The Thirteenth Union: Prelusion

Chapter Eight: The Life Feed

"So, Mister Zolnerovich, we think we can use the students to our advantage," the man said. "We've constructed a small sensor, small enough to swallow without any idea it's there. If the students ingested them, we could test their vitals, scan them, widen the subject pool."

A holographic diagram of the spherical device floated between the both of us. Janette was standing beside me, writing down notes with a flower pen, the fabric petals shaking with each word she wrote. I lifted the hologram with my fingers, turned it, and examined each miniscule detail. This was really quite fine work. I was proud of this man. I did not know his name. There were many that worked at Salva Serum, and many of them had projects of their own that I knew far more about.

"What do you think, Janette?" I asked, showing her the diagram.

The man, maybe in a late twenties-fairly young-stood there, waiting in anxious anticipation for my approval. It wasn't every day that my workers had the chance to speak to their boss's boss's boss.

Janette tilted her head down so she could gaze over the rim of her amethyst purple glasses. She puckered her lips, and, placing the flower pen down, she reached out and took the hologram from me. She twirled it, zoomed it and out, flipped and twisted it. "How long can they transmit?" she inquired.

"It can last up to six months," the man shot off quickly, eager. "Long enough for us to check and double check their information. It essentially will draw energy from their bodies, which might cause an increase in appetite and fatigue, but it won't be so drastic that the students will be falling asleep at the drop of a hate."

I nodded, thoroughly impressed. "Give me a run down of how it will benefit me," I ordered.

He tapped a key on the keyboard and the diagram in Janette's hands turned into a moving picture of the device moving with a clump of red and white blood cells. "When the device is inserted into the subject, we can track their sicknesses, their bodily functions, anything inside of them. It's a live feed that would transfer directly into their files every seventeen minutes. It tests blood, tracks that hormone levels, can detect when the student is depressed, anxious, in pain, etcetera. This is your own little fly-on-the-wall." He pointed to the hologram.

"And...how long would it take to test the information against the results we've taken from Phase Two patients?" Janette asked, before I could even think of the question.

I smiled faintly at her. Pride blooming in my chest.

"Not long at all," he said. "After we've tracked their data for a month or two and gotten a steady graph of how they're functioning, we can cross check the information against information already taken from those of the Phase Two recipients."

Janette looked at me. I knew what she was thinking. And I agreed. Anything to further the progression rate of our experiments is a project well worth while. She nodded to me.

"That's certainly impressive," she commented, and the young man beamed with satisfaction. "This is most definitely a project that could be taken to the next level. It might even rank well above other projects that we're engaged in."

"Thank you, ma'am," the young man dipped his head at the recognition.

"But..." She gestured at the hologram with the petals of her pen. "The funding for this device-does it even have a name yet?"

He chuckled to himself. "I've talked to a lot of my superiors and they're always speaking about how many of our most important projects are nameless. I didn't want to get ahead of myself and say that it was important, but, no, it doesn't have a name. I haven't even logged it's progress into our database yet. It's off the record. Completely hidden from public and private access."