Don't Look Back! Part 2

Chapter Twenty-Seven: The Beginning of the End

Screaming, the legs tossing around, marina fought off the men that dragged her into another room and strapped her to one of the tables. She fought off one of the soldiers and managed to get her hand free, but before she could even think of climbing off the table, another soldier entered with Dr Miller and held her down to inject something into her neck.

Puzzled at the sudden silence, they jumped back and had a look at Marina, who lay still on the table, her eyes wide open, a silent scream on her lips. Within a matter of seconds, she body writhed under the influence of the serum, then shook and at last lay still, like she had done before. Soft lines of blue and silver shone on her skin when the soldiers touched her arm to lift her off the table and transfer her into the tank at the wall.

Under constant surveillance the game began once again, her memory deleted, Marina had been transferred into another room, dressed by a nurse that kept her distance whenever the girl before her took a deep breath. At last, soldiers entered the room, grabbed the girl off the bed she had been placed on and brought her through a long dark corridor towards a small platform where Dr Miller and Dr Wilson awaited them.

"Now let's see"

The soldiers placed the girl in the middle of a metallic platform, watched as Dr Miller placed a note on her chest, then they filled the box with a number of crates, boxes and what they had been ordered to place there, then shut the entire thing off by lowering four metal cage sides that clicked into place and sealed off the box from all sides.

Content with their work, the doctors watched as the box rose off the ground and into another shaft that lit by red lamps went far up towards a dark, heavy metal door. When it reached a certain height, another metal plate shifted into place and cut off the shaft. From there on, the fate of the girl lay in her own hands.

The smell of old wood, mould, and moss filled the air. Metallic clicking echoed through the darkness. Barrels, boxes and massive crates, stacked from bottom to top of the metal box, rattling and shaking at the fast movement. A number of crates filled the middle of the box and in between, curled up into a ball, hid a girl. Covering her head with her arms, she lay still, listening to the rattling and clicking around her. The eyes squinted, she tried to make out her surroundings, but nothing gave away her location or where the strange smell came from that reached her nose. She had smelled it before, a long time ago, that much she knew, but she could not figure out where or when. Neither did she know what to do. Carefully, her hands reached out to touch the wood around her. Inside the crate before her head, something jingled, not too loud, but arrhythmic as if it were thrown around inside the crate without anything to hold it down. Wondering what it could be and what room she had found herself in, she covered her ears at the sudden, deafening, shrill sound that echoed through the shaft in which the box still ascended.

***

"You sent the third subject in with the other two?" Dr Paige muttered as she headed into the room where Dr Miller sat at a desk and studied some files. "What where you thinking? We have seen what they can do together, there is still no information on what happened with the cocoons, and you put three of them into one containment?"

A terrible grin on his face, Dr Miller rose from his seat and walked over to Dr Paige, his eyes on her as she stepped back. "We have used up almost all the children with abilities, not once did the serums work, they either died or we had to abort the experiment because we would have lost them-"

"And now you endanger these projects for the sake of what? Trying to get them to kill each other?"

"We need new children with abilities. Out there are no more we can take. In here, they do not function the way we need them to, so we will create new ones"

Her eyes on the screen, Dr Paige walked closer and studied the notes on the second monitor. "What have you done? You want to breed them?" Her sights shifted to Dr Wilson who entered the room with another file in hand, a smile on his lips. "They are children, not some animals you can breed and use"

"Ah, I see you are catching up with our idea" He pointed at the monitor with a list of the subjects on it. "We have figured that those two will make a perfect new subject, if we intervene on time, we can use the new subject and form it to our liking. The blood will have higher quantities of that virus the siblings carry and we can use it, for us, for the children, create our own world, a new one-"

"You are insane. The point of this was to find a cure, not to use the children like cattle. Dr Miller, can we agree to not use the children like that. Whatever may happen, will happen, but you cannot expect anything good to come from this. You just sent a girl into a pit with a bunch of teenage boys." Her head turned to Dr Wilson, sat at the desk, his eyes on the monitor. "She has greater abilities than any other, if something happens, and something will happen, she could kill every last one of them or endanger not only this project but all the others. What where you thinking?"

"Give it time"

"And the other boy? Are you going to send him into Group B as well?"

His head turned to Dr Wilson, Dr Miller stepped towards the desk as well and shook his head. "No, not yet. We want to see what happens with subject C while contained, if that goes wrong, we will still have Group B to try again, and the others. At some point one of them will have to work"

Shaking her head, Dr Paige walked out of the office and along the hallway to another room where Thomas sat strapped to a chair, a needle in his arm while a soldier held him down. "Let the boy go"

"Ma'am, we have strict orders-"

"I said, let him go" Pressing her fingers to the bride of her nose, Dr Paige took a chair and had a seat next to Thomas. "What were you thinking?"

A tear in his eyes, Thomas shifted in his seat, wincing as the nurse removed the needle and headed out of the room. "She only wanted to help, Marina, where is she?"

"Don't worry about her, Thomas. WICKED is good"

***

"Gally" Marina let out as the slimy creature threw her through the air and vanished into the maze, her blue lightnings the last thing Gally saw as she disappeared.

***