Don't Look Back! Part 2

Chapter Thirteen: Blue Lava

The head pounding, Lucy turned in bed, the cuffs around her wrists cutting into her skins, she moved. It burnt, cold, then stung.

Noticing her movement, one of the soldiers walked over to the bed and handed her a glass of water to drink. He held onto the cuffs as long as the glass touched her skin and tied her back down when she had finished drinking.

"Where am I? What happened?" Lucy inquired, but her words met uncooperative ears. Neither of the men answered, instead, the soldier took his place beside the door and waited until the next shift took over his place.

They switched every four hours. Lucy counted the time in her head, the only thing to do, tied to a bed with nowhere to go. No windows, no clock, nothing to distract her other than her mind.

Jack?

He did not answer.

One eye on her guards, Lucy turned her head to the opposite side. Stephen, are you there? Is Tommy all right?

Thank goodness, you're alive Stephen rushed out of his room, through the hallway and past the guard that tried to hold him by the nap of his shirt. Just a second before he could reach the door to Thomas's room, another guard gripped him tight and dragged him back into his own quarters, the door locking into place behind him. Damnit

Everything okay? Tommy?

The guards won't let me to him. Yes, he's fine, they all are. We are training for the real world now

Lucy sighed, her eyes losing focus. Be careful

The room door flew open so hard, it still shook after its impact on the wall. Three more soldiers walked in, armed and in special uniforms. Dr Wilson entered the room covered in gloves, mask, visor and an overthrow of plastic.

"Please hold still for this, it will only take a moment" He injected Lucy with a blue substance and less than a glimpse later, she drifted off, back to sleep. "Okay, ready for transport"

The men untied her and carried her out of the room, up one floor into a laboratory with several massive machines. Three of those machines had tables with straps, syringes and tanks full of fluids attached to them.

Onto one of these tables the soldier placed Lucy, tied her down and adjusted her head to lay straight.

Another soldier entered the room and brought in a kid about Lucy's age, scrawny, the reddish hair standing to all sides, his face pale like Lucy. He too, sedated and unable to defend himself, got tied to the table. After that the soldiers left the room and waited outside while two nurses entered the lab and attached electrodes to the two children.

The syringes found their places in either side of the temples, right above the collar bone, and in between the ribs, just below the diaphragm. With one click, the tanks full of fluid began pumping, filling the children with a thick liquid. It took about a minute until both their eyes that had been spread wide open tainted dark blue.

Under the amount of liquid pumping through their veins, both shook so strong, the nurse had to removed the syringes to make sure neither of their subjects would break one off or hurt themselves.

The entire tremor lasted about three minutes, followed by silence. In that time, Dr Wilson mixed another concoction and filled two syringes with it. He handed each nurse one syringe, then waited for another minute before giving the order.

Right after the injection, the boy stiffened up, his jaw clenched, the body tense, his finger nails digging into his palms, the blood dripping to the floor.

Lucy on the other hand showed no reaction. Neither her eyes, nor her body changed.

Dr Wilson noted this down next to his suspicions, and continued the experiments.

Fluids, breaks, more fluids. After the each run, the nurses drained some blood from the kids veins, marked it and hung it on a rack. Three runs for the first experiment, four runs for the second, and during the fifth run in the third experiment, the boy's veins popped up and glowed like Lucy's had done so many times before. Bright blue and silver, running all over his face and around the eyes, marking the blood vessels that led from his heart to his brain.

On the second table, Lucy's fingers twitched, but due to his fascination with the boy, Dr Wilson and the nurses did not notice it. At least not until the table rattled under the vibration, then the entire machine and the pumps heated up without anyone pressing the button. The hot liquid that had remained in the tank boiled, hissing and searching for an escape route.

Both nurse ducked away under the tables when the top of one of the tanks popped off with a bang and landed near Dr Wilson. He glared at it, then the tank, watching as the liquid reached the edge and overflowed, covering most of the floor around the tank.

It surrounded Lucy's table, cooled down on the metal and solidified against the skin of the tied down girl. More and more liquid rose onto the table and formed a hardened cocoon around Lucy.

Not a moment later, the same happened with the boy's tank and before the eyes of Dr Wilson and the nurses, the two children vanished into thick, solid cocoons that swallowed the tabletop and the straps.

A blunt clunk came as echo from the nursed knocking on the solidified liquid.

Perplexed Dr Wilson turned to one of the cameras in the corner and raised his arms. "What now?"