A/N: An old story fragment, edited up for Day 6 of Gundam 00 Week, to fit the prompt "Closed World." More specific warnings at the end, but this is about the Super-Soldier Institute, so please consider all accompanying warnings to be in play.
Title from the Atashi/{Words of Songs} translation of "Closed World" by The Back Horn.
the prayers of saints graze by and vanish
There was something so ominous about the Institute. Maybe it was in the way the fluorescent lights flickered or the odd currents of air he couldn't quite find the sources of that blew in and out of doorways…but, the Institute didn't feel safe.
E-0057, who only called himself Allelujah in his own mind and Marie's, didn't spend a lot of time alone in the Institute. The scientists didn't exactly encourage it. But when he was sneaking off to the place where Marie was kept—well, he didn't like being in the hallways alone. His stomach always started churning and he got goosebumps, and if the atmospheric control system made shuddery noises, like it did from time to time, he would jump, like he was expecting someone to pop out of the shadows.
Which was odd, when he thought about it.
He'd only ever been here, right? At least, he only ever remembered a place like this. If he tried to think back any farther…his head ached, in the places where the bandages were thickest, and behind his eye—the gold one, the one that matched Marie's.
He'd been so excited back when the scientists told him about the surgery. He normally hated them, because he didn't like having to skip mealtimes beforehand, and the medicine they used to make him sleep made him feel fuzzy and yucky. Also, wherever they cut into usually hurt, even after they stopped giving him medicines for it. But they told him this time that the surgery was going to give him…well, he didn't really understand all the terms, but it would make daily lessons and tests easier for him, and his eyes would turn a cool color.
But when he woke up, only one of his eyes was gold, and the surgery had made it so sensitive to light that the scientists wrapped it in bandages. Even now, covered in layers and layers of cloth, with nothing to make it hurt, it was still aching—or maybe, it was more like the spot behind it was aching. No one had touched him, the temperature hadn't changed—but it hurt, and his stomach felt awful, and maybe his legs were a little shaky.
This was a corridor he'd never been near before, though. Some of the places in the Institute were dangerous, he knew that much. The scientists always told them they had to stay under supervision all the time. If the scientists found him wandering around like this, he'd definitely be in trouble. He didn't remember too well what happened when people were in trouble—actually, anything from before his surgery was kind of blurry—but he was pretty sure it was bad.
His stomach felt bad when he was scared too, so maybe this was just a very, very bad kind of scared? That didn't seem to make sense, though.
He tried to remember other times when he'd been scared.
All of them were from the last week.
He was sure it had happened more than that. He knew he was the kind of person who was scared fairly often.
But when he tried to think about things from before his surgery, they were all confusing and swirly and vague, like weird dreams that were slowly fading away now that he was waking up. He could remember things like the name of the colony he was on, or how many countries there were in the AEU, but he couldn't remember things about himself.
He knew Marie was a designer baby, and that some of the youngest kids came to the Institute still sobbing for their parents. He didn't know which category he fell into. He was…pretty sure about his age, but he had no idea when his birthday was or if he'd ever done anything to celebrate it.
Probably not, though. Only scientists got to celebrate birthdays.
All this thinking about his memories wasn't helping his headache any, though. Something was making his head hurt, he was sure of it—but he didn't know what it could be. He was just standing here. Maybe moving would help?
Tiptoeing, he snuck into the hallway—it was one he'd never been in, far from both his room and Marie's, and he was curious. But the further he walked, the worse he felt.
There was a loud banging sound, all of a sudden, and Allelujah threw himself against the opposite wall of the side it had come from, not even noticing the pain that suddenly spiked in his head.
It was a door. One of the doors that lined the hallway was closed but clanking against its frame. Allelujah pressed his back against the wall, trying to breathe quietly, and stared at the small window at the top of the door. As he watched, a face with slitted gold eyes peered over the bottom edge of the window—and then started rattling the door harder, shouting all the while.
"Get out of here or I kill you, you hear me, brat?" the person shouted, before starting to kick at the door. "Your d*** quantum brainwaves are reacting to mine and you're making us both feel like s***, now get before I decide the easiest way to end this is slitting your little throat!"
The words quantum brainwaves were familiar, but Allelujah didn't know what they meant. He knew what the threats meant, though, so he ran, feet skidding and just barely finding purchase on the tile floor. He only stopped when he literally collided with someone else.
A lady scientist, her hair cropped short, smiled down at him without a single bit of warmth. "So, there you are, E-0057. We have some tests to do."
I don't wanna, Allelujah thought. Aloud, he asked, "Who lives down that hallway?"
"Just some people who went down the wrong path," the lady scientist said. "You won't be seeing them again, so if they scared you, don't worry. But don't come here again. It's not safe."
"Don't worry, I won't," Allelujah said. "It gives me a headache."
"Oh?" the lady scientist said. "Well, we'll have to run some extra tests on you today, if you've had a headache."
Allelujah gulped.
"Don't worry, we won't be doing anything invasive today," the lady scientist said, placing a hand on Allelujah's back to guide him up the hall toward the labs.
"Hey, I have a question," Allelujah said, since he was already in trouble and he might as well make it worse. "Is it okay if I can't remember things?"
"Have you been forgetting things?" the lady scientist asked, in mild concern.
"No…I mean, from before I woke up with the bandages," Allelujah said.
"Oh, that," the lady scientist said. "It's normal for you to forget things from before your surgery."
What if I don't want to forget them, though? Allelujah thought.
"Now, come along," the lady scientist said.
Allelujah nodded. And, at the back of his mind, someone else entirely stirred, but did not wake.
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A/N: The lady scientist is lying about Alle not seeing this hallway again—the fact that his initial surgery failed to produce the desired results means that some of the scientists are already considering the possibility of locking him in there as well, or just killing him.
Warnings: harm to children, medical experimentation, implied kidnapping, unnecessary medical procedures, memory loss.
I do apologize for this one.