Project Human

by Sean McKenzie

porch, on the verge of collapsing, staring through her streaming tears with a look of total disbelief.

  Darryl awoke with a start. The room was cold and empty. Almost empty, he realized, as he made out a few forms next to a wall. He was lying on his side and slowly sat upright. He rubbed the sleep from his eyes and became aware of subtle movements. Turning his head, he noticed a few more figures. He was not alone. The room was filled with people. All of them looked sick. He noticed then the bars surrounding them. They were in a cage. A cell, as if he were jailed, held captive. He then began to remember his encounter with Barton.

  “Adelle?” he called into the silence. Nothing. “Adelle, are you here?”

  Out of the darkness, someone groaned terribly. It was deep and painful. It turned into a wail of anguish, then silence.

  “Who’s there?” he asked.

  “He’s dead,” a raspy voice whispered from across the cell.

  Darryl turned. A lithe form, ragged and scraggly, starving to death maybe, was inching his way over to him. “Who are you?”

  “Who knows? Do you?” the man said, stopping just feet from Darryl.

  “No. I’ve never seen you before.”

  “You are looking for a woman?”

  Darryl nodded. “Doctor Barton took her.”

  “Me, too.”

  Darryl saw the other’s appearance, his skin bruised and swelling, his eyes blackened, his hair unkempt and foul, reeking with a scent that only death would appreciate.

  The other said nothing for a few seconds, just sat and rocked himself.

  “You’re new,” he finally offered.

  Darryl looked around. “Where are we? Why are we here?”

  The delirious man smiled. “Tests. Always tests.”

  From the other side of the room, someone else began groaning. The man smiled to Darryl. “I know things.”

  Darryl began to respond, but then the person moaning began to thrash about wildly, violently. Then suddenly he stopped, falling to the floor.

  “Dead, too.” The scraggly man smiled. “Blessed are those killed by the tests.”

  “What tests?”

  With a wild look and a wolfish smile, the other began to reply. “Hybrid creations. Them and us, bound by something sinister and unimaginable.”

  Darryl swallowed hard. His throat was dry, and his head was throbbing. He was beginning to understand.

  Alien. Tests. Changes. Hybrid.

  “We need to get out of here. Do you remember which—”

  “The first thing I remembered was that lie,” he cut in angrily.

  “What are you talking about?”

  The other became hysterical. “Oh, oh. You’re not there yet! Oh it’s beautiful!”

  “What are you talking about?” Darryl’s head throbbed in pain and the lunatic’s laughter did little to help matters. “Just get to the point.”

  The other calmed. “The lie. You were fed a lie from the beginning. What did they say happened to you? How did you get here? Why don’t you remember? Lie, lie, lie.”

  Darryl shook his head. “I was in a car accident.”

  “Brilliant! Because that makes sense! You hit your head, you forget. You’re hurt, they fix you! Beautiful! I love it!”

  Darryl grew angry. “That’s what I remember!”

  The other leaned in close. His eyes sparkled in the dimness. He smiled proudly. “None of that happened. Think back. Remember.”

  Darryl could see the man’s appearance more clearly now. His skin was bruised all over, discolored in large splotches. He was draped in a foul stench, as if his body had died a long time ago and he wasn’t aware of it yet. There was a pain held in his delirious look as well. Whatever he had suffered through, he was not finished yet.

  “I’m telling you, that’s what I remember. I was in a crash, and they brought me here.”

  The other’s smile was gone. Anger filled his eyes. His response was a painful whisper that chilled Darryl. “Not brought. Took.”

  T W E L V E

  Headlights appeared before him, seemingly out of nowhere. He was too distracted, too preoccupied with fighting to have noticed. Now they were heading straight for him. He panicked, turning the steering wheel hard, both feet stomping the brake pedal into the floor mat. The car skidded out of control with the tires screaming violently. Through the spinning, he made out the ditch coming fast and a line of trees just beyond. But there was nothing to do but brace for the impact.

  Darryl brought his arms up across the steering wheel and buried his face into them. Glass shattered against him in an explosion of dirt and debris as the front end smashed into the ditch embankment. Everything went black.

