Lab Rats

Chapter 2

Not me having the patience of a two year old and posting chapter 2 less than 24 hours after chapter 1.

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The morning after we got the shots, my alarm went off at 0530. I'd heard that in the outside world they had alarms that you could turn off by pressing a button on it, but here the stupid box on my bedside table didn't shut up until I was out of bed and had opened the closet in the wall five feet away. It alerted whatever bastard was in charge of the electricity in our rooms that we had actually gotten out of bed and were getting dressed and a few seconds later he'd turn it off.

I blinked as I opened my eyes and they adjusted to the bright light. We didn't have any natural light in our rooms, and the lighting changed depending on the time of day. When it was time to get up, it was painfully bright. I dragged myself out of bed, the chills from the night gone, no thanks to the sorry excuse for a blanket I'd been curled up in all night.

Grabbing some clothes and quickly changing from one set of pure white clothing to another, I absently wondered how long it would take for anyone to notice if I didn't change and what kind of punishment that would warrant, after that I brushed my teeth in the tiny sink beside the toilet on the opposite wall from the closet. That was the extent of my room. A closet, a sink, a toilet, and a bedside table that held only the alarm clock and a plastic cup for water. Underneath it was a shelf holding a stack of four textbooks and four notebooks that I'd been using for the past four months now. Each wall was about ten feet from the one across from it.

The alarm gave three quick buzzes to let me know it was now 0540 and I had five minutes before guards came for us. I ran my fingers through my hair but couldn't tell what effect that had on it since I didn't have any mirrors, then I stood by my door and stared blankly at the metal paneling on it till it opened. The three boys from the rooms on my right were already outside, standing in a straight line, looking straight ahead without wavering. They were flanked by eight guards; one in front, three on each side and one behind. There was just enough room between the last boy and guard for me to fall in and I did. Exactly one foot behind the boy and one foot in front of the guard. We picked up the last boy in the same way and marched through the corridors lined with doors I'd never been through for about five minutes until we got to the dining hall, which was a room barely bigger than our rooms with one long table in the middle. There were three chairs on both sides and five plates of food already set. We all sat, myself and two others on one side and two on the other. When we first arrived, there had been a sixth boy, but a few years ago he lied to the guards and told them that the rest of us were planning to escape. We were all sentenced to solitary confinement, only bought out to endure interrogations. The solitary confinement cells were completely dark and the only furnishings were a blanket and a bedpan and the only time we saw light was when a small slot on the bottom of the door opened for them to give me food or take our used plates. I have no way of really knowing, but when a guard came for me on what I guessed to be the third day, I thought the punishment had been cut short and I nearly cried with relief. But that was short lived. The interrogations we endured were more than just physical, they were emotional and psychological torture. They demanded to know who had started talking about escaping and what our plan was, promising to stop the questioning and torture if we would just confess. But of course, it wasn't true and none of us were going to throw anyone else under the bus, so we had to live with it. After what felt like years but was in reality only a month, everything abruptly stopped. During that time, the few nights I wasn't kept in solitary confinement I was shackled by my hands and feet to a bed in the infirmary.

Meanwhile, the sixth boy had used us as a distraction to try to escape himself. He had been the oldest and up until then, we had looked to him for comfort and guidance. In our world of rules and guards and being treated like anything other than human, we only had each other, and he had been one of our only sources of comfort. And then he betrayed us.