Thermophile

Thirteen: Friend

WARNING: This chapter mentions fetal and child abuse and death, if these triggers, or with a possibility of damaging your mental well-being, skip it.
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The planet was freezing over? Why? How?

What the fuck?

My mind was spiraling somewhere thinking of the world freezing like a goddamned popsicle–maybe we were really damned–maybe God fucking got tired of taking care and hearing his creations' shitty prayers, and damaging the Earth so he just iced the whole planet over. Everything was covered in snow, so pretty much all that my sight could reach was an endless white, they even made my eyes hurt because it was like staring into nothingness.

I scanned my surroundings again, hoping for any movement–any color–excluding the light sprinkles of flurry snows dropping on the ground silently. Any kind of road or path was nowhere in sight too.

"It was just summer yesterday." I murmured.

"The last summer, or rather, the last season change I became aware of was sixty-plus years ago." Elliot said, walking past me. He had his hands laced at the back of his head, but his nonchalant attitude was contradicted by the sad tone of his voice.

I traced his footsteps-or rather, the line he was making because the pile of snow was up to his knees-unsure to where he was taking us. It was still unknown to me how I could put my full trust to this person whom I didn't even know existed until a while ago, I just did so. And that was fucking creepy.

But this is just a dream. A tiny voice at the back of my mind whispered.

Yes, no? Even I, didn't know anymore.

Maybe Leib would come in my room and yell at me awake any minute now.

Leib. He was my big brother. But the familial connection I expected to cling with the thought of him was nowhere to be felt. It was like I knew him but not really knew him. The details were there, the moments when we were together were there, but there were no feelings.

It seemed as if I was just told that I have a brother and he was this and that but never really got to be with him.

I tried to recall my parents and friends and it was the same, nothing to feel, a blank slate of emotion.

"Where are we going?" I asked my companion.

"Somewhere where there are no wires." He answered.

I didn't know the connection of those wires to explaining to me what really was happening and I didn't further ask about it for now. "What happened?" Here. To everyone. To the world.

"Your question is too broad, do you mean you?"

Shit, I forgot about that part right there.

The crunches of snow being disturbed were the only sounds I heard for a while. Because I was itching to know, at the same time, a part of me was afraid to hear the truth that what I knew all along were all lies.

"There's really something wrong with the fluids I gave you, or was it me? Did I deliver it wrong?" Elliot sighed. We traveled a pretty far distance but I sense no weariness from the both of us. "Never mind that. Okay, I shall start at the beginning as per the data I gathered and of course will try to tell you in a concise-but-detailed manner."

I nodded from behind him, but replied a "Yeah," later on.

"BioGenetion Merge Subject Thirty-Five, code number 9401902604, that's your full name. You were created in a laboratory using a spliced egg and sperm. In short, you got no parents and you were a lab rat. Seventy-nine years ago, they successfully 'grew' you into what looked like a year-old baby. The main objective of the study was to test the theory that it doesn't need the introduction of a fertilized egg in a female for it to grow and develop-simple, innocent even-but a military organization caught a whiff of you and proposed-at gun point-to incorporate something that will enable you to be the country's war machine, and then create many others like you if it became a success.