PersonaliKey

The Logic of Choice

My eyes drifted open, vision blurry. Cold steel links wrapped my wrists, and the scent of a dusty dentist's office infused my nose. Large metal bars surrounded me, and Sally laid beside me in an identical cage. There were dozens of small wires and tubes injected into different parts of her. Eugh. Did I die? I sure hope this isn't what hell is like. I'd rather push a boulder up a cliff than be some lab animal. I raised my head and felt plastic tubes wiggle in loose gashes in my neck, fuck. Goosebumps crawled up my spine. Sally's head drowsily swayed, unconscious. I heard horror stories of the Meyer Branch's high security prisons, but never thought I'd be in one. I'm just a shy teenage girl. There were two women in lab coats faced away from us working with racks of beakers, vials, and computers.

Sally hated me now, I'm sure. First, I abused the necklace, she begged me to stop, and then got caught, which she warned me about. Yet, she still searched for my family crest with me. I was an asshole – I even blamed her for taking it. Actually, it was all Harry's fault. Fuck him. Soul mate? Ha. Did he even know what would happen? Wait, what was going to happen?

"Chancellor." A man in another stark white robe, face masked with another terrifying crow-beak mask, approached the two women. "The subject's perceptive receivers have normalized."

The woman, who is apparently Mrs. Churchill-Geller, acknowledged him. She twirled around. Her shrewd face creaked into that damn smirk. She knelt down beside my cage. "If it were up to me, you'd be dead by now." She cracked her neck. "But your life is in the hands of the Meyer's Briggs branch research for now." She glanced at Sally's restless body. "It's a shame about dear Sally though, she had potential. Such is the life of an artist, short and tragic." I tried to speak, but my lips were numbed.

"Enough" barked the other scientist, still hurriedly working. "Thank you again, Mrs. Geller, for retrieving the girl. You can leave."

The chancellor waltzed up to the woman. "I'm an executive of the Meyer's Briggs branch, now."

"If you insist."

The chancellor grabbed her shoulder. "The elite council sent me to oversee this operation to completion. We wouldn't want a... conflict of interest to obstruct anything."

The scientist's eyes barreled into the Chancellor. She had a pair of keys dangling around her chest, peeking out from her lab coat. My keys!

"I am a devoted member of the research division of the branch, Chancellor."

"It is not what you are that concerns us." The chancellor stated firmly. "It is what you were."

She scientist ignored the chancellor's comment. She meandered toward my cage. She pushed her blank expressionless face against the bars. "You are ignorant, chancellor."

The chancellor's eyes flared. "Excuse me?"

"I was not appointed to join the hidden Meyer committee, unlike you and your incestuously political family. I was given a choice, and I chose it." The smell of chlorine reeked from her coat. "I forged this research division. I led this project in its infancy. Nothing would deter me from its progress."

Mrs. Churchill-Geller frowned. "She is your daughter, Rosalind."

"I already gave her up once." She stared back into my eyes. "I have experience, now."

She pressed down on a small lever near my cage. A clear liquid poured through the swath of tubes around the room. My arms jostled, rattling in their bounds. My mother? It felt like the sun swam across my body. She's alive? My limbs fell limp one by one. She couldn't... The last mumbles faded softer until I was wrapped in a blanket of emptiness.