She stopped in midstride and glanced down at her right leg. She could see nothing wrong with it. She raised it, swung it back and forth at the knee, like a pendulum. No pain, no restriction of movement. She returned it to the floor, ready to continue forward, and it was only as the sole of her foot touched the cold tile that she realized something was wrong. It was strange, leaden, and from a tingling line above the ankle it didn’t look or feel right.
It was not her foot. They had done something to it. They had grafted—
For a moment, she froze in terror. And then she realized: this thought was completely insane. Of course it was her foot. She forced the perverse idea from her head and continued to the cabinets. They were unlocked, but she found nothing inside them but gauze, gowns, surgical cloths, hairnets, and masks.
She kept looking. It occurred to her that if she couldn’t find a weapon, she might find a drug — a tranquilizer, or a strong narcotic, or even anesthesia: something that would put her out of commission until whatever strange feeling was creeping over her had passed.
Nothing. The cart that orderly had wheeled out probably contained anything that might be of use to her. To hurt someone — or even medicate herself.
Her eye stole back over to the parang, gleaming on the table. Now, that was a fearsome weapon. It would disembowel any of those bastards with a single swipe...
Don’t touch it.
With a stab of fear and frustration, she turned away, heading across the room toward the mirror. The limp was even more pronounced now. And then it became clear that limp wasn’t really the right term. She simply could not stand the sensation of that thing touching the ground.
That thing. That “thing” was her foot. Her own foot. Everything depends on keeping control...
She stared up at the mirror. She knew the general was staring back at her, and perhaps the doctor as well. She wanted to curse them, but Christ, she felt strange. She slumped down and heard a clattering beside her. It was the parang. Its long cruel blade, exquisitely sharp, lay beside her, edge glistening in the lights.
How did it get there?
She must have picked it up on her way past the gurney.
She edged away from it. “Pendergast!” she yelled at the mirror. “Are you there? Pendergast!”
With great effort, she mastered herself again. This did not need to happen. She was not like those victims who had cut off their own feet. She knew what the drug did. That knowledge was power.
But even as she told herself this, she found herself looking toward the foot at the end of her right leg. Strange how she’d never realized before. How could she have lived so many years without noticing the mistake? That foot wasn’t hers. It was hot and dull, as if infected. In fact, she could even feel the pathogens crawling up the blood vessels like tiny insects, attempting to make their way into her otherwise healthy body...
No, she told herself.
She tried to summon her thoughts, but she couldn’t focus. Try as she might, her old memories and her sense of control were being overwhelmed by that alien lump. She examined it closely, trying to detect exactly what was wrong, unable to look away. It was like driving past a car accident, where you didn’t really want to see, but you couldn’t help staring.
They had done something. Replaced her foot, grafted something on there. Something that felt — in an awful way she had no words to describe — too much. Her body didn’t need it. Her body didn’t want it. She...
“NO!” This time, she yelled aloud. She glanced up at the clock: more than an hour had passed.
They were watching, the sick bastards. She wasn’t going to give them the show they wanted. She tried to take deep breaths, empty her mind of the fear and revulsion.
Don’t do it. Don’t do it. Don’t do it.
Even as she repeated this to herself, she realized she was still staring at the foot.
DON’T DO IT. DON’T DO IT. DON’T DO IT...
Without her knowing it, the parang was now back in her hand. She gave a shriek and scrambled back, but somehow it remained in a grip she was unable to loosen. But when that right foot hit the ground, the soft revulsive sensation overwhelmed her with nausea.
It’s just the drug, she told herself. That’s your real foot. It’s normal, not some infected piece of meat.
She had to move her focus away from it. With an immense force of will, she went back to a game she had played in her childhood. She’d been tall for her age in grade school, and gangly, and people made fun of her. But she could escape the humiliation by tuning that out and retreating into a private garden of her imagination: a Technicolor glade where the grass was a bright green, the foliage lush and particolored, and in which she herself was a white horse with a flowing mane, running free and wild.
It had worked when she was young, and as she concentrated it worked again now — she was able to slow the breath that escaped in gasps, open her hand, and drop the weapon. It fell to the tile floor with a loud ringing sound. Taking a step back, she closed her eyes tight against the brightness, the maddeningly regular rows of tile. She was able to control her breathing. She opened her eyes again and looked up at that mirrored window behind which the general watched as if she were a mouse in a cage. “Fuck you,” she said out loud. “It’s not working.”
No answer, no reaction. Well, no matter. She could resist this. She was going to win. She’d sit down in a corner of the lab, the parang in hand, wait there until someone came back, and then she’d overpower them and escape. She’d use the parang on them instead of herself.
The parang was at hand — she picked it up, stood, and walked toward the corner. But this fresh effort at walking was pure horror, every step like squeezing a bag of poison into her body. She staggered and, unable to balance, abruptly sat down on the tile floor.
DON’T DO IT. DON’T DO IT. DON’T DO IT. DON’T DO IT...
She was gasping again, sweat beading her brow, slicking her palms as she slowly, deliberately, held up the blade and turned it in the light. Another wave of nausea swept over her, and she choked and doubled over in pain. There was poison in that foot and it was going to kill her — it was killing her.
DON’T. DON’T. DON’T...
With a supreme effort of will, she tried to recall the white horse again, the enchanted garden of her childhood. But all that came was a white and green fog of confusion, into which a rotting horse staggered, oozing fluids from its eyes. Her entire consciousness, every particle of energy, was fixated on that disgusting thing attached to her. She drew it up toward her thigh, horrified at the thought that others might see it. Oh God, if only she were free of it...
Free.
She looked at it, breathing even faster now. She could see where the parasitic thing had attached itself. She could see the very spot: just an inch or so above her ankle.
Free yourself. Free yourself. Free yourself...
It was incredible that she could have missed it. She could actually see, feel, like an invisible line across her skin, the precise area where the pores and freckles became no longer hers. Abhorrence rose in her like a tidal wave. It was unbearable.
She heard, in her mind, the rotting horse pause, issue a scream of fear.
FREE YOURSELF. FREE YOURSELF. FREE YOURSELF...