Experiment X1A-9424

X1A-9424 woke up to absolute silence, well almost absolute silence. A soft beeping murmured in the background. The room was dark, shadows from the machines’ soft light covering the sterile walls. He shifted in the bed and moaned as his muscles protested, sore and aching. He forced himself into a sitting up position. He realized he could breath fine, he didn’t feel unbalanced anymore either, just very sore. No I.V. was in his hand, just the monitor suction cups on his chest and temples. He removed them and slipped out of the bed. The machine screamed. He winced at the sound, more reflexively then it actually bothering him.


His feet felt thick and pain laced up his ankles as they took his weight but he forced them to move forward as a quick hobbling pace. His hands went to grab the doorknob of his room when it flew open, several men in military fatigue filling the door way, holding large rifles up in his face. X1A backed away until his knees hit the bed, his bright blue eyes round in shock and fear. The lights were turned on.


“Xia back into bed now,” said the soft thin almost nasally voice that belonged to Dr. Varius.


“What is Xia, Dr. Varius?” X1A-9424 asked while Dr. Varius approached him and applied pressure to his shoulders forcing him to sit on the bed.


“It is your name. It is easier to say then X1A don’t you think?” he asked thought it wasn’t a real question.


“Name?” he asked confused, he struggled against Dr. Varius not wanting to lie down.


“Yes, when you ran away, we need to give you a name in order to find you. The name was Xia Barnett. If you are a good boy, you can keep it and we can call you Xia instead of X1A, boy or it. Wouldn’t you like that?”


“I don’t want to lie down,“ he answered instead, trying to push Dr. Varius away.


“X1A stop and behave yourself.”


“I don’t want to lie down!”


X1A twisted hard breaking free and shuffled to the back wall because the door was still filled with soldiers. He pressed his back away he wall as if to make himself smaller.


“X1A, come here,” Dr. Varius cooned, putting his hand out as it to a scared dog.


X1A shook his head, he wanted out. He wanted to his piano. He wanted things he couldn’t even understand.


“XIA BARNETT GET YOUR ASS INTO THE BED!” a deep voice boomed.


X1A’s eyes snapped away from Dr. Varius and to a new person standing in the doorway, large, muscular and imposing. He knew this man though; he was always around the compound, watching, silent. The man terrified X1A for reasons he didn’t know.


X1A shifted slightly, before taking one careful step towards the bed, terrified the man would suddenly lung at him. Another careful step, his eyes never left the tall man as he made his way to the bed. X1A sat on it before didn’t lie down, twisting so he could still see him but the bed was between them.


The man took a threatening step forward and X1A was off the bed and back against the wall. The large man scoffed and in a few paces was in front of the boy. He grabbed the boy by his hair, and all but dragged the whimpering experiment to the bed.


X1A winced, his hands clutching the man’s wrists to help ease the pressure on his scalp before he felt himself thrown onto the bed, his legs hit the side painfully before rough hands forced him onto his back. The other soldiers had moved into the room and were holding him down as thick, heavy cuffs were snapped around his wrists and ankles. He pulled against them feeling the metal’s edge bit into his skin. A hand snapped in his face and he focused on the large man.


“Now then, let us clear something up. I am Lt. Jon Barnett and I have apparently officially become your father. Now, you don’t know what this means so I will tell you. It means I own you. Not just in the eyes of society but I have control over this project now, so everything to do with you belongs to me. You will do what I say, when I say it. You will not talk back to me or my men. You will do exactly what is expected of you or you will be punished severely. Do you understand?”


X1A nodded slowly and carefully.


Lt. Barnett’s eyes narrowed, “you will answer me in words. You will say ‘yes, sir’ or ‘no, sir’.’ Understood?”


X1A licked his lips, “yes, sir.”


“There, see not that hard. Now you have a name now, so we shall be using that. X1A is a mouthful, so Xia it is. You will answer to this name, do you understand?”


“Yes, sir.”


“Now, let me clarify something about your name. It does not make you a person. Xia is just the way to X1A in short hand. You are nothing more than an animal created in this lab for science purposes. You have no rights. Understood?”


Xia was a little confused but he knew the underlining meaning, being called Xia was the same as being called it or X1A, meaning nothing was changing.


“Understood?!”


“Yes, sir,” he replied quickly and everyone exited the room.


Xia looked at the things around his ankle and wrists, he wondered if he could break them. He tried but they were stronger than him, or maybe he was just still too tired.


-------


“Dr. Varius, let us discuss some things about Xia shall we,” Lt. Barnett said as they walked down the hallway from the experiment’s room where four soldiers stood guard.


“Of course Lt. Barnett, what do you want to know?” Dr. Varius asked trying to stay calm as they approached his office.


“Explain to me why it didn’t use its strength to fight against us. I saw a regular 15 year old kid in that room.”


Lt. Barnett plopped down on the long sofa in the office, as Dr. Varius sat at his desk.


“Xia’s ability are not first nature for him. He didn’t start developing the strength or speed until he was about 9 years old and that was under extreme duress. Unless he is under extreme conditions these abilities don’t manifest. It isn’t in his nature to use them, his genes are ninety-percent human after all. We haven’t been able to bring these abilities to the surface to make than more first nature. As it is as you have noticed during the test it takes some time before he even begins to use them. I have asked him before why, and he said something interesting which is why we have been doing so many brain analyses in the last two years. He said he felt like he had to break through a wall to be able to get the light.”


