Emeros X

Chapter 4

At the test facility, Scott Hayworth sat alone at a computer as days of footage sped by him in fast forward. His job was simple; watch the tapes. Report anything suspicious.

The job was exclusively for security measures, but every once in a while, he had to report some angst-ridden teenager for not taking the pills, in which they’d have two choices: restart the program in a year and take the pills, or get kicked out of the program. Every teen caught picked the former. Nobody in town had ever been kicked out of the program, not even when it started before Scott was born.

Scott’s day had progressively gotten more lackluster as the hours dragged on. His bagel didn’t have enough cream cheese on it and he tripped walking out of the elevator on his way to his office space. Nothing out of the ordinary for Scott Hayworth, video security monitor.

He had finally gotten all the tapes for the past few days and skimmed through hours of footage. He watched teenager after teenager open the bathroom cabinet, take out the pill and swallow it, sometimes choking or making a sickly face afterword. Every teenager that took the pill for the first time stood in the bathroom for a while, trying to gauge when the pill would ‘kick in’. Scott remembered doing the exact same thing nearly a decade ago , when he was only sixteen.

He had gotten to the footage of patient 785646, a somewhat lanky, dark haired boy carrying a backpack. Minutes flew by as Scott watched the patient take out the pills and ingest them. Scott thought nothing of it and began to fast forward some more until he noticed something strange. The patient put another pill in a pill container, cramming it into the bottom of his backpack. That was impossible. Scott remembered that the dispenser was locked; only one pill would come out in a two hour period. He rewound the tape and watched again, closely this time. The patient walked into the bathroom, read the instructions and opened the zipper on his backpack. He pulled out a pill container, what looked to be allergy medication, and unscrewed the cap, taking a pill out. Patients were only allowed certain types of medication directly prior to going to the test facility, allergy medication being the most common. Scott watched as the teen opened the cabinet and took the pill meant for him.

The boy stopped and stared into the mirror. Scott looked around; making sure nobody was noticing how intently he was watching the video. He watched as the boy swallowed a pill and put the other in the pill bottle. Scott wondered why the boy would have taken an allergy pill out if he was only going to put it back in. He rewound the tape again and watched the last minute, watching the boy bring the hand the allergy pill was in to his mouth and swallow the pill. The other hand dropped the leftover pill in the bottle.

Scott watched the first boy he ever witnessed skip the pill zip up his backpack and walk out of the bathroom.