It was a prison, just with labs and modern technology all over the place. And guards. They were everywhere. We couldn’t go anywhere around the Home Base camp without them leering down at us in a chastising way.
“At least we can roam free during the day,” I said, trying to think positively.
Maddie had a glazed, dreamy expression on her face. “I would give anything to go outside and lie on a bed of lush, soft grass with the warm sun on my cheek.”
I considered it. “Yeah. That sounds amazing.”
We weren’t allowed to go outside without the guards, and usually when we did, it was because we had landscaping duty or something. There was a high security fence around the property line of the Home Base Pod. If we even dared to approach it, we would either be shot down, tasered, or the fence itself would send a few hundred volts of electricity surging through us.
Long story short? We had absolutely no way of escaping this place alive.
“Oh,” Maddie said with a grin.
“What?” I stared at her curiously.
“Don’t look now, but do you see that guard over there?”
“How am I supposed to know which guard you’re referring to without looking?” I asked with a chuckle.
“Use your peripheral vision,” she told me.
“Okay,” I said and glanced to the side. I saw a guard lurking by the exit doors of the cafeteria. He was anxiously shifting his weight and swaying back and forth.
Maddie placed her hand over her mouth to stifle a laugh. “He is thinking that he really has to go to the bathroom and he can’t wait for someone to come and relieve his shift.”
I slapped my hand against the surface of the table. “Ha!” I said. “That’s a good one.”
I needed that little humor in the morning. It was everything we could do to keep ourselves amused under the circumstances. We were monitored from every angle. We had to find a way to keep ourselves entertained.
“Is something funny over here?” Another guard approached us from behind and kicked Maddie in the back with his black boot.
Maddie let out a grunt of surprise and her eyes grew wide.
“No.” I shook my head diligently.
I felt as if I were the one to blame for this because I had slapped the table and laughed a little too loudly. If I had just kept my mouth shut, Maddie wouldn’t have received the brunt force of this asshole’s boot.
Maddie swallowed down her oatmeal and managed to do so without choking or sputtering. She shook her head too. Her eyes were crestfallen as she tucked her chin down to stare at the table.
“Yeah, well, you’re making too much noise,” the guard said maliciously. “Get up, you.”
Maddie swiftly pulled herself to her feet, her chair squeaking as it slid across the linoleum floor. The guard grabbed her by the arm. Instinctively, I stood up too.
“Hey,” I said. “Where are you taking her?”
“I’m separating her from you,” the guard said with a look of annoyance on his face.
I clenched my jaw. I would fight these jerks if they ever touched her again. At least that’s what I told myself I would do. I had to protect Maddie because she wasn’t strong enough most of the time to defend herself. She was small and dainty.
“Come on, you,” another bored-looking guard said as he walked up behind me and took me by the arm. “It’s time for your daily testing anyway.”
“Already?” I groaned and rolled my eyes, instinctively sagging my shoulders.
I didn’t feel like being poked and prodded today. I wasn’t in the mood, but it wasn’t as if I had any choice in the matter.
“Get a move on,” the guard said, impatience lacing his voice.
“Fine,” I grumbled under my breath. There wasn’t any point in arguing. The party was over before it ever even got started.
“In here,” the guard walking me said and shoved me in the shoulder a little more aggressively than necessary.
I glanced at him over my shoulder with a glare.
“Psychiatric testing is first,” he grumbled.
I walked in the door and found a scientist from the Fundamental Society waiting.
“Good morning,” he said in a jubilant tone, as if the procedure he was about to perform on me was perfectly normal. As routine as these tests were, I never got used to them because I felt like they were probing and invasive.
I sat down in the monitor chair that was attached to a dome with wires protruding out of it. Those wires would be hooked up to my scalp and would test my brain levels. It was mundane to sit there and oftentimes I got bored until they gave us the stimulation tablets to gauge the levels of pleasure or pain we exhibited.
They would give us videos to watch, first of pleasant things and then torturous things that were meant to throw us off balance and fuck with our minds. Think puppies and flowers in a field and then in an instant it would be switched to Mutants being massacred or beaten in some way.
I always wanted to shut my eyes, but if I did, the scientists would make me start over from the beginning. After the third time that happened, I learned my lesson and kept my eyes wide open from then on. There was nothing I loathed more than being hooked up to monitors for several hours a day, but I was powerless to do anything about it.
A girl named Rachel walked in as the scientist was finishing up the last hookup to my scalp.
“Hey,” she said and gave me a casual wave.
“Hey, Rachel,” I greeted her with a friendly smile.
There was something calming about Rachel that always soothed my soul. She was the type of person who never let anything bother her, even this shit we were forced to endure. She had a peaceful attitude that I wished I could find within my own psyche, but these scientists and guards worked me up too much.
“How is it going today?” she asked as another scientist hooked her up to the monitors.
“Same old thing,” I said with a chuckle.
It was as if we were having a nonchalant conversation about the weather. Except I wasn’t as mentally seasoned as Rachel when it came to not allowing this stuff get under my skin. It was hard to act casual and friendly when I had no free will.
