“I need something for the pain.” He said while breathing heavily.
“It will wear off, be patience.”
“I want it now!”
“Give him some water.” The Dr said.
He was enraged by the cold response not only of Dr Broad but of everyone else, so he ran towards him, beating up several guards in the process. Dr Broad, the real nurses and Mr Vogel took refuge in a room where they could observe everything behind a glass. He pushed a button to activate the speaker.
“Try to relax. Just breathe, don't fight it.” The Dr said.
Braith took a chair and threw it at the glass, failing to make a single scratch. Rolf Vogel indicated something to a guard who entered with a pistol, darting a tranquilliser into Braith who, in a matter of seconds, couldn't hold the weight of his own body.
After what he considered to be half a day, even though it turned out to be only half an hour, Braith woke up handcuffed on both arms.
“I am very sorry for your discomfort.” Dr Broad said.
“That’s a nice way to put it.”
“I did not expect it to be so… intense.”
“So? Am I free now?”
“Not yet, we need to do just one more thing. You see, the chemicals down your nose have intensified those nerve endings and the connections with your brain, but don't worry, that is a one-time treatment.”
“How kind of you. I will send you some flowers over the weekend.”
He rattled the handcuffs while Dr Broad signalled the guards to come.
“This one won't hurt, I think.”
“That’s reassuring.”
One of the guards put a breathing mask on Braith.
“In fact, you have tried this before but with no results. My theory is that your nerves were not ready, but now they are.”
Dr Broad pressed a button and the gas started flowing into the mask.
“Three deep breaths will do. There you go, one…”
Braith felt as if he was a big bubble trapped in his body, trying to leave.
“...two…”
It was as if that massive bubble was made of his blood and was now ascending through the pores.
“... and three.”
The bubble seemed to burst just when reaching out of his skin, leaving a tingling sensation in his whole body. His eyes went wet and when they uncuffed his left arm, he wiped his tears while thinking that he did not remember the last time he felt that. His calm was obvious and Dr Broad decided to release him completely. His breathing was soft now and, despite being free, Braith stayed in his seat. Slightly confused, disoriented but relaxed, he slowly managed to look up at Dr Charles Broad.
“Take a deep breath now.”
“I don't need to.” He laughed.
The Doctor looked at the guards but as Braith was not being aggressive, they remained still while cautious.
“I am breathing all, everything and everyone.”
“Just take a deep breath.”
Braith laughed hysterically, falling to the floor and crawling to a corner.
“Just take a deep breath.” Said Braith, mocking Dr Broad.
They were all disconcerted by him when he finally decided to make a theatrical inhale of air while standing up slowly.
“I can smell it all, I can see it all, I can feel it all.”
He turned his back to the Dr, facing the wall and attempting to hold it with both hands.
“It is too much.”
His hands started to scratch the wall but then it looked like the brick was crumbling like dry cake until he punched it and made a hole while tearing his skin a bit. Before Dr Broad gave the order to the guards, he turned back, throwing the heavy medical chair at them and knocking them down in a second. He jumped beside the door just before it was opened and punched the guards coming in until Charles pressed the panic button, sealing the room, thus leaving Dr Broad trapped with Braith.
“I don’t know why you guys are so afraid of me.”
“Because you are an animal.” Said Rolf Vogel through the intercom.
“Tell us what you feel, Braith.” Dr Broad said, trying to keep his composure.
“I can feel everyone, I told you. I can feel the nervous guards behind that door. I can smell the fear around, the fear in you. But it goes beyond that, I feel like I am connected to all of you and the people outside and I can feel that they all see me as a lab rat and I will tell you that right now I am a very angry lab rat.”
He took a chair and hit the glass with it. The same glass he couldn’t scratch last time, it now cracked with the first impact. When he was about to hit it a second time, all the scientists and Rolf ran away from the room. Braith dropped the chair and looked at Dr Broad.
“What have you done to me?”
“Do you like it?”
“I can’t control it. I don’t like that.”
“Could you let me help you to control it?”
“You can try.”
