บท 2: 2. The Poison.
I arrived the next day in Vancouver, where the gala was to be held. I had recently bought a large mansion here and took my things there. I ate well and prepared for the evening of the celebration. At least this time, I wouldn't be the main character. It must be a refreshing party where nothing happens. At 3 p.m., I drove to the party venue in my dress and heels.
My passion is buying shoes, and I have a lot of them. And nothing is enough. Even now, I have the lovely velvet ones that just matched my dress. My hair was shoulder length, very blonde, and spiky. Of course, Mariella had the defiant long red hair that Damon loved to touch.
No, no, no, I wasn't supposed to think about fucking Salvatore. I shook off such thoughts, got out of the car, and started walking towards the gala. I knew I would meet my old friend Jarod here. Jarod was shocked and then amazed when I told him about Damon. We talked on the phone for hours, and he helped me very much throughout the years. Somehow, I was dryly amused, as I didn't want to share Jarod with Mariella. Jarod was by far my best friend, nowadays my confidant even.
He said, "You were right. You knew Damien was his person, but damn Salvatore. But then again, he was the victim of Damien's manipulations there as you, too. Now I understand why neither of us ever got a reading on him. I understand completely. Are you okay? You must be in shock. And not to worry, I will not meet up with Mariella, not yet anyway."
I assured him I was and had told him I was coming to the gala. I was here as a prestigious surgeon, not as Damon's wife. I was here all by my merits, and I knew Damon had been irritated in time, too. When I was actually good at surgery and got awards.
I arrived in a hall full of people, took a glass of champagne, sipped a little—quite good—and walked around. I hadn't seen Jarod anywhere yet. Maybe he could not make it in here. He had promised nothing as Miss Parker decided everything besides he had his enemies as well. The centre, they were still after him and his possible children, as they wanted to test whether or not his pretender ability was heritable.
I wasn't thinking when a hand took hold of my elbow and a voice in my ear whispered, "Hello, baby."
I looked up, and this was not a Jarod.
This was Damien. He might have been going to Damon as a cousin or brother. His eyes were dark, almost black, his nose was narrower than Damon's, and he had a much broader face. He was also red-cheeked, as if he'd been out in the cold. I realized Damien had a human body so that I could kill him.
An injection pushed into my back from below the ribs, and I felt the substance hit my aorta. My head started to fog up. Damn. It's easy to kill a man, even when I am sedated. The drug was powerful, though, and I could barely stand on my feet. Damien took me under his arm and firmly guided me to the bathroom. He dragged me to his grip.
There, he locked the door and pushed me into a seat on the toilet. I clenched my fist. One punch, one punch in the throat, and that would kill him. Damien gave me a sharp look and took a small spray bottle from his pocket.
He blew two sprays close to my face, and everything went black. As I came to, Damien was in another cubicle on the toilet. He had moved a panel from the ceiling and pulled out a sports bag, a familiar aluminum briefcase, and yet another bag. Then he put the panel back down and jumped off.
I was feeling really fuzzy. Whatever was in that spray was going to my head badly. I felt slightly nauseous; my muscles would not work at all. Damien opened the bag, and there were bags of, great, jelly again. Orange, quite dark. Several shades of silver and many sizes of colorless.
He hung them on nails on the wall and let the jelly run out again, almost to the end. I tried to look for my phone, but saw that Damien had my bag. He finally came and picked me up.
I could barely stand, and he muttered, "There's no time to do this otherwise, and this is what I want to do. Now it is the time to take this one step further as you are now evolved."
He lifted me onto the table near the hand-washing basins on my back, picked up my dress, and then started. He gave me yet another blow of that goddamn drug; I groaned and limped fully. My vision faded and when came to, he was already at work.
One cannula sunk right near my spine, and he pulled the needle out of it and pushed a milkshake-thick tube deep into the back of my abdomen. There was an orange jelly that started to drip directly into my bowels. I felt it dripping, coating my bowels.
Another colorless bag, a 3-litre bag, was floated under my peritoneum on top of my intestines. Then he floated one under my skin and started to gel the base of my skin. The orange jelly was already slowly starting to work. I could feel my head not clearing but fogging up even further, making me feel helpless again.
He gelled the whole of my chest skin firmly and effectively, always changing the bags, sometimes silver, sometimes colorless. He poured three large bags of orange jelly and two large bags of colorless jelly all over my stomach.
The jelly would not show up anywhere. Then he wrapped a corset from under the boobs to my hips and taped it shut. Again, it kept the jelly tightly in me, but it didn't hurt this time.
Then he lifted me and pulled down my dress. Surprisingly, the corset was not visible under it. My dress was just a little loose as the corset tightened my waist.
