The Boy in the Gray Hoodie

ONE | Monster

Death was a cocoon. Inside it, he became something else. It was a shield that enveloped him, blotting out the pain and the fear. Then they brought him back, and the cocoon dissipated. Gone. Evaporated, like a drop of water on the scalding metal slats of the heating vent in his cell. But dying was always easy. Coming back tore him to pieces.

A deep, choking breath erupted from his lungs. His heartbeat pounded in his ears.

"We've got a pulse," a voice announced triumphantly.

"Start the IV and hook him back up to the monitors," the tone of the order was sharp. The voice was familiar, too. Never strained; always clear and unfaltering.

Cold sensors pressed to his bare torso. The little round sticky pads connected through energy to a machine outside the room that monitored his electrical signals. Waves of electricity that couldn't penetrate the suits the doctors wore. He could hear the beep, beep, beep through the wall of glass. His reflection pulsated. The mirror breathed. Each fragmented particle vibrated to the rhythm of his heart.

Distracted by the boy in the mirror, he jerked when a needle ripped into him and lifted his skin. The beeping turned frantic. His pupils dilated. Liquid poured into his veins, flooding them and stirring his blood. It traveled—not in a steady flow but in bursts—to the chambers of his heart. The metal table shook underneath him. A rattling tremor; his body reacting to rebirth.

It was colder here than inside his cocoon.

Three long blobs floated overhead, blurry around the edges, and blue. "How many fingers am I holding up?" They wiggled.

He moved the same three fingers of his own hand, mimicking the one floating above him. The cuffs around his wrists shifted and clinked.

"Speak," the man barked.

E7's white skin looked dark in contrast to the radiating brightness from the overhead light, especially the flesh under his blue eyes. Ash colored veins branched out like naked trees under a scattering of smooth scars. They dotted the creases of his elbows, forming pink and white constellations down his arms. Fingers...how many fingers...the question echoed.

His gaze shifted from the blue hand to the ceiling. Whiteness above him. False clouds. Shapeless and flat. Then back as the cold metal table pressed against the leathery skin of his shaved head. He had seen his reflection before. Blue eyes, angular features. Strange. Different from the people outside the room. None of them had faces; they didn't have eyes either. Long gray panels across blank masks of the white suits hid their eyes. His slender fingers had never been inside a pair of gloves.

"E7 is verbally unresponsive after resuscitation..." something clinked on the table. It touched the side of his hand and he flinched. It was cold. "Can you check his pupils?"

There was a quick flash of a smaller light just above his eyes. "Reactive."

"Good. Vitals are decent. His pulse is fast. We should slow it down."

"He just needs a minute."

A minute. Sixty seconds. They didn't mean a minute. They meant a span of time in which they would be comfortable to wait. Less than a minute. He counted by twos and reached forty before they made a move.

Twenty seconds.

One of them took back the slender object beside his hand.

Click.

"Get a blood sample and go run it. I want reports on his metabolic rates and cell reconfiguration. I want to see what we've accomplished here today."