Hey, everyone! Here's today's update-it was supposed to be yesterday's update, but, you know, life. (I also fixed the missing page breaks in the last chapter. Gaaah.) Anyways, enjoy!
5 – Clean-Up Duty
The next three days were mostly the same: the guard would wake us up, toss in our allotted number of food packets, and then an hour later escort us to our doctors for our daily shot. Every day Dr. Brailes would check me over and ask what symptoms I was experiencing, then he'd give me my shot and send me back to the barrack. Since most everyone else was too sick to do anything but lay there, I'd spend most of the day talking with Anna, and whoever else happened to be feeling a bit better.
By day four, everyone seemed to be feeling better except Meagan, who stayed curled up on her bunk while the rest of us ate on the floor together and chatted. As far as I could tell, we all had similar backgrounds: we were all from decent homes in decent neighborhoods, and we had all been grabbed in or near our houses. None of them had any weird powers or abnormalities that would make them prime kidnapping targets. They were just nice kids that had been in the wrong place at the wrong time with the wrong DNA.
That morning, however, when I was taken to Dr. Brailes for my check-up, I was puzzled when he gave me two shots instead of one. Usually I never said anything more than I had to, but today I ventured to ask, "Excuse me? Why am I getting an extra shot today?"
"I have orders to administer an accelerant," he grumbled, talking more to himself than me, "I mean, you tell those Neanderthals, 'No, give them one to three years to develop properly' but they want results within the next six months. Six months! But what do they know about genetic modification? Those stuffy old..." then he remembered that I was there and clammed up, shooting me an annoyed 'I'm not supposed to be talking to the experiments' look.
My stomach churned slightly at the new information. An accelerant; as in, some sort of crazy chemical to make us mutate even faster? This did not sound good. And it sounded even worse when I got back to my barrack and started vomiting and dry heaving, with severe muscle cramps forming all over my body. It was like I had gotten the flu, except ten times worse. And, since all the other girls in my barrack had gotten the same shot, all twenty of us were moaning and puking. Not a pretty sight when there's only one toilet, and some of the girls were in too much pain to even crawl off their bunks.
For the first three days I received the accelerant, I spent most of my day retching or sleeping, getting up only if I needed to use the bathroom, get food and water, or go to get my shot. A doctor walked through our barrack a couple times a day, checking us over and making sure we were fed and hydrated—a few girls were totally bedridden had to be put on IVs. By day five, however, me, Anna, and some of the other girls were feeling well enough to at least talk again.
Meagan moaned, shifting uncomfortably under her blanket. "I feel like death." And this was one of her good days.
"Agreed," grumbled a girl named Cammie, who was on the bunk across from mine.
"It's the accelerant," I speculated, as I paced back and forth between the two rows of bunks. I still wasn't feeling one hundred percent, but my body was starting to adjust to the illness, and lying around for days at a time was making me restless. "They're trying to speed up the mutation process."
"Speed it up how much?" Anna asked.
"The scientist said they wanted results within the next sixth months," I recalled, "but I have no idea how long it will be before we, we..." I trailed off.
"Grow wings and fly?" Anna smirked slightly.
"Or die a slow and painful death," Meagan countered pessimistically. "I used to read Fang's blog, you know, and sometimes he'd write about the School and about the different genetic experiments, all grotesque and mutated and stuff." And he didn't even describe the half of it there.
"Guys, we're not going to turn into School experiments," I told her, "We can pull through this if we hang on."
Meagan scoffed, "Since when did you become an optimist, Ella?"
"Since you all started acting like we're doomed," I told them, resolve building up inside of me. "The only way we're going to survive this is if we believe we can survive it. Maybe the virus and accelerant won't work and we'll all stay normal. Maybe someone will come and rescue us before anything weird happens. But even if nothing can stop this, I'm not going to give up that easily."
There was a collective sigh from the other girls. "She's right, you know," Anna said, sitting up on her bunk. "I mean, think of World War II, when all those people were put to work in concentration camps and starved until they were living skeletons. Do you think any of them survived by feeling sorry for themselves all day? And we have it easy compared to them!" I shot her a grateful look, thankful for the moral support.
"Alright, alright, I get the point," Meagan grumbled, "but any of us could die at any minute. You do realize that, don't you?"
