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Time passes and winds together to noose the present day, and Rope in all her attempts at escape is doomed to inevitable mistakes. Leaving behind the breathing mines of Rim Billiton, leaping over her burned bridges to the crowded streets of Great Lungmen. In search of, under all it’s rain, a back alley doctor of no uncertain infamy. An attempt at survival she couldn’t rightly explain. Hoping for a cure, hoping for medication, hoping the pain of oripathy will let up for just a day, just a few hours enough to contest only with the usual nightmares of sleeplessness. Hoping she can afford it. Hoping and hoping until she’s picking dried blood out of her hair in the corners of a holding cell. Amidst the concrete and screaming everything starts to unfocus, losing her mind at the name they use for her, the yelling down the halls, slamming doors, stale air lack of privacy can’t sleep can’t eat can’t cry no release until.
She’s purchased, by some feline in an off-white coat. She’s ushered on shaky legs to a transport, in relative privacy. They give her food. They give her water. Some of it stays down. Life feels like watercolour in a thunderstorm, less and less. The hum of the truck, the feeling of it’s wheels at speed across uneven pavement. The blanket over her shoulders and the softness of the fabric, freshly laundered. The little details of the moment building and building together until she feels in some sense present. There’s a couple others along for the ride. A white haired stranger asleep in their seat, hood pulled down over their eyes. A lupo hidden under a red coat face pressed against the window staring at the buildings passing by. Rope wonders numbly where they’re going, why they’re going. The truck soon glides to a stop and she’s led through door and hall again and again by the feline from before. She speaks tersely but uses pleases and thank yous, and trades hellos with people they pass. She leads Rope to an office, and tells her to go in and take a seat before checking her watch and heading off. Rope does as she is told.
Rope stares blankly at the Liberi woman dressed to the nines. She’s wearing name brands, a month of rent between her hat and coat alone. Lipstick and eyeliner no doubt a handful of meals, beneath the desk a dress priced out in 30 day supplies of medication and shoes that tap to the rhythm of a paycheck you dare not even dream about. And Rope smiles all the same as she’s running numbers and feeling comically out-of-place and looking for an excuse to make a break for the door. Wondering why she’s here, what she’s in for. The Liberi is flipping through paperwork, a couple sheets of which Rope was made to fill out, twirling a gaudy pen between her fingers. A pint sized Cautus with an eyepatch sits on the floor behind the desk, smashing crayon smudges on paper. She seems out of it, but at least having fun.
“Terribly sorry for this mess, Darling.” The Liberi, Orchid says the nameplate on her desk, shuffles together the paperwork with a sigh. “Usually we prefer to have new prospects stop in at medical but the circumstances of your, shall we say, Hiring were a bit…” She tilts her head, searching for a word, and Rope feels a pit in her muddy stomach. She doesn’t even know what the fuck this place is, fresh out of a Lungmen jail fully ready to be disappeared. Mentally still curled in to a ball as black rot eats up her guts. Was she committed? It wouldn’t be the first time. Is this an asylum, is she a guinea pig? Is this quarantine, or just another jail with a nicer paint job and more women guards. Rope wants to yell or scream, to run now that she’s not in cuffs, now that the doors don’t lock. She plotted the route on her way in, slapdash as it is, out of here. Quick turn out the door down the hall and the rest is history if she can make it to the tarmac. If things go south there’s extensive ductwork that looks easy to access. But all that slurry in her head and she’s still smiling as the Liberi says,
“Out of the ordinary. Though I suppose not much here would pass for ‘ordinary’.” She tosses up a pair of air quotes, and rubs the bridge of her nose. The one-eyed kid in the corner pads her way over, and hands the drawing to Orchid.
“Popukar wants to make tea.” There’s uncertainty in her quiet voice, as she speaks of herself in the third person. Orchid graciously accepts the drawing, and compliments her use of colour.
“Say darling, how does a spot of tea sound to you?” She glances at Rope to underhand her the question, but turns back to Popukar. Patting her on the head and straightening her lopsided cap.
“Uh, haha.” Rope considers the option, biting at dead skin on her lip. Her voice cracks as it comes out. Tea does sound good, but it’s an open drink. What if they slip her something? If the kid brews it it’s probably fine. Will she even be able to keep it down if she drinks it? She’s still thirsty. She should try at least, but what sticks to her ribs has been a bit of a coin flip lately. And depending on the dynamics of this place, maybe she’s expected to say no? “Is it free?”
“Er, Pardon?” Orchid raises an eyebrow, straightening in her chair. Rope smiles and digs chipped nails into her leg under the table to keep the stress off her face. She laughs like she was telling a joke.
“Cause I ain’t got change on me.” She laughs again, and lets the smile she’s practiced show in her eyes.
“Oh perish the thought darling, you need not trouble yourself with finances while here.” Orchid waves a hand through the air as though to brush away a stale breeze. Not to worry, she says, making Rope worry.
Before long Popukar returns with two sturdy looking mugs on a tray.
“Popukar made tea.” She announces, smiling a little as she very carefully places each mug on the desk.
“You’ve done a wonderful job darling, thank you.” Orchid pats her head again, and the kid is off to smear more crayons together. Rope finds her angle, and headstarts the conversation in the hope of guiding it toward some answers without letting on how little she knows of what’s going on.
“Cute kid, she yours?” Rope gestures with her teacup, not taking a sip until she sees Orchid do the same.
