Shape

Chapter 2: The Facility

trypanophobia (needle) warning

"Are we there yet?"
We had been driving for what felt like days at this point.
"Almost, just a little longer."
That was the first time he had given me an actual answer during the whole car ride.
"Finally! We've been driving for ages!"
He gave me a laugh and apologized for the long ride. I looked out the car window and realized we were driving through a thick forest filled with thousands of strange plants I've never seen before. I almost fell into the floorboard when I swore I saw a flower looking back at me.
"You okay back there? Sounds like you're really jumpy."
He glanced at me through the rearview mirror, curious about what I was doing.
"Did you not see that plant!? It had an eye on it!"
He had to reassure me that there were no eyes on any plants, and that I was probably just hallucinating from my lack of sleep.
An hour or two had passed when I was woken up by the mystery man saying that we had made it to the place we were driving to.
"Get up kid, we're here."
I shot up as soon as I heard those words leave his mouth, I was excited to see what my new home looked like. Filled with excitement I got out of the car, holding my bag, shocked to see the giant white building in front of me.
"Woahhh, is this my new home?"
He gave me a smile as he pulled what looked like an ID tag out of his pocket and scanned it at the door.
I was greeted by two other people in the same weird evil scientist clothes as the man was.
"Welcome! We're so happy to have you here!"
I was greeted by a woman with a big welcoming smile and a quiet, rather old looking man who both took my bag and started walking me into a strange closed off white room. I questioned them on what the room was for, and got the response of being told to stay there while they grabbed me a new pair of clothes. I was confused but before I could say anything, they left the room and closed the door. I was sitting there for a few minutes before I started wondering where the man who drove me here was, did he leave me? Did he get second thoughts about going through all that trouble just to get me here? Did he decide he didn't want me anymore? I didn't understand what was happening, I was starting to worry if they had forgotten me. I wouldn't blame them if they did.
"So sorry for the wait! We couldn't find anything that looked your size, I hope that's okay."
The lady from before bursted into the room, panting like she had just ran a mile. The man on the other hand was completely calm and composed like before.
"That's okay! But why did you bring me new clothes, I brought my own."
She managed to catch her breath before telling me that they had to wash all of my clothes due to a sanitary thing they had, which I didn't mind. I was told to change into the pair of clothes I was handed and to give the ones I was wearing to them when I was done changing so those could get washed too. The clothes I was given were white, a white shirt with two arrows in a circle, like a recycling symbol, and a pair of solid white shorts.I got dressed and handed off my old clothes once I was done.
"White suits you! Now follow me to your new room."
I was walked down a hallway full of doors to what looked like other rooms, I asked why there were so many and was told that lots of other kids like me lived here, kids that were abandoned and unwanted by both the foster system, and society itself. I had a happy expression on my face the rest of the walk after I heard that. When we got to what would be my room, I heard someone across the hall talk through a small window at the top of his door.
"What are you gonna turn that one into, another monster maybe?."
The woman put me in my room, and shut the door before walking across the hall to yell at him.
"Be quiet 37. You are going to be nice to your hallmate whether you like it or NOT"
She yelled at him for a little bit before apologizing and saying for me to ignore him and relax in my room for a little while. I wandered around my room a bit before looking out the window on my door to see that there was a floating hand with an eye on it outside my room in the hall, not attached to anything. I thought it was just a creepy decoration before the eye started moving and looked right in my direction. I jumped back at the sight of it and fell on the floor. How was that even possible? Why did it look at me? I asked myself a bunch of questions and decided to just explore if there were any secrets in my room. If there was a floating hand, why wouldn't there be any secret rooms somewhere? Some time passed of me searching when I heard my door being opened, I checked to see who it was, and was met by the grumpy looking man from earlier holding a giant needle in his hand. I shivered at the sight of it, he looked at me with an annoyed face realizing that I was scared of the needle.
"Look kid. Just make this easy on me okay?"
He started walking towards me with the needle, making me terrified of the idea of it being stabbed into my arm. Panicked, I ran to the other side of my room, determined not to get a needle half the size of my head stabbed into my arm.