According to Dr Broad, the chemical mixture inhaled by Braith allowed him to stimulate his brain, releasing copious amounts of adrenaline and also heightening his perceptions. During further tests, it was determined that his sense of smell allowed him to distinguish more scents than the average human being but also gave him the capacity to increase his radius of detection. He could detect persons or animals around and he was also able to determine certain states like agitation, fear and many others. All of this was actually a secondary effect to the adrenaline released, which was basically aimed to make him stronger and it was the first step in developing a type of super soldier. Braith accepted the offer and continued the journey with Dr Broad. The tests continued for months in order to measure his capacities, side effects and further consequences in his behaviour. The mixture was altered several times to improve it and the idea was to reduce the dose from a daily intake to a monthly one, something that could not be achieved easily and required years of research with probably many more subjects involved. As usual, because of his long stay, Braith felt trapped at the institute and convinced them to let him rent a small place nearby. They agreed to pay for the place on the condition that he would spend one night per week at the lab and more if the type of study would require it. Braith was embracing his gifts by deciding to play poker at small casinos, knowing who was bluffing and who was not. He did not do it for the cash entirely but for the thrill itself, so he got involved in illegal fighting also, scoring big wins here and there. Life was sweet for a while, however, he knew that everything would eventually go South as he failed to realise on time that he slowly became government property, therefore, he was no longer in control of his own life. It would be more difficult to move as he pleased and even that was perhaps the least of his worries. The institute had invested considerable resources in the lab rat to let it loose, or worse, to allow all of that research to be sold to a competitor. Little by little, they managed what nobody could have done so far and it was to hold him on a short leash. He wanted out but as for the reasons why, they seemed weak. The money was good, he actually enjoyed it most of the time and they were reasonable with his demands, but it was his nature to run away, walk free, counting only on himself. During his time at the institute, he did not make any friends. Perhaps the only person who could have been one was Lark. There was nothing remarkable about that subject, just that he was like him but different, there was a sense of relation between them. They tried to keep them apart and threw them into competitions but Lark lacked this hunger and rage so characteristic of Braith. However, he was the only one Braith knew like him and that fact alone made Lark the only “colleague”. He did not seem like a menace and was more of a well-behaved naive kid. Their conversations were always monitored one way or the other and, for the institute, Lark was less of a loose cannon because he was allowed to live outside the premises from the very beginning. Lark was not as reserved and seemed more attached to his Doctor who was considerably more attractive to him than Dr Broad. The link between them was obvious but the way t
hey both smelt gave Braith a weird flash every time he saw them. In one of the few conversations he had with Lark where he thought there were no hidden microphones, he asked them if he trusted her.
“More than the rest of them.” He said.
“But she works for them anyway.”
“Because she has to.”
“Be careful, that means she is a player.”
“That means she is moved by more than just profits.”
“What are you moved by then?”
“To discover what I am and I am doing that with her.”
“And with them.”
“Not necessarily.” Lark said with a smile and left.
It was impossible for Braith to have a relationship like that with Dr Broad or with anyone else at the institute. Actually, he had never had a deep friendship or a meaningful relationship with anyone and it did not look as if that could change. For a few days, he considered the fact that Lark was the only person he could identify with as he could also sense people, gain strength and was experimented upon, but Braith was just too awkward socially and it looked like he was not going to change any time soon. He could not foresee the way his end would start and it was all because of her. After a training exercise to measure his weight, he felt her on his skin in the shape of tiny hands grabbing all over his back. It was a scent full of fear but power at the same time, desperation, energy and a huge desire to fly free. That perfume was everything but subtle and as with many others, people were not able to feel it. The peculiarity, in this case, rested on the fact that she was so different from everyone else, so intense. It was as if she was shining. Her glow could hit him at intervals to fade out for a few hours. She was somewhere on a higher floor but he sensed he was surrounded by people at all times. When he came closer to her location, he detected an unusually high presence of guards and medical personnel. Most of them familiar, he could recognise them from before while others were new to him. There was something big happening around her but all that mattered to him was her calling. He was able from the very beginning of that day to feel her silent scream crying for help all over his skin. Later on, he decided to stay overnight which they approved, but clearly, all of the resources in the building were mostly focused on her. In the middle of the night, Braith felt her but this time she was awake with an intensity out of the ordinary. Like a wolf hearing the howling of the pack, he