Experiment Number One

I respectfully declined to be the government’s new plaything after Ren Clash, Doctor Taylor, and Lieutenant Wallace barged in. I told them I had more important things to worry about than some stupid mutation. Don’t get me wrong, I was dying to figure out what was wrong with me and why I had never heard of a mutant before, but if answering those questions meant that I had to die, there was no way I was going to go through with it so long as I was myself. My goal in the beginning was to get back to my siblings, and I couldn’t do that if I was dead.

Doctor Taylor didn’t like that reasoning; she started screaming something about how my siblings are better off without me and my new responsibility is to her cause, or whatever.

I don’t remember a thing after Doctor Taylor’s freak out. One moment I was left with my powers, the next I was being jutted awake by the feeling of someone snatching me out of my bed. My eyes sprang open to a group of four men dressed head to toe in pitch black tactical gear in my cell. Two gripped their hands around my forearms, urging me forward; the other two stood in front of me and at my rear. They bound my wrists together behind me, causing me to trip over my feet from the lack of balance. Still foggy from sleep, I said, “What’s going on?” No one responded, but what could I expect?

As they led me up the stairs, I knew exactly what was happening. I had refused to go forth with their plans, so the government was going to kill me. Or strap me down to a table and then kill me slowly. Or maybe they will threaten me with the lives of Amilio and Mariana. I started to panic. I knew the Volent government wouldn’t stop at anything to get what they wanted. But I kept still; instead, I watched my surroundings. My eyes jotted over the compound as we crossed different entrances and pathways. I was looking for a place to run. Somewhere to escape when I needed to get out.

“Thank you soldiers.” My face reddened at the familiar voice. “I can take her from here.”

Lieutenant Wallace approached my side and replaced the soldier’s grip on my arm with his own; his fingers barely grazed my skin. The guard before him burrowed into me as if he was afraid I’d run away. But to Lieutenant Wallace, he seemed to not be phased by my presence at all. He just continued walking down the corridor, staring straight ahead.

I noticed a scar that ran along his right jaw, reaching from his ear to just about his chin. I wondered how he got it. Just to think he was there with me, deemed the government’s greatest weapon, it made me wonder how much of his life he had put on the line. Obviously, he didn’t seem to care much about it much. If he’s walking around with a defective bomb like it’s a regular occurrence, you couldn’t care. Right?

“Looking at the old scar, I see.” Lieutenant Wallace watched me without turning his head; his stare caused my face to turn hot. I looked to the ground, watching my slippers shuffle against the light grey concrete.

He chuckled, “No need to be embarrassed. Everyone asks questions about it. So, go on,” his voice was smooth and made me warm. It felt like a steaming cup of thick cocoa on a cold winter’s day. Cozy. Comfortable.

I told him, “I wasn’t going to ask anything about it.”

“Well, good. I was getting tired of the questions anyway.” He gave a small grin and we returned to walking silently. We turned down a few hallways, and all I had learned about that place was that it was a maze. How was I supposed to get out of there if I couldn’t even find a simple door with an “exit” sign above it? The only vents visible are twelve feet high on the wall and smaller than the width of my shoulders. That passage was out of the question.

“How are you feeling?” Lieutenant Wallace asked.

Startled, I stuttered out, “Fine.”

“Just fine?”

“Yeah.”

“Are you sure? I know that after you use your powers, your body gets overwhelmed and you tend to pass out.”

“How do you know that?” I looked at him with furred brows.

“Well, it happened when you,” he paused for a second, his lips hesitant. “When you had the altercation with your parents.” Well, at least he wasn’t saying I was a murderer. “And when you got detained. So after what happened earlier, we expected you to fall out or feel somewhat fatigue.”

I thought back to when my father tried to kill me. To this day, I don’t remember using my powers then. I don’t remember using them when I got arrested, either. The only thing that came to mind was the flash of light that blinded me before I passed out. When it happened, it was like life was draining out of me, but maybe it was my powers escaping my body. Doctor Taylor had said that my father was electrocuted. Perhaps I did cause his death.

“Well, with my father and my arrest, I was in a frantic state. So maybe the more intense my emotions are, the more overwhelmed my body becomes?”

“That could be,” Lieutenant Wallace looked thoughtfully ahead. We turned a corner and were met by steel double doors. “I guess we’ll find out.”

When he opened the doors, I was met with another pure white room filled with all kinds of different machines. Everything gleaned underneath the lights overhead and the space smelled of peroxide. The government seemed to have an obsession with white rooms. Weird.

Lieutenant Wallace led me through the twists and turns of the machines to the back of the room, where a single door was covered in green chipped paint. He knocked three times and then took a step back. After a few seconds, the door swung open to where Ren stood with his famous smile. “Mendoza, you made it!” Like I had the choice to be anywhere else. “Come in, come in.” He motioned his hand into the room as he pressed himself against the door, allowing space for Lieutenant Wallace and me to squeeze in.

The room we entered differed from what I had seen two seconds prior. Instead of everything being bright, white, and squeaky clean, the room was lit in a faded yellow light, the floors had a layer of dirt painted on top, and the walls were made of chipped red brick.

