There was no clock in the room. Not one that she could see anyway. She was glad for that. In class, she would stare at the clock for minutes at a time watching the little red arrow click slowly in a circle. One second… two seconds… three seconds… Her little hand cradling her head as she sagged lower and lower on her desk. Time seemed to slow down when she did that. It wasn't fair that when she was having fun, time rushed by like it was on fastforward. But when she stared at the clock it seemed to be staring back at her knowingly, grinding down its gears to a crawl. No, in this room there was only a glass pane and a monitoring station with a big screen. And streams of bubbles. Why was everything pale green…?
She must have been wearing contact lenses. Or some kind of goggles. Was this another one of father's experiments? She struggled to see past the glass pane. There was no one in the room. Perhaps they were monitoring her brain waves? She tested that theory, working her brain so that her mind seemed to reach out into the darkness. She could feel no one. For the first time in her life, she was completely alone.
Obviously the experiment was going poorly. No one at the monitor, no one it seemed even noticed she was awake. Usually there was at least one miserable doctor keeping a watch on her, shaking so badly that they would drop the clipboards they were holding. They were never allowed to touch her, or look her in the eye. Her powers were dangerous, that much she knew. But this was getting ridiculous. How could she, a little girl, hurt grown-ups?
She tried to move but everything was in slow-motion. Her body felt strange. It took her a moment to realize that she was suspended in green liquid, and the pane she had been looking through was the wall of a cryostasis tank. She chewed and tasted plastic. This was far more complicated than any of her father's previous experiments. She must have done something truly horrible to deserve this. Maybe if she knocked, he would hear her. She was tired and needed rest. If she was polite, he might even give her back Teddy.
She raised her hand through the liquid and tapped on the glass. In that moment of tapping, she froze with horror. Her hand. Her hand. It was different. Her fingers were longer and the knuckles more defined. Her nails had grown out like popsicle sticks. Veins rose across the back of her hand down to her arm like worms under her skin. What had they done to her?
A dark shape moved in front of the tank. Her fear faded for a moment as she noticed it. Someone had entered the room. She strained to see through the green haze. Dark brown hair, square glasses. Her father. In a mixture of panic and relief, she raised her other hand to pound on the tank, and her arm knocked against her stomach. She was taken aback by this new startling feature. Her stomach was big. Very big.
Her father had moved to the monitoring station, and was typing away. As she reached down to touch her stomach, her father's voice echoed through the green liquid.
"Alma… Alma, cookie…"
Her body had changed. The cryostasis tank… no. No. She screamed but only air escaped her mouth, frothing the liquid. The pane shook and the monitor trembled. She clutched her balloon of a stomach in one hand, fingernails scraping against her skin. She knew she was a monster. She knew she was dangerous. But this? Her fragile child mind struggled to make sense of it all. Babies… stomachs were where babies come from. But she was still a baby. She had only just finished learning to multiply in school. How could she have a baby inside her if she was only a child? But as she stared down at her stomach, she noticed her long legs, her wide hips, and round breasts. This wasn't a child's body. This was a woman's body. And it was hers.
Her mind darted with panic. It crashed against the walls of the tank like a fish struggling to escape. Faintly, she felt her father on the other side of the glass. He was doing something that would harm her. He was regretting it. The room was going dark, and she fought to reach him. She had only seconds, and frantically repeated why why why why? But the serum had already done it's job. Her mind shrank back into the tank, and her eyes closed. As her last ounce of strength left, her hand rested limp on top of her stomach, hands open as if she were cradling the unborn child.
She watched the green light slowly fade into a point in front of her. All the experiments, the isolation, the needles, the brainwave tests… monsters. They had taken away everything she cared about, and now they had done something even worse. This wasn't about her mind. It wasn't about control. This was about fear. Fear had driven them isolate and maim her. Her own father was afraid of her, so much that he was willing to abandon her.
"Father." She knew he couldn't hear her, but she felt a deeper, more satisfying warmth as she thought. "You are the monster."