Host

Rebirth: Joanna

"One day, we will discover the secrets to the mystery that is the human soul. And when we finally uncover it, we will have already lost ours."

Cold. Darkness.

It seems that this repulsive liquid will be my forced eternal security blanket, fluids being replaced every other week. Once again, the tube that runs down my throat is ripped from my raw windpipe and quickly traded for another equally loathsome scrap of hardware. This is all just seconds before my lungs can taste the fresh air that lies mere inches from my hauntingly gaunt face, but completely out of my grasp.

My weak hands brush against the smooth, slick 'glass' that separates me from the waking world. This cylindrical tube may very well be my perpetual prison; my future, so long as I'm proven useful, will be without end.

My name was Jo. Joanna Marie Parish. Since I was chosen, they do not call me by my given name anymore. I am now called J-80... at least that's what the chart beside the tube I reside in reads. Test Subject for the W.A.S.P. Project. Though the paper doesn't state what the Project stands for, the muffled ramblings I can hear through the thick acrylic tube suggests that W.A.S.P. stands for Weaponised Altered Stealth Persona.

Whatever drugs they had been pumping my body with since I arrived in this god-forsaken laboratory is supposed to one day churn out a mindless killing machine. Considering how weak and frail my body has become... I can only assume that they have failed thus far. It is laborious for even simple respiration at this point, which is why this tube is constantly being crammed down my gullet. I can't even breathe on my own anymore, how do they expect me to take out... whoever it is that they want me to take out?

I slowly opened my eyes again; it was difficult to see through the fluid, since it was denser than water or simple saline. The scientists and other doctors seemed to be... agitated. Suddenly, the despondent attitude of the thick-rimmed glasses-wearing fiends is flipped, they are energetic, and even animated for once. They are murmuring to one another, some even shouting empathically. What has happened?

"K-80?"

"Yes... Can you believe it?"

"They are bringing the serum here now."

"Finally we'll get to see some results."

Results? Serum? This must mean that the formula had been perfected. That also meant that they would quickly use the correct formula on all of the subjects here. Whoever was left after the previous failures, that is. For a fact, I knew that the A through E subjects were dead, or were catatonic the last time I saw them in the yard. If my physical state was anything to go by, many of the others might have already wasted away and died too. I was a bit taller than some of the other female subjects when I was chosen, and had more muscle mass than even some of the smaller males. I had come to miss my figure a bit, since it was all I could really see in my tube. I watched myself wilt away like some dying flower in the reflection of a funhouse mirror. Honestly, it was anything but fun. Now, instead of the Amazonian warrior princess that I had been working toward resembling since I was 8, I looked more and more like a wrinkled old woman who neared her visit with the reaper.

A large, stalwart man wearing what seemed to be a bullet-proof vest barged in with a short, plump looking doctor at his side. The larger man held a metal briefcase to his chest like a life preserver, a hand-scanner on its front. The fat doctor stopped in front of my fluid-filled tube and stared into the week-old fluid, where I could only lazily stare back, uncaring of my lack of clothing. I had been here for years, naked and bare for all to see. This jolly-looking doctor could not change the fact that modesty had no presence in science.

"Bring her I.V. here... It's time for J-80's transformation."

His voice was as genuine as his receding hairline, and his kind green eyes staring into the tank were a tad unnerving, even to me, a floating science specimen. He placed his chubby hand on the briefcase that the bodyguard held with such care, it hissed and opened to reveal an unassuming looking syringe with cloudy, shimmering fluid inside.