From my low position I could still see across to the beds, but trying to rise, my legs were like jelly.
“Ellie,” Cassie called, her voice high and pained and I knew she must have been held back or she would be across the room fighting with all that she had.
Ellie flinched, but her eyes remain closed.
I called out her name when I saw the pain bunch in her face with the soldiers angling the creature’s head to her exposed forearm, its teeth grinding into her young flesh.
The room fell silent but for the effort of the soldiers pulling the creature from Ellie’s arm to leave a ragged mess with blood flowing to the absorbent sheet underneath. Tears streamed down my face to mix with the blood and sweat already coursing. Others sobbed around the room but I dared not stand again.
Time seemed to slow and I felt numb, unable to make out the words spoken, barely flinching when a gunshot burst out and the girl creature slumped to the floor. I wasn’t insulated from the smell, which seemed so much worse as they dragged the body down the corridor.
On my knees, all I could do was shake my head, overcome with grief as I watched, waiting for the doctors to rush over and bandage Ellie’s wound. But neither moved. Instead, Toni turned her attention to Jess whilst Doctor Lytham bent to a cupboard built into the table, pulling up an aerosol and spraying plumes of white mist in a circle as her face contorted at the stench.
“Help her,” Cassie’s angry call came out, but dull as if my ears were stuffed with cotton wool.
Still on my hands and knees, I made to stand and rising a little I watched as Cassie fought against her hands held at her back by another soldier. As she struggled, she stared to the bed where Ellie lay with her blood spilling to the floor.
Doctor Lytham raised her hand at Cassie.
Cassie stopped moving, her face contorted with rage.
“Ah, Cassie. That’s not how you save her,” Doctor Lytham said in a voice like they were talking over dinner. “Thank you for joining us.”
“You’re an animal,” Cassie shouted with her face contorted. Then her expression changed as she forced herself to relax. “Help her, please. Help her,” she called out, looking to the doctor as if she was the only person in the room. “Fucking help her.”
I tensed to move, but felt the slap of the rifle across my shoulders and I collapsed to the floor again.
Doctor Lytham smiled as if Cassie had asked her to check a mole. “There is a way to save her,” she said. “You hold the key. Your blood can help her. Do you understand?”
Rising up from my hands, my vision blurred when Cassie looked to me, her eyes darting between myself and Doctor Lytham.
“Cured?” she seemed to say but with no volume.
The soldiers strode back through the door, holding their rifles again. Cassie turned to the doctor and nodded.
Doctor Lytham smiled and Toni moved around to a cupboard, pulling bandages before working on wrapping Ellie’s arm.
To the snap of zip-ties, I watched through blurred vision as Cassie wept, but didn’t put up a fight when the soldiers pushed her further into the room with her hands behind her back.
After hurriedly wrapping the bandages tight against Ellie’s arm, Toni rushed past the metal table in the centre, grabbing another syringe as she passed. Pulling a rubber tourniquet from her lab coat pocket, she moved around Cassie’s back and wrapped the rubber around her arm. I watched Cassie wince through gritted teeth as the needle plunged, her gaze fixed on Ellie.
With beaming wide eyes, Toni came from around Cassie’s back, heading to the second table and opening up a round machine which looked like a pressure cooker. She removed the lid and decanted half the blood from the syringe, splitting it between two glass vials. Pulling up a second syringe and the blood from Jess, she did the same, writing their initials on each of the glasses. I watched, transfixed as she took one of each of the vials and put them inside the machine before pressing a button on the side.
The machine whirred, and I felt a slight vibration through the floor. The timer pinged after a brief moment and she pulled both glass vials out. The blood had separated to a yellow and red liquid sharing the vial equally. Toni drew out the yellow from the top of each, before pouring the remaining deep red contents into another which was already half full and changing the settings on the machine and replacing the vials. The rumble it made was a little different to the last.
With another ping and rather than take the vial out, she grabbed a new syringe, drawing up the deep red.
“No,” I called again, but my voice came out so feeble. “No,” I shouted. “They’re not making a cure, they’re mixing the two together. Save Ellie, you fucking bastards.”
Doctor Lytham looked over her shoulder at Ellie, but waved her hand in the air.
I rose again, fighting against the pains across my head and back.
As Toni headed to Jess with the syringe pointed out, I looked to Alex, then Cassie, my heart melting at her despair. I turned away to Jess who barely reacted as the needle jabbed into her arm and Toni pushed down the plunger.
“No,” Cassie called as she tried to pull her arms out from the binds and grip of the soldier standing unmoved by the situation. “Save Ellie. You said you would.”
Jess closed her eyes, screwing up as if in pain, then shook, her body convulsing against the bounds as Toni pulled the syringe from her arm. Twisting around with her brow furrowed, Toni looked towards Doctor Lytham, who raised her eyebrows as if in
