Silence Falls

The four other girls in the room snapped their heads to gape at Otep with large eyes and opened mouths.

“What did you just say?” Alexis queried faintly from the side of her bed, her bony fingers clutching the thin crisp sheet underneath her.

“Did you just say that Hermanni, OUR Hermanni, is Subject V?” Natasha quoted, needing to recount Otep’s words aloud with her own voice to comprehend their implications more discernibly...for what she was saying was inconceivable.

“THE Subject V?” Onika needed Otep to simplify to her what she alleged.

Demitria merely shook her head in response to Otep’s proclamation, not willing to give it any of her energy or time to regard. It simply couldn’t BE in her mind’s eye. Not him, not their Hermanni. What kind of monsters would want to undermine a face so precious, so pure, so...beautiful?

“I’m not sure if you even remember this, Natasha, but back at the mall outside the Girls bathroom I...called Hermanni by another name when you were with him. Does that ring any bells?” Otep began, not sure if Natasha was still so profoundly under the spell of Hermanni that perhaps she wasn’t able to conceive of that event ever taking place. Still, she had to try and find out.

Natasha frowned as she tried to beckon that very memory up. When she wasn’t able to instantly, she started to believe that Otep’s meds were certainly making her brain asinine, that was until the vague memory began to surface from her stupor, making itself known. Natasha’s brown eyes widened as they locked on Otep’s face. “Oh my god, I do remember that day! That was when Cris and Connor came across that tunnel under the mall and almost got caught by one of the patrols!”

The others began to nod one by one as their memories came back to them too. The drugs were seemingly cluttering their memories and trying to expunge them.

“Do you remember WHAT I called him?” Otep interrogated Natasha as she reclined her head back against the wall behind her and stared blankly up at the ceiling overhead.

“Yeah, you called him…SUBJECT V!” Natasha exclaimed before slapping a hand over her mouth from the impact. She squeezed her eyes shut, suddenly feeling woozy on her feet. “Oh my fucking god!”

“And he...” Otep drawled, replaying the scene in her head of Hermanni’s reception to that very name.

“He responded to that name!” Natasha ended, beginning to finally see the bigger picture here. But the others weren’t amenable to buying her claim so easily. If Hermanni was Subject V, surely he would have told them so, wouldn’t he? He had no reason to keep this a secret from them.

“No way he’s THE Subject V!” Demitiria objected sternly, not caring how defensive she sounded. Hermanni wasn’t here to champion himself against Otep’s accusation and in his stead she would! “Why would the government want him of all people? Is he supposed to be some illegal immigrant or some nefarious terrorist or something?”

Onika shut that notion down with a shake of her head. “Hell no! There no fucking way the government would enlist this much manpower to catch, or murder some illegal immigrant. That’s just overdoing it. But...for him to be a terrorist, now that would have to be the only explanation here.”

“What the hell IS a Subject V anyway?” Alexis demanded to know, mystified as hell over this whole nickname business and what it was even meant for. Why was Hermanni called Subject V?

“It’s a codename of some sort.” Otep mumbled behind her hands as she let out a massive yawn. “I’m guessing it’s the very name the government bestowed upon him themselves.”

“Maybe it has something to do with that dead girl he was blamed for killing…” Demitria mentioned, recalling the night of one of their many slumber parties that Hermanni had joined and had recapped his life story to them. He had mentioned some girl that he had watched die but had zero involvement.

“I don’t get why the military would want to get THIS involved with some chick's death years ago.” Onika remarked, not accepting the connection. “Especially when they have no evidence to prove he did it.”

Not caring about the dead girl they were talking about, Otep sighed before publishing something they obviously didn’t know of his story. “That dead girl’s father was a high-ranked officer in the military.”

The others glanced at Otep for a bit as their minds slowly started to restore together Hermanni's story. Taking to sitting back on her bed, Demitria leaned her head back against the cold wall and murmured. “So her father is military? Then that could mean he might be the one behind all this.”

“It would seem so, wouldn't it?” Otep mumbled, rubbing her droopy eyes.

“Wow…” Natasha breathed, then looked down at a dozy Otep. “Damnit, Otep, we need to stop sitting around here doing nothing and get the hell out here already! You have to do something, PLEASE!”

Sighing wearily, Otep climbed lazily to her feet again. “And just what the fuck do you want me to do about it? Go tell them we're ready to leave now, and thank them for all their hospitality?”

“FUCK NO!” Natasha snapped, not liking her sassy attitude.

“Can't we just escape like we did before in the Medical Facility? I mean, I know that you guys scrapped the plan and had to take a chance in the end, but…” Onika started before recalling that Bert had taken a blind leap of hope in their escape and that there weren't any precautions that they had conducted.

“Bert became a desperate man over the years, ladies. He squeezed through vents so compressed that it literally gave me claustrophobia just from watching him do it every night and day. He scaled elevator shafts when there were no ladders to hold onto. He stoutly wriggled through circuits of pipes and even had gotten himself wedged a few times. That motherfucker even went through the goddamn sewers! Solitary Confinement was a five star resort compared to rooming with him and that stench he brought back.” Otep couldn't resist smirking at the memory of her fleeing out of the room in abhorrence.

Alexis got up from her bed to stand in front of Otep, the others joining her to surround their remaining leader. “Why can't we do that then, Otep? We can at least try, what else do we have to lose here?”

Otep shook her head, resisting Alexis’s imploring eyes. “No, I’m not about to let you all go down like that. If we are to get out of this stupid Hospital, we’re going to do it my way and my way only.”

“Okay then. What is your way?” Demitria asked, waiting for the intricate information, but Otep merely smiled and pressed her finger against her lips in curbed silence. The girls collectively frowned as they watched Otep spin around to exit their room, leaving them with no solutions to their liberty.