Disclaimer and Notes: see Prologue
The Experiment – HST 17
by Belladonna
~Chapter 1~
It was dark when he awoke. The man slowly opened his eyes, warily and tried to hold his aching head in his hands to soothe the pain at least a bit when he’d had to realize that he could not move his arms at all. This fact, more than anything else shook his rather clouded head really fast clear of all the cobwebs and he rattled at his restraints that held his wrists bound tightly to the table. The man had also to make the bitter realization that he wasn’t just restrained at the wrists of both his hands but also at his ankles which wore bindings like his hands did. Disappointed and defeated he let himself fall back towards the table and tried to find more clarity in his surroundings, shrouded in half-darkness. His eyes had adjusted pretty quickly to the dim light, like they always had done so that he was able to recognize that he must have been held in some kind of laboratory. He felt how until then repressed panic began to rise within him at that thought.
The little light that changed the otherwise dark room into a dimly lit black did emanate from the many LED-displays that belonged to computer terminals inside the lab. Those terminals must have been along side the walls; at least that was it the man suspected since he only was able to see the many lights, blinking and the faint humming sound that probably also belonged to those computers. His mind still was a bit clouded and he wasn’t able to form a much more sharper thought at the moment which must still be the after-effects of the sedative he was given. But why had he been sedated?
At the other end of the room, the only part of the laboratory that was illuminated at least a bit by a small lamp in the corner stood a man. He wore a white lab coat which identified him as either a scientist or a doctor. He currently stood with his back turned to the man on the table, facing the computers and taking notes on a clipboard in his hands. From time to time he checked some readouts and displays on the computer, changed the settings on the terminal next to him that, like the man on the table was now able to recognize was in fact standing at the farther wall opposite of him. The man on the table turned his face away from the corner and tried to look around, looking for something else to reveal to him where on earth he was and why but all he saw were shadows and some outlines of more computers at the wall towards another corner. He also believed to have seen another person standing in that corner, watching him, saw the glimmer of a lit cigarette and light reflexes on glasses. Or was it again the twilight playing tricks on him?
When he had tried to concentrate more, there was nothing to see. The image of someone standing there had vanished, in its place now the beeping sound emitted by a computer and he again turned his head to face the man in the white coat, desperately trying to fight down the panic that hadn’t settled yet but was now nagging at him with full force.
The man in the lab coat raised his head at the sound of the monitoring device going off, turned his eyes towards some displays and cut the alarm then. Silence once again settled down inside the lab but the humming of the computer wall unnerved the man on the table and unconsciously he started to growl slightly. His eyes never taking off the man in the coat as he took his clipboard in his hand and slowly walked towards him he again fought the urge to lunge right at him or even better back away and then run the hell out of here, without so much as one look back and not ever thinking of coming near that place again. That meant wherever here was.
Before the man in the lab coat reached him, he switched on some buttons at a nearby table and turned that way the light on to now fully illuminate the room. Immediately two surgical lamps, attached to the ceiling and facing down the table were lit up, blinding the man restrained to it with its searing white light. He painfully shut his eyes, pressing them closed but he felt the light seeping through the lids and all he saw was red mixed with orange spots. At the ceiling several more lamps were turned on that way to light up the room and show to everyone what it held. But to him who was blinded for the moment, not daring to open his eyes again it held nothing of interest, all he heard was a door being shut loudly at the farther distance.
The man in the white lab coat stood now above him in front of the table and pulled the lights away a bit and they were turned automatically off. He watched the man for a short second then decided to speak.
“You can open your eyes again, the light is now off”, the man said silently. “I know that you are awake.”
The other man on the table blinked and pressed his eyes shut once more, eyes which had to slowly get acquainted with the light again. Remaining silent he took his first good look at the man in the white coat, then glanced past him taking notice of the whole set up of the laboratory. He recognized that he truly was inside a medical lab, the medical equipment still the same from when he remembered it but he also recognized some things he could not identify. And then there were the long row of computer terminals along the wall. He felt how his previously repressed panic began to rise again, returning with his full memory of where exactly he was. His breath sped up, the beginning of a panic attack he hadn’t had since a long time ago and he also realized that he wasn’t alone in the lab. There was another man lying on a second table next to him who seemed to be still unconscious.
