, tears began to fall down her face again. The man looked at her silently for a moment, then bowed his head slightly. He was almost surprised himself. He was looking into her eyes. Then, as if coming out of a trance, he spoke. "Can you understand me?" He said it in German.

Elizabeth nodded slowly.

"And in English?"

She nodded again.

He watched her a second longer, as if sizing her up. Then he looked down at the muzzle.

"I'm going to take this thing off you now. Are you ready? It's going to hurt like hell."

She nodded. In the adrenaline of the last few moments she had forgotten that she had dislocated her jaw. But now it felt like it did before. Surely her body had reacted to it without her realizing it. On the other hand she was pretty sure that any pain compared to what she had already been through was more than enough experience of hell, if that existed.

The release was more difficult than it seemed.

The devices inserted into her skull were delicate, and her body was so weak she could barely move.

When he finally removed the muzzle, a sharp pain shot through her jaw.

She had spent so long trapped in that leather and metal prison that her mouth itself had been deformed, forced into an unnatural position during those two years.

Elizabeth sobbed in pain, feeling her body shake uncontrollably. He said nothing and with uncanny precision released her from her bonds. Almost as if with some instruments he cut the metal and leather that kept her tied to the stretcher, and then the same with the other ties on her legs. Her body was sliding off the bed. Then he simply leaned over and held her as her body began to fall.

By instinct, she clung to him. She didn't understand why. She didn't understand anything. Only that at that moment, after years of suffering, her body acted on its own. She sank into his arms and cried.

She couldn't explain why, but a part of her body felt as if she really felt familiar with those arms and hands. The only reason she had calmed down when she saw him was that feeling. She couldn't explain what it was. But she felt that there was something strange about him. It could well be that she had simply taken him as her savior, or that he was the first person in two years who had shown her something other than rudeness or cruelty.

Something more human.

Human? Elizabeth then looked at his ears.

Pointy ears.

And then she put her hands to her own ears. It was the first time in all that time that she had touched her head. She could feel her cheekbones and her arms were almost so thin that she could see the veins as if her skin were transparent. But in her inspection she detected something on her head.

Pointy ears.

She had them too. Although the man's seemed somewhat smaller compared to hers. The memories she had as a child had always seen her parents as normal. So? Those ears? What did they mean?

Mermaids.

Those scientists and doctors had talked about something called feys and had referred to her and others as her. She was a mermaid? She could breathe underwater.

What am I?

She remembered her parents' conversations. Disjointed fragments, but sometimes sharing a thread.

A world hidden from the eyes of others.

Visions came to her of herself as an adult studying old books and ancient treatises. Encounters. Disencounters. Yes, there was no doubt about it. Her parents and she herself had been in contact with another world different from the everyday world.

The man spoke and brought her out of her musings. "My name is Aogami. Aogami Shin."

Elizabeth tried to speak, but her mouth felt sore. Although since he had removed her muzzle she was feeling an itching and burning all over her mouth that she knew well. Again, the regeneration. The man pulled a blanket from a nearby pile near the gurney and covered her with it. Elizabeth had looked at herself, she was covered by a hospital gown that smelled bad, but it wasn't dirty. She had been changed the day before, but the fact that she had wet herself made her feel uneasy. The man named Aogami Shin didn't seem to mind. Then, without another word, he carried her in his arms. When they left the room, the scene that greeted her was a vision of chaos. Her eyes still burned from the brightness, but the image was that of a battlefield.

Bodies of soldiers and doctors lay on the floor of a long corridor, some with their eyes open in death, others turned into unrecognizable masses of flesh and blood.

Bullet shells glittered on the ground.

The air was thick with gunpowder and ash.

There were many men and women standing around carrying papers and boxes. Many stopped and looked at them, but said nothing and went on with their task. Elizabeth watched the horror without understanding, without being able to fully process it. There were others helping other people wearing gowns similar to hers. Of other ages, but almost all with pointed ears, others smaller in size resembling children, but who belied the latter with their adult faces. She had heard in the past conversations that there were more there. Feys, dwarves, hobbits.

That idea popped into her mind like a memory from the past. Something she had seen in a dream from her past.

The man advanced with firm steps, holding her carefully, as if he feared that the slightest movement could make her fade away. Elizabeth could barely feel her own body, the rough blanket wrapped around her was the only thing separating her from the cold of the maze of corridors. All around her, the corridor stretched like an endless tunnel, a corridor of shadows and distant echoes. There were voices, orders shouted in languages she didn't quite understand, the sound of boots hitting the floor, the clatter of something collapsing in the distance. But the man would not stop. He went up one endless staircase, then another, then more hallways, each narrower and more suffocating than the last.

"Are the transports ready?" the man shouted, turning backwards.

"Yes! the others have already gone up! You go with that girl too! We're coming!" shouted a voice from below.

"Good!"

A few more meters of steps and a wide-mouthed tunnel. Then, the light.

Elizabeth squinted, unable to process the sudden brightness after so long in the gloom. She couldn't remember the last time she had seen the sun, but she knew it was the sun. The daylight enveloped her, warm but unreal, as if it belonged to another world. The fresh air brushed her skin, so different from the thick, liquid-smelling hospital air she had breathed for two long years. She tried to sit up, but her body was dead weight. She could only stare, eyes still glazed, at the organized chaos around her: people who looked like soldiers moving efficiently, staggering people being helped onto trucks, boxes of papers being loaded in a hurry. Shouts, engines starting up, orders thrown to the wind. Everything was moving too fast, but Elizabeth only cared about the sky.

She breathed in deeply, as if with each breath she could tear the smell of the prison from inside her. Her whole being trembled, between disbelief and fatigue, even though she had only been awake for a few minutes. She was still there, held in the arms of a stranger, and yet, for the first time in years, she did not feel the weight of the chains that had bound her around her. She breathed without fear. With trembling hands, she clung a little tighter to the blanket and the man gray shirt, searching for something tangible in the midst of that surge of sensations.

Then, for the first time, she looked up and saw the face of the man carrying her in the daylight. His expression was still hard, there seemed to be no emotion, but there was something different in his eyes: a silent sadness. Seeing her conscious, he gave her a slightly forced smile, as if he was having trouble moving his muscles, but spoke to her in a calm tone, without hesitation. "We're going to take care of you, don't worry."

Elizabeth looked at him a moment longer, trying to find in his face the answer to a question she had not yet asked. But for now, that didn't matter. For now, there was only the wind, the light, and the taste of the open air in her mouth.

When she looked at the face of the man holding her, she understood only one thing. A feeling that had no basis, but she knew it was so.

Her torment was over.

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