Damien said, " You know what orange does, and there's a lot of it, baby, and it's strong. Don't even think you can do anything. As for those other things, don't worry. It will all come out in time. It is time to tell you about my brief experiment and what I have done to you over the years. What all those dictations meant, what Damon never could remember."
He then applied a mild electric current to the corset.
"That will enhance the absorption of the gels, as you'll soon see. Fortunately, this won't be as long as your boring opening."
He packed his bag and opened the door. A man was waiting behind the door. Damien handed him the bags and said, "Take those to my car."
The man took the bags without saying a word and left. The sedative kicked in when the electricity helped it to soak in. I was walking on Damien's arm and was pleased about one thing: no wet dog smell.
Damien rubbed my belly occasionally, even though I couldn't feel it through the corset. He made me drink alcohol typically throughout the three hours we were there. Jarod was nowhere to be seen. I knew I was in trouble. He talked to a lot of people and in that fashion that he knew them well. And what was creepy, he introduced me to his baby to everyone. I was too drugged even to talk. I was glad that he did not try to kiss me.
As for my pack, they were all under Mariella's spell, and no one had any reason to suspect anything had happened to me. I tried to reach out to the pack but was completely blocked by the tranquilizer jelly or something.
According to the pack, they would just think that I went off somewhere to mend my broken heart, or else I couldn't bear to be near Damon. And I had gone away when Adam and Charles were with Mariella.
I would have to try to survive this myself. I thought how stupid I was to go to the gala now, to invite Damien to attack me literally. But how in god's name did he find me? Did he get a gala invite list somewhere? My thoughts were sluggish, and I did not have any bright idea where this would end up, into a shed or something worse.
We left the gala and strolled to the car. Damien was upset about something, something bothering him.
I got myself together and asked him what was wrong, as I had always asked Damon," What's wrong?"
Damien was silent for a moment, and to my surprise, he answered. " Schedule, Baby, schedule. I was hoping for a little more time, but it's just how it must be."
I said. " You don't have to do any more of this for me; just leave me somewhere, and I'll never breathe a word of this. By the way, you exposed yourself to me a long time ago. I tried to make Damon believe you were not part of him, and I guess you manipulated him into thinking that you are just part of him."
Damien paused and laughed, " That I did baby, and I've never regretted it. Too bad you didn't convince Damon about my existence. We had so much fun having you wonder which one I am. I have prepared for it all these years, and by the way, it was a nice try. I meant I won't get to enjoy your company for quite so long. I'm certainly not letting you off the hook. And you can be sure that my schedule will be different the next time I get my hands on you."
He wasn't going to be with me all the time? We came to a black van. Damien knocked on the door, and the same man who had taken the bags opened the door. "Everything's ready, Damien."
The man said, and then they lifted me into the car together. Damien closed the back doors.
A light came on from the car's roof. The car was fitted with a fixed stretcher with spiked handles and springs.
"Shit, it's hard to get out of those." I thought, annoyed slightly.
The men quickly stripped me naked, shoes and all. The jelly was still working, my arms just dangling by my side.
Damien pushed my clothes over to the other man with my bag and keys. " You know what to do? I gave you an address?"
The man repeated the address of my Beverly Hills mansion and then jumped out of the car with my bag and clothes.
Damien made me sit on the stretcher and dumped me on my back. He fastened the spiked shackles on my hands and feet. Then he just turned off the corset and took it off me. Several bags were hanging from the roof of the car.
Damien slid them again into my belly and gelled my ribs, arms, and legs with the same orange jelly. My stomach began to feel bloated and was bulging from the jelly. He gelled around my lungs all over my heart. My eyes didn't want to stay open any longer. Eventually, all at least 50 bags were inside me.
Then he took a big syringe, probably about 100 ml, and pressed it into my liver. The platinum that was in the syringe hurt so badly. He embedded five syringes in my liver. My liver ached, throbbed, and hurt so badly that I didn't have to worry about sleeping.
Then he reached over on either side of the stretcher and pulled the bubble wrap off the sides. Great, he wrapped my whole body in the bubble wrap, and I felt the heat start to enhance the absorption of the jelly.
He looked at me for a moment and said, "Schedule, baby, schedule, but those all have to be soaked up before we're there, and as for that platinizing of the liver, well, we'll figure that out later. "
Damien exited the car, went to the front door, jumped in the driver's seat, and started driving.
So, my liver was all over the place. I wanted to curl up in a ball and cry. I was in so much pain. I knew I was alone as Charles had explained to me how he was Mariella's protector, and he had a special radar that saw all of her problems, even the slightest. I knew Damon was not mine, as he had no such thing in his mind.
