Kinetics (3 page)

“The old lady…” I paused, “I wonder what
she is going to do about all of this?”

“I don’t think that we can count on her
doing anything.” Sandy remained still and kept her eyes closed.

“Why is that?” Ronnie asked.

“I was still awake as they tossed me
into the truck.  They torched the house and I didn’t see the old woman
anywhere.” She explained.

We all took a few moments of silence for
the old woman.  None of us really liked her, but she did take care of us for
the most part. We had lived in that house for several years.

Ronnie broke that silence, “We’ll say a
prayer when we get out of here, but for now we need to find out what is going
on.” He pulled himself up with the bars.  “LET’S GET THIS OVER WITH!” he yelled
into one of the cameras.

As if on cue, the door leading out of
the room clicked loudly.

Ronnie took a few steps back.  Kenny
stood and helped Sandy to her feet. 

“I think someone heard you.” I joined
the others.

We waited for the door to open.  Three
men entered the room.  Two burly men wearing armor and combat head gear came in
first.

The third man was normal sized, much
smaller than the first two.  He wore a lab coat, had slicked back shiny black
hair, and glasses that were almost invisible to the naked eye.  He looked older
and he had an almost trustable face.

We didn’t trust him. 

He walked to the bars and looked us up
and down like zoo animals.  I felt over whelming disgust with the way that he
looked at me.

“Who are you?” I asked as his eyes
returned to me for a second time.

The man in the lab coat sighed and
scratched his forehead, “My name is Doctor Cid.  I am your mentor.”

“What do you mean mentor?”

“It means that while you’re here you are
my responsibility.”

“What are you talking about?” Ronnie
took a step towards the dividing wall.

“Ah, thank you Mr. Ayers for
volunteering to be the first one to find out.” He pointed to Ronnie, “Take
him.”

Dr. Cid took one last look at all of us,
turned, and left the room. 

The two guards presented their thumbs
for a scan at the door that crossed into our side of the room.  The lock
clicked.

The first guard dropped his rifle and
pulled out a pistol.  He aimed it at me.

The second guard entered the cell.  He
grabbed Ronnie, who didn’t fight.

“Whatever happens…” but he stopped.

The guard directed Ronnie out of the
room. 

I yelled in frustration. 

“WHAT THE HELL IS GOING ON?”

“Grace calm down!” Kenny said through
his teeth.

“Calm down?” I shook my head and paced
around the cell, “They just took Ronnie and you want me to calm down!”

“I want you to be rational.  What are
you going to accomplish by throwing a temper tantrum?” He embraced Sandy. 

I dropped to one of the benches and
hugged my knees. 

We sat in silence, and waited for what
was going to happen next.  I laid down on the bench and covered my face with my
arm.  I tried to clear my head.  I tried not to think about all of the horror
movies that I had watched, and what they could possibly be doing to Ronnie at
that moment.

I could hear whispers between Kenny and
Sandy.  Mostly he was trying to calm her down.  She was freaked out about what
was going on and my outburst didn’t help things.

The silence was broken suddenly by the
pain filled yells of Ronnie.  The worst most gut wrenching screaming that I had
ever heard in my life issued from the walls themselves.  I had never heard him
yell let alone scream like he was being gutted.

The screaming went on and on for what
seemed like forever.

Sandy sobbed into Kenny’s shoulder and
he looked horrified.  They both looked up to Ronnie as a big brother, a
protector.

Just as I did.

Ronnie’s screams eventually stopped.  I
began to pace the room; I knew that they would be in shortly to get their next
victim. 

“Whenever they comeback, don’t say
anything.  The both of you just sit there and shut up.” I knelt down in front
of Kenny and Sandy.

The door clicked.

I stood and watched as Dr. Cid and the
two guards came through the door. 

“Take the girl next, the red head.”

Both guards drew their pistols and shot
darts into Kenny and Sandy.  They both fell to the floor. 

“Why are you doing this?”

The cell door swung open and one of the
guards came after me.  I decided that I wasn’t going to go without a fight.  I
threw my left fist at the guards face.  When my fingers made contact, I
immediately felt my bones shatter.

I screamed.

He barely even moved.

He grabbed my shoulder and pushed me out
of the cell.  The other guard locked the cell door.  They pushed me out into the
hallway.

I cradled my hand.

“What are you going to do with me?” I
was directed down the overly white hallways.  Bright florescent lights lined
both sides of the hallway; burning my eyes.

No one said anything.  One of the guards
pushed me in the back with his rifle.  I stumbled and hit the wall.  I pushed
myself back up and kept walking.

We stopped at a large round door.  Dr.
Cid slid a keycard, presented his thumb for a scan, and presented his retina
for a second scan.  The door split down the center, and slid into the walls on
either side. 

They pushed me into the room. 

Several machines lined the walls around
the room and in the dead center was an operating table.  A half dozen other
doctors rushed around the room taking readings from all of the equipment.

“Lay down.” Dr. Cid pointed to the
table.

“No.” I kept as calm as I could, holding
my ground.

He snapped his fingers.  One of the
guards wrapped his fingers around my throat, and picked me up off the ground. 
He dropped me on the table.

The doctors strapped me down to the
table.  I didn’t fight, I could hardly breathe.

“Things are going to be so much easier
if you don’t fight.” Dr. Cid typed on a tablet.

“Piss off.” I hissed through gritted
teeth.