  Darryl found himself staring at the delirious man as his flashback faded. There had been an accident. He had hit his head so hard that he was knocked unconscious. He remembered it all.

  “You see it now, don’t you?” the other whispered.

  Darryl shook his head. “No. You’re wrong. I was in an accident.”

  “It was no accident.” The man slid into the shadows.

  Darryl didn’t care for the way the other had implied that what he knew, what he remembered, was false.

  “We need to get out of here,” he said openly. No one answered. Moans and other sounds of anguish filled the silence.

  He looked around. The light at the far end of the hall gave little indication of his surroundings. The cell, as he saw it now for what it was, was large with a single door made of iron bars. If a ceiling existed, he saw none of it.

  He decided to test the door. Pressing his palms flat against the iron floor, he pushed himself up, bringing his legs under him, rising into a stance. Then everything went spinning. He was unable to control his balance and he fell, hitting the floor hard. On his back, he waited for the spinning to cease.

  “You can’t leave. Not until he comes for you.”

  The whisper shot out of the darkness with anger and resentment. The lunatic found him foolish for trying to do what the rest of them had failed at. Darryl paid no attention to him, thinking that when the dizziness fades he would try again.

  A door squeaked opened from somewhere deeper in the darkness. The grind of rusted iron hinges brought everyone into a scramble like a warning siren in the quietness. Darryl sat upright and waited. He watched the others scurry into the corners past him, moaning as if their movements were too much to bear. It occurred to him then that maybe he should be hiding as well.

  “It comes,” a frightened voice whispered in the cell.

  The cell went still then. Darryl remained where he was as the figure came into view. Even in the dim light he could tell that it was Doctor Barton. He moved to the cell door and stopped. A clanking sound from a large set of keys was heard just before the iron door swung open.

  “I’ll need a volunteer,” spoke Barton sternly.

  After seeing no one move, Darryl replied, “I’ll go.”

  He saw it as a way out of the cell, a way to escape and a hope to find Adelle. Even if the others were frightened, he knew that by going he might have a chance to survive.

  Barton turned to Darryl. “Not you. Not yet.”

  Barton turned then, pointing into the darkness, seeing someone Darryl had missed. “You. Rise.”

  Whimpers followed as the person stood. Others around it scooted away desperately. Slowly the patient walked towards the door, hunched and dragging a limp leg. Barton waited, his hand motioning for the other to come forward. When it had, Barton stepped out into the hall, taking his patient with him, locking the door behind. Before leaving, he turned to stare at Darryl.

  “I will be back for you.”

  “Where is she?” asked Darryl. He watched Barton and the other disappear in the darkness of the long corridor. Seconds later, a door creaked open, then shut.

  “When he comes back, we have to make a run for it.” Darryl tried to warn the others, to make them see when their opportunity would be.

  “Why would you want to go with him?” the lunatic
spewed.

  “It’s our only chance.”

  “I’d rather die right here, than have him turn me into one of them.”

  One of them?

  Darryl left his the words to hang in wonder, leaving the room to fall into silence. If dying in the cell was better…he left the thought unfinished. He understood why they were so afraid. But if they didn’t escape, they would seal their fates.

  One of them.

  Darryl sat patiently, waiting for another chance to escape.

  Doctor Barton helped his patient into the bed, strapping him in for his own safety, locking the straps down tight. He had a serum ready, injected into a syringe before claiming the patient. He had picked one of them who was further along in progression than the others; one who would test his newest serum; one whose memory was not coming back; one nearly to completion stage. The girl was recovering fine, but the changes in her were not as drastic, and he had to be sure his cure would hold true in further transformation.

  “Hold still,” Barton said, pressing the needle against the other’s arm, injecting him quickly.

  He stepped back, out of the light, watching the other’s appearance without hindrance from his shadow. The convulsing came almost at once. Without the straps, the patient’s arms would have flailed wildly, uncontrollably. But this was not Barton’s first, and he was prepared.

  The eyes changed color slowly. The skin followed. None of it came without a price. None of it was pleasant. But this time Barton did not gag the patient. This time he wanted to hear the change in the screams.

  And so he did.

  After several long minutes of the worst agonizing screams he had ever witnessed, his patient slumped into a daze of silence.