Subject 0025

Chapter 6: The Birthday Gift

((Playlist: Smells Like Teen Spirit by Nirvana))

When he left, twenty-five repeated the word ‘gift’ silently. It was an unfamiliar word. Strange. The gift stung his skin. He might have found his palm bleeding if he looked at his palm. He did not open his palm until lunch, just as the doctor had instructed.

While unpacking the lunch, he put it under the plate that was filled with salad, rice, beef, and tomatoes. Everything was prepared deliciously. The best meal he ever had, even better than past days.

He got a glimpse of the edge of his first-ever birthday gift. It was white and pointy. It gave him a shallow cut. After lunch, he did not put the trash into the bin as Tess told them.

They were coming today; the doctor had said.

With passing minutes, holding the gift back again, his heartbeats were a sequence of thunders in his ears. The doctor had promised firmly twenty-five that he would be right there as soon as twenty-five did as his instruction. “Don’t be afraid,” he had encouraged. “Just do it. Swift and precise. You can do it.”

After that, he would help twenty-five escape. He could not believe that this was happening; that someone was helping him to break free from this hell; that there was something better for him aside from the pain and the suffering.

The doctor was right. He should do this. What a great person he was for helping him, twenty-five thought. He was risking his own life.

In his cage, he sat down at one corner inconspicuously as he used to. Then he waited for the monsters.

From where he sat, he could see the corridor beyond the glass wall. Besides him were the toilet and the shower. It was a tight space to sit, but he would not miss it when they came. Also, it was the farthest from the entrance. In the middle stood a white table and chair where he had his lunch. As he had grown taller, it had become too small for him.

Time passed so slowly. Something was bugging him in the back of his mind. It had to do with the days when he was locked up. He had no time for wandering thoughts. He had to do this.

When the monsters finally showed up in front of his glass cell, he was still not ready for what he was going to do. One human and two machines, monsters all the same. They never came here in three.

The doctor had explained to him who his target was and why his attempt on the rest would be useless. He could not hurt them as they were not human, he had told him. That twenty-five already knew though he did not tell him so as he was supposed to stay quiet. He referred to them as AIs, the word he was not familiar with.

Out of the three, the human was one of those people in white coats. He was plump, had a round face and brown hair. The human gave the machines a verbal command that he could not hear. This time, it was final. The man’s intention was clearly written on his face. The calendar and the clock on the glass wall showed 11/30/3026 14:00:03.

He jumped up from the floor as they entered. He calculated the short narrow path. His hands were slicked with sweat. He gripped the thing in his fist tighter so that he would not drop it.

He needed to be fast. As fast as he could possibly be. Otherwise, it would be over before it happened. In a blink of an eye, he dashed to the man who he recognized as Dr. Raciti.

The man had not expected this. “Son of a—” Twenty-five stabbed the thin white blade into Dr. Raciti’s chest.

It was that or the stomach, the other doctor had said. “Do you know who I am?” he had asked twenty-five. “Answer me.”

“I’ve seen you before.”

“Do you know my name?”

“No.”

“They call me Dr. Lance. Tell Raciti that I sent my regards to him.”

Twenty-five did not have the chance to give him the message. Stabbing someone was a lot harder than Dr. Lance had explained. Instead of the blade penetrating into flesh as he expected, it only scratched the surface before it hit the bone. Besides, the weapon was too small.

Before he could make a second attempt, two metal hands seized him from behind. More than half of the short blade was sticking out. They separated him from the doctor. A red dot appeared on the doctor’s white coat and it got bigger.

What had he done? He wondered frightfully. Did he kill him? Or did he not?

But it was over, right? Any second now, Dr. Lance should arrive. He had promised twenty-five he would send help or would come himself right after he had stabbed this man.

The round-faced doctor was sitting on the floor, pressing on his chest. He gathered up and stood on wobbly legs. Twenty-five did not kill him. He could stand and talk, the meaty body trembling with fury.

“Kill him! Kill the guinea pig right now,” ordered the doctor, gasping. “I don’t give a shit about any experiment! He hurt me. He needs to die right away. Damn animal!” he spat. “Make it suffer before you kill that fucking animal!”

The AIs threw him to the wall. His back hit the hard surface; he could hear his bones creaking. The impact caused the wall to send shockwaves through him. They pressed him up there with their glinting robotic hands. Despite their weight and size, they moved so fast and so flexibly.

Blood sputtered out of his mouth. Seconds went tick, and no one was coming. He had failed. Of course no one was coming to save him. For the first time in his life, someone tried to help him and he turned out to be so pathetically useless. It must be his own fault, he thought to himself.

Crashed by the pressure and the weight against the glass surface, another machine hand reached his throat. It choked him with anger on its face, as if it could feel any actual emotion.

In the next room, his neighbor was wide-eyed, fearful. The kid shrank on the floor.

Twenty-five could not breathe. Suffocation burned his nose, throat, stomach, and then the entire body was set ablaze from inside. His eyes were clouded.

The realization dawned on him that this time, he was dead for sure. It was hard to believe, even though he was to be slaughtered since he was born in this hell. There was always a glimmer of hope before, but this was different.

Unlike other kids, Twenty-five was not even an orphan. He had no parents. At least that was what they told him, when he was younger. It was during the lessons–at an early age, they taught the kids how to read so that they could give them written instructions in the future. When they got to the word “parents”, their teacher told them that their parents were irresponsible sorts as they had either uselessly died or thrown them away.

Except him, she continued, looking at twenty-five. In the classroom were about thirty or forty kids, sitting at their desks while the teacher sat on the podium, her ankles crossed.

“He had no parents. Our scientists created him,” she had informed them. Then she looked down at him, who was sitting at the front. “That doesn’t make you special, if that’s what you are thinking. I’ve noticed you laugh a lot, as if you enjoy your existence. What’s there to enjoy about it? You are the stupidest kid here.”

Make it stop. Make this stop, he thought urgently.

Memories stopped as his neck snapped. He was dead despite his glimpse of consciousness. “It’s…o…ver,” he thought.

Somebody was getting angry. Breathing hard, the man sputtered, “No...no…no! You dumb AIs! Stupid robots! You killed him in one snap. It was so quick. So easy.”

The darkness was approaching. Everything had happened so fast; within a few minutes, his world had ended. He regretted it but was not sure about what. At last, he wished all of this had not happened.

Then it was gone—the darkness—before it could not envelop him. Abruptly, he was no longer on the wall. Nobody was crushing him to death. No bone was broken. He felt fine.

He was sitting in one corner, on the floor, as the kids here used to do whenever they were nervous. There was no one else inside his little room. Only him in his white pajamas in the sparkling clean glass compartment.

The robots were gone, as well as the round-faced doctor. He looked around. No one was watching. Like nothing ever happened.

For several seconds, he did not understand. Was he dreaming? Or Did he imagine everything? It was so vivid. Was this what the doctors called insanity? He had seen some kids going crazy when they learned lessons and played together when they were younger. They saw things and heard voices that were not real.

Then a light flashed in his mind as noticed something strange. Even stranger than all of this. He was not crazy.

Something poked in his right fist. It was his late birthday gift! The blade was here.