Shape

Chapter 7: Copycat

"EVERYONE OUT OF THE WAY!"
It was One's monthly day of freedom, everyone loved crowding around him like he was a rare zoo exhibit, I found it entertaining to watch them climb on top of each other just to get a better view of him. I've never been able to get a glimpse of him due to the massive horde of people, but today I guess a pair of Two's hands had different plans, as two of them decided to pick me up by my arms and practically hold me hostage in the air. It wasn't until I looked down did I realize why they did that, I looked down at the ground below me to find the horde that was blocking the way was now passed out on the floor covered in electrical burns.
"Good job for saving at least one of them from the maniacs massacre, Two." One of the guards walking alongside One looked relieved to see that not everyone was electrocuted, guess I was lucky. The hands looked at each other with a proud look in their eyes before carefully placing me back down on the ground. I waved at the hands as they left before almost breaking my neck trying to look up at the giant, glowing man in front of me.
"What? Something on my face?" His voice was deep, with a cold, empty tone to it. His hands and feet were chained together like a prisoner, with skin that had a yellow tint to it with bright, pulsing energy flowing through his veins. He looked down at me with a curious look on his face.
"No! You're just so.. interesting to look at!" Interesting? Really!?
He laughed at me with his terrifyingly loud voice and called me strange before starting to walk away. Each footstep booming through the hall like mini earthquakes. He truly lived up to the nickname 'giant'. Though after that day, I started to feel weird, like my body was trying to mimic something it wasn't supposed to know about.
No. That's not it.
It's trying to create electricity.
I started to panic. What was it trying to create electricity for!?
My body knocked me out before I could fully understand the reason why.
"Alright 23, it's time for your chec... OH MY GOD"
I woke up to find myself back in the testing room, covered in my own blood. I was Isolated inside of the room, yet outside, it was filled with scientists that were writing things down and observing me from a distance. Among them was the idiot, and the big green guy who had stabbed me. I was confused about what was going on.
"Welcome back to consciousness 23, we have some interesting news to tell you." One of the scientists started speaking through a speaker system. "It seems like your body is trying to mimic One's powers by reshaping qualities of your DNA. Did you have any idea about this?" Her voice was irritating to listen to.
I took a closer look at the bloody mess covering me to discover small volts of electricity flowing through a decent sized cut on my arm that I was unaware of until now, must be how I got covered in blood. Looking up at the steel-like window that divided me and the people on the outside, I saw a look of twisted excitement on the boss's face, and a look of sorrow on the second in command. I started to feel scared for my well-being at that point.
"It's your lucky day 23, I'm doubling your amount of tests per week starting today." The boss's voice boomed through the room and echoed around in my mind, causing me to freak out into a mini panic. "What..!?"
He looked at me with his sinister green eyes, he was determined to make my life even worse than it already was. I hated him even more than the moron who I refuse to name.
"Alright Shape, are you ready to try something new?" His voice made my stomach uneasy with nervousness. Nothing good came from him.
"What kind of needles are you stabbing me with now?" My tone was full of sarcasm.
He let out a laugh and walked into my section of the room holding two small bowls that contained different liquids inside of them. "What are those for?" My curiosity was getting the best of me, what if it was a trap?
He sat down in a chair in front of me and placed the bowls down onto a table that was normally used for surgical tools. I looked up at him confused about what I was supposed to do with them.
"Pick one." His face still covered in an evil form of curiosity.
"Excuse me?" He motioned his hand to the two bowls, "Pick one"
I looked down at the bowls, one of them was bright yellow with a strange current pulsing throughout it, while the other was a disturbingly deep red color, like a bowl of aged blood.
"Yellow." I had made up my mind. "I choose the yellow one"
Once that was said a man entered the room to take out the red filled bowl and unfastened my restraints, allowing me to sit up comfortably and get a better look at the cut on my arm.
"Do you know how that happened?" He seemed honest in his question, like he was just as clueless as me in how I obtained it. "No" I decided to answer honestly.
"So, what exactly am I supposed to do with this?" He hadn't explained the reason behind the bowls.
"Drink it." He sounded serious, was I really supposed to drink a bowl full of strange yellow liquid? Just watching the energy surging throughout it made me nauseous. "Go on, drink up."
Slowly, I picked up the bowl, and hesitantly drank it. Each sip sending a surge of energy through my veins. Once I was done I slammed the bowl down onto the table, feeling my body slowly heating up due to the liquid. I lifted my head up to see the sinister grin on the Boss's face even wider than it was before, his eyes beaming with what I can only assume to be a twisted version of pride.
"This is an even better result than I could imagine, you're literally glowing with One's power!" His voice contained a twisted excited tone to it.
I looked down at my once pale, practically white arm, to see my veins now glowing bright, sickening yellow, causing my skin to have a yellowish tint to it. "One's Power..?" I could hear my voice shaking from fear of what's to come. "This is amazing! Bring in the other bowls right away!" With that said, the scientists on the other side of the wall started rushing around to complete his orders as fast as they could. Meanwhile, I sat there in my chair, oblivious to what was happening around me. The only thing I could manage to make out was blurry figures through what seemed like yellow tinted vision from the sudden surge of energy my body was desperately trying to keep up with. It seemed like #2 realized I was struggling, as he walked into the room holding a weird looking object, and injected a substance into my arm, which helped to calm my body down. Minutes later four different people rushed into the room, all holding bowls containing different colored liquids. They placed them down onto the table in front of me like before, but instead of giving me an option, I was told to start with the red liquid, and keep going until all of the bowls were empty. No matter how much I protested against it, the boss's choice was final. "Before I drink this, could you at least tell me what it is?" He looked up at me with his evil grin "The lower five's blood obviously, what else?" My eyes widened with horror. I was expected to sit and drink four bowls of blood like it was nothing!?
