I have lived a long life and my greatest pride is also my greatest shame. I am a scientist, a geneticist to be more specific. I've dedicated my life to unlocking the potential that lies just beneath our genes. It's a crusade of mine, my Holy Grail as it were. I want every person to have an equal opportunity at life no matter how bad a hand they were dealt at birth.
But this passion blinded me and drove me to do things that tore apart my soul, only I didn't know it till I took time to look around me, to see the monster I had become. I subjected countless children to horrific experiments where I essentially opened up their spines and played around with their genetic material, all while they were awake and aware of the pain.
It was my working theory that the body operates differently when it is under sedation or anesthesia. So, if you truly wish to operate under the most optimal of conditions to truly unlock the potential of your subjects you can employ neither of these things. And my reward for this barbarity, a handful of specimens that exceeded my expectations.
But the price I paid to get there was far too high. When it's quiet I can still hear their screams and at times it feels as though my hands are possessed as they continue to cut through phantasmal flesh and grow slick from the invisible blood that pours out after every touch and stains my hands so they are never clean, forever soiled from my sins and I am not religious.
I have much to make up for and fear I will never be able to bring peace back to my mind, but that doesn't stop me from trying. Now I look to heal without doing harm and my subjects are no longer children that I purchased from destitute families, people that were staring down the barrel of a gun and had to decide do we live or do we die? Do we survive doing that which is deplorable?
My colleagues say I will work myself to death and they very well may be right. Every ounce of energy I have is spent doing research and humane experiments on animals. But in the dark of the night I can hear their moans and feel their bony fingers reaching out from depths of the pit while they grab hold of me and drag me down with them.
It is the punishment I deserve, but I must at least try to balance the scales before I resign myself to my fate. I pour over my research. I had found a way to unlock the body's ability to regenerate at a much faster rate and regrow severed limbs, a condition I created myself when I cut off multiple limbs. Now I need to find a way to unlock that ability without horrific experimentation.
It is long into the night, darkness surrounds my table lamp, but I'm barely aware of the time. Everyone else has left the lab. I am all alone. I'm pouring over my notes , trying to find the threads that connect my current research to my former ones. What I did was inhuman, but I cannot refute the efficacy of those experiments simply because I wish I'd never done them.
I'm connecting the dots when I feel a presence in the room. I look up from the monitor, the only light in the dark room and catch sight of a human shaped shadow standing near the door. It moves towards me with silent steps as though melding with the shadows rather than employing physical locomotion. At first I think it's a ghost, but as they draw near I can determine their identity.
"Good evening Carl, how are you?" I open the conversation as I abandon my research and turn my chair toward him.
"I fare well doctor," is his answer as he limps forward.
"What happened to you?" I query and stand up to examine him.
"It is nothing," he assures me and sets a hand to the desk. "Just the price I pay for the life I have chosen."
"You're a good man Carl, but you're not indestructible," I remind him and sit back down. "You need to be careful."
"That is a fact I am well aware of doctor," he replies and sets a hand to the desk.
"Please, I really would prefer you call me Theresa," I offer as I sit back in my chair and slide my hands into my lab coat pockets.
"This is not a social visit, doctor," he presses as he leans his face closer to mine. "I need more."
The color completely leaves my face. "No, Carl. I'm not going to make anymore," I throw back and sit up a little straighter. "That stuff is eroding your brain. Best case scenario you develop dementia. Worst case you become a vegetable."
"I already know that, doctor," he persists as he gets uncomfortably close. "But that does not change the fact that I still need it."
"No Carl," I push back as I leave my seat and stand behind it as though it were a shield. ""I'm not going to be a party to your brain death."
He takes hold of the chair and hurls it across the room. "Remember what you did, doctor," he continues and advances on me.
My ears fill with tiny screams. "Please don't do this," I beg as I back up.
"Remember the children who trusted you as you strapped them to the table," he continues and steps ever closer.
The screams grow louder. "I'm begging you, please don't do this," I whimper and take another step back.
