Sixty days before....
My head pounded.
I needed to eat.
So...hungry....
My cheek was plastered to the floor of the Pit, a puddle of drool surrounding my face. I couldn't feel much of my arms or my legs. They hadn't fed me in a long, long time.... I was growing weak. So weak.
Suddenly, the elevator doors opened, and a mechanical sound echoed throughout the Pit.
From the large shaft exited about twenty SWAT members and roughly ten researchers, all men.
The SWAT team surrounded me in a giant circle.
"Guns at the ready!" one man shouted near my right ear.
His call hit my brain like a ton of bricks and replayed in my head over and over, each time with a higher pitch. Guns at the ready! Guns at the ready! Guns at the ready! Guns at the ready! Guns at the ready!
His voice shot into my ear with a white noise. I grimaced in pain.
I tilted my head to watch the men standing above me, but each time my head made a movement, the forms of each of them seemed to bleed like watercolors on glass. It seemed like there were five bodies standing for each one person and I couldn't focus on one clear figure at a time.
They put me on something new. I didn't know what it was but it was terrifying.
The doctors closed into me in a smaller circle. One, tall and familiar, stepped forward and leaned close. "Do you feel that, Xander?" he said, his voice hitting the inside of my head painfully and his words each followed by an echo. "You won't be coming out of this for a long time. Can't crack any more wise-ass jokes now, huh?"
I tried to speak but my tongue felt like it took up my whole mouth and I couldn't even hear anything that I was saying, if anything even came out.
He backed up and laughed like someone sizing up an opponent. The others around him started in a chorus of a dark, low, demonic laughs until, eventually, the echos of them all stopped.
"Let's get him stripped," the man said then, his voice not as loud this time.
My body felt as light as air as a few men started to lift me up and take my clothes off.
The elevator opened again and out came one hundred (or, at least, what looked like one hundred at this point) people dressed in clear hazmat suits running towards me. I closed my eyes and tried to drown out the pain of the noise of their footsteps.
One, upon coming closer to me, started walking slower. "Are you sure he's out?" he asked quietly.
"We are sure," the familiar voice confirmed.
"I hope so," the man said and dropped a large biohazard bucket near my face. "Did you hear the news?" he asked as he started to drop something in the bucket.
A man on the other side started to do the same but didn't speak.
"What news?" another asked.
"Dr. Faye killed himself," he whispered, moving so that he was farther away from my ear. "He was found floating in Thanatos River this morning. Must have jumped from the bridge," he said.
"Experiment X taunted him to suicide," the man on the other side of me blamed.
"He is becoming an increasing threat--" another man from above my head said.
YOU ARE READING
Of Monsters and Humanity: The Genesis
Fantasy{UNEDITED FIRST DRAFT, REWRITE IN WORKS} "...You've made me see that humanity isn't just found in humans. Sometimes monstrosity is found in humans, too." Xander sat back and soaked in my words as he raised his head high. The words hung in the...
