The Belly of Bygone Days

Be my Ally

Day 20

Time held little meaning in the lab; not with the individualised routines and strict procedures as they were. There was no day, or night, or morning, or afternoon. Every day was the same as the one before, with little to no change in the schedule. Sure, there was a clock in the common room—a calendar, too—but they didn't mean much. Not here in this windowless prison.

Prison.

Doris chuckled to herself. There she went again, being silly. The lab wasn't a prison; it was a privilege. A chance to become the face of tomorrow, a new breed of soldier. It was here that she was finally going to become someone special.

The clock, a large gaudy looking thing—the only splash of colour in this otherwise sterile white room—read half past two. It hadn't been long since the scientists had opened the door to Doris' cell—no, not her cell, her bedroom—and escorted her to the common room where she immediately spotted her older brother, Oliver, sitting on a white chair reading a book. Reading was one of Oliver's favourite pastimes; his only pastime, really. He'd been an insatiable bookworm since the moment he'd first learned to read and had spent most of his time in the orphanage's library, back when they still had to live in that awful place, back before Oliver had been drafted into the army and she'd decided to follow him into the war. Libraries were scarce in the army barracks, even scarcer in the camps, but no matter where they were posted, Oliver still somehow managed to source books from some place or another. He'd been ecstatic when he'd discovered that the laboratory had its own small but well-stocked library.

He looked up as Doris approached him, a warm smile appearing on his normally serious face. A smile she suspected he reserved just for her. "Doris!" he said, setting the book down on his lap and patting the chair next to him. "How'd you sleep?"

Doris sat down, shaking her head. "Not well, Ollie. I try, I really do, but I just can't seem to fall asleep."

"Ah, it's to be expected," Oliver empathised, patting her shoulder. "I find it difficult, too. We've just got to give ourselves time to get used to our new home."

"What are you reading?" Doris asked, peering at the book on Oliver's lap.

He picked it up and showed her the cover. Like all the books in the lab, the original dustcover had been swapped out for a blank, white one, so Doris was none the wiser as to what story was contained inside.

"A Study in Scarlett," Oliver told her. "Can't go wrong with a bit of Arthur Conan Doyle. Ah, look. There's Elias!"

Doris looked over to the entrance where a fair haired young man was being escorted into the common room by a couple of scientists. Doris smiled and waved at him. He returned the smile and began to approach.

"How was the training?" Oliver asked him.

Elias shrugged a shoulder. "Not particularly interesting, I must confess. I was hoping for something a bit more intellectually stimulating."

"Was it the flashing lights again?" Doris asked.

Elias nodded. He raised a hand and rubbed at his eye.

"Subject E001," one of the scientists, a large balding man, called out. "Subject E001 please report for training."

"That's me," Oliver sighed, placing a stark white piece of card between the pages of his book. "And I was just getting to a good part, too. Oh well, I guess I'll see you both later."

"Have fun at training," Doris beamed.

Oliver laughed and ruffled Doris' hair affectionately. "I'll do my best, little sis."