"Remember how you picked up the knife and cut the skin from their spines," he continues undaunted and advances yet further.
All I can hear is screaming. "In the name of all that is decent in this world, please don't make me relive those moments!" I shout to be heard over the wails and back into the wall.
"Remember the screams, the pleas, the begging," his voice cuts through the noise. "Remember them calling out to their parents, to god, to anyone who will listen."
The screams intensify. "I can't do this again!" I call out and slide down the wall.
"You know how to end this," he persists as he stands over me.
"I can't," I insist as tears stream down my face.
"Remember how you would poke and prod your way into depths of pain they never knew existed," his words hold the weight of all my sins compiled into a single, crushing weight.
"Please, don't do this," I blubber as I reach out and take hold of his leg.
"Give me what I need," he demands in quiet fashion and gazes down upon me.
"You don't know what you're asking," I carry on as I look up into his indifferent face. "You won't be you anymore."
"Remember picking up the saw and-" his words continue to flow with all the venom he can muster.
"Alright! Alright!" I cut him off and lower my body to the floor. "I'll make it for you. God help me, I'll make it for you."
It takes me several minutes to recover from the emotional bombardment and even then I'm still not free of it, I'll never be free from it, nor should I ever. Carl pulls the hoodie down from his head and lays himself across the table, completely at my mercy, just like before. I pick up a syringe and stand over him.
I know what I must do even though every part of me tells me not to and there's even a small part of me that contemplates filling it with poison and injecting him with it. In this fashion I would be free at last from this grisly task, but I could never demand a further sacrifice from those that I have already taken so much from. All I can do is carry on the best I can.
I push all that aside and concentrate on the task at hand as I steady my hand. I lower the needle to the base of his neck and slowly push it into his flesh. I drive it precisely one inch inside before pulling back on the stopper. I fill the syringe with spinal fluid till it's a quarter full. Completed, I set to the task of creating the serum while Carl stands up again.
I sit myself down and carefully squirt the fluid into a beaker while I am careful not to waste even a single drop. I then combine precise measurements of various other chemicals and heat to an approximate degree till the color turns to a frothy white. This creates the serum Carl is after. The one that activates his more inert power and will likely spell his end.
I put it into a bottle and wait till it fully settles while, just for a moment, I contemplate dropping it on the floor and stepping on it for good measure. I'd be doing him a favor, maybe even saving his life, but he's too stubborn to not demand I make another and he doesn't care how much fluid I would have to draw or what harm it would do to him. He's far too short sighted.
I slip the bottle and a syringe into a shatterproof case. "I know you think this is the answer you're looking for," I start in as I hold it out to him. "But it will not settle the demons I placed in your head."
He snaps the case out of my hand. "This is my purpose," he insists as he slides it into a cargo pocket on his pants. "It became clear to me when I was lost in the depths of despair, praying for an end to the nightmare."
"What I did to you was inhuman and I try to make up for it everyday," I try to defend myself as I fear he may make me live those days again.
"What you did to me can never be made up for," he throws back and glares upon me. "But this is not about revenge. This is about purpose, the purpose that became clear to me the first time you used the Truth on me."
I prepare to speak, but find I haven't a leg to stand on. I bow my head and dare not raise it till I hear the door shut. I sit myself back down and gaze at my notes, but it is not words that I see. I see a scalpel covered in blood. I see the pins to hold back the skin. I see the faces of children who have cried so hard that their eyes are red and ringed. I see a cold table with leather straps.
I see all of these elements come together and create a nightmare from which there is no escape, no reprieve. I see myself cutting and not caring how much they screamed, how much they begged. This was for science. This was for the betterment of all mankind. The suffering that is felt today will be forgotten and we will be all the better for it.
This thinking was the armor I wore whenever I felt attacked by their pleas. It was the crutch I employed whenever I felt myself close to breaking down. Even the revolving door of assistants, who could not stand what I was doing, did not faze me. Even when it was only me, I still didn't stop. I sit back in my chair as I wonder if my life would have changed if not for the incident.
