Project Neptune

Teaser/Chapter One

Chapter 1 ~ Specimen E17

"What's today's date?" Dr. Brooks asks me just waiting to write on his paper. He stares down at me with his big brown eyes. I look up sleepily into them with my own pale blue eyes.

"May 12th 2089." I repeat back. One of our daily tests is remembrance. The doctors check to see how much me and my sister remember each day we wake up.

"What is your ID?" He asks just as always.

"Specimen E17." I say dryly. Dr. Brooks scribbles on his clipboard silently. His bushy brown eyebrows stick out over his thick black glasses. His head is bald with sunspots, and he is tall and thin like a ruler. He scribbles and looks me over as he does everyday before he leaves and goes into the room behind the two-way mirror. I look around my blank living quarters and everything is just the same.

Shiny white, hard plastic walls meeting a white tile floor. I sit on my bed, a mattress with a white metal bed frame and white sheets and a white and pink blanket. The pink is faded and stained. I touch it with my index finger and thumb and the yarn is tangled and crusted over with some unknown substance. I've had it since I was born. The whole room smells like sanitation, and I don't notice until I think about it.

I wait for Dr. Evan's to come in and make me undress but she never does. Instead a woman I don't recognize comes in and sets her clip board on the sill of the two-way window. "Where's Dr. Evans?" I ask trying to sound worried, even though I couldn't care less. I like Dr. Evans, she's a gentle, kind woman, but her temper is insane. She has black hair and soft eyes but when you make her angry they seem to turn red. I've only made her angry once and I haven't done it after that. I was a child then, about twelve if I was human, and I thought that becoming a teenager meant rebellion. I refused to undress and she practically lashed out at me. She screamed and yelled and thrashed around. The war ended with me naked and in tears. That's also how they found out our hair changes color when we feel extreme emotions. Mine turned black, for fear.

"Her husband died last night in a terrible car accident. I'll be filling in for her. My name is Dr. Pollock." The woman says. She only looks to be about thirty. Her red hair is pulled back into a very tight ponytail and her brown eyes shine with youth. She had red lipstick on her teeth and her mascara was thicker on the left than the right. She told me to undress and I did so, and just as Dr. Evan's always does, she looked me over to make sure everything was the same. I don't like it here, neither does my sister. We are poked, prodded, tested, and violated. I may have been created in a lab but I am a person none-the-less. But there's no way out so I just have to suck it up.

"Very good." Dr. Pollock says retrieving her clipboard from the window sill. She scribbles on it just as all the doctors do, checking the same boxes off they do everyday.I honestly don't know why they continue to conduct these exams because everything is the same every single day. I sit and wait for a guard to bring me out to commons so I can see my sister. It's a different guard everyday so I try to see if I can guess which guard correctly. It's Sgt. Freeman. I can feel it. I think to myself as I wait patiently, staring at the door.

A few minutes pass and Sgt. Anders walks into my room. Darn.

"Miss?" He says holding the door open for me. I step off the bed and follow him down the plain white hallway to the common room which looks just like every room in this half of the building. White walls, white floors, white furniture. All to match our white outfits. My sister is already waiting for me at the table. She had on the same white slacks and polo shirt. She has on her zip up hoodie overtop."Breakfast will be ready soon." Sgt. Anders says pulling my chair out for me. I give him a nod of acknowledgment and scoot into the table and lookup at my sister. She's staring back at me.