Lab Rats

Chapter 6

TRIGGER WARMING

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"You look like shit,"

The next morning came far too soon as I was dragged out of bed by my stupid alarm and went the motions of morning on autopilot. As soon as the row of guards had left me and the other guys alone to eat our breakfast, Parker had commented on my appearance.

"I feel like shit," I replied. "And you're one to talk."

Parker looked like he'd gone through an equally torturous experiment since the last time we'd seen each other in the courtyard.

"Yeah, we'll when you're forced to fight a fucking rattlesnake for who-knows-why and get bitten, you don't come out looking like great,"

"A. .. What?" Amir nearly dropped his spoon of whatever protein packed mush he'd been given.

"Since I'm supposed to be all agile and shit they thought I should go head to head with a big ass snake since my reflexes should be faster than its strikes or something." Parker explained.

"They're fucking insane," I scoffed. "I've never seen a lab outside of this hellhole but there's no way people would just. . . throw a person in a free-for-all with a snake for science."

"Are you good?" Joon asked.

"Golden," responded Parker, biting into a piece of bacon that had had every once of fat cooked out of it. "I got to spend the night in the infirmary being pumped full of drugs."

"What happened to the snake?" asked Amir.

"Dead. They wouldn't let me go until I killed it."

Shaking my head in disgust, I thought to myself for the millionth time how completely screwed up this place truly was. Yesterday they nearly killed at least two of us and today we have to go about our lives as if everything is just dandy, and who knows what the rest of the day holds for us?

"Hey Conner, you good? You haven't made a single comment about your food today," Amir elbowed Conner, who was sitting beside him and staring blankly into his bowl.

It was true. Conner was usually the first to complain about the food, but he hadn't said a word all morning. In fact, I realized he'd barely spoken the past two weeks.

He looked up, blinking as if trying to clear an invisible fog in his head.

"Depends on how you define 'good'" he replied, deflecting the question. "I don't think any of us fit the bill."

"Touche," said Amir, dropping it.

We finished our meal in silence. Since this was one of our few chances during the day to talk to each other without supervision or the fear of saying something wrong by accident, we usually talked non-stop, but over the past few weeks, our conversations had been getting progressively less lively.

After we finished, we were escorted to a classroom. The entrance was at the back of the room so the first thing we saw upon entering was a large screen built into the wall. To the left of the screen stood a wooden podium facing the back of the room. Six metal desks were in the middle of the room in two rows of three. The rest of the walls were covered in shelves brimming with books, and the walls were made of wood and painted a neutral light brown color. This was the only room in the entire facility that didn't feel like a prison. There was even a window beside the podium.

We all sat in the desks, Conner and Joon in the front row and Amir, Parker and myself sat in the back row. Our teacher came in once the guards left and fiddled with something behind the podium for a moment. The teacher was an older man named Phil Willson, shorter than me, with wild hair and big black rimmed glasses. Unlike everyone else, he didn't wear a lab coat and instead always had on slacks, a button down shirt and a sweater vest on. He had been our teacher since we first arrived and was the only person in this entire organization that didn't treat us like lab rats.