The Test 3: The E.N.D

“Mai? Hey Mai!” I said as I shook the newly freed Test Subjects hand. Mai’s breathing had become suddenly shallow, a worrying sign for a newly freed Test Subject. She had just been freed for heaven’s sake! She couldn’t just die! Not now when she had just escaped from hell!

“Hey Mai!” I said again as I took to shaking her shoulders. “Come on girl, wake up! Wake up! There’s a whole new world out there waiting for you!” I said again, patting her on her cheek. Mai’s eyes slowly began to open and the nurses in Mai’s room with me took off her breathing mask and replaced it with a nose one.

“Where....where am I?” she croaked, her pupils dilating from the shock of the blinding whiteness of the Hospital room. I let out a breath of relief, she was ok.

“It’s ok Mai, its ok. My name is Test Evaluation Subject 20; I’m a test subject too. Listen to me; you are going to have to be strong for this ok? You are on the top side of the world; you know where all the other normal non test subject humans live? You’re on the outside Mai, and you’re in a building they call a hospital, it’s where they help people get better”

Mai looks at me quizzically; I had inkling on what was going through her mind. ‘Is this for real? Can I believe her? Am I really outside? Or is this a joke the scientist are playing on me in the lab’ I knew what she was thinking because I had been there before; I had been in her shoes. I remembered suddenly waking up into a room where I had no idea where I was or what I was doing there. All I had was a woman by my side telling me that everything was going to be ok, and that I would understand in time.

“but-but the lab? What’s going to happen to my tests?” she replied, still shocked at the thought that she could possibly be away from all of her daily tests and examinations that had happened in secret in an underground laboratory. “what going to happen to the other test subjects?” she asked me, her eyes full of tears ready to be spilled.

“they are fine, you don’t have to have tests anymore Mai, no more doctors or robots or labs, no more testing you on the cure for malaria, your free Mai. Your finally free.” I told her, choking on my own words as I watched her face come alight with realisation as it finally sank into her. She was no longer a slave to science, no longer a human genie pig for medical examinations or just science examinations. She was free. Her tears of joy slid down her cheeks.

“But-but how?” she asked me as she smiled, wiping away her tears with the back of her hands.

“Shhhh. Its ok, I’ll tell you everything later, all you need to know now is that you’re safe. Your free.” I said again and watched her smile grow even bigger on her pale non sun touched skin. She nodded and allowed herself to have a mask put on her to help her sleep. I sighed yet another breath of relief, the hard bit was over, getting them to believe that they are actually free. Some think that it is just a dream or an illusion put upon them by the scientists but the truth is that we actually saved them. We rescued them from their angelic white prison; we saved them from their impending doom that would have engulfed them if they stayed in there until their time came. You see down there, in the secret laboratory’s, humans are grown in Petri dishes and forced back upon their mother until they are born so they can be taken away and locked up in a cell to be tested on.

I was lucky, I never got forced to carry a baby, I don’t even recall that they took my eggs. I got out when I met Gabby, an undercover government human rescorces agent who had found out about these labs and had come with a team to infiltrate the base and rescue the test subjects. 16 years I had spent down in those labs, the average maximum time a test subject actually does spend down there and I vowed to myself I would never go back, the Lab has been closed down since I was rescued by Gabby and Rav just before the poison the scientists had given to me to dispose of me took over. They brought me out of that hell hole and gave me life, they gave me Jae. Jae was another Test Subject I had met down there, and from the first time we saw one another we were instantly inseparable, in our minds and hearts. Jae was saved from the poison too, what with him being disposed at the same time as me. We got given life together, we were given freedom together.