"Yes, but we still have to try, don't we?" I pointed out, "We can't just give up! As long as we're alive, there's still a chance we could see our families again, a chance that we'll get out of this place. If we just give up and wait to die, those things will never happen. So I'm going to hang in there for as long as possible. What about you guys?" I looked around me, and many of the other girls voiced their approval. Good, that meant I didn't sound like a total dork.
I stopped in front of Meagan's bunk and said to her, "Well, Meagan? Promise not to curl up and die on me?" I had a slight smile on my face.
Even though she still looked miserable, I could tell that Meagan's spirits had brightened, if only a little bit. "I'll try my best," she said quietly, the faintest smile curling at the corners of her mouth.
Suddenly the guard walked up to our barrack and barked, "Alverez! Bartoli!" My eyes widened a fraction and I turned around, wondering why Anna and I were being called upon.
"Yeah?" Anna replied weakly.
"Come with me," he ordered, waiting for us to approach the gate. I shot a nervous look at the Anna, but we complied with the guard's orders and shuffled into the main corridor when the gate was opened. He led us into one of the hallways, just like we were all the other times, but instead of taking us to one of the examination rooms we met up with Dr. Brailes in the hall. "You stay here and listen to him," the guard ordered me, before leading Anna away to another one of the hallways. Our eyes met before she turned the corner, and I tried my best to give her an encouraging smile. Then I turned to Dr. Brailes.
"We are presently lacking janitorial staff," he explained, "so you will be cleaning this hallway and its adjoining rooms. Understand?" I nodded, not sure if I wanted to know why they were suddenly short on staff.
"But wait," I said, "Won't I, like, contaminate your equipment or something?"
Dr. Brailes cleared his throat uncomfortably. "The virus is highly unstable in most environments, and must be injected directly into an organism's bloodstream for it to have any effect. So no, you won't contaminate anything." Then he led me from room to room, showing me what needed to cleaned and supervising me as I got the job done. They all seemed to be regular examination rooms, like the one I was brought to every morning to get my shots.
There was one room, however—room 142, it was marked—that contrasted starkly with the others. "What happened here?" I asked, startled by what I saw. This room, unlike the others, was empty except for the counter and overhead cupboards, and a large cage that was welded to the top of a steel table. My heart dropped to my stomach when I saw that the cage bottom, and some of the floor surrounding the table, was slick with blood.
"All you need to know is that you need to mop this up and put the paper towels in this bag," he said, handing me an orange garbage bag, a pair of rubber gloves, and a roll of paper towel. I took them from him and walked over to the cage, but I slipped on the bloody concrete and fell flat on my stomach. Owww...
...Ewww! I scrambled to my feet when I realized I'd fallen right into the red puddle on the floor. I glanced over at Dr. Brailes, who stared at me blankly. "There aren't any dangerous contaminates you need to worry about." Gee, thanks for the concern.
So I wiped myself off the best I could and sopped up the mess on the floor and in the cage, and then I used some spray-on anti-bacterial cleaner to get rid of the residue. (I wanted to spray some onto my shirt to get the bloodspots out, but Dr. Brailes said that would waste too much time.) Once I was done, Dr. Brailes escorted me out of room 142, warning me, "Do not enter that room unless explicitly ordered to by a staff member, or you will be severely punished." Then he turned me over to the guard, who was also escorting another girl, and I was led back to the barracks. He deposited me in my barrack, then took the other girl further down the hall to where she belonged.
"What happened!" Was the collective exclamation of my bunkmates when they saw me. Some of them worriedly scrambled out of bed and stepped towards me, staring at my shirt in alarm. I looked down and realized they were staring at the bloodstains.
"Guys, I'm fine," I assured them, "they just needed someone to do some cleaning for them, same as Anna." I looked over and saw that Anna had already been returned, and was staring at me with an uneasy expression.
"It must be one heck of a cleaning job," she remarked, eyeing my clothes warily, "They didn't have me cleaning anything like that."
"Why did you have to clean up blood?" One girl asked meekly, "Was it... what do you think it's from?"
"I... don't know," I answered, "but it was mostly inside of a cage that was in one of the medical rooms. A really big cage." But exactly who—or what—had been in that cage? And why had there been blood all over the place?