“The light? You mean..”


“Possibly, we have no way on knowing. I tried to get more information out of him, but he was having trouble explaining and I couldn’t understand his fragmented words.”


“How long could he have lived outside the compound?”


“Not long, the oxygen levels outside are not as high as in the compound and his body was shutting down when he was found.”


“Can we wean him down to a normal level?”


“Excuse me?”


“He almost died out there because of oxygen levels, if he gets out again and we do not find him as quickly, then the last 20 years go to waste. I don’t even understand why this damn place has a high oxygen level to being with, the place gives fucking headaches.”


“I could go into a long string of explanation but overall it has to do with the genetic structure of the remaining 10%. Indications of studies of the cells have shown that any oxygen level lower then what is in the compound will kill him.”


Lt. Barnett leaned back, thinking hard, “let’s lower them. Do the same integration methods used on the staff before they come into the compound but let’s extend it from two weeks to a month.”


“Lt. Barnett, you cannot be serious!”


“I am absolutely fucking serious. This is my project now and I will be damned if the little fucker dies if he gets out again. Get him down to normal levels within the month Dr. Varius or I will find someone else to do it. Got it?”


Lt. Barnett didn’t wait for an answer but stormed out of the room. Dr. Varius sighed, wishing he could have gotten the experiment out of the hospital without the Lt.’s help but he knew it would have been impossible. The man was better at controlling things then he was. The experiment’s blood samples had been removed from the hospital lab, all evidence that he even existed had been eliminated. However, it went from a private government project to a military one, and Dr. Varius wasn’t sure which was worse. Or maybe he did, he just didn’t want to admit it.


--- --- --- ---


“Everything is gone! Everything, the blood samples, the records even the security tapes! None of the nurses will even talk about the case, even those that were on it! I should have tried sooner to get information. I shouldn't have waited.”


“Megan…”


“I mean, let us say the kid really had some rare medical condition. Why the secrecy? Why, the military presence.”


“Megan…"


“I mean we need to be studying new and rare medical conditions because they never stay rare. We might run into more cases and misdiagnoses because the information is being withheld. Oh and that man isn’t that boy’s father. I will bet my career on it. And another thing-“


“Megan!”


Megan’s head snapped up and she stopped her intense pacing in her living room to look at her husband who was sitting on the sofa, elbows on his knees, leaning forward slightly.


“Calm down please. Getting agitated and excited isn’t going to help the matter. Look, it’s done. There is nothing we can do. The matter is out of our hands. The kid is with his father, and probably the best of care. The man looked important and high in the military ranking I bet. The kid is probably fine and his father just might be a little sensitivity to the subject of his son’s condition.”


“You don’t actually believe that do you?” she asked him annoyed, crossing her arms and facing him fully.


“What else-“


Megan threw her hands into the air and started pacing again, “I cannot believe you! You cannot just sit there and say this is ok! That there wasn’t something fishy going on with and around that kid!”


“Honey, I think you are blowing things out of proportion. I think you might be a little sensitivity about this kid because of the baby issue.”


Ryan winced realizing he had said the wrong thing as his wife whirled on him and glared daggers at him, “don’t you dare even think about it! This has nothing to do with the fact that I haven’t conceived a baby and the adoption wasn’t approved!! Nothing!!!”


Ryan watched his wife storm out of the room and sighed. Things had been tensed in the house for the last year or so, with the denied adoption just a two months ago, his wife had been on edge and extra sensitive to all her cases involving children. She wasn’t seeing that the baby-issue was coloring her opinions and also affecting her job. It seemed to Ryan like she was bringing her personal feelings into her cases and she had already be reprimanded after chewing out some parents whose child had fallen out of a tree and breaking his arm. A normal recurring thing in young kids, especially boys.


After the incident with the Xia kid she had waited five days to allow things to 'cool down' before inquiring about his chart so she could finish it. When she was told it wasn't necessary, she asked why. Then she was told everything had been given to the child's father to have transferred to the facility that the kid was being treated at. Of course she had blown up because the medical records were incomplete but she was told the important information, such as medication and treatments had been on the paperwork and that the other facility didn't need her thoughts and opinions on the case. When she inquired about the other facility she was merely told that it was none of her business as it was no longer her case. Now almost three weeks since the kid was brought into the ER and his wife was still poking for information. Ryan was concerned about his wife and her obsession with this kid.


He sighed and went to cook dinner but instead went down the hallway towards what was supposed to be the room for either a baby or an adopted child. He could heard Megan crying and he slipped into the room quietly. He found her on the floor with a stuffed teddy bear in her arms. He sank to the floor and wrapped her into his arms, where she leaned against him and cried.


“I’m sorry sweetheart. I am so sorry but I think you should request some time off maybe go see your mother for a few days. You need to rest and relax.”


Megan nodded her crying slowing down, so Ryan scooped her up and carried her to their bedroom, laying her gently on the bed. He kissed her forehead but she was more asleep at this point then awake.


“You rest, I will make all the arrangements, ok?”


She made a positive sound and he covered her with a blanket. He walked out of the room and into the kitchen to start dinner. He was peeling potatoes for potato soup and on the phone with the hospital when he heard an unusual click on the line. Ryan shrugged it off as the hospital lines getting crossed again before hanging up. He didn’t want to admit that his wife might be right, he didn’t even want to think about the incident; he just wanted life to go back to normal and if possible become better with a child of his own. However, the back of his mind itched with doubt.

Notes