"NO! Get that thing away from me!"
He stopped walking, tapped a small device in his ear, and started talking into it saying he needed some assistance with '#23'.
Soon five other strange looking people in lab coats walked in and had to pin me down as I was kicking and screaming, still not wanting the giant needle to go into my arm. After a few minutes of struggling I heard some weird sounding music and suddenly felt like a wave of tiredness just washed over me making me feel like I hadn't slept for weeks.
"Finally. Thank you Mr. Brandon '' was what I heard before falling asleep for what felt like a few seconds, but in reality, turned out to be a week. I was shocked when I woke up and saw the color in my eyes being extremely faded and almost gray-looking, like the color in them was slowly draining away. I thought it was just my mind playing tricks on me, as that wasn't possible, right? I got changed into an outfit that was laid out for me, most likely by the nice seeming lady from before. I sat in my room, taking closer looks at my eyes while trying to figure out what could have possibly caused it, was it the shot? Was it something I ate? I spent some time asking myself these questions until I heard a click sound on my door, it was unlocked. I stepped outside my room for the first time since I arrived and was met by a curious look on the guy across the hall from before. He honestly didn't even look human. He had dark brown eyes in a shade I had never seen before, pale yellow skin like he was sick, deep black colored hair that faded into a bright shade of yellow that went just below his ears, and bruise-like markings all over his body, like he had been in some sort of fight.
"What? Am I that hideous or something?"
He spoke in a calm confident tone, almost like he was born like that.
"No! Not at all, you just gave me a shock, that's all."
I was already rethinking what I just said when he gave me a confident smile
"That's just what I was going for, nobody around here gives me that type of interaction anymore, kinda refreshing, y'know?"
I showed him my eyes and he explained that it was an effect from whatever the scientist injected into me. Scientist. That's what they were. He gave me a tour of some areas of the building while weird creatures like him were all over the place. Animal people, people with wings, people with extra or a lack of limbs, even some with weird powers. The place was like that of a comic book brought to life. We stopped the tour to eat lunch when one of the scientists walked up to us.
"Have you finally decided to make a friend, 37?"
I looked up to see a creepily tall man in a lab coat with eyes bugging out of his face like they weren't supposed to be there. He had a smile on his face that I couldn't decide was real or not.
"Just go away, your face is creeping me out."
The guy managed to make the scary looking scientists away and started to explain why the people looked as strange as they did when he noticed the concerned look on my face.
"Okay, this might be hard to handle, but you're basically trapped in a giant laboratory right now, so all the people here have either been experimented on at least once, or they have enough money to guarantee themselves a job here, while staying a normal person."
My face went from concerned to terrified. How could a place like this even be legal!? I had so many questions, but I wanted to stick with the main ones, so as not to overload him.
"So, does that mean I'm being used as an experiment too..?"
He looked at me like I was an idiot, which looking back, I probably was.
"Obviously. You're a cast out, you got bought, became legal property of the lab, and was driven to the place you have no chance of leaving unless you die."
I was devastated. My hope for a better life was destroyed before it even began.
"So, what are you exactly?"
He looked at me and suddenly the confidence that overflowed from him was gone as he looked down at the table we were sitting at and the metal gloves that covered his hands.
"Well, you're gonna laugh at me, but I'm supposed to be a banana. They would come into my room and stab the properties of the fruit into my bloodstream enough that my body started taking on some color traits of it."
