Experiment X

5 | 13

5 | 13    

    The room is completely dark, until a light flickers on, deeply shadowing the face of a young man. The face is ghostly pale, but harsh in the fluorescent light. It’s the face of born killer. Captured and altered for that purpose only. To kill. Quickly. And mercilessly. His gray, cold eyes glare seething, searing with something inhumanely feral.  

    There’s another face, but this one hovers, masked in the dark closely over him: the boy, who is sitting behind a metallic desk. An impaling, scrutinizing study upon this boy, governmentally obtained, utilized, and closely watched. He had just arrived, escorted by the Father’s Arms Themselves. The Whitecoat observing him with a clipboard in hand speaks, detached of any sort of emotion:  

    “You are known by the New American Government as X, correct?” the Whitecoat asks demandingly.   “Yes,” he answers, his voice expectedly cruel, and rigid.  

    “You will be known as Number 13 in the Tournament, is that understood?”  

    He nods. “Yes.”  

    “You have been salvaged by the New Government, trained secretly, and given special abilities, unique to you, for one purpose only. And it is the same purpose of why you were brought here, Number 13. Do you know what that purpose is?”  

    “To kill all other twelve detainees,” he recites coldly. It is that very sentence that has bleeds within its letters, his life. His life now.  

    “Exactly, that is what you were designed for. Nothing more. Nothing less. You will be the Victor. Is that understood?"

    “Yes sir.”  

    “Even the Father himself has his bet on you…So you will not take this mission frivolously. You will do all in your power to win.”  

    “Yes sir.”  

    “Good. And not to worry Number 13, we will assist you in every manner possible to assure that you do. You will be great, a wonderful new, youthful symbol for New America. The people will love you.”   Number 13 says nothing to this, only continues to glower callously into the air.  

    A march of stomping feet can be heard closing in on them, and a halt is shouted! The Whitecoat looks sternly upon the strong boy, who has trained for nearly over eleven years for this very moment, this very Tournament. “They have come to escort you to your cell with the other detainees. We hope to accommodate you well.”    

    He says nothing again: and simply stands to his feet, surprisingly tall for being only seventeen, and surprisingly bearing a far more mature face than that of boy his age. It is the face of modern war. But still of bloody, callous murder. Something savage. Dark and dangerous. Of undeniable death.   “You are dismissed. Take him away to be suited.”   The captain of the Enforcer squadron salutes and orders for the boy’s escort out of the steel, windowless room, leaving the Whitecoat alone to write upon his clipboard.  

                                                                                         …  

    He had never asked for this, any of this. The feeling of hands clutched around his bristly, shaved head is cold, strange. Or maybe it’s just this place. This brightly lit cell.   That is why his eyes are shut. To find some sort of darkness. Some sort of reminder of what once was. The life he once knew. He never knew.  

    It was and still is blackness to him.   A born and bred killer. That’s what they want him to believe. That’s what they say. That’s what the facts, and any known record about him says.   If that is so why is there this blackness in the backdrop of his memory? Why can he only remember so far back?

    Then why is his name X?  

    X furrowers his brow, and his hands clench, his veins bulging. He would be punished for such thoughts. This is not his purpose. To wonder what never was. Had never been. But there were those. What he couldn’t ignore. What he could suppress no matter how far he tried to press them within the shadows, they would return.  

The nightmares.  

    The screaming. Her screaming. Always her screaming. He doesn’t know what she is saying. If she is trying to cry out to him, or not, her voice is blood-curdling. Wailing. Then darkness. As always.   No. He cannot think of this. He will not let this become a weakness.   I have no weakness.   I have no fear.  

    He must remember his purpose. To kill. Mercilessly. To kill them all. And he will not fail in his purpose, or it will mean his life.  

    “I will not fail.” It is whispered. Coldly.   But there is something else. A terrible smile eases up his lips, as his eyes snap open glaring straight ahead.