THE CODE THAT LINKS US ©

Chapter Four

MADISON

Someone shakes my shoulder making me open my eyes all at once. As soon as I wake up I find my mother's face right in front of me, way too close. "What are you doing on the floor dear?" she asks and I look around. The forbidden door is just across de hall. I probably fall asleep while I waited for them to come home.

"What time is it?" I say hoarsely dragging me to rest my back on the railing.

"Almost midnight," she says sitting down next to me tired and tilting her head back closing her eyes. She is a pretty beautiful woman, her hair is blond, long and straight, her skin is white with a little tone of pink and her big grey eyes stand out on her beautiful face. We don't look alike even a bit.

"Where's my father?" I ask a few seconds later and she looks at me from the corner of the eye, exhausted.

"He isn't coming tonight," she says straightening her head to look me in the eyes. I look at the door and then back at her who forces a sweet smile like she knew what would happen next. "Sarah told me you have some questions for me." Oh, Sarah, there are times when you really need to keep your mouth shut. I nod without an alternative.

"I hear you," she says making a gesture with her hand for me to begin.

I moisten my lips with my tongue and gulp before I start, "what's that place?" I finally ask pointing at the door with my head and she sighs.

"It is called the Test Room" she replies and my eyes widen when I finally hear her answer, "It's a kind of lab," she explains when she sees my surprised look. I wasn't expecting that.

"Of the man in the living room?"

"Yes. His name is Wen Hoffman, he works in an experiment in there," she explains patiently waiting for my next question.

"An experiment? But... I heard a child or at least I think so," she gulps and looks at me... nervous?

"A girl," she corrects me.

"Is she sick?"

"No," I look at her waiting for an explanation and fortunately she continues. "She's totally healthy, that's the reason she's in there."

"Is she... your daughter?" I ask worried for the answer and apparently, she gets surprised for the question.

"No, of course not," she says quickly shaking her head. "That girl was specifically created to be tested and observed her whole life. Before she was born they modified her full DNA, they removed some diseases that she could have developed, and they changed genes that influenced her appearance. They changed so many things from her before she born. They called them test-children, experiments."

I am sure I had heard that from Levy once. Children created with the purpose of testing medicines for the evolution of medicine and science, guaranteeing the effectiveness of the medicaments, but sometimes they fail and the rest... wasn't good.

"Can I see her?" I ask and she forces me a smile.

"Sure," she says surprising me again but this time stands up helping me to get up. From her pocket, she takes out a silver key like the color of the door's handle to open the door. She inserts it in the lock and with a little twist the room that for so many times I wanted to see opens right in front of my eyes.

The room is gigantic, even bigger than my parents' which I used to believe was the biggest of them all. Like my mother said, at first sight, it is a common lab, similar to the one of any biology or chemistry class. At the right side of the door, there are two large metal planches located in the center and over them, there are samples with different substances of different colors in test tubes of different sizes too fully organized and identified.

At the bottom of the same side, there are some archivists, full of information about the girl I guess. In the other side, there only are two tables, also metallic, one with glass syringes of various sizes ready to be used and in the other one, there's only one box full of white plastic gloves over it.

The lab is divided in two by a big glass that goes from floor to ceiling forming a class of wall through all the other side of the room. I approach to where the glass begins and just in front of this like if it was kind of glued I find a kind of black table made up of dark glass that goes from the floor till approximately the half of the big wall of glass and in front of this one there are two tall black chairs.

"It is the control panel," she says referring to the table in front of us. She touches it two times and suddenly it converts into several screens that show different options locked in rectangles: heart, breathing, brain, defenses, reactions, climate zone B. "This controls everything of the girl and her room," she pokes the rectangle in which it reads heart and immediately the glass of the walls also transforms itself in another kind of screen with different holograms that mark the beating of the girl's heart in real time, the number of beats per minute, her blood pressure and other infinity of things and graphics that update each second, "let's keep going," she says seconds later handing me a pair of gloves from the box. I put them on and then follow her to the side of the glass that is empty. This time she passes her hand over it making a keyboard appear asking for a three-digit code, 1-5-0.

When she inserts the code, unexpectedly the part of the glass that wasn't representing anything of the control panel, slips to the left letting us enter the zone B, the real room of the child.

This part of the room is completely different from the other. All the walls are formed by gigantic mirrors, including the one that was just glass from the other side and the ceiling. There are no windows or lots of furniture, just one bed similar to the ones in hospitals in the middle of the room and over it, the girl in a deep sleep. Other than that, the only thing here is a plastic box with what seem to be toys and a strange artifact that hangs from the ceiling just over the bed, similar to a rectangular lamp.

I get into the room with my mother next to me and the door closes automatically behind us. I get near where the girl is and observe her. She is so pretty, her skin is way too white, - a product of not being in contact with the sun - and her hair brown, large and beautiful. She's young, just like I thought she would be, must be around five to six years old and wears a set of white t-shirt and shorts.

"Is she always asleep?" I ask my mother and she shakes her head.

"Just after each test, they make her sleep so she calms down and forgets the most of what happened," she explains to me and I get a lump formed in my throat. It's like they erase from her memory what happened so they could do it again and again without her complaining.

"That's terrible," I say and she forces a smile while brushing the girl's hair with her fingers. "What is it that she has on her wrist?" I say approaching her a little bit more when I notice a black mark on her right wrist.

My mother takes her forearm and holds it up for me to see it better. When I do, I realize it's not only a mark but a kind of tattoo with the same code, e-150. "Her experiment code, that way the Control Center controls the children on their charge."

"Are there others?"

"Hundreds of them around the world."

"All of them from the man of the living room?"

"Dr. Hoffman only takes care of her," she explains and I just stare pitifully at the child. "Madison, I know this can be hard for you to understand, but you must keep yourself out, okay? Your father can't know you know about her or this room, nobody can know that."

"What's with the mystery?"

"It's complicated."