Fissure
Tap, tap, tap.
A pair of blue eyes opened sluggishly and blinked a few times in confusion. Wheatley had fallen asleep sitting on his cot with his back propped up against the clear glass wall that was also a window through which the scientists in the lab behind him could observe his every move.
Tap, tap, tap.
He looked down at his right hand resting beside him on the thin mattress and watched with morbid fascination as his fingers twitched and tapped in a nonsense rhythm. He clenched his hand into a fist and the twitching stilled. This was just one of the many alarming ticks his body had begun to develop each time the scientists shoved those horrible wires into the ports running down his back. Tiny little metal holes evenly spaced on both sides of each vertebra; surgically implanted who knew how long ago. Weeks? Months? Surely not years… The implants themselves were not painful; there was a one inch diameter of perfectly numb skin surrounding each one.
There was another port at the back of his skull, larger and shaped more like an oval than a circle; he could feel cold metal against the warm bare skin of his scalp. They had shaved his head – removed all of his body hair, actually, save his eyelashes – long ago and must have done something to inhibit its regrowth because he could just now feel the sand-papery roughness of emerging stubble. He had a hazy memory of someone saying that hair was a fire hazard.
From where Wheatley was sitting he could see straight through the glass walls and into the other three cells on this side of the room and if he turned his head to the left there were four other identical glass boxes on the other side. Eight cells in total, seven-feet-by-seven-feet square with a sink, a toilet and cot with its frame securely bolted to the floor. Empty now, but each of them had once held another person; four men, two women and a small boy of about ten who had kept crying for his dad. Each one of them scared and bald and with bits of metal shoved into their backs and heads. The little boy had been the first to disappear.
The next had been the burly man in the cell across from his own who Wheatley recognized as the security guard once stationed in the lobby. He was loud and had fought every time they came for him so they had begun to keep him mildly sedated. The last time they came for him he must have realized it was his last chance because something in him seemed to snap. It had been like watching Bruce Banner turn into the Incredible Hulk. Wheatley was pretty sure at least one man had been killed as his fellow captives cheered him on. The man had even managed to make it into the main lab and everyone had had a brief moment of hope that he might make it out. He would get out and get help and the nightmare would be over. He had barely made it ten steps before he was taken down with a Taser and dragged out of sight.
The scientists were much more careful around them after that. Instead of two coming to get them, there were four, one of whom was armed with a stick that gave a nasty shock at the first sign of trouble.
The next to go had been one of the women. She was a girl really, not much more than a teenager, who had been in the cell next to the boy. She had been a trembling, crying mess and was always asking questions no one had known the answers to.
It became nerve-wracking wondering who would be the next to go. It was the man in the cell next to Wheatley's who figured out they came for you exactly six times, the sixth being the last. He also predicted he would be the next to vanish. He was right.
The next had been a thin, angry man who was constantly screaming and raging as he paced back and forth in his cell like a caged tiger. He had tried to run but was quickly subdued.
The next was a man whose brain had apparently been fried the very first time the scientists hooked him up because all he did was babble things he seemed to believe to be fact but even Wheatley was smart enough to know were crap.
Then that just left him and the woman. They mostly just sat and stared at each other; even Wheatley had run out of things to say.
They came for her next and all the while she asked how they could do this to other human beings. Did they not possess a conscience? How could they live with themselves? Then he was alone, awaiting his turn for whatever horrible future awaited.
Wheatley turned to look behind him into the main lab where the scientists were. The glass was soundproof so he couldn't hear anything but there were several of them gathered around one of the strange spheres he had often seen them working on and they seemed to be excited. The shutter on the front of the sphere opened, revealing a glowing purple iris. It blinked its shutters a few times in a disturbingly human manner, looking around the room in apparent confusion. It catches site of him, the optic narrowing in what seems to be a thoughtful way and its round body wiggles in a manner that made him think it was speaking to the men gathered around it.
Wheatley gasped and jerked away from the window, nearly falling off his cot when they whipped their heads around near simultaneously, unhappy expressions on their faces. They turned back around just as quickly, fiddled with something on the sphere and the optic went dark. Then they began to argue and would occasionally gesture in his direction. He leapt from the cot to huddle in the furthest corner, shivering and hugging his knees to his chest, fearfully staring out the window. They were ignoring him now and he was beginning to doubt they had ever actually been upset with him at all. The scientists gradually dispersed, leaving behind the dark and silent sphere.
They came for him the next day. He went without protest, his legs shaking so badly he could barely walk and wished he wasn't such a coward.