novelraw Chapter 200: For Now
Chapter 200: For Now
"You are very good at telling yourself things."
He flinched, a tiny wince almost hidden in the muscles around his eyes.
"I have work," he murmured, recovering his tone with effort. "I will explain everything, but not today." His gaze flicked to Luci, took in the mass and the breath and the sedative drag, then returned. "You will cooperate with Dr. Orhan."
The creature lifted its head.
Cooperate?
Apparently, that word didn’t mean what she thought it meant.
Sera’s jaw loosened so she could answer without grinding enamel into dust. "Will I."
"Yes." The word did not carry threat. It carried certainty, which landed worse. "You are safe here. That is more than I could promise you outside, given your condition."
"My condition."
Orhan resumed her checklist as if the emotional geometry at the glass were a film on a screen behind her. "We are wasting time. Baselines first. Then imaging. Then tissue."
"Tissue," Sera repeated, soft and almost curious, as if the syllables were an unfamiliar fruit.
"Scrapes," Dr. Orhan clarified. "Small amounts. Regenerative capacity studies. Pain response. Hematology. Endocrine mapping." She turned a page and tapped the next entry with her pen. "Reproductive profile."
The air in Sera’s chest cooled by another degree. "There it is."
Dr. Davis exhaled.
He did not disagree.
He did not adjust the language used.
He only watched her and tried to place himself in whatever part of her mind still matched the seven-year-old who had once asked him to explain why cicadas sleep for years and come out only to scream and die.
Luci’s ears flicked again. A low rumble rolled along his ribs and broke in a sigh. But still, he did not wake.
Sera kept her eyes on her father’s face and spoke as if discussing grocery lists. "If you wanted eggs, you could have knocked."
His eyes closed for a second. "This is not what you think."
"It is exactly what I think." She tested one palm against the plexiglass again. No seam. No weakness. No purchase. "You will take what you want. You will call it science. You will tell yourself you are saving the world."
She tilted her head the other way. "You seem to be very good at telling yourself things that make you sleep better at night."
"Enough." Dr. Orhan straightened the clipboard on her arm and reached for the keycard clipped to her pocket. "We have schedule and sedation windows to meet."
The creature in Sera’s blood rolled like an animal turning over on cold ground.
Not yet.
Not here.
Not with the dire wolf still caught under drugs and four men unaccounted for.
It laid its head back down but did not sleep.
Dr. Davis forced the talk back into the shape he preferred. "You will be treated with care. That is my condition."
He did not look at Orhan when he said it, which told Sera he did not actually believe he could enforce it. "No procedures begin without my consent on record."
Dr. Orhan did not honor the assertion with anything larger than a blink. "Of course."
"Your sense of ’of course’," Sera observed, "and his are not the same."
"Mine is the one that matters," Dr. Orhan replied. "Stand. Hands at your sides. Face the wall."
Sera did not stand. "You should invest in better manners if you want people to like you."
"We are not building a friendship," Dr. Orhan replied, sliding the keycard into the slot beside the door and waiting for the green glow that did not come.
Somewhere down the corridor, another lock failed to respond. She withdrew the card, wiped it once on the edge of her coat out of habit, and slid it again.
The green light blinked this time.
"We are building knowledge."
Dr. Davis watched Sera’s face as if it might hand him a translation his machines could not. "You will survive this."
She let the words pass between them and go brittle in the cold. "You keep using that word."
"What word."
"’You.’" She lifted her hand and touched the glass at the point closest to his sternum. "You do not mean me."
A beat passed. The kind that lives at the end of a rope.
Dr. Orhan gestured to the two guards at the far door, men in white with the posture of individuals who had learned how to make their bodies into walls.
They approached without hurry.
One carried cuffs.
The other carried a soft restraint loop designed to slip over wrists through a slot and cinch tight. The equipment looked clean and new, edges rounded so photographs later would not show bruises that juries dislike.
Sera rose in one smooth motion without offering either wrist.
The world tilted again, a whisper of drug still in her blood, then corrected. She rolled her shoulders as if easing a knot out from under a strap and let the creature shift weight with her so the moment looked like nothing.
"Face the wall," Dr. Orhan repeated, her voice flat with repetition more than threat.
Sera turned because she chose to, because there was no advantage in refusing here and every advantage in letting them believe obedience could be coached out of her like trick behavior.
She set her palms against the plexiglass at shoulder height and spread her fingers, counting grooves that were not there, listening to the hum that did not change when hands approached.
The restraint loop slid through the feed slot and settled around her wrists.
The cinch bit down with a dry whisper. She could have braced and broken the slot housing out of the frame, maybe, if the metal had been old, if the bolts had known winter, if she had already chosen to turn the room red.
But not yet. She had to wait until the perfect moment.
Dr. Davis, because Sera couldn’t even think about calling him ’dad’ ever again, stepped back so the guard could lock the feed slot again.
His jaw worked once, a small grind, a tic from years ago when traffic or weather had stacked an unplanned delay into a day he had over planned.
"We will talk this afternoon," he offered, as if the time were a meeting slot. "There are things you should hear from me."
She looked over her shoulder, eyes steady. "You brought me here to be harvested. We have already covered the important part."
This time, he didn’t flinch, the second wince he tried to bury in the corners of his face. "That is not..."
"Accurate?" She let the word dress itself in amusement. "It is exactly accurate."
Dr. Orhan had already turned away.
"Escort her to imaging," she instructed, checking boxes. "Order panel one. Baseline VO₂ max after. Then endocrine. Then ultrasound." The pen tapped twice. "Schedule first reproductive induction for seventy-two hours from now. Prepare for retrieval at one-forty-four hours pending response."
The creature uncoiled a breath and slid its edge along Sera’s spine, as intimate as a hand on the back of the neck.
It did not ask permission.
It did not promise mercy.
It only pressed the one truth that mattered against her bones: Soon.
Sera glanced once more at Luci.
His ears lifted a millimeter, then relaxed.
She touched two fingertips to the glass where his shoulder would be if the cages faced each other without the corridor between.
The gesture meant nothing to the camera. It meant everything to the part of her that had learned the weight and timetable of his breath.
Davis followed the guards and Orhan out into the corridor.
He stopped at the junction and looked back as if he had left a tool on a table.
His mouth opened and then closed.
Whatever sentence had tried to form there did not have the spine to stand up in this room. He turned away and let the door shut the last inch of sound between them.
The first guard’s hand settled on Sera’s elbow through the feed slot to guide the angle of her turn toward the door that would open when Orhan swiped the card at the far panel.
The motion was gentle enough to look like respect. The second guard watched her mouth in case it formed teeth.
Sera stepped when they moved her.
She counted out the distance from cell to imaging in paces so small no one would notice the cadence shift.
She marked the camera angles and the floor seam where the tile had been replaced in an imperfect rectangle. She listened to the power hum deepen a shade when they passed a bank of machines eating more current than lights require.
Behind her, the wolf slept on.
Ahead of her, the woman with the clipboard did not look back.
Somewhere in the white depth of the building, four men breathed.
Her father had told the truth that mattered in two words.
You’re not fine.
Fine.
The thought slid through her as smooth as a blade returning to a sheath.
She let her shoulders ease as if cooperating cost effort. She let her mouth soften into something almost thoughtful. She let the creature settle so completely in her bones that no one would have guessed it was awake.
They wanted her calm.
They would get what they wanted.
For now.