He felt nothing for me. I had tested it; I had sent Casablanca to him and got nothing back, so it was clear that we were over. The bubble wrap around me got extremely hot, and the tightness in my stomach began to decrease at an alarming rate. I could feel the sedative jelly working in my head, and I could do nothing except suffer the pain.
Oh, why can't that sedative also work as a painkiller? Now, besides the pain, my liver started to burn and tingle. Finally, we stopped. Damien jumped out of the driver's seat and opened the back doors. He unhooked the stretcher from the car floor and used the ramp to pull me out of the car.
"This is a short pit stop. We'll continue in a moment, but I'll show you a few things," Damien said as he pushed me into a bunker.
It wasn't exactly a shed, but there were computers, drugs, and some equipment in there, too. He parked me in the middle of the floor and took the bubble wrap off me.
He'd left the cannulas in my stomach and reattached the extra bags he'd got from the cupboard. This time, he didn't gel under my skin with orange but with green. He did it routinely and quickly. He had inserted a central line and was dripping at least 15 liters of various fluids through it. Those were the same murky colors that he had always infused in shed sessions with me.
My stomach tightened even more, the skin was even fuller, and my abdominal cavity felt full to the brim. He had even put in a peg feeding tube, draining my stomach and intestines full of various jellies.
Then he unhooked me from the peg and guided me to a metal chair to sit down. There were metal handcuffs and tight ones, too. He put my hands and feet in the chair. Then, he attached electrodes to every part of my body.
The chair was nothing but metal strips that I was sitting on, so he pretty much put them on my backside, too. He put extra bags on the cannulas, but they didn't sink when I was so full. He put a headgear on my head when I was full of electrodes, and I could feel the spikes touching my scalp.
"Nice electroshock treatment," I thought.
Then he turned on the current. It started at my feet, moved up to the belt, and finally reached my head. Then everything went white all the time. Damien sat at the computer typing something and turned the screen so I could see.
"I promise you some explanations, baby. Fine, here goes. Do you know what a nano molecule is? Well, it's a scaled-down version. The usual shrinkage can be anything from 50 to 100%. These are the promises of the future. Tiny molecules of substances that would normally be too big to go into, well, say, a tumor. A tiny nano molecule will enter the cell effortlessly and do what it needs to do. But you see, even if, in theory, it works, it needs to be studied."
His voice was now calmer, as he was a kind of scientist. I was drugged up to my eyes, but as a doctor, I could understand the gist of this.
"It would be even better if these nano molecules could be timed to be released into the target tissues when certain criteria are met. Again, as an example, tumor cells would start to grow, but this is difficult to study in humans, and animal experiments always fail. You, baby, are my test subject."
Damien continued, "I've been injecting you with these nano molecules every single shed session. And the electric current absorbs them again. Most of the jelly you've had today has been a lot of different nano molecules."
Damien watched for a moment and waited for the electric current to run through my brain again. "The electricity absorbs it everywhere, into your brain, muscles, bones, even your eyeballs. What harm are they, on release, says Cobalt? Well, you know. Silver madness, silver, again, you know. After these few hours, you are packed with these molecules. No one can find them. They are hidden in shells, and here comes the fun. You never know how long a shell is going to last, so... you can baby come up with some interesting medical problems in the future. Take, for example, this one semiconducting polymer. Now, I've packed this in all four metals plus gold, platinum, neurotoxins, and, oh, so, my favorite. Various pathogens. "
Damien continued his rant. "Now, it was unfortunate that I was kicked out of Damon because I would have had a front-row seat to every problem you had, and I would have gathered all the knowledge to develop these to the top. Now, I can't predict at all when each shell will crack, and I can't remember what's in each one. Usually, I put different pathogens in each shell because I also want to see your susceptibility to them. I can tell you that every shell has a predisposing factor that helps the pathogen to hit you better."
Frankly, I was screwed. Damien went to change the jelly bags again. He went on for three hours. One jelly bag per hour. Then he finally stuffed one more bag, so that I was as tight as a ball again when he lifted me back onto the stretcher.
He wrapped me in bubble wrap again and pushed me into the car. " Oh yeah, that liver. Well, we're on our way to the pharmaceutical company, and they've asked for that platinum for the liver. They want to see if it'll boost enzyme production."
The pharmaceutical company. Really. I was really in deep shit. Damien had put no sedative jelly in me, and my head started to clear, and my strength started to return. Now if I could just get out of these fucking spiked grips. The bubble wrap was starting to heat me again, and now that I knew what poisons had been stuffed and absorbed into my insides, the future didn't look too bright.
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