“Yeah.” Rachel nodded.
Her smile was lively and fresh. She sighed and leaned back on the chair as if she were fully prepared to relax through the procedure. I just couldn’t understand where she channeled this strength from, but I certainly could learn the ropes from her if I applied myself and swallowed down some of my animosity.
An hour later we were done with that portion of the morning testing and it was time to move on to getting our blood drawn. I hated this part too. I always felt lightheaded and queasy afterward. Maddie would reprimand me and tell me eating a hearty breakfast would prevent me from reacting that way to getting a vial of my blood taken.
By the time it was over, I was ready to lie down and take a nap, but that was a fantasy that would never happen.
“You’re on lab cleanup,” a guard told me as I exited the blood lab.
“Okay,” I said with a stoic nod.
The quicker I got this over with, the sooner I could enjoy my leisure time of the day. We all had job responsibilities, but they fluctuated from day to day. I didn’t mind it because it broke up the monotony. I walked into the lab where a group of Mutants assigned to my team for today were already working.
The teams were different every day. The scientists worried that if we were surrounded by the same people every day, we would create close bonds with each other. They worried that if that happened, we’d form an alliance against them. The scientists were paranoid and didn’t trust us.
“Tara.” I heard my name being whispered from across the room.
Maddie was there, eagerly grinning in my direction as she wiped off a set of beakers.
“Hi,” I said and approached her. I grabbed my own set of tools and began wiping them clean with a cloth that was already on the table, feeling grateful that we were on the same team today.
&
nbsp; “Are you finished with your testing for the day?” she asked and glanced at me with concern.
“Yep.” I nodded.
“Good.” Maddie sighed with relief. “Me too. It was tough today.”
“Yeah…” I trailed off and placed a few beakers back on their respective shelves on the wall.
“All right, team,” one of the scientist leaders called out behind us. He cleared his throat to gather the attention of the room.
We all stared at him with blank faces.
He shifted his weight and adjusted the wire-rimmed glasses on his face. He smiled at his guard and pointed to him with fondness. “Leroy here will be watching you to make sure you stay in order while I’m gone,” he stated.
We continued to stare at him. He looked as if he half expected someone to ask him where he was heading off to.
After several seconds, he spoke again. “Please do as you are instructed so that we can keep the peace,” he said in a pleading tone. “We don’t want any accidents to happen.”
I looked at Maddie and we gave each other a subtle eye roll. This guy was a joke.
“I’m going on a business trip,” he said.
As soon as the words were out of his mouth, my skin began crawling and a chill bolted up and down my spine. I knew exactly what that meant. I swallowed hard because it felt like my throat was tight.
A business trip was when the scientists would go with their guards to the Mutant communities, looking for promising ones to pluck up and steal from their homes and families. It was the same thing that happened to me all those years ago, and I wouldn’t wish it on my worst enemy.
The scientist made a move to exit the lab but then quickly turned around again as if he had something to add.
“Be on your best behavior,” he warned, with a sinister expression hiding in the crevices behind his glasses. “If you aren’t, I will hear about it and there will be consequences.”
I knew he wasn’t bluffing. I exchanged a glance with Maddie, who quickly busied herself in her work once again.
She was never one to be resistant, but I felt a storm brewing inside of my own heart.
3
Tara
“Lights out,” the guard bellowed as he slammed the gate to mine and Maddie’s cell bedroom closed. “No talking after ten.”
“Got it,” we told him with a curt nod as he locked us inside our cell.
It was nine o’clock at night, and no Mutants were allowed outside of their cell walls after that time. It was curfew, and it was strictly enforced no matter what.
“Well,” I said with a sigh as I plopped down on my twin mattress. The bed made a creaking sound as I shifted my weight.
“I guess that’s another day of surviving this place,” Maddie said. Her voice sounded sad.
“We’ll get through it.” My mood was melancholy as well.
Maddie met my gaze. “Don’t we always?”
“It’s debatable,” I said with a chuckle. “At least from a mental and emotional standpoint.”
“Yeah.” Maddie sagged back against her pillow and lay on her back while she gazed up at the ceiling. She placed her arm over her head and continued to look upwards.
“What’s on your mind?” I asked her.
We normally used this last hour of our day to chat and catch up with each other about the events that had unfolded during the course of our routine. It was therapeutic to vent and relax with some girl talk.
There were always two Mutants to a cell. Maddie and I had been roommates since almost the beginning of our time in captivity here. Mutants at this particular Home Base camp were rarely reassigned to a new cell unless there were significant problems with egos or too much quarrelling between Mutants in the same cell. Male and female Mutants were never bunked together.
“Nothing…” Maddie trailed off unconvincingly.
“Yeah, right.” I let out a playful scoff and walked over to her bed. “Shove over,” I told her in a gentle tone.
Even though Maddie and I were the same age, I felt like I had an older sister’s duty to protect her. Maddie moved her legs with a grunt.
“What’s on your mind?” I asked again with a touch more persistence.
