“What!?” he asked. His face had a look on it that could curdle dairy. It was a mix between confused and enraged. I assumed that, though he did not know how I knew about Room 42, (I wasn’t even sure myself) he must have thought that one of his workers had tipped me off. What he didn’t know is that voices in my head were telling me what to do, which is never a good sign.
“I said, I had only one request. And that is to take me to Room number forty two.” I said with a smile on my face.
“How did you,” he stuttered, “who...” He was at a loss for words. Probably for the first time in his life, he had no idea what to say to change the conversation so it worked in his favor.
“You want to know how I knew? Unlock me from these restraints and we’ll have a pleasant conversation about it all.”
“Not on your life.” His suave voice had melted away. This voice was more unnatural. It was more sinister. It terrified me but I kept my composure. ‘Always keep your cool in a heated situation!’ That’s what my father used to say. One time, when I had gotten in a fight at school, I came home with a bruised up eye and bloody nose. My dad asked me how the fight started and I had to tell him the truth. I told him that another boy was picking on Nick because he liked to sing and dance rather than play football or baseball. I told my father that when I saw this boy start to push and shove my little brother, I lost control. I ran over to him, turned him around to face me, and clocked him square in the nose. He dropped to the ground, cupping the blood in his hand. Soon, the blood stopped and he stood back up to face me. I put both my hands up, signaling I wasn’t going down without a fight. But, since this was my first real fight, I never realized that you put your hand up to also protect your face. My hands were just a little too low, and he knocked me right in the eye.
“I’m sure he deserved every bit of it,” my dad told me, “but do you think you would have a black eye and bloodied up shirt if you had tried to have a civil conversation with this boy?” I shook my head. “If there’s one thing that I should teach you as a father, it’s that violence is never the answer. Even when your enemy is in the wrong, and you know it, and he knows it, never solve anything through a punch to the face. You’ve gotta keep you cool in a heated situation! When he sees that you don’t want a fight, it will be easier to talk things out.”
I applied this information to my current heated situation. The man stared at me with fire in his eyes.
“Listen,” I started, “I’m not looking to get out of these locks, beat your face in, and then try and somehow escape this place when I know full well that your people will stop me with one sedation dart. However, I am looking to sit down with you and have a civil conversation to get to know you better. Besides, my neck is starting to hurt from looking at you from this angle.” He paused at my demands. After a moment, he looked at the security camera and nodded to it.
“There will be four guards, all with dart guns outside this door.” He said. “If you try anything, and I mean anything, you’ll be sedated before you can say a word.” He walked over to me, reached in his pocket, and pulled out some sort of remote control. He approached my slowly, never looking away from my eyes. He raised the remote to each brace that held my body to the metal table. With one click of the small, blue button, the metal seemed to dissolve away into fine power. “Mendelevium. Such a curious metal.” He said as he turned each metal brace to dust. “Most people don’t know that this rare metal responds magnificently to radio waves. You see, in the form of a powder, each grain of mendelevium will attract around the wave itself. The wave, trying to escape, and the grains of metal, trying to attach themselves to it. This creates such a unique phenomenon, one can only believe that a heavenly being is behind its creation. The metal, solidifies due to the immense amount of pressure. Almost nothing can break the bonds created, making mendelevium the strongest solid metal in the universe.”
“Almost nothing?” I asked. He was on the last brace now. He stopped.
“Surely the strongest thing in the world has to have a weakness. Simply, radio waves also undo the bonds made. It confuses the metal, therefore making the bonds void. Curious how the one thing that makes it so indestructible, also is the source of it’s demise. You can relate, can’t you Derek? Your brain, giving you the ability to be stronger than any man... for only a mere thirty two seconds? Because, your brain also emits a chemical that knocks you out for an entire hour. Now, I don’t mean to be rude, but that’s pathetic. And not to mention, your dear departed brother...”
“He’s not dead.” I interjected.
He laughed. “Of course he’s not. He’s just pale and lifeless on that table over there for the fun of it. Interrupt me again and you can stay chained to this table. Now, where was I? Oh! Your brother. As much as may have loved him, Derek, and as much as he meant to you, he was your biggest weakness. Love, is your biggest weakness. You wouldn’t go anywhere without him. He needed your constant protection. Well, look where you ended up because of that! Because you loved him so much, because you had to save him from danger, you were the one that ended up chained to a metal table. As for him...” He clicked the blue button, transforming the metal back into powder, and walked over to my ‘brother’. “He wasn’t so lucky.”
The mess of grey metallic powder covered the floor. I slowly sat up on the table, being careful not to injure my neck any further. My joints were stiff and my muscles ached. I’m sure the way I moved my body, he could tell. I turned and faced the man in the suit.
