The Zodiac Project (#Wattys2017)

The ox

I awoke only one other time that day. Exhausted and still a little bit drugged, I barely managed to sit up before I heard the familiar whir of locks opening. The door swung open, and a new nurse walked in, accompanied by three guards. A little overkill if you ask me.
"Hello, Rat. I'm your replacement nurse. It's time for your nightly sedatives." She said in a cheery voice.
"Leave me alone." I said, my voice still slurred from the previous shot.
"Now, don't be like that. Give me you arm." She directed as she neared me. I realized that I was still lying on the floor. I looked down at my arm. Pain had began to resonate from the spot where the glass had punctured my skin, and the floor was covered in blood.
"Come on, let's see." The nurse repeated. I didn't move.
One of the guards sighed and grabbed my bloodied arm, yanking it towards him. I squeaked in pain, but refused to give any more indication to my discomfort. They didn't get to see me suffer.
The nurse removed a first aid kit from her pocket. She began cleaning the cut with some sort of cloth covered in what I assumed was rubbing alcohol. It stung, but I held back the yelp that was threatening to escape my lips.
Then she removed a needle and thread, and began stitching the wound in my arm. I wanted desperately to pull my arm away, to close my eyes, but I refused to let them have the satisfaction.
Once the nurse had finished, she rolled down my sleeve. She removed a needle from her kit, and I yanked my arm out of the guards hand. He wasn't expecting it, so I succeeded.
"Got her other arm, please. I don't want to injure that one further." The nurse decided. Her voice was as light as her blond curls, as smooth as her makeup caked face.
The guard reached out and grabbed my other arm, yanking the sleeve back to reveal the skin underneath.
"This won't hurt a bit." The nurses promised. That was a lie.
Once again, I felt the drugs course through veins. It took much less time to take effect. I sat up for as long as my body allowed me, glaring at the nurse and the guards. Not one of them looked regretful for stealing more of my life from me. As my eyelids grew heavy, I managed to mutter one thing.
"I hope you're happy now." I growled. And then my eyes closed. My arms became to weak to support my body, and I, once again, collapsed to the floor.
"Should we put it in the bed?" The nurse asked.
"Leave it. That freak deserves it." The guard said. I heard no more of their conversation as the drugs took full affect.
I woke up the next day at the same time as always. The emperor kept us sedated for about 90% of the day, as we were still deemed unstable. It seems like abuse, but to them, we weren't humans. We weren't even considered animals that deserved their pity. We were science experiments, every piece of DNA having been artificially fabricated in a lab. Our powers made us too dangerous to be left to our own devices in our little prison cells.
The other 10% of that day that we were conscious was spent training, mostly. Monday through Thursday, we were taken to the training room for individual training. Our sedatives were adjusted so that we would only be conscious for our training sessions. Saturday and Sunday, we were left to our own devices in our rooms, though we were carefully monitored by guards. Again, there was only one of us conscious at a time.
And then there was Friday: group training day. As I awoke that afternoon, I realized why that man had come to visit the night before.
Because today was team training day, and we always had an audience.
I could faintly hear the massive door in the cage next to mine swing open. I realized I was still on the floor, surrounded by broken glass. I assumed it would be gone by the time I returned.
On my hands and knees so as to not draw attention to myself, I crawled over to the front wall that was made of glass. I could faintly hear what was happening beside me.
"Come on, freak. Let's go." One of the guards demanded. I heard his heavy footsteps pounding down the hallway, and the footsteps of Ox directly in front of him.
I heard the whir of locks being opened right next to me. Someone was at my door.
I scrambled back to the spot next to the bed where I had been the entire night. If they knew I had been awake, even for a minute, I didn't know what they would do. And not knowing is the only thing I fear.
I got in place as the door swung open.
"Up on your feet, hands where I can see them." The guard demanded as he entered the tiny white box that I was supposed to call home.
Looking at him standing there, alone, I got an idea.
I grabbed a shard of glass and tucked it into the elastic waist of my grey sweatpants. I got to my feet and put my hands, empty, in front of me. The guard told me to turn around and put my hands behind my back. Praying that the glass shard was well hidden, I followed his orders. He fastened a pair of bulky handcuffs around my thin, pale wrists, tightening them until they were nearly cutting into my skin.
He pushed me out the doors, keeping one hand on the metal connecting the cuffs.
He led me down a pristine white hallway. It seemed like everything in this place was either the purest white or the cleanest grey. Everything except for the humans. And us, if you want to get specific.
After punching in two separate codes, which he was careful not to show me, at two separate doors, he removed the metal piece from between the specially made handcuffs. I knew that they had been specially designed for us, so if something went wrong in the training room, it would shock us, or inject us with more sedatives, or something like that. No one had decided to try that function out.
I gazed around the room at my peers, instantaneously spotting Ox sitting on a large block in the corner near the door. Each pristine white block weighed roughly a ton, so most of us used them as seats. We knew they were designed to test Ox's strength. So far, he could hold two without collapsing. He could even hold two with Rabbit on top, though she weighed about the same as me, which meant she weighed practically nothing.
Out of all the experiments, Ox was what you kids would call my "BFF" or whatever. Maybe it was because of the old legend, how the ox helped the rat finish the race first. Maybe it was because, according to my knowledge, people born in the years of the ox and the rat are technically compatible. Maybe it was because I was very good at talking, and he was very good at listening.
We honestly looked like Yin and Yang, seated next to each other on that one ton pristine white block. He was 6 foot 1 and towered above me when we stood next to each other. My pale skin contrasted his dark skin like night and day. His dark brown eyes looked nearly black, while mine were so grey they looked like a blond dogs. Ox has what you would refer to as Vitiligo, which means patches of his naturally dark skin are somehow as white as mine. The most noticeable one was right on his face, covering from the bottom right side of his face to just past his eye. But what you may look at as "weird", I looked at as normal. Attractive, even. It made his eyes stand out like a drop of black ink on a blank page.
We were all made to be exactly like what our horoscope says we should be. Ox's, by definition, can sometimes be a little inarticulate, and they can be a bit distant. (The books words, not mine. I'm just reading the definition here.) And Ox fits that description, to say the least. He barely talks at all, and when he does, it's mostly to me. One of the scientists diagnosed it as selective mutism, which isn't as uncommon as you might think. It basically means that someone with selective mutism probably won't talk to you, unless they know you, by no fault of either one of you. How long they need to know you before they start talking to you depends on the person. Most of the guards, however, disregard that diagnosis completely, and have decided that he's just stupid. Even the emperor makes jokes about it. It only makes me hate them more.
I sat down beside Ox, and we just sat for a moment. One thing I like about him is that it never gets awkward. We can just sit in total silence and it feels totally natural.
"Alright, group training will begin in a matter of minutes, after we deal with a minor issue." Boomed a voice over some sort of speaker that I couldn't find.
"Yes!" I heard Monkey exclaim. I sighed in exasperation. This was not going to end well.