I was shocked, I couldn't believe that the person sitting across from me had his body destroyed enough that he was somewhat unrecognizable from when he got here. He told me that every time he moved he could feel his body bruising as easily as the actual fruit would. It was honestly tear jerking learning about it. It was also sad to hear that his hands had to be restrained in metal whenever he wanted to leave his room, because if he touched anyone or anything he would drain the moisture out of them, and ultimately kill them. So he was stuck all by himself. He told me his name and said not to laugh as that was the name he was given by the scientist as a joke, Apple. We spent time talking, cheering each other up about our situations and after some time I decided to walk back to my room alone so that I could think about everything that I had just learned. I walked down the tall, gray hallways occasionally passing another experiment, they would give me a smile or wave and I would back to be nice. I got to my room after a decent bit of walking and saw the guy who stabbed me waiting outside with another needle, this one containing a weird blue liquid inside. I tried to walk back and act like I wasn't even there, but he spotted me and yelled for me to be grabbed and dragged into a solid white closed off space, my mind was racing so I couldn't process that we weren't in my room this time until they brought out a big machine and strapped me down into a chair with me screaming as loud as I physically could. They covered my mouth to stop me from screaming and in response I sat there, unable to move or speak, just contained to a chair in front of a weird, terrifying machine that was covered in needles filled with the same blue liquid the man had in the needle he was holding. I watched as they left me with the machine and pressed a button causing it to start moving towards me while slowly reaching its mechanical arms containing three needles each towards me. I shuffled my restrained body around as much as I could to try and make it stab the chair or restraints instead of me, I stared at it in horror as it kept moving until I felt a sharp pain in my arms that I had never felt before, I screamed into the piece of cloth covering my mouth as the feeling of hot magma was flowing through my body, tears were flowing from my eyes uncontrollably while I watched the calm and composed faces of the scientists staring back at me, writing things down like I was some sort of wild animal they were researching. I wanted so badly to be out of that chair, in that moment all I could think about was the crying receptionist's face and her apology. I now realized why she was sorry, why she fought desperately to argue with the man into choosing a different orphanage. She wanted to save me from the pain I would be put through, the pain that nobody could help me with. I sat there and felt the pain of needles pushing the liquid into my veins,and slowly get pulled out one by one. The machine backed away and dropped the needles into a trash can mounted to the wall that led outside the room. I was forced to stay in the chair as scientists continued to stare and watch me like I was going to suddenly sprout wings or something. After what felt like twenty minutes of being stared at while the burning feeling continued to flow through my body, a scientist finally walked into the room to release me from the chair. I looked up at them, exhausted from fighting the needles, I was given a sympathetic look as he loosened the restraints and gently picked me up out of the chair to bring to the other scientists.
"So this is 23, the future shapeshifter I suppose?"
My eyesight being extremely blurry, all I could see was a green blob in front of me with what looked like multiple tiny things sprouting off of it.
"Yes sir. We hope to complete the transformation in a week at most"
The scientists holding me spoke with such confidence that I was worried what was going to happen to me in that amount of time.
"Good. Now go put them in their room, and make sure it's locked. I need to go check on the lower four"
The blurry person spoke with utmost confidence and seemed well respected by the other people in the room. Next thing I know, I'm being carried down to my room just as he said and was gently being put down into my bed.
"We'll check on you tomorrow, rest up 23."
The kind man left the room as I laid there feeling my body slowly cool down from the liquid. It was a weird feeling, like when you change the water temp of a sink faucet from hot to cold. My vision started to clear up, and I could finally see the marks where I was stabbed. Six marks, that's what I saw. Six places where I was injected with the burning blue liquid, they were patched up and sore, but not bleeding. I continued to lay there, sore and tired, just wishing I could go home.
"Alright 23, get up."
I woke up, unaware that I had fallen asleep. To the same scientist's face from before, only he wasn't blurry this time.
"Huh..? Is something wrong?"
He had a kind expression on his face, I felt safe around him. He was kind.
"No, of course not. We just need to check on your how body's process with the liquid we gave you is going, that's all"
I stood up, removing the blanket that was covering me to reveal that my skin had white splotches all over. He stepped back, shocked at the reveal.
"Oh! Wow, that's..Oh."
He was tripping over his words, too confused to find the right words to say that wouldn't make me self conscious or upset with them. It didn't work.
"I'm hideous aren't I."
Tears started to form as I said that, scared of what I might turn into. Suddenly, I started to feel something in my brain switch, like someone else was trying to control my body. I looked up to see a horrified face on the man as I felt my entire body start morphing into something else against my will or want.
"BACKUP. I NEED BACKUP FOR ROOM 23!"
That's the last thing I heard before my body and mind fully switched into an entirely different person.