Another agonizing draft slithers across the cell, biting at my exposed skin, filtering through the flimsy cotton robe. My emaciated frame rattles violently as I sit on my small lumpy cot. That's all I ever do. Sit. That's all any of us can do. Us test subjects. That's what they call us. We are no longer people, we are guinea pigs, mice, rats – and we are treated as such.
Trapped behind cement and steel, they spare not a cent more than absolutely necessary in order to accommodate us. A fair amount of us die of exposure, or hunger. Some snapping and taking their own lives. To them, it does not matter. We do not matter. We are, in their eyes, disposable, replaceable.
Subject 109 starts whimpering again. The hopeless, morbid tune wafting through one of the two miniscule, barred cell windows. This shouldn't bother me. I hear it all of the time. From him, from Subject 201 across the hall, from Subject 111 next to me, from everywhere. I thought I was going to get used to it; and instead, it grows more disturbing every single time.
109's name was once Victor. Once. Just like my name was once Ginny. Not any longer, though. Now, I am Subject 110. They tell me so. The huge black numbers spray painted onto my cell wall tell me so. The numbers tattooed sloppily on my right arm tell me so. I am Subject 110. Ginny Harper has long been dead.
Slowly, I slip off of my cot, flinching as my bare feet meet the frozen floor. Balancing on tiptoes, I grab the equally frigid steel bars of the small window, and pull myself up to peer into 109's cell. My thin arms, flecked with milky scars and blotches of black, brown and blue courtesy of many experimental injections, tremble with the effort, as do my balancing feet.
It's a sickening sight, one of the reasons we all keep to ourselves. Curled in a fetal position on his cot, tears course down 109's sunken cheeks as he stares blankly across the cell. Words of comfort all scatter from my mind. They would all be a lie anyway.
I remember when 109 came, just about five weeks after I had when the previous Subject 109, as a result of an experiment, had died. Like the rest of us, he was considered incompetent. They very picture of weakness and imperfection in the human race. Too clearly, I can still see the guards dragging him down the hall. He was about my age, short and squatty with flyaway mousy brown hair. But he looked healthy nonetheless, life still flourishing in his small brown eyes.
He was the one to peek through my window that day, his big cheeks splattered hectically with red, his expression horrified.
"Is there any hope of escape? Is there?" He had questioned rapidly.
I looked away from him then, not wanting to see that small bit of hope in his face at the mention of escape. Not wanting to see it slide off.
"None." I told him.
He seemed to think briefly on my response.
"You are wrong."
I said nothing.
"What is your name?" He then asked.
"110," I told him.
"No. No, your name," he persisted.
I nodded, "110."
"Surely that's not the name your parents gave you."
I remember feeling a sudden wave of anger then. Why did this boy insist on talking to me? Couldn't he see that we're all doomed? And all he was worried about was exchanging names.
"It does not matter what my parents once called me," I barked firmly at my lap, "because I will never see them again. I will never see anyone who wants or cares to call me by that name. Here, to the Testers, to all of the other Subjects, I am Subject 110. Soon, 109, you will see.
His pause was lengthy, and I could feel his eyes on my face.
"Victor." He told me quietly, an edge of defiance in his voice. "My name is Victor."
Never would I have guessed that this defeated boy before me now was the same, stubbornly defiant Victor I saw little more than two years ago. His roundness has gone, like mine has. He now sat disturbingly skinny, his curly brown hair draping in dirty tendrils around his face, down around his shoulders. All signs of previous hopes, of previous life, are gone now. Just as I had predicted. Just like I had told him. Just like Ginny, Victor is dead. Subject 109 has long since been born.
For some reason though, 109's acceptance of his fate effects me. He was always the one, the only one, who had hope. Who would try uselessly to assure me that we would one day leave this retched testing facility. And I ignored him every single time, acted as if he were just another cinderblock set into my cell wall. Eventually, he stopped coming to my window all together, and the only thing I ever heard from him were quiet sobs. There might not be any hope left, but I can try…
"109," I whisper through the bars, my feeble arms aching.
He ignores me.
"109?" I whisper again.
His head stays carefully angled away from mine.
I sigh. "…Victor?"
At the mention of his name, he looks up, startled, his lifeless eyes red. Now that I've actually gotten his attention, I'm not quite sure what I want to say. He waits curiously.
"I know it's no use now, and that this should have been said long before but I…I'm sorry." I whisper.
He frowns slightly. "What for?"
