Strained silence travels throughout the large room, the scared averted glances of scientists and the harsh glares of others sending a cold chill through the room.
"You mean to tell me that you put the vehicle there, yet you failed to attach a second PFC to it?" The voice sounds only mildly annoyed, but the terseness of the way he says the words is enough to frighten everyone in the room enough for backs to straighten, and hands to shift in laps.
The man in front of the voice is tall, with graying dark hair atop his head and a lab coat two sizes too small covering his large frame. He is young, but his IQ is the equivalent of Albert Einstein's, and his extreme perceptive capabilities makes him extremely vital.
"Y-yes, sir. That is what I'm telling you. My associates were not able to create enough time to do so."
A couple people in the audience turn to their neighbors, resulting in excited and confused whispers making their way around the room. Before they can get too extreme, a fist slams menacingly on a table. Several people jump, and the whispers diminish.
"Quiet!" The voice yells. "You are quiet during a trial, do you understand?" A chorus of nods follow. "Good." The voice says, calmer this time. "Now back to the problem at hand. You say that you failed to deploy the second PFC, so how do you propose we fix this problem? You are one of my best doctors—surely you have something in mind?"
The doctor fidgets uncomfortably. "Um—well, my colleagues and I haven't really thought that far ahead. We counted on it working."
"Excuse me?" The voice is dangerously calm, and that no doubt frightens the doctor. "Do you mean to tell me that you are going to simply give up after all of this? After all that we have worked so hard to create? Don't you want to find the cure? Don't you want to taste the success after we have saved the world from this 'inevitable oblivion' everyone is so afraid of?"
There is silence throughout the room, the echoes of the voice ringing through the building and bouncing off the columns holding the place up. The voice continues.
"Are you already so willing to destroy all that you have created? I thought, doctor, that coming into all this, you swore a loyalty to us all. You swore a loyalty that bound you to these experiments. Are you so daft as to be ready to take that back almost immediately? Look at yourself! Look at everyone and everything around you! This did not come from a sheer accident or a bad dream. This is real. So make your decision."
The man shrinks under the pressure of the words, as if they cut into his skin like a dull blade. "Sir, I have put many years into these experiments, but I simply cannot see how we would be able to continue with the current subject if they cannot be tracked. It simply cannot be done." His voice is shaking but sure of itself. He thinks he'll live to see tomorrow. He has no idea how wrong he is.
The voice laughs—a deep, rumbling sound similar to thunder—but it is not a warm sound. It is cold and dark. "Very well then, doctor. You have made your decision."
The man slumps in obvious relief, but it is short-lived. Suddenly, the voice calls, "Guards! Take our doctor to the smoke room."
The last sound before a set of four guards emerges from the perimeter of the room is a miserable groan. The sound of a man, begging on his knees for forgiveness. But the shot has been fired, and bullet wounds are not so easily healed.
~
The wall of glass that separates the smoke room from the observing room is one-sided. There is a small amount of mercy one receives by entering the smoke room. They get to die, but it is fairly quick and they do not think anyone is watching them as they crumble away into a shell of their former self.
The owner of the voice stands on one side, watching expressionless as the doctor from the previous trial is ushered in. He is fighting—quite feebly—to get out of the grasp of the guards, but it is to no avail. Eventually, he stops fighting, and the guards let him go before stranding him in the room alone and locking the door behind them as they exit.
The doctor's eyes travel the room, eyes narrowed. They bore through the hard glass, and his fists clench at his sides. Too bad that he can tell there is a mirror there. It will only make death harder—knowing that someone is watching.
The smoke room is plain, painted white all around to create a wonderfully pristine environment. After all, what good is something dirty? Being dirty makes everything hard to handle, and experiments don't work unless cleanly performed.
The doctor seems as if he's finally given up, and has resorted to closing his eyes and murmuring something under his breath. If given a guess, one might say he was praying. To whom, one couldn't be sure. Right now, no god of any kind is coming to his aid.
Fingers press against a switch, flicking it upwards in one simple, swift motion. Smoke enters the room through tubes almost hidden entirely in the walls, and the misty sheen of it makes it almost beautiful, if not for deadly intentions. The doctor kneels to the ground, going slack at the smoke enters his lungs. His muscles spasm, his back arcing, his eyes widening, and his chest heaving as he gasps for another breath that he will never breathe—
He collapses to the ground, the words forming on his lips that could be no more predictable than whether black is opposite of white. My daughter.
The last sound the owner of the voice hears as he exits the observing room is the sound of the smoke being sucked back through the tubes, and the click of harsh shoes on marble floors.
~
A knock sounds at the door. The possessor of the voice straightens at his desk, black eyes narrowed towards the door.
"You may enter if you feel that the contents of your message are more important than the work I am currently doing." The voice is sharp like a knife, and silence emits from the opposite side of the door. Convincing himself that the person had gone, the man with the voice turns back to his papers and commences writing. But he is unable to scrawl down a mere word before the door is pushed open, revealing a short, meaty man with wild white hair and frightened eyes. It must be important, then, if the man is willing to risk his life for whatever information must be passed on.
"Sir," the man stutters out. "There has been a new arrival. A young boy. He is rumored to be the one we might be waiting on. Especially after...complications this afternoon."
This caught attention. "Are you sure it is him?" The voice asks, but there is no longer darkness to his words; there is curiosity.
"Positive." The man says, nodding tersely.
If this man happened to be telling the truth, then all mistakes made earlier on in the experiment would be washed away. This boy can change things. The host of the voice's mouth stretches into a ghastly smile. "Bring him in."
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Subject #013 | ✓
Teen Fiction"I'm only going to ask you one more time." I say firmly. "Who are you and what do you want with me?" He frowns, and I tense, waiting for a blow, but none comes. I really need to shut my big mouth. "Apparently, I'm not nearly as famous as I thou...
