You Could Have Given Me a Warning

(2) Patient #0046

We watched silently as the doctor attached an IV bag to the patient, and then poked a hole in the bag to insert his chemical. I felt myself cringe at the thought of this happening to me.

"So, this is either about to get very disgusting, or work perfectly," the doctor warned us.

"What do you mean it'll get disgusting?" Gemma asked him, but then it looked as if the patient was burning from the inside. His heart monitors showed that he was no longer alive and his skin was slowly becoming black. He became darker and darker until all that was left was a burnt crisp.

"Oh my god..." I gasped as my and covered my mouth. I closed my eyes to hold back the tears and grabbed onto Gemma's shoulder who was probably gaping at the scene as well. We never really knew to what extent our experiments reached and this opened my eyes to what my job truly was.

"Alright, guess I'll have to tweak the formula. If you could give our boss these notes so she could approve my serum changes, that would be great. Now if could you leave so I can clean up?" the doctor said as he handed me the paperwork and shooed us out the door. We basically stumbled out, and I was grateful Gemma reacted the same way I did. We stood in front of the door in shock, unable to move just staring at each other.

"That's what happens to people we take?" I asked.

"I wish I didn't see that," Gemma whispered and gagged. We began walking back to our boss's office in stunned silence. When we got there, I opened the door and let Gemma in first, then followed her in again.

"You two seem... off. Is everything alright?" our boss said as we took a seat stiffly.

"That was awful. That poor guy-" Gemma began, tears forming in her eyes. Tears began forming in mine as well, but I wiped them when our boss wasn't looking so I didn't look weak in front of her. I was still trying to impress her for some reason.

"You have to remember that the 'poor guy' killed people. We don't take innocent people for our experiments. So I take it that the pyrokinetic experiment failed then?"

"Oh yeah um," I stuttered and handed her the notes that the doctor handed me, trying not to shake too much, "These are his notes. The patient first lost a heartbeat, then began turning black from the inside. I think the serum was burning his veins and burned through his body, but not enough to leak outside. Something might've canceled it out? I think the doctor should add less of one ingredient to the serum to make it work," I rambled. not really knowing what I was saying.

"Interesting observations. Thank you for witnessing that, I-" our boss began, but Damien barged in the room to interrupt. He was soaking wet and dripping everywhere.

"Sorry, but I was cleaning the toilet and something happened to the water," Damien said. Gemma stood up and wiped her face to probably remove tears from her eyes because our boss was looking away.

"We'll go help. Uh... sorry this was cut short. See you at our briefing tomorrow," Gemma stammered as she walked out. I awkwardly waved goodbye to the boss (and immediately regretted it because I felt stupid) and followed her out the door. We followed Damien to the bathroom and found puddles of water everywhere and the ceiling dripping.

"What happened?" I asked Damien, thankful for the distraction (although it was a gross one).

"I was cleaning the toilet and then the water just sprayed out and hit me and sprayed everywhere. That's when I came to you guys."

"It looks like there are footsteps," Gemma said quietly, "Did you not see anything come out of the toilet?"

"Those could be Damien's, though," I said.

"No, he has bigger feet than that..." Gemma said and pointed to the footprint, which looked like it belonged to a bird or something. Now I felt stupid for even saying those could belong to Damien.

"What, so something actually jumped out of the toilet?" Damien laughed, but stopped when he realized we didn't find him funny. It was an observation that Gemma just said so I don't know why he thought it was funny.

"Should we follow the steps?" Damien asked. Without answering, Gemma started walking the way the footsteps went, and I followed her. Damien walked behind me as we went in the hallway.

"It seems like it's going this way... wait that's strange. The footsteps grew into human steps," Gemma said. She started jogging and I did too.

"Dang, I hate running," Damien mumbled and began to jog as well.

"Hey! Stop!" Gemma yelled at someone I couldn't see because the hallway was very thin and she was taller than me. I saw her grab a taser from a guard's belt and push him to the side (very cool looking, might I add) and shot the taser at the unknown person. She sprinted and punched him in the face, knocking him out. Now that I had gotten closer, I saw who it was. It was patient #0012, Charlie Jameston, someone who had been tested in sector D (water control) and who had been moved to sector F subset 2, the shape-shifting sector (the subset is for people who have more than one ability).

"Hey! We need help! He got out of his cell, he may need special containment!" I yelled. A bunch of security guards heard my call and brought over a stretcher to put patient #0012 on and rolled him into the special containment center.

"Damien, can you go tell your mom about this? She probably wants to talk to the patient," Gemma said after they wheeled patient #0012 away. Damien nodded and walked towards her office.

Gemma and I stared at each other, and really shaken up about what had happened in the span of this strange hour, we gave each other a hug.

"I don't know what to do... this is insane," I whispered in Gemma's ear. We let go of each other and that's when I saw that she was crying. In my peripheral, I noticed that our boss was coming towards us from where we came from.

"Hey, she's coming over here," I warned Gemma. She faced the other way to wipe her tears. Our boss' heels were so loud so when Gemma heard she was close she turned back around with a fake smile.

"Ladies, thank you for stopping patient #0012. You guys are free for a few, so feel free to do whatever you want until someone comes and gets you," she said and then walked passed us and towards where they took patient #0012. Damien was following close behind our boss and awkwardly waved at us as he passed. Gemma and I sighed in relief and tensely headed to our sleeping quarters.