Candice was a subject in whom I had unlocked the ability to regulate her temperature to the most extreme of limits. I wanted to see the extent of her ability and whether I could exceed them. So I locked her in a sealed chamber with environmental controls and I gradually increased the cold as I turned the dial and kept my eyes open for any noticeable differences in the subject.
She begged to be let out, but I was indifferent to her pleas. My hand was on the knob and I would turn it slowly. The subject responded by increasing her body temperature which causes her skin to glow a reddish color. The lower I put it the more her skin shined. I was reaching the end of the knob and it was evident that she had reached her limit.
She was freezing to death. She was dying. Huddled into a ball, her teeth chattered as she whimpered. The test was turning into a failure and I was preparing to shut it down. That's when I saw her skin glow brighter and brighter as she screamed with an intensity that matched the illumination. The whole chamber was filling with light.
I stepped closer to the window and gazed at the little girl. All of her muscles were tense and she was balling herself tighter, like she was holding something inside. A bright, white hot light covered her body and soon took the place of the red glow. It reached a point of critical mass before it started to collapse in upon itself. I knew what was coming, but I just couldn't look away.
The chamber exploded and wrecked the room while I was thrown against a wall with such force that I left an indentation. My body was wracked in pain and my eyes were getting heavy, but before they closed I saw a smoldering, naked girl rise up out of the wreckage and scamper away. After that, my world went black and all I felt was a draft passing through the lab.
I woke up in a hospital, wondering how I got there. I suffered a multitude of broken bones, a concussion and a few ruptured organs. My recovery took a whole year of my life and my rehabilitation, well, I'm still working on that. During which time I thought a lot about what I did. For the first since I began my experiments I started to feel the pain I had caused.
I have a recurring nightmare where I stand in a dark room with a light shining over me and another above the smiling children who were my test subjects. Their eyes are fixed on me and sparkle in the dark. I kneel upon a single knee and spread my arms wide. They rush forward with a cacophony of laughs and woops as they hug me from every angle.
I'm awash with the pleasant feeling which turns as quickly as it came. They're collective strength lifts me into the air and strips me naked while the floor upon which I stood disappears. In its place is a nasty looking meat grinder with lots of sharp teeth. Slowly, they lower me into it and I can feel every sharp edge as it rips into my flesh while I scream till my voice gives out.
I feel every part of me as I am ground up and pulled further through the cold, antiseptic machine. That should have been the end of it, but I remain awake and aware even as I become nothing more than lifeless meat. I am pushed to the end of the grinder and little bits of me are squeezed out onto a plastic tray which is then sealed and labeled.
My remains are shipped all around the world where I am turned into burgers, or meatballs, or just simply added to a dish. Men and women eat me, children eat me, I'm even cheap enough to make my way into hospitals and nursing homes. An impossible amount of me goes out to the whole world and there is no hunger anymore as my flesh satisfies every stomach.
After my recovery I returned to the lab and found a deserted building, stripped of all its remaining resources, most likely pilfered as a result of being unprotected. The cells that housed the children are all standing open and empty and in my mind I can see Candice running to the cells and using her heat to melt the locks, a vision that is supported by the melted metal.
This gave me hope as it has been my intent to free them myself. As such, I threw myself into my work after I reached out to some friends I had and they gave me a lab to do my research in and assistants to work with me. This brings me back to the moment and the empty room I stand in. I sit back down at my computer and pour over my findings.
I also take note of the list sitting near me. A list that contains the name of each child. I use the internet and other sources to find where the children have fled to, but my endeavor is hindered since the files disappeared with everything else and all of my old contacts no longer exist. But I'm determined to find them, no matter how long it takes.
My crimes against humanity are a bitter pill I swallow everyday. Even if I had the option of forgetting I still would not. I am alive when I should be dead because I am meant to tip the scales of human suffering back in our favor. This time I won't let blind ambition push me to do things no person ever should. I will never again be the monster I once was.