"For…for ignoring you all of those times. My hope is gone, that was all I could focus on. I should have made sure," and before I knew it, tears were slowly trickling down my face, " I don't know…I should have made sure you didn't just become another miserable, empty shell like-" I wipe my eyes with the back of my hand, " like the rest of us are…"
This was bad. Forming attachments was a very unwise thing to do. 109 could die on any given day, after any given treatment. I must not allow myself to become friendly with him.
109 shakes his head slowly, looking down at his feet as he hugged his knees.
"No, this is not your fault. I would have wised up sooner or later. I was fool to think that I could ever stay myself…to think that one day I might actually leave this place and walk among the worthy, " he sneers the word, "again. No, this is not your fault at all, 110."
Lies bubble beneath my lips. Empty words of comfort that I have bite back. He's smart enough not to believe any of it anymore anyway. So, I decide to give him the only thing he had ever truly wanted from me. I owe him that much at least.
"Ginny." I say quietly.
He looks up, slightly surprised.
"My name was once Ginny Harper."
And with that, I allow myself to drop to the floor, my feet and arms coursing with slow, aching relief. On my cot, I lie down and curl up on my side.
"Such a pretty name…Ginny," 109 mused quietly. "What a shame that it's lost."
My closed eyes did nothing to stem the steady flow of tears oozing from between my lids, creating thin ribbons of fire against my cold cheeks, which quickly turn icy. Hastily, I snatch up my useless cotton sheet and scrub the moisture away. Crying does nothing, accomplishes nothing, changes nothing. I told myself that a long time ago.
"One te-…Ginny?" I hear a voice ask quietly.
I sniff, trying to pull myself together. I need to stop being so weak. I will not be weak.
"How did you come to be here?" 109 questions.
This was not the first time this question had come up. He had not asked me as much about this as he had about my name, but he had asked once before, in the past when he'd come to my window to hold very one-sided conversations. I hadn't answered him then, and I wasn't too sure that I wanted to do so now. I can't become attached. I mustn't. Going to his window had been a mistake.
"The same way everyone comes to be here," I spoke to the cell door, comprised entirely of steel bars. In her cell across the hall, 201 sleeps with eerie stillness, her arm hanging over the edge of her cot, a drop of cracked, dried blood stopped in the act of dripping from a newly flourishing bruise on the sickly pale limb. She had undergone testing yesterday. "I was one of the unaltered ones. So they gave my parents their money, and took me away in exchange."
A memory, one that I have revisited many times both purposely and against my will in my two years of being here, flashes through my mind in a blur of sound as images. I slow it down, concentrating on the last bit of Ginny Harper's life.
I was surrounded by perfection. Constantly surrounded by perfection. My pretty mother and my handsome stepfather, my heartbreaking, engineered brother, and my angelic, engineered sisters. All dark haired and olive-skinned. Only I had turned out wrong. I, the accidental result of my mother's previous husband, whom I had never met. I was overweight and pale, with average looks and average, lackluster brown hair. And it was not only in my own home that I was an outcast. No, it was everywhere I went. Carefully planning and genetically engineering one's child had become the only way to go about things around the time of my birth. If you didn't, your child would most certainly live a life of incompetence and ridicule.
Kids were being born stronger, faster, healthier, more attractive, more intelligent. I remained the same. Ugly, weak, and completely average. Unworthy to walk among such perfection. Though, there were a few, a very few, teenagers like me out there. The "Accidents" we'd been so nicely deemed. The unplanned and the unaltered.
We, (a whopping three teens out of the nearly 5,000 that made up the student body) had banded together during school. Our small group of misfits consisted of a 15 year old girl named Olivia, who would have been pretty on normal standards, but paled in comparison to the scientifically enhanced beauties around her, a tall, dark boy by the name of Darrel, who was 16, and me of course, just turned 16.
Though the real problems, for us anyway, had all started with the arrival of Emmanuel Wenby, Dictator of the United States of America. He bragged about this brilliant idea of his. To "purify" the people of America. Like a Hitler of sorts, only with the luxury of the most advanced science at his whim. Oddly enough, this revolutionary idea didn't cause as much of an uproar as expected. Of course there were the handfuls of protestors but, like trying to put a wildfire out with buckets, they had little effect.
Emmanuel Wenby had proposed that the debilitated humans, the unaltered ones, be used for testing. In his eyes, having us serve as new age lab rats could be nothing but beneficial. Vaccines, antibiotics, and other various cures and experimental medical procedures could be directly tested on humans, saving time and labor. While some Testers would be devoted to discovering medical cures, others would be dedicated to trying to perfect us Accidents. Attempting to somehow alter us so we could be worthy of being called American.
