Storm-Boi

Chapter 2 - Discovery

Chapter 2 - Discovery

I walk from the dining room feeling much better. I am escorted down the corridor, surrounded by four guards. As if I’m going to try and escape. I have no where to escape too. Not to mention everyone in London knows what I look like. I wouldn’t make it ten steps out the building before I was recaptured, if I could make it out the building.

As I walk, I stare at my feet. As always I’m barefoot, I have no idea why, though. The lab techs have never given us shoes. My feet are clean and my toenails are well manicured, like I’ve been pampered, but that’s just because yesterday they put me in for a check up with the medical centre. Like a place like this needs a medical centre. 

The tiled floor is cold and I long for carpet, something I have only seen once, when I was taken to see Mr Slandar, the owner of these ridiculous laboratories. His floors were a rich brown carpet the colour of the chocolate I sometimes see the techies eating. It was the only luxury thing I have ever experienced, being made to stand and answer questions while my handler at the time, I can’t even remember who now, had tea with him.

Before we reached eight years old, we all had handlers, Mondi still has one. They were supposed to act like mothers, if you could call them that, all they did was help us dress in the morning, then escort us to our testing sessions. I swear all mine did it for the food, all the workers here are paid generous amounts and given gourmet meals everyday, while we live off a diet fit only for guinea pigs. But I suppose we are guinea pigs, of a sort. Even so, all my handlers kept quitting for some reason. They all said something about my being a ‘handful’. Don’t know what their complaining about, myself, I have to handle Finn.

Finn is ridiculous. He’s only nine and can be excruciatingly annoying at times. He is constantly talking and has recently developed an obsession with penguins. It’s rather fitting actually, considering he himself was injected with dolphin DNA and can probably swim like one. I wouldn’t know. I’ve never seen a penguin. 

I can just here Finn’s voice in my head telling me something obscure about penguins. He is always defending the animals, because even though I’ve never seen one, I do know they are grounded birds.

“But they don’t need to fly,” he would say after I point this out, “They can swim. Like me.” And that would be the end of the argument. You know you’d lost an argument with Finn when he talks about his swimming ability. He literally swims like a dolphin.

We veer off to the left and I know where we’re going. The shock room. I give an audible groan that makes one of the guards clip me on the ear. Silently fuming, I am forced into a small dark room. Stein is in there talking to a techie. They stop when they see me and Stein smiles.

“Good,” he says to the guards, completely ignoring me, “put it in the chair and we’ll get started.”

The guards push me down into this strange contraption thing. I mean seriously, I come in here every week and I still don’t know what all the buttons do. After I am cuffed and secured to the ‘chair’, Stein nods his approval and turns to examine a screen in the corner.

“Leave us,” he says to the guards. They nod and walk briskly from the room. I can hear their footsteps echoing down the corridor before a voice snaps me back to the situation at hand.