Doctor Taylor sat at a table in the middle of the room, typing on a tablet, paying no mind to us as we sat on the other side. Lieutenant Wallace unlatched my cuffs just to bring my arms around and lock them into the restraints built into the table. I noticed a thick black bracelet with a red blinking light attached to my wrist; they must’ve put it there when they cuffed me. “What’s that?”

“It’s to test your levels,” Ren Clash said as he skipped back to the table. “It allows us to monitor them 24/7.”

“It also prevents you from using your powers,” Doctor Taylor says without looking up. “Just to make sure you don’t try to scorch us all.”

I looked at Lieutenant Wallace as he took a seat beside me. When he saw my cocked brows and frown, he cleared his throat and said, “For precaution,” then turned his attention to the wall in front of him.

“I told you guys I was not going to be your hamster.”

Ren replied, “You’re not a hamster, you are a human that happens to have an extraordinary mutation that can sa–”

“Whether you like it or not, Mendoza,” Doctor Taylor cut him off. “You are a dangerous specimen. To let you walk around here in the open without any type of protection for us normal people, will be suicide. So whether you want to comply or not, you are going to be stripped of your powers.”

“So, what am I doing here then? If I’m not here to be forced into doing this experiment, or whatever, why was I dragged out of my sleep?”

“Well to start off, this little standoff you think you have isn’t going to last. SIA will take any measure necessary to continue with their operation.”

I perked up at the mention. I remembered Ren Clash brought it up in our first meeting, but I had yet to find out who SIA was. It must have been vital if they kept talking about it. So I asked.

Doctor Taylor rolled her eyes as if it should’ve been common knowledge. She opened her mouth, but before she could get a word out, Ren Clash interjected. “S.I.A., standing for ‘Special Intelligence Agency,’ is a Volent government… well agency, specializing in things that plague our country. Terrorism, aliens, girls with magical powers.”

“Wait,” I leaned forward, “are you saying aliens are real?”

“Well, I can’t confirm or de–”

“Can we stop with all this nonsense and get back to why we’re here? I have paperwork I have to complete.” Doctor Taylor huffed. We all all shut up and sat back in our seats. With a sigh, Doctor Taylor continued, “Alright, Mendoza, we aren’t here to force you into anything, yet. We just want to talk everything through. We realized we might’ve come in a little too aggressive earlier but we are willing to give it a second chance. Show you our side of the situation, you can tell us yours, and then come to a conclusion. Does that sound okay with you?”

I hesitated momentarily; I didn’t know what possible conclusion we could reach. I was not giving up my life to help the government when my siblings were out there all alone. But I couldn’t help but feel curious to get some answers about the whole operation, perhaps even myself. They could potentially slip up and give me a way out of the compound without recognizing it.

I looked over to Lieutenant Wallace, who was dead staring at the wall. I realized he hadn’t said a word throughout the meeting that far. In the hallway, he loosened up; at least, I didn’t feel like I was being escorted by the lieutenant of the Volent military. But during the meeting, he was locked into soldier mode. “What do you think?” I questioned him.

“Do whatever you feel is right.” His eyes never left the wall.

What I thought was right? The only thing that had been right in my life was my siblings. We had been through some tough times, but I love them, and they love me. I had to hear Doctor Taylor and Ren Clash out so that I could find a way out of that place. The longer I stayed, the closer I got to being cut into and never seeing my siblings again.

“Yeah, why not?” I shrugged my shoulders. “What do I have to lose?” Quite a lot, actually, but Doctor Taylor and Ren Clash believed I already lost it all. Great. That’s what I wanted them to think.

With bright eyes, Doctor Taylor began to type on her tablet again and said, “Alright. I think starting over is the easiest.” A projection appeared on the wall behind her; from what source, I don’t know. The thing about the compound was that there were many things hidden within its walls. Projectors, speakers, cameras, and creatures. We’ll get to that.

Doctor Taylor got up from her spot and clacked her heels against the concrete floor until she reached the image. When she took her place, she shot Ren Clash a stabbing stare and motioned him to join her in the front of the room. He quickly scraped his chair against the flooring and took a stance on the other side of the image with a dopey smile. Doctor Taylor mimicked a grin and looked back at us as if she was a professional convention presenter. I looked at Lieutenant Wallace to gauge his reaction to our ridiculous situation. He looked at me with a quirked eyebrow and a slight smirk.

“Let’s start from the top.” Doctor Taylor pulled a mini controller from her lab coat and clicked it. The image changed. It was a presentation. “We are all here today because Clash, Wallace, and I were sought out by SIA to find a solution to a top-secret problem. One we must not discuss with you.”

I scoffed, “I would think since I’m the only one to help with this problem, I should know what it is.”

“Well, you can take that up with George. We have no authority over that.”

“Who’s George?” And by some miracle, the old man came waddling into the room just as the words left my mouth. “I was summoned,” he said joyfully as he made his way to the front. He completely ignored Doctor Taylor and Ren Clash behind him; instead, he said, “Wallace.” To which Lieutenant Wallace gave a curt nod in response. Then George turned to me. “And you must be Emerye.”