As quick as half of a week following the Dictator's new action was put into effect, people had started to disappear. Horror stories of members of the government coming to take away children and teenagers, (adults born before the time of genetic engineering were exempt. It was mine, and the future generations that they were trying to perfect) were hissing through society. Poking up on the news, showing triumphantly in bolded headings on the papers.
"On Commences The Purification Act," or, "America On It's Way To Perfection And Sublimity," are along the lines of what would greet you in the morning, accompanied by a black and white picture of stern-looking government officials towing petrified children or struggling teens. It all sickened me. Horrified me to the point of nausea. I was next. I knew I was next. I didn't know when I would be taken, or where, but I knew it would happen. It was inevitable.
Sooner than I'd hoped, proof that our society was now sick and twisted wasn't just on the news, it was right in front of me. Olivia was the first of the group to vanish. Simply vanish, and no one seemed to notice. No one seemed to care. Everyone went about their business, their perfect lives not to be marred by thoughts of Olivia Sanders, a mere Accident whom had been taken away, never to be seen again.
That, Olivia's abduction, had made everything so much more real to Darrel and me. Horrified and paranoid, we never left each other's side; never did anything to draw attention to ourselves, not like we had in the past anyway. We attempted to blend in, stayed silent the entire day, save for a few exchanged whispers and empty reassurances. It made no difference. Of course it made no difference. We'd both known that from the start, though were reluctant to voice it. Darrel had been taken three weeks after Olivia had, and I was then alone.
My parents, absolutely terrified, yanked me from school and had me on lockdown. They rushed to make a run for Canada, throwing only our most essential belongings into bags and boxes, my brother and sisters doing the same without an objection. My stepfather demanded that a realtor, any realtor, come immediately to sell the house, give it away for free, whatever it took to get it off of their hands and out of their name.
We'd almost made it too. We had everything packed and ready, set to leave the morning after this mad scramble had started. I was lying in my bed when the officials came. My family put up one hell of a struggle, so much so that my mother, stepfather, brother, and three sisters had to be physically restrained as they dragged me out of my home and shoved me into a dark waiting car. 1000 was left in my place, as if that were a sufficient exchange. As if that would somehow resolve the situation completely. The stiff leather of the caged-in back seat was the last comfort I had ever felt.
My mind pulls back to the present. Back to the dingy white cinderblock walls, cement floors, and cold chill of my cell. I brush off the tears I didn't realize had escaped onto my cheeks, angered again by my weakness.
"Ginny?" The voice of 109 drifts, slightly muffled, through my left cell window. "Ginny, you okay in there?"
Okay? No, no I was not okay. Not at all, not a single person in this place was. Such a dumb question to ask.
I keep silent in fear of letting him hear my voice, sure to be thick with emotion. I hate myself for it.
"Ginny…" His voice comes again, clearer now.
I look up through blurred eyes and see 109's gaunt face, peering through the small barred window. His small, lifeless eyes holding a small glimmer of compassion as he gazes at me. Slowly, as if he were still deliberating on whether or not it was a good idea, his bone-thin arm snakes through the steel, held out to me.
I, however, didn't need to spare a thought on the matter. A human being hadn't shown me an ounce of compassion in two years, and my desire, my human need to be accepted and cared for, takes over. With reason screaming at me in the back of my head, pounding against my brain, I slide off of my cot and take the two small steps to the tiny window, reaching out, my wasted fingers twining with is.
His hand is cold, his grip feeble, but the contact, life against life, feels wonderful. His thin, cracked lips bend up into a small smile, and I feel mine do the same. The pulling of my facial muscles into this now strange expression feeling odd. They hadn't worked together like that for some time now.
I feel tears sting the back of my eyes again, feel emotion bite at the back of my throat. I try desperately to contain it, to blink away the burn, to swallow that suffocating lump, but it was all a futile effort. The water in my eyes swells and brims over, moisture racing down my cheeks in larger quantities than before. Before I could get a grip on myself, I was sobbing. I was sobbing for my fate, for my family, for everyone else forced into this damned place. But most of all, I sobbed because of Victor. Victor, whom I had never treated kindly, but who had never wavered in trying to comfort me. I wasn't worthy of such kindness. Out of everyone here, Victor deserves this least.