“Let us properly introduce ourselves. As you know, my name is Derek Sorensen. I am twenty years old. I was born to my parents, Nancy and Chris in the year 1991. Two years later, my younger brother, and only sibling was born to our family. My mother named him Nick. We grew up in a town formerly known as Garmont. When I was seven, The Primal War broke out all across the world. My father left our family and never came back. One year later, my town was discovered to be a weaponry and was later destroyed by what you call, Ion Bombs. My brother and I were exposed to the radiation. Living from city to city, my mother, Nick, and I did what we could to survive with nothing. When I was sixteen, my mother left us just like my father did. My brother and I were left alone to fend for ourselves. The day after my mother had left us, men came to our apartment and tried to take Nick. For four years we were on the run. Every city we went to, every abandoned house we lived in, someone found us and tried to take us. For four years, we trusted no one but ourselves. Then, the other night, when we were scavenging for food in a local Soup Kitchen, three men tried to take my brother. Not only did they take my brother, but they took me too. Now here I sit, after being strapped to a metal operating table, after a man I know nothing about tells me radiation mutated my brain, after he tells me I have super human strength, after he tells me my brother is dead. Now it’s your turn. Who are you?” I finished.
“Well that was certainly long and unnecessary.” He said. “Fine, I’ll tell you my name, and my name only. No need here for the biographies. My name is Bradlee W. Skinner. You may simply call me, Skinner.”
“Why have you taken me?” I asked, prodding for more answers.
“I took you because you displayed the qualities of those we possess.”
“And who do you possess?” I questioned. His answers were short and sweet. This was exactly the opposite of that I wanted. I wanted to know every detail, from the number of tiles in this room, to the color of underwear the guards outside the door were wearing. Clearly, all Skinner was giving me was the necessary information to the questions I was asking.
“We possess those who were affected by the radiation. ‘Supers’, if you will. The people who developed super abilities after being exposed to ion radiation.”
“What do you do with the people you take?” This was my most important question. Not only did it tell me what was in store for me, but it might give me a hint to what happened to my brother. I knew he was alive, but where were they keeping him? Obviously, Room 42. The voice in my head had told me so.
“We.... cure them.” He said. The pause in his words gave me chills. You know in movies, when the bad guy always pauses when he’s lying? When the hero asks what they’ve done with a specific person, and the villain simply says, ‘We’ve... Taken care of him.’ This was no different. Death. That’s what happened to the people they captured. He continued to speak. “I’m sure I know exactly what you’re thinking right this very second. You’re thinking that we kill the people we take,” (This guy was good...) “oh no, no, no, no, no! All of you are too valuable to human life to murder. In reality, what we do is what I just said. We cure them. If it just so happens they die in the process of curing, that’s too bad. But sometimes, we don’t cure them. After we research what they are capable, and just exactly what they can do, well, sometimes we keep them.”
“You recruit them to work for you, don’t you? You use them to help you catch more like us!”
“Keep your enemies closer.” Skinner said with a smile. “Now, is there anything else you’d like to know, or can this conversation be terminated, I am a very busy man, after all.”
“Yes. What, exactly, is in Room 42 that you don’t want me to see.” Skinner was about to open his mouth to say something, but the noises of yelling and gunfire could be heard from just outside the door. Then, just as quick as the noise had come, it went silent. The door to my room could only be opened by key card, which Skinner was the only one who had access to it. The attempts to break me out were useless. Just then, the door came flying off it’s hinges as if an explosion on the other side had caused it. But, there was no smoke or fire in the hall outside.
“WHAT IN THE...” Skinner yelled as sedation darts went flying at him from the open doorway. One found a spot in his right thigh. He went down hard, and fast, right on top of my brother’s body. As he did, the table holding them both came crashing down with a loud smashing sound. A bright, blue light glowed from underneath the wreckage. With one last breath of consciousness, Skinner looked at me and said, “I’ll see you soon.” He closed his eyes, in a deep sleep.
The blue light vanished as I ran to my brother’s body. Maybe Skinner was telling the truth. Maybe my brother really was dead. I bent down over Skinner and the lifeless body, who was now face first on the floor. I pushed Skinner off of my brother, and rolled his body over. But, to my surprise, it wasn’t the face of my brother that I stared at. It was the face of the man that I pulled out of the window of the church with my brother, just the other night. His neck looked as if it had been sliced open. He must have landed on the broken glass from the church window. Must have been a painful way to die... Slow too. I shuddered at the thought.
“Cloaking devises. They had one in my room too that looked like you.” a voice said from behind me. I turned around. There, in the hall outside the doorway stood two people. The first, I didn’t know. He was tall, with dark brown hair and brown eyes. His skin was tan and his complexion was nearly perfect. “This is Austin, by the way. He’s the one that decided it would be a good idea to make a grand entrance. He has telekinetic powers! Isn’t that sweet?! He totally blasted that door with his brain!” said Nick, standing next to Austin, alive.
“I knew it!” I said as I ran to him. “I knew you weren’t dead!” I hugged him so tightly and for so long, that I’m positive Austin felt awkward just standing there, watching us. “How did you escape?” I asked.
“Don’t freak out, ok?” Nick said. “But, I’m not the only one that isn’t dead...”
I didn’t notice him before. He must have been in the few shadows that lined the hallway corridors. His sandy blonde hair was the first thing that I noticed. Then his blue eyes, his slightly crooked nose, his lips, his chin with a small amount of barely visible scruff on it. His mouth never moved, but I heard his words like he were standing next to me. I heard the voice in my head that had tipped me off about Room 42.
“Hello Derek. I’ve missed you so much.” He said to me in my head.
“Dad?” I said aloud, for everyone to hear.
