The Raising of Experiment Nineteen

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T

Tamlin

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(FINALLY.)

"But I don't understand."

"We have explained this before; you do not NEED to understand." The young girl, the one to whom the first voice belonged, withdrew even further within herself. She drew her knees to her chin, tucked her arms behind her legs and buried her face in her knees. Though often a set of motions undertaken when a child is being petulant, the gentle trembling in limbs too tiny to defend the body they belonged to seemed to prove just the opposite. This was all met with a sigh; the sound of metal scraping against metal caused the child to flinch away as the Woman in the Labcoat sat down in front of the girl's bed where the girl was currently huddled.

"Nineteen-"

"Trill…"

"Excuse me?" The woman's retort was sharp, harsh and echoing in the sparsely furnished, dimly lit room. It had reached the time of day during which the girl was supposed to sleep. A simulated night time which coincided with the actual setting of the sun and was initiated by a gentle and continuous dimming of the overhead fixtures. Due to her increased fear of the dark, a fear which had grown worse over time and had begun interfering with the research, they had recently installed a set of what were essentially night lights; tiny pinprick holes in the ceiling which let in just enough light to alleviate her fears.

"I…M-My name is..is Trill." She murmured from behind her knees.

"Nineteen, we have been over this as well. You cannot have a name. Not yet, at least. It is important for you to continue reacting and accepting your designation as number Nineteen. Besides," Another sigh and the girl felt a cool pressure on her arm, another on the top of her head. Knowing it was what she wanted, she raised her head, and kept her gaze on the Woman's cheek, unwilling and unable to meet her eyes. "Nineteen is our favorite number you know." The woman chuckled and reached out to pet the girl's hair, a motion the girl once again recognized as something meant to soothe or calm her. When no response was forthcoming from the girl the woman sighed, stood and began to take her leave, gathering her various folders and coat. Already the sparse room appeared even starker as the woman gathered what little she had brought in the room, including the metallic chair. Soon the room would consist entirely of a twin sized bed with freshly pressed white sheets and a still quaking young girl. The Woman offered no other words except,

"We will be here in the morning; there will be no meals until after the procedure. Do try to get sleep, Nineteen." And then she was gone, and Nineteen was left alone with her thoughts in a room with false darkness and, now, gently pulsating symbols on the walls of her confines and a false sense of night.
 
He had been planning the incursion for weeks. When at last the time had come he waited until the portal closed before him. Thick plates laced with intricate locks, the sound was always the same as its heavy weight was drawn inward to meet at a common center. Save this time, instead of the whirring click that spoke of its latching the mechanism sandwiched within gave forth a garbled crackle. He knew they were still monitoring, knew it as well as he did that their readings would confirm what they expected regardless of the strange noise. With it, the blackness descended, all artificial luminescence slowly dimming until nothing but a memory remained. The silence was absolute, the only noise remaining once the door shut being the blood in his ears and the workings of his internal processes. He remained standing, the inch or so of lukewarm was cupping his feet, lending them the dead empty feeling he avoided now. The effort kept him awake, the emptiness around him giving him time to think.
For five hours he waited until finally, with the changing of the guard outside only mechanical surveillance remained. Moving toward the door he pressed against it a wafer thin shard, the circuitry within keying an acceptance and opening before fusing, crumbling apart into molecular dust. As soon as he stepped from the water cold metal shocked the pads of his feet, the chill air sucked in by the door's evacuation bathing him in a cold that reached to his bones. It was the cold he experienced upon every waking, out of place now in the dark where it had always been warm. Footprints left slowly drying in his wake the escapee got moving, mindful of the timer now counting silently down until the door would close again. Through twilit hall he crept in the direction of his destination, location memorized now as one he passed twice on every removal from his cell.