couldn't resist it, so he left his room by climbing out of his balcony and that’s when he saw her. Through the window, he finally saw her with his own eyes. Mercy was almost awake, feeling his presence near her. In a powerful scream, she silently yelled his name, reverberating with power within Braith, but shortly after that, the sedatives in the IV numbed her for a while. He could see the doctors and nurses while hanging like a kite from the window until he detected security personnel outside, so he entered the floor from a different room. Braith followed one of the nurses and once she was alone, knocked her down from behind with a sudden blow. He managed to steal some files from her of the patients, which indicated her name was Mercy Rogers. Basically, the entire floor was dedicated to her and due to its restricted access, the only way in was to climb from the outside through the men’s room window or a storage room. From there, he could go to certain areas of the floor in disguise and steal whatever paperwork he could. Every time he managed to get his hands on any document, he preferred to go back to his place the day after to read it but he was getting really paranoid, so he got the idea of renting a locker in a gym in Central London to keep all the evidence. Maybe that could be his insurance policy one day. There was a lot of paperwork with complicated code names and scientific jargon. All he could understand and his main interest was that woman calling him, Mercy Rogers. He found out her place and date of birth, next of kin and lots of medical records on her metabolism, blood pressure and other countless reports about her health. Such reports were similar to the routine tests on him, especially the ones at the beginning. However, there was no explanation about her condition, abilities and the reason why they were basically containing her. That is exactly what the whole situation felt due to the extreme security measures, the fact she was sedated at all times and her peculiar cry for help. Her next of kin were in Spain and none of them responded to his calls or emails. Braith felt he was going around in circles so he decided to break protocol and talk to her directly. The question was to either let the institution know or to do it on his own accord. By the time he was at the storage room, dressed in a medical robe, he decided it was better to just appear in front of her so they didn't have time to prepare for anything. It was a bold move but he lacked the intelligence to come up with a better plan and, besides, he doubted they would reprimand him hard as he was one of their star subjects. Once in the corridor, things changed when a medical alert rang and all personnel ran towards Mercy’s room. In that moment, he could have sworn he saw her just walking through the middle of the crowd but in the opposite direction, towards him. She looked at Braith, smiled at him and got inside a room. When he tried to follow, he found the door was locked. Wondering why Mercy would have done that if she clearly wanted to be followed, he forced the door open. To his surprise, the room was empty. No windows, no other doors, no Mercy, nobody else and nothing out of the ordinary besides what you expect from a sad little office. The laptop laying on the table was an open invitation and he noticed a USB stick plugged to it. Suddenly, there was a loud knock at the door, so he decided to take the stick and faced whoever was outside. Again, it was Mercy, smiling at him and leading the way to an empty corridor, then to a deserted staircase two floors down, until she asked him to stop for a few moments. When he tried to ask her something, she cut him with a soft whisper. Mercy kept leading the way to Braith’s room where she disappeared. Confused, the only cold hard fact of all of this was the memory stick. Mercy had been an illusion in his mind created by her, him or someone else, but the result was the memory stick, so he took a look at its contents. Braith understood it would be a matter of time before they found out about his indiscretions and violation of confidentiality. Most likely, they would check the cameras and see Mercy, if she was with him. He gathered a few things and then left in the middle of the night by jumping the fence, not without stealing a few inhaling masks with the chemical compound. He wished he could have had the chance to say goodbye to Lark or maybe find out more about Mercy, but unfortunately, there was no other way. Braith made a copy of the USB and left it at his gym’s private locker first thing in the morning. As a specialist in being off the grid, he knew that his chances of not being caught on CCTV were slim, but he had to try. His best bet was to slowly reach for Europe and find a way to cross without being detected, perhaps by boat to the Netherlands as he had done once in the past. During his way to the coast, he had managed to read and print some of the material from the USB but it seemed that after the second time he opened it, an automatic encryption program ran through it, making it unreadable. Among the few things he learnt from the files before the encryption was that Mercy Rogers had become the most advanced and dangerous of all the subjects being researched. Her case was unique and very difficult to progress but, somehow, the outcome was worth the risk. Many of the board members did not agree with the experiment and vocally expressed their willingness to stop it by any means necessary. Mercy had proven to be beyond unstable, a troublesome feature for a project where psychology is the main key. Also, there was a list of individuals across Europe with great potential to be recruited. Some of them posed a great risk if their conditions were not dealt with properly and in case they failed the selection process, it was recommended to deal with them in an alternative manner, which Braith understood as no other than to dispose of them like failed lab rats so nobody else could have access to their potential. The institution seemed more ruthless than he thought they were and he felt sorry for not only Mercy but for Lark who had been naive enough to trust his doctor. He tried not to use the chemical compound so often but he also found that some of its effects remained longer, includ
