Experiment #13

The Vial

The man led Lina back into the elevator where they moved down a couple floors and the doors opened to reveal... the exact same looking hallway. Lina was confused, wondering if this really was a dream. Why did everything look like this? So blank and bare and... slightly blinding?

The man in front of her led her down the hallway and Lina remained quiet, wondering where they were going this time. They stopped at another door near the end of the hallway and another man stepped out of the room.

"Oh hey, you're here early." said the man.

"Yes, we got a new arrival today. We're just finishing up their processing. Are you finished in here?"

"Oh yeah. Rooms' all yours."

"Thanks."

The other man left and they entered the room. Lina was confused about their conversation. Stepping inside, she was surprised to see the room looked similar to a doctor's office. Some cabinets on the far side of the wall with a sink in the middle and a table for the patient against the wall in the center of the room. Lina felt a wave of dread wash over her. Something in her chest sank.

She hated going to the doctor's when she was young, and being here brought all that anxiousness back.

"You go ahead and sit up there." the man pointed to the table while he turned around and started looking through the cabinets. Lina nervously stepped over to it and hopped up, sitting on the edge and watching the man cautiously. He pulled out a clipboard with some paper already attatched to it and a pen and began looking it over.

"Okay, I think we're just about ready..." the man looked up at Lina and she stiffened, "Now, there's nothing to be nervous about. I just want you to relax, okay? I'm just going to do a few basic checkups to make sure you're healthy. This'll be quick."

A checkup...? Okay... that's not so bad. I've done this before... maybe... maybe this is fine...

"First things first, I'm just going to ask you a few questions. Are you allergic to anything?"

"Uh... n-no."

"That's good... Okay, are you currently sick at all? Any illnesses?"

Lina shook her head, "No...I..... I feel okay."

"Good, that's good. Have you ever had any surgery done on you before? Broken any bones, that sort of thing?"

Lina shook her head harder, "No. No, never."

"Alright..." the man muttered as he wrote all the answers on his sheet. "Okay, I'm going to start examining you now. You just relax, like I said, this'll be over quicker if you relax, okay?"

Lina's nervousness rose again as the man set the pen and clipboard down on the table and pulled out a pair of gloves from the cabinet. Lina tried to keep calm, but she felt all her senses running on overdrive.

Luckily for her, it went smoothly. The whole examination was just the same as a regular doctor's checkup and Lina was grateful that none of it was painful. The man explained that Lina was perfectly healthy, which put Lina at ease for a while. Until he told her he was going to leave the room for a moment and instructed Lina not to move. The second he left, Lina felt awkward and slightly uncomfortable. The only sounds she heard in the room was the soft hum of the flourescent lights above her, her own breathing and her racing heartbeat. The illusion of all of this being a dream... or a nightmare was starting to fade. To Lina, this all definitely felt real. And for a moment, she thought maybe she had enough time to slip through the door and find a way out. Maybe her dad was looking for her and if she could find him, they'd be back on their way to San Francisco.

But Lina's idea was dashed when the man came back, and she saw that he was holding something.

"Alright, this is the last thing we need to do and it'll all be over. You're going to feel a little pinch and then it's all going to be over, okay?"

Lina nodded and noticed the man opening a drawer and pulling out a syringe. Lina's anxiousness rose drastically, and she noticed the object the man was holding in his other hand was a small bottle of some sort. The liquid inside was a strange, amber colored substance. He poked the needle through the top and extracted a little bit before sliding the top back out and setting the small bottle on the counter.

"Okay, just hold still for me. This'll only take a second."

Lina flinched as he touched her arm and pulled up her shirt sleeve, shutting her eyes tightly and looking away. She gritted her teeth as she felt the needle pierce her skin, but it was gone in an instant. The man quickly put a bandage over the spot and discarded the syringe.

"Alright, that's it. You're done."

Lina blinked away the tears in her eyes and looked over at the bandage. It was... a lot faster than she thought it was going to be.

"You can move your shoulder around if it feels sore at all. But don't get up just yet."

Lina lightly rubbed the spot around the bandage before pulling her shirt down. The man picked up the clipboard and pen and wrote down more things onto the paper. For some reason, Lina was surprised. She didn't feel bad or weird. She expected something terrible to happen to her, but nothing did.

The man looked up from his clipboard again.

"Alright, doesn't everything feel okay? Any pain anywhere? Congestion? Is your vision okay? Numbness? Does anything feel different to you?" he asked.

Lina took a moment to feel every part of her body. She didn't feel... anything weird. In fact she felt fine.

"I... I think I'm okay..."

"That's good. And that's all we're going to do with you today. I'm going to take you back up in a second, I'm just going to finish this... You can sit for as long as you need to."

The man turned away and started scribbling away on the papers held together on the clipboard. Lina wondered where she would be taken to next, but that thought quickly faded from her mind as she began to feel... a little light-headed. She began to breath heavily and raised her arm up to look at it. For some reason, it felt heavy to her and the world around her began to spin. She blinked a few times as her head began to roll slowly from side to side.

The man glanced at her as she fell back onto the table and everything faded into darkness.