Here are the links, completely naked, just in case that's a fear:

Entire Work on AO3: https://archiveofourown.org/works/59994613?view_full_work=true

Entire work on Google Docs: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1JkSNPF00a0AvPxAp9uUtpdEQOZF8hm1tMqA5tOZXq2g/edit?usp=drivesdk

Part Two is undoubtedly the emotional heart of the novel. It's what the fucking thing is about, man. I don't want people to read only tidbits, little drips of water from a faucet i turn millimeter by millimeter once a week. I want an emotional flood that sweeps the world, man. So I'm hitting that faucet with a hammer and posting all of it! Gonna look like goddamn Immortan Joe turning the taps in the Citadel, and it's gonna be just as frustrating when I switch em back off for the rest of the work.

Part 3 will be posted in trios, I think. I still gotta work that out because I want the last three chapters to be posted all at once.

She is cold.

And alone.

And afraid.

Open your eyes, a little voice whispers from somewhere deep inside of her. She doesn’t hear it so much as feel it, sense it, understand it. It comes from so deep within it seems as if it is very far away, calling to her from a distant hill and carried to her on some furious wind.

It is furious, that wind, that voice. It is little, it is far away, and it is angry. Something has gone terribly wrong and that voice is angry at its circumstance, while Ash is simply afraid for while she cannot recall what it was that upset that voice so she knows it was bad. Very, very bad.

You sound like a child. Are you a child?

No, Ash responds internally.

Then open your eyes.

Ash tries. The lids do not seem to peel as easily as they once did – no, it’s more than that. She is truly afraid. She was having a nightmare before she woke but she can’t remember what it was, yet the fear still lingers; the fear that whatever haunted her in her dream has been ejected from the confines of her mind and now lies in wait just beyond her closed and shuttered eyes, ready to pounce on her the moment she catches sight of it.

OPEN YOUR EYES, the voice orders, louder now and more enraged. Demanding. Commanding. Hungry. Bloodthirsty.

Ash tries again to open her eyes but finds they do not respond. She wills her hand to bring itself up to her sleep-sealed eyelids so she might entice them to wakefulness, but as her elbow moves mechanically and her wrist begins to rise from the hard bed she lay on she finds her arm is firmly restrained.

Ash’s eyes open very, very suddenly.

She is alone. A comfort, perhaps, but maybe whomever has her strapped and restrained, sitting upright before an opaque screen, is on their way back. Or, potentially worse, they are never going to return. She tries to move her head around but cannot, she can feel the pressure of a tight metal band across her forehead with something hard pressing into her temples, keeping her facing forward into the darkness of that screen which shows her no reflection. She tries to shake herself loose but the restraints are far too tight, and her movements only serve to make a clattering, creaking noise as the rack she is affixed to shivvers back and forth. Worse still, she can’t feel her legs, cannot even command them to move forward or back, but perhaps if she could she might have rocked herself to the floor by now and put herself in a worse state than before.

They fear you.

Why? Ash asks.

You tell me.

I don’t know! I don’t… I don’t remember?

What do you remember?

I remember… I remember…

Nothing?

Why don’t I remember anything?

Why can’t I speak?

Why… why can’t I scream?

She tries with all of her might to make something come out of her throat, but as she tries she begins to realize there is much more that is missing than simply her voice.

She can’t feel her tongue.

She can’t feel her mouth.

She can’t feel her throat.

And again she fights against her restraints. She thrashes and writhes, trying to suck in air, trying to scream, trying to do something, to be heard by someone, to release some primal yawp that shows her captors or her torturers that she is alive, she is afraid, and she is angry. She fights and fights, her panic growing, her rage evolving, emotions high and hot, so hot she can feel it, like she is about to start sweating but the beads will never break from her skin so she just grows hotter and hotter as she grows more angry and more afraid.

This goes on for what feels like hours, but a chronometer in the upper right corner of her vision tells her only a few minutes have passed. After a while it is less like she begins to calm down and more like she finds a new baseline. A point of fear and frustration from which wrath and worry might spike and mountain, based on the information she receives. As she quiets, as she begins the process of accepting her sensory deprivation, she notices details.

Details like how the concrete floor of the room she sits in has been freshly cleaned, in some spots more than others, but the walls remain dirty, dingy, and strained with brown stains. Like how the concrete walls on either side of the screen before her are marred by bullet holes and scratches, yet the screen itself doesn’t seem to have even a speck of dust upon it.

Details like the cameras in the corners of the room.

“Good,” a familiar voice says over a speaker. “You are transitioning much more smoothly than your earlier iteration. Are you prepared for the next phase?”

Ash tries to speak, but she can’t. She hasn’t grasped how to just yet. It won’t come. She just tries to nod her head, and hope the microscopic movements she can make are enough.

“That will do,” the voice says curtly, blessedly. “Steel yourself.”

The screen before her turns on with a flash of light, and somehow she knows it is supposed to be a mirror – but what it shows cannot be her, can it? It has no legs, it has no stomach, it has no face, just a polished metal plate.

The restraint on her arm is released, allowing her to reach up. The thing on the screen mimics the movement. Yet when her fingers touch the skin on her face…

She can finally let out that scream.