Chương 185: Chapter 184: The Clean Room Diagnostics

DATE: Unknown LOCATION: Unknown LOCAL TIME: Unknown He waved his hand through the glowing air. The image of the planet's dark, rolling edge vanished, replaced instantly by the blinding glare of a red sun. My perspective dropped down to the day side of the planet, miles away from where everyone else lived in the twilight. Right in the middle of that endless heat, a massive dome appeared in the projection. A perfect, isolated jungle.

"We needed to know if the problem was caused by the environment, or if the people themselves were broken," Bucky explained.

"So we built a clean room on the day side of the planet to isolate a control group." The hologram zoomed through the thick canopy of the enclosure. A single man formed right out of the dirt, rising to stand in the brush. A faint blue glow hovered over his head, tracking a slow, steady heartbeat.

"The man was built exactly to our original design," Bucky said, his voice flat and heavy.

"He was a herbivore. His body was hardwired to be violently sick at the thought of eating flesh." Around the man, beasts and birds began to form out of the ground. I watched the man react. As the animals stepped toward him, the blue light above his head flared. He pointed at them, studying their shapes, sounding out words to name them. Data scrolled down the side of the projection as he worked. When he was done, he just went back to eating leaves, barely paying the predators any attention.

I rested my chin on my hands. They didn't bring the animals to him for company. It was an intelligence test. They were making sure his brain was doing exactly what it was supposed to do, and nothing more. This tale has been unlawfully lifted without the author's consent. Report any appearances on Amazon.

"Left alone, he just did what he was designed for," Bucky said, the firelight reflecting off his thick glasses.

"So we added a second subject, made from the man." Bucky's projection flickered, glitching for a second. When he spoke again, he didn't sound like a scientist running a test anymore. He sounded ancient, and deeply tired.

"Despite the perfect environment, the alter woke up." In the hologram, the woman separated from the man. She walked to the edge of a still pool of water and stared down at her reflection. Above her head, the calm blue tracking light shattered. Her eyes went completely dead, and then reignited with a sharp, terrifying focus. Something else was looking through them. A cold sweat broke across my neck. I couldn't catch my breath. I tried to swallow, but my throat was bone dry.

A low, rhythmic hum—the one I'd been trying to ignore for months—suddenly flared in the back of my mind. It didn't just vibrate; it purred. It felt dark and warm, settling right into the roots of my teeth. My heart hammered against my ribs. I wasn't just watching a history lesson. I was looking at a mirror. The thing that broke the very first woman was sitting inside my own head right now. In the glowing projection, the woman didn't go back to eating plants.

Whatever was driving her had just erased her natural instincts. She picked up a heavy rock and walked into the brush. A moment later, the scene shifted. The man and woman were crouching over the bloody remains of a wild animal. The woman held two pieces of flint. She struck them together. Sparks caught on dry moss. A real, chaotic fire flared to life in the hologram. She handed a piece of the seared, cooked meat to the man. He didn't pull away. He followed her lead.

As they ate, the lights above their heads flashed an angry, violent red. Their brainwaves spiked wildly on the display. They were flooding their bodies with dense proteins, pushing their minds far past their natural limits. They stopped eating. They slowly stood up. The peaceful, docile look was completely gone from their faces. They didn't look at each other, and they didn't look at the fire. They both looked straight up, staring directly at the invisible roof of the dome.

"Once their minds expanded," Bucky said quietly, "they didn't just realize they were naked. They realized they were in a cage."