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The original was posted on /r/nosleep by /u/Saturdead on 2024-11-23 18:06:02+00:00.

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I wish I could give you more detail. I wish I could give myself more detail. But what happened was that they draped a black hood over my head, and that was that. I was to be taken somewhere, and no one would tell me anything. And why would they? I didn’t need to know where I was taken, or why. They had their own agenda.

There was a bumpy car ride, the sound of sliding metal, and an elevator. Firm hands gripped my arms to the point where they bruised. Apart from the occasional ‘go’, there were no words. The elevator had gone down, so I guessed I was somewhere underground.

When the hood came off, I was in a brightly lit concrete room. There was a simple bed, a toilet, a sink, and a metal door. There were no indicators as to where I was. No clocks. No phones. The only thing to keep my mind busy were a couple of magazines next to the sink. They were mostly about things like fishing and camping, from the turn of the millennium.

Time passes differently in a place like that. You start to imagine things, and you lose track of yourself. From the point where you go to sleep to when you wake up, everything looks the same. It’s like no time has passed at all. You start to doubt yourself. Did you sleep for six hours, or ten minutes? Has it been five minutes since your last drink of water, or two hours?

At times, there’d be commotion outside. People grunting and struggling with something. They’d swear, or scream. You got used to it after a while.

It must’ve been three or four days before I got to see another person. By that time I’d read through every magazine dozens of times, counting how many times each letter showed up. I’d counted every ceramic tile on the floor, walls, and ceiling. I was desperate.

It was a stranger that opened the door. She looked nice enough, a tall woman in her 50’s with combed-back hair, like she was fresh out of the shower.

“You’re not gonna cause me trouble, are you?” she asked.

“Should I?”

“I wouldn’t advise it. I’m just here to check on you.”

I didn’t fight her. There were plenty of guards outside; I’d just put myself in a world of pain. Instead she checked my pulse, shone a light in my eyes, and asked to check my throat. She had these thick gloves and a pair of protective goggles – possibly to make sure I wouldn’t accidentally infect her with SORE.

“I can’t believe it is stable,” she said. “I’ve never seen that.”

“But you’ve seen it… unstable?”

“Oh, several times. This type of affliction is more common than you think.”

She put together a couple of pills in a small cup and handed it to me. I didn’t take them.

“It’s just vitamins,” she said. “See?”

She downed one of them without a drink of water, like a lunatic. I decided that, for now, I’d trust her. She seemed harmless enough.

As she was about to leave, I panicked a little. I didn’t want to be stuck in that room for more time than necessary, and I was practically climbing the walls at that point. I followed her to the door, and watched the guard outside tense up with his taser.

“Please,” I said. “I’m going crazy in here.”

“Sorry about that,” she sighed. “Most people in your condition aren’t as… mentally stimulated.”

“Are there others like me down here?”

“A handful,” she said. “Most of them just sit there or stand in the corner. So I suppose none of them are really like you.”

“Miss, I’ll… I’ll go crazy in here. You gotta do something. I’m not like them.”

She looked me up and down. There was a sort of sympathy there, for sure. She was hesitant.

“Dudley brought you in, right?” she asked.

“Yeah,” I nodded. “I don’t even know what you want from me.”

“Well, we’re going to do tests. We’re going to see what the difference between you and the other infected are.”

“For how long? What’s gonna happen to me?”

She opened her mouth to say something, but changed her mind. She gave me a pat on the shoulder.

“You have to understand,” she said. “Most people who come here don’t leave. They can’t. You’re something new, and I don’t think anyone has figured out how to deal with that yet.”

“Listen, I’ll play ball,” I said. “Just don’t stick me in here like an animal.”

“Fair enough.”

I agreed to do some preliminary tests. I was taken to an examination room where the lady collected some basic samples. Blood, saliva, urine. She also checked my ears and feet. It wasn’t all that uncommon for those infected by SORE to have very dark nails, apparently.

She already knew my name, but she introduced herself as Allie. She’d been with Hatchet for over 12 years, and before that she’d been a professor at UC Berkeley. I didn’t have to tell her a lot about myself – she’d read the files.

“What I don’t understand is how all this happened in the first place,” she said. “SORE doesn’t just stop on its own. You must’ve done something.”

“I met this woman out by St. Gall,” I said. “Had a blue kaftan. After speaking to her, I was just… fine.”

“I’d love to meet her,” Allie said. “But I suspect that whoever that was wouldn’t be all too eager to  work with us.”

I had a couple of x-rays taken, and then she emerged with a massive syringe. Seeing my reaction, she put it away.

“We’ll take the bone marrow some other day,” she said. “But I’m afraid that’s all for today.”

“Please don’t put me back in there,” I said. “It messes with my head.”

“How about this. I ask the guards to turn the lights off at 9pm, and I get you a couple of books to read. Would that help?”

I shrugged. It’d help, but it still wasn’t an enticing thought.

“And we’ll talk again tomorrow,” she added. “Deal?”

“Sure, yeah. Deal.”

For the next few days, Allie tried to make sure I was as comfortable as possible. Lights out at night, books to read, and she came by at least once per day. Mostly just to get a couple of samples, or to discuss results. For example, the iron value in my blood was a lot lower than it ought to be, so I had to take some extra pills for that.

Days would pass. Maybe weeks. The only people I’d see were Allie and the guards, and Allie was the only one talking to me. We developed a sort of quasi-friendship, where she’d get me out of my cell and I’d provide her with answers. And sometimes, we’d just sit and talk for a while. She’d tell me about her sons back in California, and about her messy divorce a year or so back. It was nice to hear something ordinary.

Then there was that one day when she wanted to show me why they were doing this to begin with. To give me some context.

We wandered around the other cells. There were about half a dozen in total. There were more rooms, but most were empty.

“We can’t go in without full hazard gear,” she said. “They may look calm, but the slightest provocation can set them off.”

She walked up to a door and opened a small hatch, protected with plexiglass. There was middle-aged man in there, lying on his bed. There was something coming out of his mouth. Little white strands.

“Looks harmless enough,” I said. “Is it really that bad?”

Allie knocked on the door, once.

The man shot out of his bed and threw himself at the door with complete abandon. He had this long wound across his neck where more white strands protruded, and now that he was provoked I could see more coming out of his nose, ears, and eyes. Just like what’d happened to me.

“Some people change more, some less,” she explained. “Long before my time, they tried experimenting with specific dosage in volunteers, to see if the transformation could be steered.”

“Could it?”

“Not really,” she sighed. “But boy, could it do some terrible things.”

The man pressed his face against he plexiglass. The white strands poked and prodded at the edges, trying to find a way through. Allie didn’t back down.

“Most people already have a miniscule amount of the catalyst in their system,” she explained. “Sort of like… microplastics.”

“What is it?” I asked.

“I think the layman’s term for it is Blameless. Stupid name, but it seems pretty ingrained by now. But there was a Danish-American philosopher that had another name for it.”

She closed the hatch and looked me straight in the eye. Maybe just for effect, or to drive a point home.

“He called it the soul,” she said. “He claimed that this material was what gave our ancestors that first ability to speak, to think, and to reason.”

I was shown a handful of other patients. I didn’t think all that much of it, until I saw a young woman. She had this black pixie-cut hair. I just blurted out my thoughts. I’d gotten so used to talking to Allie that I didn’t consider what I was saying.

“Elizabeth,” I said. “Salinger, right?”

“You two know each other?”

“In a way,” I said. “I knew her dad.”

“He’s been looking for her,” she said. “It’s horrible, really. She had a particularly gruesome infection.”

Allie looked throug…

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