Z - 12

Is it Thursday or Sunday? Those are two very different days where I'm from--even though I can't really remember where that is--but every day has seemed to mesh together. Has it been a year? Over a year? Two months? No matter the time, each day feels like an eternity in my new cold, damp, four-cement-wall bedroom with a foot thick iron door on the front right wall. The only hint of the time I really get is the small sliver of light that creeps in teasingly through the crack in my wall opposite the iron door.

Every day, I wake up to the crack of light blinding me through my eyelids. I sit on my rusty cell-like bed and read for the twentieth time the same story about another world with magic and powers and insert myself into it, pretending that I'm one of the characters. Really it's my only form of interaction since being locked up here, and I can't even remember what it looks like behind that iron door.

Then several times a day, I will hear the intercom on my cement ceiling say, "Subject blank, ready for testing." They call up about three of us every day, but I can hardly believe anyone else is here. I mean, where am I?

More than that, who am I? I can't remember my name other than the one I was given before walking into this cell: Subject Z - 12. So what? They've gone through the alphabet with people 12 times? What are they even using us for?

What are they doing to us?

Here is what I do remember: however long ago it was, I woke up in a bed with all kinds of strange-sounding devices surrounding me, but I had no memory of anything from before then. I still can't remember a thing, but I'm sure there's something outside this building. There has to be, and that crack of light in my room is my proof.

After they handed me a change of clothes, I was escorted to this room that I've spent every day in since. I can't even remember what the hallway outside my door looks like, much less the rest of this building. How big is it? How many others are here? What is it for?

But what I am most afraid of is that I know I will find that answer soon.

The intercom buzzes and I hear, "Subject Y - 12, ready for testing."

I'm next. Whatever that message means, I know I'm next. I can't remember much of anything from before, but I remember A through Z fluently. What's going to happen when they call me?

Several minutes pass that feel like hours--or maybe they were hours; I can't tell. I have no way of knowing the time aside from day and night, and that is only thanks to the sliver of light I get from the crack in my wall. There must be something beautiful out there. A light like that doesn't just come from a broken, rusty lightbulb dangling by a string on a concrete ceiling.

All I can hear is my foot tapping rapidly on the dust-bathed floor as I'm sitting on my thin mattress, and I wait anxiously for hours to fly until I hear my name called. I will be the last one of the day--the third subject that they call over the speakers, and I have no way of knowing what will come of it.

I'm almost doubtful they'll actually call me, but after doing nothing but waiting and staring at the light for God knows how long, I finally hear, "Subject Z - 12, ready for testing."

I jump to my feet, suddenly startled even though I knew this was coming. I can feel my heart practically leaping from my ribcage faster than sound, and I almost feel like I might collapse. The room spins, my lungs tighten, my stomach wants me to vomit, my heart is like war drums pulsing up to my ears and through my veins, and if I thought everything was quiet before, then I'm suddenly deaf.

My body trembles as the iron door creaks open, and a woman stands across from me in a white coat, holding a clipboard.

"If you will please follow me, Z - 12," she says, and I have no choice but to follow.

The hallway is the same as my room, and as we're walking, I'm struggling to avoid tripping over my own feet. We take a few turns here and there, and everything is the same: dark, damp, and gray. Then, the woman finally stops in front of another iron door. When she opens it, I have to squint my eyes. I'm in utter disbelief for a moment thinking this may be the same light coming through the crack in my wall, but my suspicions are disproved when I open my eyes back up and instead see a well-lit white room. It's so bright and new, but it isn't yellow. The light I see is yellow, and it fades away at the same time every day.

"Come in," the woman says, and I nervously enter the space as she closes the iron door behind us.

There is a seat in the center of the room, and when the woman is finished locking up the door, she demands, "Have a seat." I can do nothing but obey.

When I sit, she crosses the room to another door opposite the one we just entered into a small room with a huge glass window so I can see in. Or, more appropriately, so she can see me.

Others leave the room to join me, and I'm left unable to avoid the sticks they use to scrape my tongue, the needles they use to take my blood, and the wires and devices they attach to my head.

