Thermophile

Fifteen: Remembrance 2.0

I watched my blood fill the fat syringe. I felt the device's pull as I started to feel drowsy as the crimson liquid went up its barrel. After the tourniquet was untied from my arm, the person in a very weird, white suit left without a word.

And then, I was left. I knew long before that these people didn't treat me like them—like a human being—instead I was regarded like an object that wouldn't feel basically anything.

The new place was no different from the old one, it was just that there were others here, and by that I meant other experimental subjects. I was put in a large room with nothing but a bed in the middle of it. The absence of other furniture to relieve myself reminded me that I was not really what I appeared to be or how I was treated.

It had been so long and I gather it had been many years since I last saw Elliot. I always wondered what happened to him before they put me to sleep—or when I was sane.

Time was unknown because this place lacked any kind of device that told it, whether it was night or day, only those people studying us would know. Hah, studying, I knew that now. And as a pioneer subject, I was often called—more like wheeled-in strapped to a metal table—to participate in specimen gathering. We were made to be studied at with the possibility of being sold—like human toys. Oh right, I wasn't really a human.

"Why is her liver always incompatible with the others?" One of the people in white asked the other one. A woman.

"I know, right?" Her companion was a man and they were standing at the foot of the bed I was bound to. "They just," He made a gesturing motion with his hands. "die."

They continued to talk but I muffled their voices in my head. For some reason, I couldn't use my ability in this place—if I wasn't asked for it—whenever I wanted to. I could've easily burned these chains with my bare hands. And burned these buildings along with these cruel people. If I could just...

I directed my sight to the large lamp above me. I was brought here again. Since my transfer, there was not a moment that I wasn't wheeled in this room. Last time they cut a part of my liver to attach it to someone else and I guess that was what they were talking about.

I frowned when they wheeled another bed beside me, it was empty.

Who will lay in it next?

The question in my head was answered the second a boy entered. He was small, that the white gown he was wearing swallowed him. He looked like one of those in the conditioning—those that I tend to be friends with because I either saved them from being bullied or approached them because they were alone.

"Nathan, this is Subject Thirty-Five," His companion gestured my person, who was very naked and bound on the table.

Wide red eyes stared back at me and they were swollen as if he cried for a long time.

"Get on the bed," commanded the person in white laboratory coat beside this Nathan boy.

He complied and climbed the bed taller than him with his might, and without being instructed, he lied on it.

Does he know what was about to happen?

Does he know they were about to open him up—or probably just me—and alter his inside make-ups?

"Sit tight, all will be done in a jiffy." If that sounded convincing to them enough to put a kid at ease, then for me it sounded really creepy.

"All set." One said and they all went out, leaving me with the child beside me.

When I looked at this Nathan kid, I was bewildered with his blank face. No fear, no any kind of emotion, he was just there staring above. Did they give him some kind of a drug to suppress emotions?