With difficulty, Victor slides his other arm through the small window, and pulls me into the best embrace he can manage, blocked by concrete and steel. I should push him away. I need to go back to my cot and ignore him again, ignore him forever. I need to get out while I still can, while I still don't care whether 109 survives or dies.
But in my gut, I already feel that it is much too late. No matter what lies I tried desperately to get myself to believe, I do care. The wall I had built around myself, to isolate myself for my own protection, the one I had nurtured and layered for two years, was suddenly beginning to crumble at the foundation, and there was nothing I could do now to repair it, nothing.
We stand there, awkwardly hugging each other through the layers of confinement. I wish I had the strength to let go. So badly, I wish.
"Shhh," Victor hisses soothingly, his hand rubbing comforting circles on my starved back, bone against bone.
Eventually, I manage to beat back the uncontrollable sobs into nothing but a few silent tears. Then, slowly, I pull myself away from him, tearing apart the two souls that seemed to have melded into one during that brief time.
Without meeting his eyes, I go back to my cot, wrapping my arms around my legs, resting my legs on my knees.
"Y'know, I didn't get it before," I hear Victor say, still at my window. "I see now though. You're convinced that being antisocial is the best way to keep from being unhappy, aren't you?"
I don't answer, I just stare forward at 201 across the hall, the slowly rising and falling sheet the only sign that she wasn't a corpse.
"I think you're wrong."
I look up a Victor, whose face is kind, yet sporting a shadow of the defiance I saw in his full features so long ago.
"I think," he continues, " that you should be making an effort to be social."
I laugh, though the situation couldn't be more devoid of humor, turning back at 201's cell. "Right. I should go make friends, so I can wake up one day and have the pleasure of finding them dead."
Out of the corner of my eye, I see Victor wince at my bluntness. There I go again! Being cruel while all he's trying to do is make life in here more bearable for me. Maybe it's for the best.
"Yes, that is always a likely possibility," he admits. "But, look at us."
I turn my head to gaze at him.
"We've been here for two years. Wouldn't you think everything would have been a bit more bearable if we had spent those two years keeping each other company? Talking, maybe even laughing once and awhile?"
Slowly, I feel his reason inch its way past mine. I do understand what he's trying to say. And I do agree with him. But still…
"Yes, but what if it didn't last two years? What if it only lasted a matter of weeks? Days?" I ask question him.
He shrugs, "Well, wouldn't you be glad you knew that person, even for that short time? That you had company for even that long? I would."
He continues to look at me, and I at him, chewing on his words as I did so. When he saw that I wasn't going to answer, he simply said,
"Look, I'm not trying to force my views onto you. By all means, do what makes you happiest," he tells me, and as I look at him, I see that he's utterly sincere. "I just thought that maybe, you'd like to see a different view is all." And with that, he disappears from the window.
"…Thank you, Victor." I tell him quietly.
I can hear the smile in his voice when he answers, "Anytime."
There came a clicking of stiff, expensive shoes on the concrete floor, coming down the long hallway towards us. Fear floods me, and I close my eyes, a shiver running down from the tip of my spine to the bottom of my toes. It was an ominous sound, a sound the Subjects have come to fear above all others. Above the frequent crying, the fits of hysteria, the senseless mumbling of a fellow slowly slipping into madness. It was the sound of the Testers, coming to pluck one, or more, of us out of our cells and take us to one of the blindingly white, sterol rooms filled with instruments varying in their hideousness, and vials and tubes filled with horrible, burning, wretched tasting liquids.
I lay down and cover myself with my cold sheet. Maybe, if I feign sleep, they'd choose someone else. The shoes clack closer, closer. My heart hammers so hard against my ribs that surely the malnourished bones will crack. The footsteps continue closer, and I'm getting more and more nauseous with each click that sounds. Not me. Not me, not me, not me, oh please not me. The footsteps stop right outside my cell. I think I'm going to throw up.
I look towards the cell door, and see no one. Then, my heart seems thunder to an abrupt halt. Realization hits me. It is not my cell they are at.
It is Victor's.
I fly out of my cot and thrust my head through the steel bars, my scraggly hip-length brown hair dangling around me. They, two big Testers, are taking Victor out of his cell, snapping hardly necessary hand-cuffs around his wrists, preparing him for a trip to the white room. I take a deep breath, trying to calm myself. Relax. He'll be back. Relax.
One of the Testers catches sight of me hanging half out of my cell, and grins unpleasantly. With a meaty, hot hand, he covers my head and shoves me back into my cell, where I land hard on the floor. The other guard laughs at me.
