BioSwap

Chapter 4

A knock wakes me.

Pushing myself up I rub eyes as my head pounds endlessly.

The knocking continues, "I'm coming, please stop."

Looking around I am aware that I am in my bedroom and I am soaking wet. Running my hands through my hair I feel the slick wetness dripping from the ends of my hair landing on my thigh. What the hell? The knocking keeps on as I grab my head trying to stop the pounding from killing me.

"I said I'm coming!" I say out loud making the knocking finally stop.

Weakly lifting myself from the bed I groggily make my way to the door swinging it open as I turn around to sit back down.

"What in the world happened to you Adara?" It was a female's voice, my mom's voice and she sounded really worried.

Taking a seat on the edge of my bed I peek up at her. With the light bothering my eyes I squint,  I can see her standing there with her hands on her hips as one foot taps. "Are you going to answer me?  I've been calling for hours, hours, Adara, and you've been upstairs in your room."

I lowered my head, I wish she would stop yelling for once. I put one hand up, “please stop yelling mom.”

“Do you have any idea how worried I have been?”

I have no idea what she is talking about but little images start to flash in my mind. A little boy, fire, smoke, guns, red, blood, voices. I squeeze my eyes shut trying to erase of temporarily stop the images from popping, but it doesn’t help.

I shake my head again, “Adara?”

An alley lighting, pain, a boy, hands holding me, rain splatters on my face, a roof, clouds, darkness.

“Phil, come quickly.” I can hear my mom shout for my dad but the images and voices are too loud to cover up.

I press my hands against my temple and pray for everything to stop. Or to at least slow down for a bit. But nothing, nothing I did was helping with the pain and images that filled my head. The little boy lying dead on the floor, his eyes begging for me to help him. His eyes holds mines as they drag his lifeless body away leaving a puddle of red blood in the middle of the broken down room.

Warm hands touch my shoulder, “Adara.” His voice is soft like a whisper but instead of his touch bringing me back it takes me away.

 

“Dr. Lionel, there has to be something else we can do?”

I’ve just been given the instructions to test our new subject with a different type of serum. This serum hasn’t been tested on any of our animal subjects. I don't understand why he wants to test our human ones first. We don’t know the first thing about what it can do to a person. The last person we tested died immediately, an innocent BioSwap who never asked for any of this.

When I came in The Meds building to work for the government I thought that I could find a way for BioSwaps and humans to coexist. Once here I found out that BioSwaps are nothing more than animals, and they want to hurt anyone who is not like them. But I soon realized as well that not all of them are like that. Some want to live amongst us. Survive and be with their family. But after debate and arguments I found out that nobody is different to the people who work here and the sooner you realize that the better. It doesn’t mean that I don't have a soul, I do, but I also agree that we have to control the BioSwap; all of them. In order to live with them.

“Phil, what you fail to realize is that we live with people. Not animals. BioSwaps are not people, we are, and we have to protect ourselves from them. I thought we established this when you first started here? “