They finally return into the same room as the woman, and all of them are seated in a line facing me through the window. The woman says, "Vitals are in good shape. Nerves are high but stable. Beginning test for subject Z - 12. Z - 12, please stand."

I do.

Then I jump as a hole in the wall opens up, and a table with a red ball and two bowls is spread out in front of me. The red ball is in one bowl, and the other beside it lies empty. What surprises me more is that I see color, and somehow, I can remember what this vibrant, lively, loud color is called. That's right, red is my favorite. Red is my favorite color!

"Z - 12, what color is the ball?"

With a giddy voice, I exclaim, "Red! Red ball!"

"Good. Now, do you think it is possible to move the red ball from one bowl to the other?"

I nod.

"Do it, please."

I pick up the ball in my hands and move it to the next bowl, but the woman doesn't seem very amused.

"Now move it back without touching it." I start to pick up the bowl it is in to dump it, but the woman interrupts, "DON'T touch the bowls either. Use your mind."

My mind?

As far as I can recall from my memory, I don't think that is possible, but I have to try anyway. I start to focus on the ball, and I imagine doing what I want: floating from one bowl to the next. I can see the image in my head as it does so and softly lands into the next bowl.

"Good," the woman says.

"But I--" I hadn't done anything to the ball yet; she has to wait! But when I look back down at the table, the ball has moved. I really did move it not just in my imagination but in real life.

Then the next test comes from the other wall. A table with a rat in a cage sits in front of me, and I can instantly hear it's cry to be free. It almost brings me to tears as I hear the ringing of his cries grow more and more intolerable.

"Stop! Please! Let him go!" I cry.

"You let him go."

I'm assuming she means to use my mind for this, too, but I can't focus on unlocking that padlock over the rat's screams.

"Stop it!" I shout, and suddenly the cage bursts open in response to my cry. The rat crawls out and remains on the table until it is removed from my sight again.

These people must have done something to my head that day that I woke up surrounded by tools to make this possible.

"Now the final test," the woman says, and a wall beside the window opens like a sliding door.

Instantly, my mind is pounding, and I can't understand what it means, but I know it isn't good. A man walks in, but I can tell he is no longer human. His skin has red boils and his eyes are black. His teeth are yellow and he groans in pain. But he wants to hurt me. I know he does. Some parasite has changed him from human to beast, and he hungers for food. I have no doubt that food is me, and he is coming toward me.

The loud noises from his head reverberate off every wall, and they scream, "Help me! Help me! Feed me! Feed me!"

But now, I'm seeing vague memories flash in my mind about creatures very similar to this. They grew everywhere like a plague, and then I suddenly woke here. But why are they bringing one of these to me? Do they want me to die here?

The creature moans loudly, and the noise is too much to bare.

I look at the woman in the window and shout, "Why are you doing this? Help me!"

"Stop him."

"NO! I can't!"

She doesn't respond. The creature draws closer, and that makes the noise in my head louder. I groan from the pain, practically falling to the floor from it as I'm covering my ears, but his pain begs me to look at him. There is a longing in his heart to be free from whatever has taken him captive, but it is telling him to hurt me. It controls him. Maybe the test is to see if I can break him free.

I reach my hand out to try and help him, but a sharp ring goes through my ears and I scream bloody murder at the top of my range. I fall to my knees with my eyes shut tight as I'm still screaming and crying, and suddenly a rush of wind flows out of me, and everything is quiet.

I don't understand what is happening, but I know I'm unharmed. I slowly open my eyes as I hear the woman mutter to the others, "None of the others ever got this far. They were all killed."

My eyes meet theirs trhough the glass window, and I see them standing in shock. I'm so caught off guard that I hardly notice the man lying on the ground several feet in front of me where the creature used to be. He looks familiar, but I can't remember a thing. I can't remember if I even knew anyone else before being brought here.

But he weakly pushes himself up, grunting from the pain of what just happened. His pale skin no longer has any red boils, and he looks clean and human again. What does this mean? What was he before? Who is he now?

He turns around slowly and looks at me, and he looks amazed to see me.

With a shocked smile and white teeth, he asks, "Alessia?"