"Urgh," the fat Tester who pushed me groans in distaste, wiping his hand on his black pants, "greasy little thing."
The other guard guffaws again as I pull myself to my feet. They both look at me.
"Take a good look at him 110," the fat Tester tells me, jerking his flabby head at Victor, "There's gunna be a new 109 soon."
My organs lunge before dropping to my feet. What? What? I stand there, gaping like some sort of fish as I try to form words. I know exactly what they're saying, I just don't, refuse, to believe it.
The skinny Tester frowns at me, "Not a very bright one, is she?"
Fat Tester rolls his eyes and opens his mouth to explain, but I cut him off, not wanting to hear his words.
"Take me!" I blurt, tears streaming down my face, but this time, I don't care. Not if Victor's about to…to…
Victor shoots me a fierce look, trying to tell me with his eyes not to interfere. I will not be silenced. He deserves to live more than I do. Much, much more.
"Take me," I tell them again, firmly despite the choking fear that I feel.
The Testers glance at each other, clearly finding me amusing. I couldn't find a curse vile enough to shout at them.
"I'm sorry my little mousy, but we already did the female test. Poor thing," he says, not the least bit sincere in his sorrow. He jerks his head to the right, and my eyes meet a lumpy body bag on a gurney. I scream.
"Well we haven't got all day, lets get this over with Orville." Skinny Tester says, sounding bored. They start to walk away.
"NO!" I screech shrilly.
The Testers and Victor stop to look at me, slightly shocked. Victor leaves them, walking over to me. Orville looks on, mildly interested, while Skinny Tester turns away with a theatrical sigh. Victor stops in front of me.
"Run. Kick, yell, bite, claw, struggle, do something! Anything!" I beg him.
He shakes his head at me. Even now, his face only seems hold concern for my well being. Unbelievable.
"It'll do no good, you know that," he tells me softly.
I can't bear this. Why him? Why Victor? What has this boy ever done to earn this? My head droops in defeat, and I watch tears hit the floor, making dark, shapeless blobs on the frigid cement. A finger lifts my chin up, and I find Victor staring intently at me.
"You take care, alright?" He tells me gently.
I feel my face crumple, tears fall onto his hand.
He sticks his arms in between two narrowly spaced bars, lifting the handcuff chain over my head, and wraps what part of his skeletal arms that fit through, around me. I do the same, the cold of the bars mixed with the slight warmth of Victor's body. I cry pathetically into his shoulder, soaking the thin white cloth.
"Let's go." I hear the nasally voice of Skinny Tester groan.
Despite my attempts to keep him there, Victor pulls away from me.
"Victor," I choke, but I can think of no more delays.
He smiles wryly. "Try to be happy, okay? Do whatever you can. It'll make it more bearable, trust me."
Skinny Tester stalks over and seizes Victor by his handcuff chain, dragging him forward.
"Oh, and Ginny?" Victor says, still being tugged forward by the impatient Tester, but turning his head so he can see me.
I stick my head out of the cell so I can see him.
"I'm really glad we finally got to talk. And thank you," he smiles widely at me, despite the fact that he's walking into death's embrace, "for giving me my hope back."
They turn a corner, and Victor is gone.
I collapse to my knees, still gripping the frozen steel bars. I sob harder than I ever have before, my whole body shaking. For minutes I cry, maybe even hours. I still can't understand. How can such a horrible thing happen to such a good person? But, as I fall completely to pieces, an answer starts to form in my mind. Maybe it happened because of who he was. Victor didn't deserve a place like this. Didn't deserve the suffering, the anguish, the depression. He deserved to be free. And now…now he will be.
With that one positive thought locked around my grief, I get to my feet, wiping my face on my shoulder.
Try to be happy, okay?
No more crying. I will try to be happy. There has to be some way.
I look across the hall, and my eyes meet those of Subject 201. She was awake now, sitting one her cot, watching my mental breakdown with sorrow contorting her features. She glances away when I catch her staring though, and looks down at her hands, sitting folded on her lap, like restful, pale spiders.
Do whatever you can. It'll make it more bearable, trust me.
I do. I do trust you.
"201?" I say, loudly to get her attention.
The girl looks up quickly, startled that she was being talked to. Her huge brown doe's eyes catch with mine. Through the pallid skin, bruises, scars, and the near anorexia, I see the beautiful girl she once was. I smile, and slowly, timidly, she grins back.
"Hi…I'm Ginny. Ginny Harper. What's your name?"