There were tears gleaming in Maddie’s eyes. She sniffed, trying to be subtle. “Do you ever feel like you are just walking in circles?” She didn’t look at me. “And time is frozen solid and you are living the same moment over and over again?”
“All the time,” I admitted. I leaned up against the back of her wall and propped my knees up to my chest.
“If I ever get the hell out of here…” Maddie trailed off again as if she were living out a fantasy in her mind.
I looked at her and waited to see if she would elaborate. When she didn’t, I asked her the question I asked myself all the time.
“What would you do if you escaped?”
Maddie looked at me and grinned. “I’d take you with me, for starters.”
I squeezed her hand. “Of course. Ditto. I mean after all that. Say we got away and we didn’t have to worry about them hunting us down anymore. What would you do then?”
Maddie let out a long-winded, dreamy sigh. “I don’t know.” She picked at her thumbnail and sat back up. Her silver hair fell over half of her face and masked her features. “I would love to just run.”
“Run?” I laughed.
Maddie gave me a sheepish smile. “I know that probably sounds a little crazy.”
“No, it doesn’t.” I shook my head and looked at my knees. “I’d give anything to have the freedom to feel fresh air in my lungs and explore wide open spaces.” I hated to compare us to dogs locked in cages, but in reality, our situation wasn’t a stretch.
“Did you get to go outside and play a lot when you were a kid?” Maddie peered up at me curiously.
I smiled and lifted my chin to meet her gaze. “Yeah. A lot actually. My parents were the best.”
Maddie let out a soft laugh. “Yeah. Mine too.”
“It’s probably a shot in the dark that we ever get out of here,” I said with a resigned sigh. “That we could ever enjoy the luxury of feeling cool grass beneath our toes.”
“It’s nice to dream though,” Maddie said in a hopeful voice.
I gave her another smile. “That’s the truth.”
“I miss them,” Maddie said in a barely audible whisper, her posture wilting.
“Who?” I asked.
“My family,” she said, and I heard her sniffle again.
“I miss my family too.” I squeezed her hand.
“I think about them all the time,” she confessed.
“Me too,” I said. “More than I care to admit.”
She wrinkled her brow in confusion. “What do you mean by that?”
“I don’t know.” I shrugged. “It seems like every time I think about them, it’s in my dreams, and it’s always bad memories that haunt me.”
“Like what?” Maddie asked.
Our gazes locked and I quickly turned away and directed my focus on the cell door as my vision fuzzed over with tears.
“Tara…”
“No, it’s okay,” I said and dismissively swatted my hand through the air.
“I don’t mean to pry.”
“It’s fine.” I managed a smile and glanced back her way. “Sometimes I imagine what it would be like to see him again.”
“Who?” Maddie leaned closer. Her full attention was on me.
“My brother,” I said and scratched my elbow. “When the Fundamental Society guards dragged him away down the opposite underground tunnel, the last thing I saw was his tear-stained cheeks.”
“I’m so sorry,” Maddie said and visibly shivered. “I know that feeling all too well.”
“I know.” I smiled at her.
Maddie had endured the same torment and trauma that I had as a child, being torn away from the only safety and comfort that she had ever known. It was difficult being an orphan who had no one else to turn to in the world. That’s
why I was so eternally grateful that we had hit it off and bonded so well after becoming roommates. Some of the other Mutants here weren’t as lucky.
“Sometimes I even dream that he is still alive and well,” I said with a chuckle. I rolled my knuckles across the fabric of Maddie’s bed sheets. “Although I know it’s probably a stretch to assume he’s out there somewhere.”
“It’s not impossible,” Maddie noted.
“No,” I said and glanced out the oval window that looked out onto the courtyard. “That’s why there’s still a little bit of fire left inside of me burning, even if it’s not as bright anymore.”
“Can you imagine if he was living his best life, just out there somewhere with a family of his own and a job that allowed him to contribute to society?”
“I would love to imagine he got that kind of grace handed down to him from the universe,” I admitted. “I would want nothing more than his peace and happiness.” I meant it.
If I had to spend the rest of my life within this Home Base camp if it meant knowing that my brother roamed free, I would agree to it in a heartbeat. But it wasn’t as if I had any choice in the matter anyway. Regardless of where my brother might be, dead or alive, I was stuck in here at the mercy of the scientists who probed me on a daily basis.
“He was older than you, right?” Maddie pitched her eyebrow as if she were trying to recall on her own.
“Yeah.” I nodded. “By two years. I was eight and he was ten at the time the guards infiltrated our community and snatched us up.”
“That’s around the same age as me and my sister when we were taken away from our parents,” Maddie said. Her voice was somber.
“I know you miss your twin,” I said gently.
Maddie’s smile was tender. “We used to always say we could read each other’s thoughts.”
“But you really could do that.” I laughed.
Maddie crossed her outstretched legs over the edge of the bed. “Back then I didn’t realize it. I was just fine tuning my ability and coming into my own.”
“I still feel like I haven’t figured myself out,” I admitted.
Mutant Academy (The Fundamental Society Book 1) Page 3