You Could Have Given Me a Warning

(3) Patient #0012

"That was probably the worst it could get, right?" I said, sitting on my bed facing her.

"Yeah... plus they're really bad people," Gemma said. We were trying to justify the actions of our coworkers, but it was really hard to shake the image of the burning man from my head.

"How did... we even get this job?" Gemma asked me. I looked up at her.

"Our boss told us we were chosen," I replied. "But our memories had to be wiped for us to learn the training."

"Yeah I know that much, but how do we know that's true? What if... We were kidnapped as well?" she asked. This question left me silent.

"You know what bothers me, also?" I asked quietly. I cleared my throat and grabbed a tissue, expecting to start sobbing.

"What?" Gemma asked.

"We knew that there were experiments going on. Why didn't we realize...?" I started sobbing into my tissue.

"Lina? Gemma?" Someone said from outside our door. I wiped my tears away and tried to make myself presentable as Gemma stood up to open the door. It was Damien.

"Uh so my mom wants to see you in Interrogation," he said.

"Thank you, Damien, we'll be right over," Gemma said and closed the door. "Are you good?" Gemma asked me. I nodded and left the room after Gemma and closed the door. Damien was still standing outside so he ended up walking with us to Interrogation.

When we got to Interrogation, we found patient #0012 sitting in a chair across from our boss with a lot of restraints on. We were looking in through a window.

"She said she wanted you to listen," Damien said and handed each of us a pair of headphones. I looked at Gemma, confused as to why our boss suddenly had so much interest in us and put the headphones on.

"How did you get out, Charlie?" our boss asked very condescendingly.

"I shapeshifted into a bird and hopped into the toilet that's in my cell and controlled the water to bring me somewhere else," he said.

    "Does he have truth serum injected?" I whispered to Damien.

    "Yeah," he whispered back.

    "Why not shift into a fish?" our boss asked.

    "I can only shift into a bird," he said, "although being able to transform into other things would be nice, wouldn't it?"

    "We do the experiments to perfect that sort of thing, Charlie," she said. He suddenly started tensing up and screaming.

    "You can't transform with those restraints on, Charlie."

    "Can you stop calling me that?" Charlie cried.

    "What? Your name?"

    "You sound so evil whenever you say it..." he said, sobbing. I always hated watching interrogations, but I've never had to watch one with a patient. I've had to watch our boss interrogate people who had some information we needed, like the whereabouts of certain people and such.

    "Why did you try to escape? We are giving you amazing abilities," our boss asked.

    "I need to see my family. I don't know how I got here and I don't know where they are. I don't even know where I am. I need to see my wife, my kids, my parents..." Charlie sobbed.

    "You don't have any of those things," our boss said and then walked out of the room, leaving Charlie in the room alone with his tears and an empty chair.