ing his acute sense of smell but not the adrenaline rush that made him stronger. It was that developed sense to perceive all sorts of scents which alerted him about the presence of several agents from the institute. They were all around the room he was renting for a couple of days before making his next move. Braith inhaled a full dose using the breathing mask and took his backpack to run away. Like during his training sessions, the team did not stand a chance whatsoever and their strength relied on their gear. However, this time, they seemed to know all of his movements as if they were tracking him somehow, perhaps Lark was assisting them because he knew that he was also able to feel people the same way he could, just not by scent. But he did not recognise Lark’s odour, so there it was, the institution using all of their resources to recover the valuable information he acquired. It did not matter anyway because he was able to knock them down one by one, sometimes two at a time. His strength was no match for any of them, nor were his reflexes and intuition. The training at the institution was playing against themselves but he was clearly outnumbered as all of them kept coming on and on, so the best choice was to outrun them before being finally shot. One of the reasons why he picked that apartment was its location near a forest and a lake, features that would help him to escape. Once at the forest, he climbed to the trees and basically ambushed every agent individually. He knew they would not kill him, they were probably asked to sedate him. When he couldn't detect any of them but the weakest link, he jumped onto him and, to his surprise, a jolt of electricity repelled him from his opponent. Unarmed, short, and not muscly at all, Braith knew he was not a soldier but another enhanced being, someone like him. If only that boy knew that they were on the same side, maybe the chase would be over. It was a golden opportunity that ended faster than he thought when he was Tasered out of the blue before he could explain the whole situation. The rest was blurry and he experienced a series of flashes in slow motion back at the institute with a parade of doctors, nurses and scientists around him. When he felt he was overcoming the trance of being trapped in that dream, he started to fall over in it again. Just when he gave up, he saw Mercy in his hallucinations, walking around. She did not talk, just listened to all he was saying with not much sense of understanding. The time of the day became a strange concept as minutes and hours were one slow blur. Mercy appeared sporadically but she faded more and more each time until Lark came and he was different, more vivid. He could actually talk to him and managed to understand what he was saying, not the exact words but the meaning of them. Braith was happy that at least one of the few people he could relate to was there. Even if he was a projection of his own mind or a projection by Mercy, God knows who what the hell he was, but still, the figure of Lark comforted him more than he thought he would. Lark looked worried and weary, different even, but Braith could not figure out why. Like the usual ghost inhabiting his mind, Mercy appeared, although she was unable to communicate with Lark. Mercy asked to tell him to hold hands, which Braith tried several times. Lark could feel the request and, reluctantly, he did it. In that moment, by creating that bond, so basic and primary as the touch of bare fingers, their ways to perceive the world got entangled and grew stronger. Braith ignored whether it was Mercy’s influence, but it happened, Lark walked into Braith’s mind and emotions with a bang, seeing Mercy for the first time and told him about a room. Lark had to go to that room as soon as possible in order to release Braith from the jail he was in. He kept asking how or why but there was no time. The security personnel arrived, so he had to leave. They were all concerned about a possible breach. Mercy became distant and faded out in pain. It was all futile, even if he got to that room, the security in the building was increasing as they were in red alert. After a surge of sparks in his mind or in the real world, everything went darker, reigning the disconcert among the personnel, and after a few moments, Lark came back to make everyone else go away. Slowly, the blurriness dissolved into consciousness while he breathed his way into reality. Lark had brought an inhaler with the enhancing mix and left Braith sitting by the bed, breathing through it. His recovery was slow while Lark was busy fighting off agents, using them as human shields for shots and basically holding off the front. Braith walked towards him, thinking he could help but his own weight dragged him down. The only thing to prevent him from hitting the floor was Lark who managed to hold his friend down. Dr Velia, someone Braith had seen in some of the demonstrations, was talking directly to Lark in a very menacing way. She was threatening, to say the least, saying they will become fugitives, enemies of the government and probably from the whole world. With no money, low on enhancement and powerful enemies, there would be little they could do. However, Lark was determined not to let go, so he whispered, “She is hiding something, I know.”
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