The man then returned his gaze towards the one looming above him and fought the panic down. It did him no good to loose it while he still was tied down to the table and it did not seem as if he would get free any time soon. The white coat seemed to be a doctor and the name tag on the breast pocket on his coat told him that his name was Dr. Jonas. Next to the identification card that dangled from the breast pocked he could see the stylized double helix, the mark of the genetics department of the Initiative, which he would find out later. The doctor was a man in his middle thirties so it seemed, relatively young for a scientist; short dark blond hair that began to fade away alongside the temples and his brown eyes were hidden behind reading goggles. Jonas bent over to remove the two contact sensors that had been attached at the right and left side of the other man’s head and put them with his clipboard onto a small metal instrument tray next to the diagnosis table. During the whole time the man on the table watched him in fascination, not able to do anything else but to swallow down his surprise. He now took in the electrodes for the first time as for what they were, having them seen simply as cold places on his head before. Inside him the one question still burned hotly like the light of the sun would sear him, the question about his present condition, lying tied up on a chair inside a lab.
“What do you want from me, what the hell is this place?” he demanded to know from Jonas, his voice sounded raw and hoarse. Deep inside him he feared the answer, did not want to hear it for he already knew half of it; suspected it.
“My name is Dr. Jonas; I am a doctor”; Jonas said in a soothing voice. “There is no need to get agitated that much or for any concern. I will not harm you.”
Still why had the other man the deep feeling that Jonas would not be telling him the whole truth? He glared instead at him, trying to intimidate him into giving him a satisfying answer and afterwards releasing him so that he would be getting out.
“What do you want from me?” he repeated his question and this time he tried to lay some more ferocity into his voice, he also raised the volume a bit he spoke in. Jonas seemed not to be impressed that much by it, he took his data board, the clipboard he took notes on and that also was his interface to the computer terminals and double checked the data he retrieved, changed some settings that had gone to zero by removing the electrodes and ignored the other man for a while which unnerved him. Jonas obviously choose another method of gaining data and receiving readings from the man on the table, then he turned back towards his patient again who had gotten pretty angry by now.
“Once you have calmed down a bit, I will try to explain everything…”
“Let me loose you bleedin’ bastard or I’ll rip your throat out! I want answers and I want them now!” he hissed, the memory of what he was returning fully now and he again started to buck up against his restraints, trying to get them off. His face changed into a murderous glare, but nothing more than that, remaining human in fact for now. Jonas backed away and remained a good distance to the table, the readings and readouts on his data pad rising high. Jonas took a deep breath, nervously and tried then to calm down the obviously distressed and frightened man, glad for the restraints still in place.
“I will try to explain everything to you”; he said hesitantly, still keeping his distance to the wildly bucking man. Jonas seemed to be afraid himself of the other man. Silently he added, but more to himself “If I can make it reasonable and believing for you.”
Louder he continued to tell him that he should calm down, he would give him the answers he desired. Jonas fetched his interface again and rechecked his retrieved data. Then, taking another deep breath, he touched a button at the side of the table and the restraints on both his wrists and ankles snapped open. Jonas remained his secure distance and backed away even a slight bit more, watching the man who slowly sat up and rubbed his wrists, already red and slightly chafed from fighting the metal restraints. He then massaged his temples slightly as the world around him began to spin faster then before. Jonas still hesitated, he wasn’t quite sure whether his decision had been right to free him but he’d had to give it a try. It was after all his experiment so he had to take the risk, it had been necessary.
The other man swung his legs off the table and tried to stand up, but his knees buckled and he had to steady himself on the corner of the table.