When he came upon it sudden fear slowed him, the gaping blackness of the portal keyed to open just as his had done, looming and made bigger thanks to another glow coming from inside. Stepping through gave him the same shock as before, the feel of smooth metal replaced by warm springiness. His toes tested the material and before long he was absorbed, both feet enclosed by pulsing softness. Only when he looked up did he remember why he was there. The sudden realization caused him to shrink back as he focused on the bed set within the wall opposite where he stood and the figure that was huddled there. No doubt she had been startled by the door's odd behavior, doubly so by the stranger standing before it. The situation was as uncertain to him as to her so instead of anything that might frighten her more he simply stood, trying to pick out her features in the dark.
 
Sleep rarely came easy for Tri-…Experiment Nineteen; she was trying to remind herself of this with as much force as she could, lest she make that mistake again. Often there were the voices. Even more often, there were the dreams. She winced, unable even to lie down as thoughts of tomorrow crowded her head, flickering between memories of a past she knew was the truth and memories that did not feel like her own. Vaguely she was aware of the ache in her belly; lunch had been light and she had not been able to eat much of it, the looming surgery dampening her appetite. Another rumble; she brought her knees to her chin and buried her face in them, breathing as slowly as she was able. She knew she should not be afraid. That she had gone through such things multiple times…that she had always been okay and that they knew what they were doing and yet, despite how much she knew this to be true she knew this to be the opposite of true, too.

It was the sound of the door, out of place and unusual so late in the night, opening that snapped Tri-…Nineteen to attention. She pressed herself further against the wall, happy once more that they had allowed her to move her bed against it as the door slid open before her and in walked…somebody else.

She blinked, mouth parting slightly in primarily curiosity as the man, for the girl was sure it was at least someone in the shape of a man, entered. She waited for him to say something. To tell her that her surgery had been moved up or that there would be a training session or…or something. Perhaps even for him to firmly, yet gently, remind her that she needed to be sleeping. And yet, he said…nothing. Tri-Nineteen said nothing for a while as well, feeling his eyes searching her in the dark. After moments had passed, during which neither of them said anything, the girl removed her face from behind her knees, tilting her head in a questioning gesture before finally, carefully, speaking.

“Um…H-Hello… Who…are you?” Her voice was soft, young and had the clear, higher tones of a girl. Inside, she shifted, something that was happening more and more frequently as the situations around her changed. She made a face, something between a look of pain and a look of upset, before this faded and she was back to being the cautious young girl on the bed, staring at the stranger who had just entered her room.
 
The voice that came from the lumped shadows across from him was a strange one, like nothing he had ever heard. To ears accustomed to gruff masculinity, cold electronics or simple scrolling text the tinny sound tinged with just a hint of unease almost made him keep his silence. If only to hear it again. Instead he deigned to cross the room, off-balanced by the unfamiliar softness of the floor but still with as much grace as draconian regimentation demanded. Only when he stood a meter from her perch did he stop and slowly, always with tacit and measured effort sunk into a crouch. Briefly his eyes were taken by the nonsense runes that drifted past on the wall behind her, their gentle effulgence suffusing the darkness with a heatless glow. To him the entire room felt...alien and himself an intruder in places he could not comprehend.
But she had spoken, should he speak? Words were never something he got the chance to use, following the orders of those that handled him required nothing in the way of voice. Merely action when it was due. Swallowing thickly the stranger worked his throat, his tongue, parted lips that felt almost numb with disuse and finally, with a sound that was louder than he intended he spoke. Unfortunately, it was little more than a guttural noise, one that actually startled him for its magnitude in so quiet a place. Hunkering down he gripped the material underfoot, head swiveled about to stare at the still open door. Like a beast he waited, aware of how he must seem but too fully knowledgeable about what would happen should he be caught. When nothing presented itself he relaxed, shoulders unknitting and eyes returning to the girl.

"I...am..." This time his voice was softer as he gained easier control of neglected vocal apparati. "....serial number two-three-zero-six point eight-nine...who are you?"
 