“Yes I suppose she is,” Orchid laughs leaning back in her chair, “Though only recently has she come in to my care, we’re quite inseparable now.” From just behind orchid the kid pipes up,
“Popukar doesn’t like to be alone.”
“You won’t be darling, it’s alright.” Orchid’s expression is briefly complex, before she straightens out her wrinkles with a drink of tea. “But enough about me, tell me about yourself, you’re a bit of a mystery at the moment and it’s my job to help clear that up before sending you off.”
She’s too quick to get back on track, but from that one question Rope got her to answer she at least seems to have a kid, and maybe a conscience. Though cops have kids and killers can do the dishes. Rope laughs,
“Ain’t much to say really, I’m an open book but my pages are blank you know. What you see on the cover’s what you get.” Rope sips her tea now that it’s cooled, and can feel her stomach start thinking about closing shop. “Besides, that stack of papers you got there probably says it all.” Rope baits the hook. Really she doesn’t know what those papers say. Probably it’s her arrest record, some statement that got beat out of her, medical charts humiliatingly out of date yet gospel to any doctor that looks her up and down.
“Well,” Orchid sets her mug down, staring long and hard at the paperwork, folding her arms in thought “The information here is, shall we say, impersonal. Ultimately useless to us as it seems to be an account less of your own experiences and more a telling of the…” She trails off for a moment, circling a hand in the air to conduct her train of thought, “…Circumstances of your birth, of which you had little to no control over.” She sighs, and smiles, “Not exactly the best way to get to know someone, wouldn’t you say?”
Rope blinks. Reminds herself as promising as that lengthy lead-in might seem, fact of the matter is she’s still used goods these people paid for. Who knows what they might do if they feel they aren’t getting their moneys worth. In that respect, maybe this isn’t as alien a situation as she thought.
“Well, I’m good with my hands and pretty quick on my feet.” She smiles, “Like it says on the tin, I know a thing or two about ropes and knots. Any more than that though, I uh,” She laughs, glances at Popukar and back to Orchid, “I probably shouldn’t talk about around a kid.”
Orchid takes a slow breath and sighs, unable to look Rope in the eye for a moment.
“I understand…” She re-situates in her seat, suddenly aware of how uncomfortable she is. “At the very least, I hope you find Rhodes Island to your liking.” She offers up a smile of her own, one Rope recognizes as genuine.
After that Rope’s led through the corridors of Rhodes Island, and is left sitting alone in what is unmistakably a doctors office. Wondering if all doctors offices everywhere come from the same mail-order magazine. If there’s some annual doctor conference where they all decide to decorate their offices with the same tacky posters about the dangers of originium or smoking or unprotected sex. She pointedly doesn’t sit on the exam table, and rolls her eyes. Doesn’t seem to be any cameras in the room, visible at least. She’s pondering checking the drawers for anything useful when the door opens and in shuffles a woman nearly asleep on her feet. Dr. Silence, reads the name-tag. She’s straight to business, doesn’t make an attempt at conversation. She has in hand a tablet, which she pays more attention than Rope. She props it on a stand by the counter sink, washing her hands and still squinting at it’s screen as she gloves up. Finally she looks at Rope, and frowns, turning to glare at the tablet again.
“That bad, huh?” Rope can’t help herself, making a not-joke joke.
“Yes. The records kept by the Lower Lungmen Penitentiary seem to have left out a significant number of important details.”
“Imagine that.” Rope sighs, crossing arms and closing off. To which the doctor does not reply. Instead she wears her frustration on her sleeve, pulling off gloves and picking up the tablet to see her frown reflected in the screen. She shuffles through a couple drawers, pulls out a set of cups and passes them to rope.
“The bathroom is down the hall.” She’s scribbling something in the digital margins, “Come back when you’re done. And please wash your hands.” Her final words chase Rope out of the room with a particularly accusatory tone.
This would be the perfect opportunity to split, unsupervised, empty halls. Slip through the cracks. Especially considering whatever test they have her taking, she’s certain she’ll fail. But staring at the girl in the mirror, unwashed and underfed. Bones aching and cold and her guts curdling. What next? She makes it back to the streets of Lungmen, assuming that’s even where she is still. Then what? The mirror shows her the corpse she’s stuck in, heavy set eyes and skin with a film of sweat and stink and all the little landmarks carved in to this battlefield. She takes a deep breath and feels miles away, like the stranger in the reflection is blinking out of time.
She pisses in to the cup and drags her body back to the doctor. She’s weighed, measured. Blood is drawn and a spit swab taken. She stares out the passenger side window of her body, at the nothing a thousand yards away. But never forgets to fake her smile as she answers the Doctor’s lengthening list of questions.
“How often would you say you smoke.”
“I don’t know. When I can.”
“How much alcohol do you drink in a week?”
“A couple drinks a night I guess…”
“Hm. Are you sexually active?”
“Yeah.”
“I see. How often do you come in to contact with Originium.”
“I was born in a mining town, so…”
And on and on, until Dr. Silence lets out a sigh. She sets down the tablet and rubs at the bridge of her nose.
“We won’t know for certain the full extent of the damage done to your body until your results come back, but you are in extremely poor health.” She adjusts her glasses and crosses her arms, “Most of which could have been avoided if you simply went to see a doctor, rather than letting it get out of control. Now that you are with Rhodes Island I do hope you’ll start to take better care of yourself.”