“Why do you insist on fighting?”

“Oh I don’t know, maybe it has something
to do with the screaming from Ronnie.” I coughed and fought at the bindings.

A nurse pulled up my sleeve, and rubbed
my skin with an alcohol pad.  She filled a syringe with a red liquid and made
sure the needle worked.  She pushed the needle into my skin and injected the
liquid into my vein. 

“What is that?  What are you doing to
me?” I demanded.

She pulled the needle out and turned
away ignoring my questions.  She picked up another vial, a new needle, and
injected a blue liquid into my neck.  She pulled the needle out and set it on
the table.

The pain in my hand began to subside. 

“Alright, let’s move her into stage
one.”

Two doctors rolled a machine to the top
of the table and locked it into place.  They took two needles and pressed them
into my arms.  Another doctor moved in and pulled tubing from the machine and
snapped them onto the freshly inserted the needles.

“Ready for fusion.” The doctor said.

The machine began to hum loudly; blue
light shown from behind my head.  Dark red liquid flowed through the right
tube, and a dark green liquid moved through the left.  They both entered my
skin at the same moment. 

I didn’t feel anything at first but that
didn’t last.  My blood began to boil.  I shrieked in pain as more and more of
the foreign chemical was pumped into my body.  I thrashed against my bindings
and screamed as my skin burned. 

“What are you doing to me?” I yelled in
between screams. 

“Grace dear, we are making you better.”
Dr. Cid smiled.

I yelled, I screamed, I cried. 

I wanted to tear the flesh from my
bones.

Darkness began to push in around the
edge of my mind and I was happy to let it come.  I laid my head back and closed
my eyes.

“Sorry, but we can’t let you go to sleep
just yet.” Dr. Cid pressed a button on his tablet.  A jolt of electricity came
through the table and in to my body. 

My eyes burst open and I screamed again.

“Please! When is it going to stop?”

Blood ran from my wrists and ankles as I
thrashed at the bindings.  I prayed for my mind to shut down.  I wished that
everything would be done with; over. 

I wanted to be dead.

~//~

When I woke I didn’t open my eyes.  I
wasn’t sure that I wanted to know what was going to happen next.  The room was
cold.  I was lying on a thin mat, that didn’t form any kind of barrier between
me and the cold metal below me.

I looked at my hand.  The bones were in
pieces, but as I felt it there was no pain.  It was as if the incident had
never happened. 

I turned my head to the side and
blinked.  There was a pair of feet.

“Sandy?” I turned my head slowly to look
at her face.

“Sorry, my name is not Sandy.  It’s
Rachel.” The girl said kneeling down to bring her face to the same level as
mine.  She pushed her dirty blond hair out of her face.  She was at least my
age, but she looked like she hadn’t had a decent meal in months.

I looked around the room; it was only me
and Rachel.  I was sure that they had already gotten to Sandy and Kenny.  The
room was small; there was the bed, which is what I was sitting on, a toilet
with a small sink on top of the bowl, and a door.  Enough room for me to
stand.  If I had stuck out both of my arms they would both found a wall.

“Who are you?” I leaned against the wall
and rubbed my neck.

“I am like you, part of this project.”
She sat on the ground, and leaned on the opposite wall.

“What was that stuff that they pumped
into my body?” I hoped that she had some answers.

“Sorry again.  I don’t have anything for
you.  I just wanted to warn you.”  She stood and moved into the center of the
room. 

“Warn me about what?” I looked up at her
face, the light from above her burning my eyes.

“They are about to do something to you,
I don’t have time to explain what.  You need to let your emotions take over,
let whatever bubbles up around the edge take over.” She looked scared.

“What in heaven’s name are you talking
about?”

“Just remember to let your emotions take
over and things will get better for all of us.” She said, “Oh, and the others
that you came here with, they are all fine.  They have all been through the injection
and are in separate cells on this level.”

I let my head fall down into my hands,
and rubbed my eyes.  I wasn’t sure if I was going to be able to take much
more. 

When I looked up she had vanished.

I jumped up and looked around.  I ran my
hands over the door, but I was sure that if it had opened I would have heard
it, the metal was thick.

I sat back down, ghosts, what next?

My head was killing me and the quiet in
the room was not helping.  I spent most of my time switching from sitting on
the bench, pacing around the room, and laying down.  I counted the lines in the
ceiling hundreds of times.  Each thud of my heart was like a boulder crashing
onto my skull.

I thought of the girl who had vanished
into thin air.  She had said that her name was Rachel and she knew that the
others were alright.  I wondered if she had been a figment of my imagination
that I had created to ease my mind. 

It hadn’t helped.

Several times sporadically a small slide
halfway up the wall would open.  Someone would place a protein bar in an
unmarked wrapper and a bottle of water on the small shelf below the slide. 

I ignored it the first half a dozen
times.  When it became clear that they would take the food if I didn’t eat it
coupled with the fact that I didn’t know how long I was going to be there, I
decided that I should at least drink the water.  Then I gave in when my stomach
was louder than my heart beat and began to eat the bars. 

They were extremely bland but I didn’t
feel hungry after I ate them. 

~//~

“Stand up and face away from the door. 
Place your hands on the back of your head.” A man’s voice issued from the
speaker in the wall.

I sat still on the bench contemplating
if submission was a healthier option at this point.  The message was repeated
with a harsher tone.