His movements frightened the girl for a moment, and only a moment, as he approached her without a sound. She feared reproach, punishment, some sort of reprimand for something she was unaware of having done. What she did not expect, however, was for him to crouch down beside her bed. What she did not expect was a curious and all together frightening sound that had her hiding behind her knees, trembling slightly as she felt that shift, that tear, within her. For a moment, and only a moment, she blacked out. When she came back to herself the man was speaking and, though her fear did not abate, she realized that he did not intend her any harm. At least, in that moment. His answer, his response to her question was altogether unexpected and brought forth a surge of joy and momentary confusion and delight and curiosity. Not a researcher. Not another man in a lab coat. No, he was…

He was like her; had to be like her.

She smiled then, a lopsided thing that stretched across her face and appeared wholly natural and yet new.

“You are…like me.” She whispered, more to herself than to the man. “I….I am T…” She frowned, as though she had caught herself doing something she knew she was not supposed to do.

“I am Nineteen.” Simple, she thought to herself. And it was, in effect, her name. Though she was also incorrect in that it was her designation and her serial and WHAT she was just as much as who she was. She said nothing more for several moments, nearly a minute, as she attempted to figure out his features in the dark, unaware if he was performing the same sort of scrutiny on herself. He did not speak either and, quite suddenly, Nineteen did not want him to go. To leave her to her nerves and her inability to sleep and the knowledge that tomorrow would come whether or not she wanted it to.

“You are not one of…of them.” The girl blurted out, hugging her knees and speaking from behind them. “And if you…are not one of them… then you…” Her sentence seemed to die in her throat, as though the girl was unsure of how best to speak to the man.

“Are you…like me?” Though she tried to keep the hopefulness from her voice she could not keep the light from her eyes as the thought of there being another like her, another who would understand her and who would know what was happening to her, was enough to fill her heart with a lightness she had not experienced in a long, long time.
 
Like her? The distinction made little sense. He was nothing like her, which was exactly why he had arranged this meeting. It was a way for him to indulge his curiosity before it was finally stolen from him forever. Crouched as he was in the dark, her features swam uncertainly, his mind playing tricks with what little he could see by the walls' glow. What struck him was her size, so small and her upturned nose. Cute would be the word he might use if he had known it but instead ignorance forced him to settle on strange. Edging nearer he peered closer, very much aware of their proximity. The bed remained an unspoken barrier that he did not cross. Only when she had stopped speaking did he realize that she had at all, the silence settling back upon his ears with weighted familiarity. Suddenly, he didn't want it to be silent. For once, here was someone that did not simply bark an order and then wait for it to be carried out. He found himself excited and not a little bit frightened, the same feeling he felt before a live-fire exercise. Here it was similar...but different.

"I am..." he paused, head spinning as he tried to formulate an answer. What was he? Not like her, that much was obvious, even the room itself spoke of their difference. Yet here she was in a cell, just like him. "...I...hrm..."

Confusion won in the end, the tension evident in his limbs draining away as his mental faculties turned fully instead to pondering an answer to what before had never occurred to him. At the last he took a seat, arms enfolding his legs which were themselves bent and held to his chest. An intelligent mind had been carefully cultivated by those faceless ones that oversaw his creation, formidable but simple in its function. Here was a being trained in the quick and violent answer over slow deliberation, any philosophical wanderings quickly swept away by the intrusion of more immediate matters. He had no answer, the lack alone fostering an unendurable void within his psyche that bore down and threatened to swallow him up. So devastating was this lack and his awareness of it that his mind threatened to turn in on itself in the face of what he had witnessed in his short life. The very walls held a thrumming malevolence that he had not before noticed, the old scars and forgotten pains committed by those that had built them rising like wraiths from the still lake of his memory.

All at once they were banished as his eyes found her once again, "...what are you?"
 

There was something about him, about this curious and all together odd stranger, that had the girl both wishing to edge closer and wanting to hide under the blankets. A piece of her wanted to touch him, his skin, his hair, to see if it was like hers; the one thing they were always careful about was to refrain from touching the girl any more than was absolute necessary and, when the situation called for it, they often wore gloves. She had never understood this but, like many things she had never and believed she would never understand, she had logged it away. Questions received only disgusted looks or exasperated sighs; it was as though her curiosity was a nasty little habit that they wished to rid her of. Wisely she had begun to keep silent, to keep her thoughts and questions to herself lest she receive any of the negative things that often came of them.