I didn’t respond.

“My apologies, allow me to answer your question. Everyone around here just calls me George. I’m the captain here in this operation. The organizer per-se of this historical event,” he clasped his hands behind his back and rocked on the heels of his dress shoes.

I still didn’t respond.

“You’re a quiet one, aren’t you? It’s alright. We don’t need your voice to accomplish what we have planned.”

“I’m not quiet,” I piped up. “I just don’t have anything to say.”

George’s smile faded slightly when he said, “Well, you’re talking now.”

We can skip over the kind of standoff between George and me. There’s not much to tell other than that he gave me weird vibes and I was always aggravated around him. Anyway, Doctor Taylor interrupted us so that she could finish the presentation. George waddled over to the corner behind me and leaned against the wall. Lieutenant Wallace could see I was getting a little worked up so he gave me a reassuring nod. More for the people in the room rather than me.

“As I was saying, we are looking to solve a problem. In our search, we ran into a few bumps in the road that prevented us from that accomplishment. Until we found you, Miss Mendoza.” I opened my mouth to ask a question, but Doctor Taylor beat me to it, “Please, just let me finish.”

I stayed quiet.

“We’re going to let you in on a little secret, Mendoza.” Doctor Taylor cleared her throat. “Only high class profiled individuals know about the mutants. But we only knew of it from word of mouth, never having the chance to witness the phenomenon ourselves.” She clicked to the next slide, “Until we discovered you.”

A fuzzy video without audio played through the projector. As soon as the image began moving, I knew exactly what it was. There I was, surrounded by a swarm of police officers as they tried to arrest me. Chief Raimond held my arm, dragging me along to the police car when I started to resist his arrest. I fell to the ground, trying to drag myself back to my siblings. Through the video, I watched as one of the police officers pulled out a taser gun from his belt and aimed it at me. The second it latched onto my skin and sent waves of electricity through my body, a blast of blue light erupted, pushing me back and setting fire to anything within ten feet of me. The camera fell and was positioned in the polluted sky. After a few short seconds, it returned to show a painful blistered hand. The shot flashed back to me, withering on the ground, engulfed in blue sparks. The video ended, and silence hung over the room. Everyone’s eyes were glued to my seemingly impossible body on the screen.

“At first, L.P.D. just brushed it off as you setting off a bomb in your house. They had every reason to; your siblings called in a threat, so they took all the precautions they could.”

Until then, I never thought about who called the cops and what brought them to the scene, but I didn’t expect it to be my siblings. They were probably so terrified. If they saw me and my parents lying on the ground, torched and surrounded by blood… I didn’t even want to think about how they were feeling then.

“Chief Raimond had another idea,” Doctor Taylor continued. “He never clarified why he called SIA., but when he sent them the body cam footage, they knew they had a special case on their hands. A nineteen-year-old malnourished girl not affected one bit by a bomb setting off near her? It was too good to be true. So, SIA’s forces went to Lusha, retrieved you from L.P.D., and brought you here.” Doctor Taylor let a tiny smile creep onto her face.

Ren Clash took her place as head speaker. “It seemed impossible that some random person from Lusha, of all places, was a mutant. They were last seen in the middle east and it was believed that the ‘power’ part of the gene went extinct, making their ancestors regular human beings. Then, we tested your family’s blood.” Doctor Taylor clicked to the next slide, and a four-quadrant square appeared on the screen; I instantly recognized the grid.

“You remember ninth grade biology, right?” Doctor Taylor said condescendingly.

I rolled my eyes, “Just because I’m from Lusha, that doesn’t mean I’m stupid. I know what Punnett squares are.”

“Great, so we don’t have to dumb it down even more for you.”

“Let’s not be mean, Taylor.” Ren scolded. “See here, Emerye. Everyone has the M-Gene, the ‘power’ part relies on the type of gene you got. After testing your mother’s blood, we found that she had a hybrid version of the M-Gene.” An ‘Mm’ appeared above the grid. “Meaning she had a 50% chance of being born a mutant.”

“And your father was recessive.” An ‘mm’ appeared on the side of the grid. “Meaning he had a 0% chance of being born a mutant.”

“When your parents came together to conceive you, those genes got intermixed.” The letters on the screen combine and fill in the squares. “Leaving you to being born with a 50% chance of having the recessive gene and a 50% chance of having the hybrid gene. And through the hybrid gene, you have a 50% chance of being a mutant. And when it comes to you, Miss Mendoza, it looks like you got lucky.”

I stared at the screen in wonder.

“Through this analysis, we’ve come to the conclusion that you don’t have to have the dominant M-Gene to be a mutant, you can also be a hybrid.”

“That seems impossible,” I counter. “There’s probably millions of other hybrids out there. Why am I the only one that has been discovered in centuries?”

“That, we don’t know.” Doctor Taylor returned to her seat in front of me.

George spoke up from the back of the room. “We’re betting there are more people like you out there. Their powers are laying dormant or they are just hiding from us. But that’s a problem you need not to stress yourself out about.” He moved to the front of the room. The image of my genes flooded his face.

“Now, let’s focus on what you’re going to do for us.”