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Chapter 55
The X-ray machine’s steady drone created a disorienting pattern, with each heartbeat sounding like a drill as it passed through Amelia’s skull. She struggled to remain motionless on the constricted bed, closing her eyes in a senseless attempt to block out the disorganized chorus assaulting her senses. She forced herself to look in the center, her teeth chattering against the confusing din. The primary method is these tests.
But even as the silent incantation reverberated across her mind, she sensed an unlucky force lurking just beyond her awareness. A menacing presence that crept through the shadows, taunting her with innately painful flare-ups that endangered her fragile hold on reality. Philip’s rough, warm palm grounded her in the middle of the discordant clamor. With a quiver of pain, she pressed back and begged him in silence to tie her up against the growing wave of hysteria that moved to remove her. “Just breathe, love,” he muttered, bringing some relief from the annoying din.
“At this moment, I’m here. In this, you’re in excellent company.” Despite the ghostly entanglements gnawing at her wounded mind, Amelia managed a meek nod, clinging to the solidity of his presence. The separation was abrupt; one moment they were enclosed in this sterile, mechanical refuge, and the next they were helplessly whirling into a kaleidoscope of ominous darkness fear.
A fresh memory section emerged unexpectedly, bringing with it the chilly, cloying sting of rotting, musty metal, and a seismic wave rippled through her little edge. Spooky dreams assumed shocking shape, and she could almost taste the old, underground air burning the back of her throat. Tied to the wagon, scoured into crude, seeping wounds on her wrists by rough, gritty limitations that rendered her immobile. Like monitoring sentinels, the shadows seemed to pulsate and undulate in time with the hammering machinery, creating bizarre patterns that lingered and mocked.
Then, as if a camera was gradually focusing, she became aware of the source of the vague fear enveloping her. Cambel’s lifeless, uninteresting visage transformed into a unique source of support, distorted by a ferocious snort. The demonic bitch seemed to rise up from the real miasma, carried aloft on irksome spirals of cunning perniciousness. “Alert finally, my dear?” Amelia’s neglected faculties were scratched like rusted nails by the piercing jest of the sad lady’s voice. “I so hoped you’d be a captive audience for what’s to come,” she continued.
A sleek, jagged shadow emerged from Cambel’s periphery and approached the cart with an almost foreign grace. With a sense of unease, Amelia observed as mysterious mechanical components extended, like hideous tools and ringlets of fiber optic light that pulsed with weak bioluminescence. Then, in a blur of whirring, grinding motion unleashed, the mechadendrites rushed forward with frigid might and coldblooded accuracy.
“Amelia!” Philip’s short breath, like a very pointed demolition hammer through gossamer strings, ended the terrifying scene. Stay with me, my darling. Make an effort not to let it pull you back there.” She pulled back, her nostrils flaring as she took deep, lifeless breaths in. With every deliberate breath, the phantasms drew back like low tide, exposing hidden shoals of reality. The stark sterility of the X-ray room sharpened around her, the subtleties of touch solidifying into newfound realism. All save the slick muttering that felt like they were literally scraping the inside of her head, refusing to be so easily let out.
Additional examinations ensued: EEG monitors gauging her safe havens, an astounding display of imaging devices probing and scrutinizing from every angle. Despite the pain of the needles and the shock of being poked and prodded like a bizarre specimen in a petri dish, Amelia persisted. All with the hope of finally releasing the negative energy that was slowly growing inside her consciousness. Frost-like tendrils pricked through Amelia’s stomach as the quiet chatter of technicians and medical staff filled the examination room.
Philip stood bravely beside her, anchoring her against the growing unease while they waited to see what would happen. At last, the principal expert in nerve systems arrived with an abundance of printouts and output symbols fresh from the processors. His gaze darted between the few, highlights etched into a mask of drilled impartiality that did nothing to conceal the dismay simmering beneath. “Well?” A rough inclination of interest was expressed by Philip’s cut urging. He was rapidly running out of patience with his cryptic non-replies.
“What did the sweeps uncover?” The expert mumbled to himself as he readied himself, stroking his lined components. When he spoke, there was a heavy rhythm to his voice that suggested someone struggling behind the weight of somber disclosures. “Mr. Waller, our clinical investigations revealed nothing comparable to this in fact. things your spouse is experiencing.” His gaze darted to Amelia before he continued in a measured tone. “It gives off an impression of being the aftereffect of some type of robotic brain embed melded straightforwardly into the pathways of her mind.”
Every syllable resonated in Amelia’s consciousness like the muted cost of a composition chime, hanging in a disoriented silence. She sensed Philip becoming rigid beside her, coiling and exploding with a force that portended dangerous fury. “An embed?” He began to spit out his rage more and more at the words. “You’re telling me that mean woman had the audacity to put a goddamned cybertronic leash in my wife’s head?” “P-please, Mr. Waller, I comprehend this is upsetting news…” Naturally, the hapless specialist recoiled at the force of Philip’s explosion, moving back a stage. In reality, we’re trying to investigate the entire scope and makeup of the embed’s design.
However, it appears to have the capacity for distant access and, well, in any case, surpassing Miss Bowman’s mental perception in absurd situations.” There was an excruciating silence for a few heart-pounding moments, as if the room were a cosmic vacuum. Amelia was unable to breathe, her chest constricting around the razor-sharp needles of recognition tearing her from the inside out. This, then, was the astounding revelation behind the malevolent gatecrasher seizing control of her mind-some inorganic danger that Cambel’s twisted manipulations had managed to burrow into the innermost recesses of her consciousness.
The full, terrible consequences crashed over her in a debilitating riptide of darkness, and her lips parted in a voiceless wail of anguish. She was pulled out of the undertow by a flurry of activity and the sound of gear crashing into the tile surface. She blinked a little, confused, then cleared her mind to concentrate on the terrible scene a few feet away. With two explosive steps, Philip had crossed the room and grabbed the specialist by the lapels. His manner was a cyclone of colliding storms; anger, worry, and doubt stirred across his carved highlights like clouds split by forks of primal fierceness.
“Don’t even think about remaining there and attempt to excuse this…” Every statement had an uncontrollably bizarre tone, as if he was struggling to maintain a conversational grasp. “That incapacitated hellspawn debased my better half – disregarded her brain on a major level no individual ought to at any point endure!” He brutally shook the defenseless doctor to put an end to his outburst and pushed him back till his shoulders struck the wall.
In the contact, hardware struck the floor, creating a fresh cascade of metallic rattles that echoed throughout the cramped room. Amelia watched the chaos intensify from a distance, almost as if she was not there when emergency responders and security guards rushed to the scene. A part of her instinctively knew that this explosion should make people nervous, fearful, or vigilant, in any case. Either way, in that one instant she was numb, a hollowed-out shell stripped of all remaining stun or shock potential. It had been too subtle for Process to see, but the basic ideas of selfhood had been corrupted.
Her thoughts had been meticulously dissected. The deadness shattered then, without preface. An invisible force burst like a missile from the depths of her mind, wiping out her abilities in a tempest of calculated agony. Her body trembled as every tender area erupted in fiery synchronization, her lips yawning in a soundless rictus. A single, distinct idea broke through her clouded consciousness during that endless instant: the embed had awakened and it yearned for control over the surface of her universe.Original from NôvelDrama.Org.