Experiment Number One

Lieutenant Wallace brought me back to my cell. He retrieved me a fresh pair of clothes and placed my power stripping bracelet back onto my wrist. Before he left, he instructed me to lie down and pretend I was sleeping to make it seem like I didn’t know the power had gone out. So that’s what I did, and all the stress I experienced pulled me into a deep slumber.

One built on a nightmare.

I was back home in Lusha. It was my house, but clean. More polished. It smelt of daisies, and the morning sun shone hot through the windows, covering the world in a white filter.

I sat at our kitchen table once I became aware of another presence. My mother was facing away from me by the stove with an apron tied around her waist as she stirred a pot. A savory waft drifted over me, letting me know she was cooking my grandmother’s famous tomato soup. The scent flowed into my body, making me feel warm and cozy. I exhaled with a smile; it had been a long time since I felt like that.

“Emerye, can you start setting the table?” My mother’s sweet voice lulled. Without resistance, I pushed myself out of my chair and went to the cabinets to grab dishes. I watched my mother; it’s been forever since I saw her willingly cook, the last time being right before Mariana was born. She had a glow around her, a warm aura that heated my skin like a furnace. Her long raven hair covered her face, making it impossible to see behind it. Still, with how she hummed her favorite melody, I could tell her smile was wide.

I went to place the dishes on the table, and once I finished, my voice squeaked, “All done, Mom.” I stood behind my mother with a dopey smile, waiting for her to turn around and lift me to the air as she sang me praises. She responded, “Go tell your siblings it’s time to eat.”

My smile faded, and I pressed my lips together to contain the familiar feeling in my gut. The air around me turned into a cold chill. The sudden temperature change didn’t seem to have affected my mother; she still sat at the pot stirring the soup and humming her notes, though they dropped an octave.

I decided not to press the issue; I finally had my mother back and would not know when she’d leave again. I walked over to the kitchen doorway, but the space beyond it was empty when I got there. I stuck my foot out, only for it not to find ground. “Mom, how am I supposed to tell Amilio and Mariana that dinner is done?”

“Call to them.”

I stared out into the void and cupped my hands around my mouth, “Amilio. Mariana. It’s time to eat!”

“This smells delicious, Mom!”

I whipped around to see my siblings sitting at the table with their backs towards me. My mother stood over Amilio, setting down his bowl of soup. Amilio shook with excitement as he prepared to dig into his meal. Mariana, on the other hand, stayed still as she awaited her dinner. I walked towards them leisurely, “How did you guys get in here so fast?”

“We’re always here when Mom makes dinner, right Mariana?”

“Yes.”

I walked around the table, trying to get a good look at my siblings to see if they were okay. No matter what angle I was at, their faces always seemed to be hidden from my view; necks turned and faces blurred. “Why won’t you guys look at me?” No one responded. “Are you guys… upset that I left you?”

“Of course we are,” Amilio responded between sips of his soup. “You left us alone and now we’re dead.”

“What?” I said in shock. Clearly, they weren’t dead if they were sitting right in front of me. “Look at Mariana, she’s already changing.” I looked over to my sister, whose long hair that resembled my mother’s was covering her face. She slowly lifted her head from her bowl of soup to look at me. Red beady eyes with snarled, rotted teeth and decaying gums took over the face of the sister I loved. I gasped at the sight.

“Why are you so surprised? You did this to us,” Amilio said with a voice full of anger. As my gaze switched between him and Mariana, I watched their skin melt off their bones. They screamed in torment like they were being burnt alive. Tears fell from my eyes. I wanted to reach out and help my siblings, but something held me back. Above me, my mother stood with her hands on my shoulders, making me sit there and watch my siblings melt away.

“You did this,” her voice was filled with malicious intent. “You were being selfish and now you are killing your siblings.”

“No,” I cried. “No, I was trying to get back to them.”

“The clock is ticking and your time is running out. Soon they’ll be nothing but piles of bones. What will you do without them then?”

I woke up, falling out of bed and landing on the hard and freezing ground. I winced as the fluorescent lights blinded me; I guessed the compound had finally regained its power. I tried to still my breathing, but the images of my siblings decaying in front of me and the feeling of my mother holding me down stayed heavy within my soul.

I knew it wasn’t real; my mother was dead, and my siblings were off somewhere far away from there. Wherever “there” was. They weren’t in the compound with me and were safe from the threat of the Infected and the Dhasl… Unless another power outage happened and they got released. The Dhasl could’ve already been out there. I didn’t know how long I slept or what new developments had been made. I could’ve been asleep for days, and the Dhasl and Infected could be roaming the streets of Volent, creating a new army for that Warzel dude. I would never know.

The dream scratched my brain like a broken record. There was nothing better to do than sit and think in my cell. I decided nothing major happened during the power outage because I was still being watched through the observation window. Other than that, though, I had no other visitors. Ren Clash and Doctor Taylor didn’t come in begging me to give myself to them. The guards didn’t come by to bring me to some hidden part of the compound or to deliver me sickening food. Even Lieutenant Wallace didn’t come by, which I should’ve expected because he genuinely had no reason to. He probably didn’t want to cause any suspicion after the whole black out incident.

So I did what I usually did when all the officials left me alone for hours: I sat on the floor and stared at my observers working. I thought about my siblings and their relation to the threat of the Infected. If the Dhasl and the Infected were to get out and somehow spread and the disease multiplied across the country, my siblings could have gotten infected. And if my siblings got infected, I would have done anything and everything to find a cure. And that “cure” happened to be me. So, could I really just sit there and refuse to help Ren Clash and Doctor Taylor because I didn’t want to leave my siblings alone when there was a threat on the horizon that was coming to kill us all? Is that what my mother meant when she said I was being selfish? In truth, did I have to remove myself entirely from my sibling’s lives to really and truly ensure their happiness and safety?

The answer was simple. How could I preach about trying to save my siblings from the world when if I didn’t help develop the cure, I would be the reason that the world would put them in danger. I was the first human with M-Gene powers to appear in thousands of years; who knows when another one will come around and help the government out. I was all they had and I’m everything my siblings had. But I would rather them be together and happy with me dead rather than all three of us together on the verge of an apocalypse. My siblings were young; they still needed to grow. They needed to break out of the Mendoza curse to become something more than what my parents were. Something more than me.

The next time I saw Ren Clash and Doctor Taylor, I agreed to their experiments.