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Test Subject K-80 : Tyler

"Fighting back is an incredible waste of time in this life. It is futile and tiring. It is also completely necessary."

Understanding why he was here was a lot different than accepting it. He understood why he was strapped to this table, tolerating the needles they shove into his skin. They needed him.

They crave a power that they themselves will never have; the power to decimate their enemies, to bring order to the world around them in the form of brutality. They need a soldier, or more practical, a robot. They need a cool, calculated being to sort out their problems and follow their every command, to carry out their directive without the need to get their own hands dirty.

He was not chosen to think. They would not expect it of him. No one would expect a soldier to ask questions or defy his commanding officer; they would expect him to run blindly into the fire simply because he was told to. To jump when they say jump, no "How high?"s necessary.

He had been a soldier once. Officer Tyler Samson, platoon leader in the military forces. When the war was still young and the government was still naïve about the people they sought to defeat, he proudly stood on the battlefield with little more than a gun and the word "Go".

Now, he was a test subject. They had stripped him of his name and his title and slapped a number on his chest just as quick. K-80. It pissed him off almost as much as the needles did, and that was saying a lot.

When you are chosen, there is always an option to decline. You don't have to become a lab rat simply because they say so. Keep in mind that saying no leads to the collective pariah treatment. Your refusal is printed in newspapers, put on the television and declared loudly over the radio.

Your best friends will hate you. Your mother and father will disown you. Your favorite high school teacher will spit on your grave after you are jumped and knifed in an alleyway on your way home by the Reverend's daughter. Hell, the Rev might even be in the wings recording it on his phone to put it online later.

There is an option to decline when you are chosen. You are just an idiot if you choose that option.

When the draft was made socially unacceptable and practically illegal to enforce, the government had to get their lab rats somehow. The poor, the crippled, and the publicly detested were chosen to join in a fantastic new study. You would become revered, you would be granted large sums of money, records would be expunged, and you would be provided amazing medical care.

Anyone who declined the opportunity was often seen as despicable, that they thought more of themselves than others, that by saying 'no', you were basically committing treason. The government assured everyone that treason was not something that a naysayer would be stamped with, they would not go to prison or be shot on site, but they knew damned well that the public would serve up its own justice; they would never have to lift a finger to eliminate a threat, the threat would be eliminated on its own.

"Two serums to test today, K-80, hopefully we can sort out some sort of recuperation period for you."

The pretty little brunette was back. Scientists were more often than not, male, but somehow K-80 had gotten lucky and there was a woman on his team. Well, luck actually had nothing to do with it. Any guy that jabbed the brute with a needle was met with a fist through those old-man glasses of theirs. One day, they got smart and put a woman into the mix. His father had once told him as a boy to never to hit a woman, so the tests went as planned from that day on. At least she's nice. The other chick was about 60, salt and pepper hair, tied back so tight that he was sure it had to hurt. Somehow, no matter how tight the bun was, her wrinkles remained. Her nearly black eyes vastly creeped him out, and her pointed nose made him think that she had to be a vulture or a crow in another life, picking away at men's rotting corpses on the side of the road somewhere. Her voice was oddly reminiscent of a screeching bird as well, sharp and as pointed as that damned beak of hers.