“Frankenstein’s monster,” I said, chilled. “You know what happened to the monster’s creator in that story?”

“That story was an allegory about the industrial age,” he said dismissively. “The problem with warfare is that people get upset at the soldier deaths. I intend to provide pre-dead combatants.”

“That is the sickest, most amoral idea I’ve ever heard in my life,” I said, shrinking back in the chair.

The Professor threw up his hands. “This is why I don’t bother with conversation. Any idiot could see that we’ll actually save lives by using corpses as soldiers.”

“But they’ll still be killing living humans.”

“You’re a simpleton. The only thing that doesn’t bore me about you is how you heal from injury. That could be extremely useful for my project.”

The Professor called to a man, someone I thought of as Average Joe, because he had the face of the guy next door, your coworker, a man in line at the bank, a face you wouldn’t remember unless you saw him smile as you screamed in agony.

The Professor said, “Here’s the key to my car. Keep it filled with gas and clean if I ever need to use it.” He handed Average Joe a transponder key and then said, almost as an afterthought, “Also, take this subject and get her identity. No damage to her organs because I want to use them later.”

“We can fill up that vat.”

“Don’t annoy me with trivialities.”

Sometimes I have nightmares about what happened next, my fear and the pain. The water.

My life had been endangered before, but nothing had terrified me like the water filling my mouth, my nose, my lungs. The worst of it was the feeling of helplessness. The deep water rendered me voiceless, the heavy chains rendered me powerless.

The men only let up when they got bored, but then they’d come back and start again.

I didn’t think they would kill me on purpose, but I thought they might do it by accident, so I held on. I held on as fiercely as I have ever since I was an embryo in my mother Regina’s hostile womb.

They injected me with drugs, hoping that I would talk. I pretended to be under the influence and was able to get a cherry fruit juice box before they figured out that I wasn’t Billie Jean, an unwed mother.

No further juice boxes followed despite my confessions that I was Jane, who’d spent too many years at the Lowood school for girls, or Maggie May, keeping my young lover from school, or Brandy, who worked at a waterfront bar, or sexy Sharona. I wasn’t clever Lizzy, in love with a snob, or impetuous Bridget, needing a cigarette and a drink.

So who was I? What was I?