"Go ahead, I'm waiting." His words piercing into me like a knife. I picked up the first bowl with shaky hands, the more I stared into it, the more nervous I became. Lifting the bowl to my mouth, I could feel the other's worried energy inside of me, but I ignored it. I took the first sip, sending a wave of uncertainty and worry throughout my body. Once done, I looked down at my arm to see the bright yellow in my veins slowly fade into a deep, reddish purple. I placed the bowl down onto the table, and picked up the next one. This one being a vibrant turquoise color, and just like the other bowls, I was expected to drink it. I continued this sick routine until the last bowl was finished. Leaving me feeling exhausted from my body trying its best to keep up with the foreign substances flowing throughout it. Slowly, I leaned back into my chair, my body overflowing with pain. I looked up to see a team of doctors entering the room, their arms filled with various types of medical tools.
"What are they in here for?" My voice was weak and shaky, I was shocked I could even speak.
"We're just checking to see if there's any side effects we should be worried about, nothing serious." Their voices were kind and reassuring, it put my worries at ease. I sat patiently in my chair as they inspected my arms and overall health, writing any observations they found in their clipboards. They were quiet throughout the entire inspection besides a few questions here and there, that was until they took a look at my eyes.
"Hey Boss, is this supposed to happen?" They had a magnifying glass-like tool at my eye.
The boss walked up to where the doctor was standing, and took a look into the magnifying glass.
"Hey Shape, do you have any pain in your head as of right now?" The doctor had the clipboard back in his hand, ready to write something down.
"No? Should I?" I had no idea what they were looking at, but it was making me nervous.
The boss picked up a mirror that was placed on a nearby table by one of the doctors, and held it up to my face for me to see the faint variety of colors covering my left eye. The same colors that were inside of the bowls. It was an interesting sight to see compared to the extreme lack of color in the rest of my body.
"It's beautiful." I missed having color.
"I guess this was a side effect we just couldn't calculate. Your body sure is unpredictable."
I thought that as a compliment. I was potentially one of the only few experiments in the building that they were unable to fully control. It was an amazing feeling to have.
"Though it's because you're so unpredictable that I'm afraid I'm going to have to relocate you once again."
I stopped in my tracks, I was going to be moved?
"From now on you will be placed in a closed off section of the building, and you will also be given a new name for the scientists to refer to you as." His tone was cold and empty, yet he still wore a smile no matter how cruel his words were. If he said I was to be moved, that means I have no other choice than to be moved.
"You're a monster, you know that?" My words were sharp.
"It takes a monster to run a place as cruel as this, Shape." I watched painfully as he walked out of the room, followed by the doctors with their clipboards, leaving me behind in solitude.
The next few days consisted of an annoying amount of safety checkups and saying goodbye to the few friends I had managed to make during my time in the solitude hall.
"Alright 23! Time to go!" I was to be escorted by multiple guards to my new room. Due to my new abilities, I was at a higher risk of a rampage, which made me an even bigger hazard than I already was to them.
I stepped out of my now old room, feeling anything but positive about the move, and stood there as I was cuffed to make the guards feel safer and more secure.
"So am I going to have a roommate? Or will I be put alone?" I tried my best to make conversation, anything was better than awkward silence.
"I don't know, but what I do know is that you'll be placed across from a very talkative person. So you better get prepared."
I was happy to learn I wouldn't be alone. It made freakouts more prone to happen, though they probably figured that out already.
With multiple failed attempts of further conversation, we eventually made it to an off putting hallway with an even more off putting staircase. I tried to slow down the walk there as much as I could, but every time I was met with an aggressive shove forward or shout to speed up.
"I understand you might be paranoid, or even scared, but the other stowaways down here are the least of your worries. You should really be worried about yourself, I heard you caught the eye of the higher ups."
I felt my body tense at the thought of that.
"Yeah, he said my tests are gonna be more brutal from now on, said I was supposed to be a breakthrough in whatever he was trying to accomplish." My voice trembled, I couldn't hide the fact that I was scared of whatever future plans they had for me.
"I feel bad for you kid, you're probably going to be turned into a weapon like the rest of them."
"Them?" There were more?
"Yeah. The ones placed down here are mainly used as last resorts for whenever the higher ups decide to take over a place's territory. Though most of the time they cause too much damage than intended, that's why their last resorts." I could tell he felt uneasy talking about it by the way his muscles were tensing up. He must've seen some things while working here.
I tried to learn as much as I could before we reached my new room, luckily it was at the end of the hallway. What wasn't lucky about it was the kind of creatures we had to pass before reaching it. They were terrifying, yet sad to look at. Each of them were covered in what looked like battle scars, and ranged anywhere from looking like an average person, to making me question how they were even alive. They weren't evil or monstrous like I feared. Instead, as we walked down the pain filled hallway, all I could see were broken souls, waiting for the day they eventually broke down and became useless to the world. It was gut wrenching to see. So much so that I ended up sealing my eyes closed by accident.
"Alright you freak, here's your new room." I heard a slight hint of sympathy in his voice.
I felt the guard unlock my restraints, I didn't try to run like I usually would. The marks on the others trapped down here proved that it was useless.
"You're all set. Unseal your eyelids, it looks creepy."
I felt his hand nudge me into the room as I opened my eyes to see a cold, jail-cell like room. I turned around to face the metal barred door, and watched as what looked like maintenance men put up a sign at the top of it, and leave without a word. Leaving me alone in the cold, sadness-filled environment.
"Copycat? That's a stupid name."