She had, when asking her own questions of the stranger, expected some sort of reprimand; she expected him to silence her just continue staring, as though he were a new doctor sent in to study her while she slept. Still, he continued to surprise her. It was becoming apparent quickly to the young girl that while he was not one of them he was also not quite one of her. Or…was he? She paused, eyebrows wrinkling with a variety of thoughts that were difficult for her still developing mind to grasp. In the meantime, it seemed that the stranger was having much the same difficult time of their whole encounter. His question caught her off guard and her forehead wrinkled even more as her thoughts churned slowly in her mind.

“I…I am not sure…what I am, either.” She finally admitted, mulling it all over in her mind. “I am…Tr… I am nineteen. But I am not like the men and the…the…” She swallowed but was unable to speak the name of her doctor, the woman who had left earlier that evening after ordering her to sleep. She curled in on herself, knees drawn to her chin, arms wrapped around her legs. She decided, then, to attempt an easier question. One that the man might have an easier time answering.

“How did you get here? To my room? I thought only they could do that.”
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When she asked how he had managed to get into her cell he visibly brightened, pride taking hold as he edged closer. It had been easy, really, as he began to explain the complicated security system and how he had meticulously tracked the movements of living guards during daylight hours, filling out the knowledge when the opportunity had presented itself. This had come in the form of a security breach, his handlers leaving him one day in an office while they went off to deal with the incursion. All it took was a few minutes alone with a computer terminal, using the concepts that had been so efficiently drilled into his brain to gain access. From there, weeks passed until at last he had garnered the small security chip which he now showed her.

"It was easy," he beamed, the altogether unfamiliar emotion causing him to practically buzz with excitement. "But it won't last long. I could only keep the doors open for a half hour at least before the robo-guards come back."

Sudden shyness took hold as he spoke, the notion that he had done it all just to see her making him feel strange, like his stomach was doing flips inside. Carefully stowing the chip he backed away, sinking down to a crouch on the soft floor. Going back didn't hold any appeal now that he was here and, truth be told he hadn't really known what he would do once he had made it into her cell. Driven by curiosity that found itself sated he was left only with the overwhelming fear of getting caught, causing him to steal a glance at the still-open portal and the dim hall beyond.
 
The stranger’s excitement was not fully understood by the young experiment, the idea of achievement a concept rather foreign to the little one. She listened, however, eyes wide and flickering lightly in the dim glow of her room as he recounted the trials and tribulations required of him to enter her room. His elation was enough to set her own heart racing and her own cheeks flushing; the idea of danger was one she was capable of understanding and one which resulted in her own minor flow of adrenaline. What this meant she could not know yet, as she watched his eyes flicker to the open portal and she reflected again on that rush of danger, she understood that he would leave her soon. Had he come only to see what was behind her door? Now that he had seen her, understood that she was simply another thing hidden away, would he leave her alone again? Never to return?


This thought was strangely upsetting.


“Trill.” She blurted, unaware of what she was saying until it was out and utterly incapable of being returned.


“I am Trill. It is who I am, I am sure of it.” Her earnestness was something not easily missed; it was clear that getting this point across was important, the flickering in her eyes made that all the more evident as he gaze flitted between the stranger and her door. Some part of her was certain that if she shared this, this thing which she had been forbidden to acknowledge, that perhaps he would return. There was no hope that he would stay. Especially when her surgery… She shuddered, closing in on herself as that sick, heavy feeling of dread returned.


“I don’t like the pain. I know it is pain because SHE told me so.” She muttered this, voice rising and falling in some curious combination of tones as her panic began to override her. Her face was buried now in her knees and when she spoke next it was a miracle her words were audible.


“Will you come back?”
 
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