Blue Fire (Edited)

Chapter 6: On Display

Philip woke with a jolt, feeling the vibration of the wristband on his right hand. Cracking his eyes open, he noticed it glowed in a vivid red. With a groan, he let his head fall back onto the bed. He couldn't afford to delay or ignore the summons; otherwise, they would drag him there by force. Getting up, he changed into the usual jumpsuit they provided and descended the stairs.

Rutherford awaited him by the main door, wearing a smirk. "Come on, you can't keep your fans waiting," he declared, leading the way out, with Philip dragging his feet behind him.

Philip knew they were heading to the lab, the one he christened 'the fish tank.' It was more formally referred to as the observatory. But it reminded him of pictures he had seen in books of fish tanks.

He was right; they arrived at a large white circular room with three doors on the opposing side. Philip never really knew where the other doors led. In the center of the room, nestled between a row of circular workbenches, was a large circular glass chamber.

He hated that chamber, but he liked this room for its vast windows. At the top of the circular room walls was an endless array of windows encircling the whole room, falling to about two feet from the ceiling. He enjoyed the blue sky and the white puffy clouds, a view he was not privy to in the confines of his stay. He could tell it was a rather cold day today as the condensation on the windows was extensive, and there was a thin line of ice covering the bottom sill of the glass.

Rutherford stood at the open door to the glass chamber and motioned for Philip to enter. As soon as he made his entrance, a glass panel slid up from the floor sealing him inside. Furnished with a treadmill and a bench, he chose to sit on the bench and await his fate.

Soon, Rutherford returned with a group of men, all in short white coats with their names embroidered on their pockets. They eyed Philip with a mix of apprehension, curiosity, and, surprisingly, fear.

"Enter, gentlemen. As promised, you will get to witness for yourselves today the capabilities of Subject 1. I know you've all reviewed the footage of the other subjects as they were practicing against subject 1 and wanted to see for yourselves what he was capable of," Rutherford announced.

Philip felt like he was the main spectacle at a zoo, a rare creature for others to gawk and point at. He wanted to tear off the cuffs and indeed show them what he was capable of. But if there was a way out of the cuffs, he would have known it by now. He read a plethora of engineering books with the sole purpose of reverse engineering them, but all his attempts were futile.

"Sir, how safe are we right now, standing in such close proximity to the specimen?" One of the men asked Rutherford. To which Rutherford produced a small remote from his pocket with a sliding button on it.

"The round room you see before you is bulletproof and virtually indestructible. Also, the remote you see in my hand helps me control the subjects. It automatically connects to the cuffs of any of the subjects just by pointing it at any one of them. The slider controls how much electricity I can push into their bodies. I hear it's quite painful, wouldn't know myself though," he ended with a forced laugh. To which some of the other scientists smirked.

Rutherford kept his finger on the slider and pointed it towards Philip.

"Subject 1, please stand," he spoke.

Philip raised one eyebrow his way and slowly stood up, putting his hands in his pockets. He knew that this was Rutherford's way of challenging him, of seeing whether he would comply with a simple order. He did, knowing that standing would not be what gets him zapped. Any order to produce blue fire would be met with resistance, and he was prepared for the pain. This was the one thing he refused to give them the satisfaction of knowing.