KYMIERA: PURITY by Steve Turnbull

Author:Steve Turnbull
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
ISBN: 9781910342640
Publisher: Tau Press Ltd

12

Melinda

The cold was the first thing Melinda was aware of and she was shivering. She was on her back. Her right arm ached from being stretched above her head. She tried to move it and found her wrist was encased in a metal strap. She shook it and it rattled.

Using her heels she pushed herself up the bed—she wasn’t sure, it seemed like it was a bed, but there was no light. She blinked just to be sure that her eyes were open, but the darkness was complete.

She rolled over to her right and felt the edge of the bed with her left hand. Pain lashed through her ribs—she remembered being kicked. She pushed herself up until she was sitting and leaning against the metal of the bed-head. There was no pillow and only a sheet stretched across the mattress, but now that her right arm was no longer stretched above her head she felt a great deal more comfortable.

The place smelled of damp but there was the clinical scent of antiseptic underlying it all. It reminded her of the month in quarantine, but even the Purity cells had not been like this. They may have been no more than a prison but at least they were dry and had light. The amenities were crude but she understood.

Here she had been dressed in a single shift, nylon, and nothing else. In quarantine she had clothes and at least some privacy.

She had imagined that her younger brothers had been terrified; they were too young to truly understand. And afterwards they had been very quiet, even months later they were scared to leave the house and cried when they went to school. In quarantine the whole family was separated and contact with anyone else was forbidden, except for the staff. And they were not friendly.

She understood. Everyone was scared of the S.I.D infection. There was no cure and once infection had set in there was nothing that could be done. It entered your cells just waiting for the foreign DNA so that it could bind it into your genetic make-up and turn you into a monster.

No, the staff were not friendly. She did not blame them; she understood. Every five days they were tested. Under anaesthetic, of course. The pain afterwards, where they had drilled into the bone marrow, was bad but the painkillers were strong.

She rubbed her hip absently. There was a permanent scar where they had repeatedly made a hole.

But this wasn’t the Purity. She did not understand this.

She felt the tears welling up but rubbed them away. Crying wasn’t going to help.

Who could have done this? The ones who had taken the other two girls, that much was obvious. What did they want?

‘Why can’t you put the lights on!’ she shouted. Her words fell dead around her. She could get off the bed and find out at least on one side. But she was afraid: afraid of the dark; afraid of what might be underfoot; and afraid of monsters in the dark beneath the bed.

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