“You are still weak, too weak to stand up yet”, Jonas scolded him and mentally made a note for himself. This was a bit concerning so he tried to gently shove him back to lie down on the diagnosis table again but the other man refused. The short feeling of dizziness and nausea had vanished and he stretched his body, straightened it to a more intimidating posture hoping to being able to take out the doctor and then get the hell out of this place. He shouldn’t feel that sick at all.
“No!” he almost shouted, still trying to get his face shifting and even more remembering what had happened. He looked around him, looking at the lab. Instinctively he felt that something was wrong, that something was missing inside but he failed at pinpointing exactly what that was. “I want to know where I am, what the bleeding hell you want from me and why you did what ever you’ve done to me? And I want to know that now!”
Jonas still seemed a little indifferent about the other man, simply standing there and remaining silent while the other ranted and threatened him. Yet Jonas studied him closely with the glance of a biologist watching rare microbes through the ocular of a microscope. Then he made his decision, trying to take the risk.
“Take a look around, find out for yourself”; he simply said, taking a deep breath and stepping aside so that the other man could get a better look at the other table and the rest of the lab.
The other man took a tentative step towards the second table, curiosity taking over and then froze. He couldn’t believe what he saw and felt a strange feeling spreading out inside his stomach like he hadn’t felt before. He hesitated for a second, not wanting to look again at the man who lay in front of him, restrained to the table like he had been moments ago but he had to and now wished again not to have.
For the other man on the table, unconscious and tied town had short platinum blond hair, some bleached strands falling onto his forehead but not long enough to hide the scar at the left eyebrow. Subconsciously the man’s hand rose to touch the scar on his own eyebrow and asked himself not for the first time where the hell he was and how long he had been here, not to mention what they could’ve done to him during that time.
The man on the table was wearing grey sweatpants and a shirt on which also a double helix strand was stitched into. The face of the standing man lost colour quickly, paled in comparison to his usual skin tone and he remained standing there like a stone column. That man on the table looked exactly like him, just like the picture that he would greet him every morning in the mirror, would he have had a reflection that is. He did not remember what he looked like now exactly but he knew how he had looked back then when he had been still alive.
That man could have been his identical twin. He sucked in a deep breath. Forgetting for the moment that he usually did not breathe, he then turned away from the other man. Jonas watched the scene unfolding in front of his eye, taking notes on his clipboard while studying his retrieved data the computer transmitted to his interface. The new data came from an implant he had placed at the nape of both men’s necks before they awakened, or at least before one of them had by now. He double checked the vitals he got from the still unconscious man and nodded satisfied. Meanwhile the standing man noticed a strange wristband around the wrist of the man on the table and wanted to take a closer look at it, but Jonas intercepted him and put a hand on his shoulder, gently pulling him away from the table. The man flinched.
“W-what have you done?” he asked stammering and confused. He was too shocked at the sight of the other man, still out cold to do anything else or to even think of seeking an escape. “Who is that?”
He continued to massage his temples and tumbled backwards to the other table where he sat down on the corner. “What has happened to me?”
“I will try to explain everything”; Jonas said. Now he was a bit more secure about everything, having retrieved new data and confirming his earlier suspicions, he asked the other man confidently to join him at a table in the farther corner or the lab; a more private place to explain and talk so to speak.
“You are part of an experiment.”
“What?!”
“Well, to be completely honest, you are only one half of the experiment and he”, Jonas gestured towards the unconscious man, “is the other half.”
“I don’t quite understand”, the man was highly confused by now, not able to find a clear thought at the moment nor to digest what he just had seen or partially been told. How was that possible, another man that looked exactly like him, or so he thought, since it had been a while since he had actually seen himself.
He raised his hand towards his aching head, massaging the bridge of his nose and noticed for the first time that he too was wearing a wristband of sorts on his left hand, the same in fact he had seen on the other man. It was like those worn in hospitals and it looked like the one the other man was wearing. He saw some black lines on it, a barcode probably and some numbers followed by his name.
William Windsworth aka Spike.
go to Chapter 2
back to Prologue