Experiment Number One

Ren and Doctor Taylor took me back to the lab and started the process immediately. They didn’t tell me much about what would happen during the operation, but I didn’t care. I lost too much just for it not to matter in the end? No, I was going to matter. Losing my siblings was going to matter. Giving up on the hope that I would return home to them would matter. Giving pints after pints of my blood to a cause that would save the world would matter. For Lieutenant Wallace, I was going to make it matter. 

Ren Clash stripped from his guard uniform, threw on a lab coat, and then placed his hand on the small of my back, guiding me over to a hospital bed. It was surrounded by various machines and surgical tools. Once I hopped onto the bed, they began sticking needles in the veins on my wrist. The tubes were attached to a machine that collected the blood. Maybe it would be like all the other extractions I had… perhaps that time, they were going to drain me dry. That’s the only way I wouldn’t survive. I questioned if I was really ready to feel myself dry and limp like a juice box.

To save Lieutenant Wallace, I would.

They flipped a switch to drain my blood. I could feel the tube suctioning out the dense liquid bit by bit. The skin on my arms started to itch.

Doctor Taylor came up beside Ren with a clipboard in hand. She wrote furiously. Ren started to poke at a machine behind her, flipping switches and pushing buttons. He turned around with a mask in hand and moved towards me.

“What’s that for?” I said before he could place it on my face. I could see the smoke radiating from the mask, immediately knowing it would make me fall asleep. They might’ve been courteous enough to make me numb so I didn’t feel any pain. But were they ever that nice?

“It’s just to put you to sleep so you don’t disrupt us during the surgery.” Ren Clash states matter of factually.

“What surgery?”

“Bone Marrow extraction,” is all Ren said. He moved the anesthesia closer to me.

“Wait,” I threw my hand between me and the mask. “Isn’t blood enough?”

“Not for what we’re trying to accomplish,” Doctor Taylor set her clipboard on the surgical table. “To create what we want, we must go straight to the source.”

My head began to hurt. Their words seemed plausible. To create a cure, you need the best of the best, right? And I didn’t care, not with Lieutenant Wallace’s life on the line.

There was something in their words. The dark speck in their eyes. I couldn’t let it go.

“So my bone marrow will create the cure?”

“No, not the cure. The bone marrow is to create a serum. Serum M.”

Something clicked around my wrists and ankles. My body was pressed securely into the chair. They locked me in.

I pulled against the iron bands. I got a sense that I had been there before.

“Emerye, there’s no need to struggle. We already told you we would change the world.” Doctor Taylor rolled her eyes. She was back to being the conniving woman I first met when I arrived. All the fake sympathy and empathy for Lieutenant Wallace flew out the window. “You already agreed, so please don’t make this any more difficult.”

I had to leave; something told me I had to get out. I grew sweaty and my body began to tremble. My heartbeat increased and it felt like it was going to explode at any moment. Ren Clash and Doctor Taylor were going to use my bone marrow for something terrible. That was what Lieutenant Wallace warned me about. How could I be so stupid? I had to find out what they were planning to do.

“What is Serum M?”

Doctor Taylor scoffed, “That’s none of your business. Just know you are now a part of something bigger. One last happy thought before you die.”

I sucked in a breath. “If I’m going to die, why can’t you just tell me?” I tried to calm myself down to make it seem like I was in content with giving up my life. I held myself still, but the heartbeat monitor was screaming beside me. If I were to make it seem like I didn’t care, I had to regulate it. I only had to breathe. Just breathe and don’t lose control. I took a deep breath, and the beeping began to slow.

“She’s right, Taylor. I think since she’s giving us such a gracious gift, we could at least tell her where her donation is going,” Ren Clash had his trademark smile on his face, but it emulated a sinister tone.

Doctor Taylor took a second to think about what Ren Clash had said and shrugged her shoulders. “Why not.” She picked her clipboard back up. “Go ahead, tell her Clash.”

Ren Clash beamed, “Alright, so it was my idea. Doctor Taylor did help throughout but it was all thanks to me that we’re actually going through with it. SIA doesn’t–”

“Ren, just get to the point. We have to start the surgery before George returns.”

“Right. After finding out you’re a mutant we began to question if there were any more out there. But there was no way of telling unless we made everyone on Earth take a blood test to find out. Very stressful. So we came up with an easier way, one where we don’t even have to question the mutant born alliance to us. We came up with a serum, one we can inject into a being with the recessive M-Gene and turn it dominate! We’re going to create a whole team of mutants and they are going to be the most powerful national defense weapons in the world!”

Something stabbed my heart.

“And the Volent government is going to be so pleased with this new technology that Doctor Taylor and I are going to be held in high regard and never forgotten for centuries to come. I mean, we returned the mutants to the Earth!”

“You mean I returned the mutants to the earth,” I spat.

“Yes, yes, Mendoza. You had your part. But no one is going to know that, will they?” Doctor Taylor smirked like she was so clever. She was. That’s why I was paralyzed in that chair, and they stood over me like I was nothing but some alien. That’s all I was, not a person but an opportunity. A gain. Something to right Ren’s wrongs and raise the both of them to the heights of society. With how they stared at me like I was their prized jewel, I knew they couldn’t care less about the Infected anymore. They didn’t care about the lives of the people Ren destroyed. They didn’t care about Lieutenant Wallace.

They didn’t care about me.

The blood in my veins boiled, setting my skin ablaze. I wasn’t going to let it all be a waste. I wasn’t going to have my life lead up to the government turning the world into an anarchy. I wasn’t going to give them the control. I just had to figure out how to stop them. If I could make them feel something, I could divert their attention and put the extraction on hold or buy me more time to think. All I needed was to think.

“What about everything else? The Dhasl and the Infected? What about the sword? Isn’t that supposed to be your great weapon?”

It was like time had froze. Everyone in the room went silent, they didn’t move a muscle. The only sound came from the machine pumping blood from my heart.

Ren Clash slowly turned around and eyed me suspiciously. “How do you know about the sword?”

My face grew hot when I realized my mistake.

I opened my mouth but Ren spoke before I could attempt to make my case. “It was that backstabber wasn’t it? Not only did his tell that freak cave-woman of my whereabouts and our plans, he’s running around telling this imbecile!” He was raging; no longer holding onto that last piece of charisma I saw inside of him. “I will leave him to rot in that cell. I will leave him there until the Dhasl kills him from the inside out.”

I was too stunned to even move a muscle.

Doctor Taylor put a hand on Ren Clash’s shoulder. “Clash, there’s no need to waste your breath.” She turned to me. “The Dhasl and the Infected are the least of our problems, and so will Miss Mendoza once we stripped her of all that she can offer. Whatever information she knows will be gone within an instance. As for the traitor, I agree with you, Clash. We will let him drown in his misery until he drops dead. How does that sound, Mendoza? Maybe you can both meet up together in the afterlife and you can introduce him to the parents you murdered.”

I never wanted to hurt somebody so bad. The beeping on the monitor increased again as I trashed around.

“That’s enough of that,” Doctor Taylor said, snatching the mask from Ren Clash. I tried my best to dodge it but she grabbed my jaw and held me in place as she positioned the mask. I held my breath, but I wasn’t strong enough. When I gasped for air, the anesthesia seeped into my system, and I immediately felt myself slipping away.

“It was nice knowing you, Mendoza.”

Ren Clash and Doctor Taylor stood over me with blinding smiles and even more luminous eyes. “Thanks for your contribution.”

I drifted away, but I couldn’t give them control.

I couldn’t.