Beat

            The room was cold. The concrete floor did not seem to be insulated from the outside, and it was still winter. She shivered in the lightweight blue prisoner’s jumpsuit they’d given her. The clothing was little more than a set of pajamas.

            She had not even known that the militia had this building out in the woods. She had heard about Far Watch Outpost, but she had always assumed it was little more than a camp. She did not expect the fortified bunker that she had been taken to.

            Her heart was still not beating. Ana's fingers and toes felt icy with the lack of circulation. The biting pain in her stomach was still there, but she had grown used to it. At the very least, they had given her a bed, though they had not provided any sort of blanket. Still, she attempted to spend her time there, not disturbing the wound.

            Would it heal, though? She knew as much as the average person about how the body worked, and that wounds would heal if they were properly sewn up and disinfected. In most people, there was a constant flow of blood, which brought all the nutrients to build new cells and the platelets and such that helped to plug up the leaks. She did not appear to have that luxury.

            It had been twenty-two hours since her heart had stopped. Surely that was enough time for the body to begin to decay. She at first tried to imagine what would happen to her, but soon decided it was not a thought that would lend her any comfort.

            I have got to get the blood flowing again.

            She hit herself in the chest, hard. It did not seem to have an effect. She was exhausted. Sleep called to her, and lying on her back, it was very difficult to resist. Yet at the same time, whenever she felt herself drifting off, she was confronted with the twin nightmares – that she would fall asleep and never wake up, dying the rest of the way, or that she would awaken, but this time as one of those foul, decayed things like the ones she had seen with Harrick in the hold of the ship on that day that had changed everything.

            Where was Harrick? She felt ashamed to even think of him. He had been her mentor, she his confidant. She imagined he felt betrayed, discovering that the brightest up and comer in the department was an unnatural abomination.

            Then her thoughts turned to Karin. All Ana could imagine was the horror that she would be going through, realizing that she had been having sex with a draugr all this time.

            Everyone in my life has fallen into this nightmare.

            And then there was Sydow. Two men had been forced to hold him back as Ana was led away from the hospital. Even when it was laid out for him to see, he still fought for her. Nick Sydow was very dear to her, even if she could never feel about him the way she suspected he felt for her. In a sense, she felt the worst about Nick. With the others – her friends, the other officers – she could believe that they were only feeling betrayed. She knew that Nick had blinded himself out of misguided loyalty.

            He’s more loyal to you than yourself, she thought.

            Suddenly, the need to sleep vanished. In an instant, she was wide awake, though she had no idea why. It was as if the dull blues of the starlight bouncing off the snow had been traded for harsh, pure whites.

            She stood up, the wound screaming, yet it felt distant – a low priority. Something was going on outside. Her cell was in the basement, and the one window was high up at ground level. She could hear someone speaking, but there was something odd about it.

            “Yes, I do. Yes, I know it’s clear. The Clock Tower was destroyed long ago. Yes, back when Altonin was destroyed. The hold burned, and the refugees with it. Yes. Yes. I understand. We are one in the machine.”

            There was another voice. Ana could make out three sets of combat boots through the window. They were actually quite near to her cell, yet she had perhaps had her fill of fear for the day, so she did not shy away.

            “We are one in the machine.”

            A third voice: “We are one in the machine.”

            The phrase caught her. It was somehow familiar. Wasn’t it one of the mantras those Machinists liked to spout? Yet this did not sound like the cheerful chants of proselytizing devotees. It sounded monotonous and thoughtless, without any hint of fervor.

            Then she realized that she could smell the faceless man’s coffee.

            It was just as it had been in the dream - a scent of burning plastic and battery acid, of coffee that was not coffee. She had not drunk it - someone or something had told her she did not have to - but the smell was enough to remember it by. She realized now that she had been looking at the faceless man all along – or at least his shoes. He was standing between the militia members. Judging from the orientation of the shoes, he was looking (or would be, if he had eyes,) right at Ana’s window.

            She staggered back. Weakness seemed to shoot outward from her chest, and she found that it was a struggle just to stand. Was her dead heart finally catching up with her?

            Or maybe the faceless man is Death, coming to take me away.

            She stumbled backward, falling and landing on her rear end hard. She sprawled on the concrete floor, looking up at the pattern of shadows cast by the three militia men, but not the faceless man. The faceless man cast no shadow.

            You need to get your heart beating again.

            She was breathing very hard now. Her chest had seized up and even moving her arm was like lifting a boulder. But boulder or not, she still brought it up and slammed her fist down on her chest.

            Beat! she screamed silently to herself.

            She could feel a bruise forming in her chest – one that would never heal if she did not succeed.

            Beat!

            She brought her fist down again, this time with so much force that she suspected one of her fingers might be broken. It was agony, but she refused to give up with the foul scent of acidic death wafting through the air.

            Beat, by all the gods, beat, damn you!

            Once more, her fist crashed down on her chest, and then she squeezed a muscle she had never thought about squeezing before.

            Thunder. Blood gushed through her arteries. It was as if a wildfire had blown through her entire being. She felt as if she could breathe flames.

            Du-dum. Du-dum. Du-dum. The sound was like a timpani being pounded inside her chest, through her head, and along every limb.

            She fought to get a single deep breath. Her lungs were shuddering, and all she could hear was the pounding rhythm of her heart. She realized that the shuddering feeling going through her core was laughter. She was laughing uncontrollably.

            When she finally gained enough composure to get herself up, she looked out the window. Only one of the militia guards was still there. And the faceless man was nowhere to be seen.

            Then the pain came back to her. She looked down and saw that the front of her shirt had a red stain spreading on it.

            “I’m bleeding,” she said to no one in particular. She never thought she would be so happy to say so.

(Copyright Daniel Szolovits 2012)