elimination
Chapter Seventeen

I am floating through a black vortex of oblivion. I see nothing but blackness, feel nothing, experience sheer nothingness. I look down at my body and nothing is there. I reach out to feel my face and feel nothing. It vaguely occurs to me that this is death. I always thought death would be an utter lack of conscious, but here I am with a vague sense of self awareness floating through the oblivion I have for so long feared. thump thump thump I can hear a faint thumping coming from the blackness, but it’s not from any particular place. thump thump thump thump thump thump It radiates throughout my entire essence. I can feel the vibrations of the noise as it steadily gets louder and louder. A heartbeat. My heartbeat? thump thump thump thump Suddenly the black seems to part, receding upward and downward and giving way to a painfully bright, white blob.

I am staring at a ceiling. The light sears my eyeballs, frying them until they feel as dry and rough as sandpaper. The logical thing would be to close them, but I have been in the dark for so long that the thought of going back is more painful than anything my eyes could endure. Instead I try to raise my hand to shield my eyes, but nothing happens. I try to look over at my arm, but I can’t move my head. Fear begins to creep through me at the notion that I am entirely paralyzed. With all the strength I have I create a sudden burst of momentum and am able to raise my head about two centimeters.

I am on a white bed in a plain white room and my naked body has a million tubes sticking in and out of it connecting to machinery that is around my bed. I can vaguely see the outline of a door, but before I can get a proper look gravity infringes upon my vision. My head feels as though it is made of molten iron as it slams back down on to the cot sending shockwaves through my entire body. I feel as though each one of my proteins is being slowly denatured, one amino acid at a time. My eyes close again. The blackness resumes.

A metallic sounding click like the mechanism that opens a locked door pulls me from a dark slumber. I am suddenly bathed in freezing air as the harsh slap of footsteps comes toward me accompanied by familiar voices. My eyes shut in fear as the deep rasping voice of Apocalypse scrapes through the silence. “Here we are, Mutation 347, The Methylation Project. I still don’t understand the significance of this one, if it were me in charge it would have been put out of commission weeks ago after what it did.” Put out of commission? Weeks ago?

“That’s why you are not in charge,” responds the curt voice of Doomsday. I can almost see her look of disgust through the black veil of my eyelids. “We were given direct orders from Pinnacle 1 to keep this particular project going and I don’t intend to let you mess this up like you do everything else. It’s your fault that we are babysitting in Level Two instead of...” “Instead of where?!” Apocalypse cuts her off, his voice a crackling snarl. “Getting ourselves killed with the rest of the Titles who make it to the lower continent!?” Lower continent?

The rusty gears in my head begin to turn as I conjure up the image of a far off textbook page. “Present day Earth has two continents, the upper continent and the lower continent. This was caused in part by the rapid movement of plate tectonics caused by the targeting of areas capable of disrupting seismic activity during the nuclear war. However the primary reason was the rising sea levels caused by the melting polar ice caps.” This is all we have ever been told about the lower continent; I certainly have never heard of anyone ever going there. My interest piques as Doomsday begins to speak. “Last I recall you weren’t fully acquainted with all the intricacies of this project.” There is some indistinguishable edge in Doomsday’s voice, a wicked evil thing that slices through the room making it even colder. “Come,” she exclaims. I hear her brisk footsteps heading left followed by Apocalypse’s reluctant heavy feet. Their footsteps echo conjuring the image of a long hallway to mind. Suddenly they stop and Apocalypse now begins to speak in a flustered, breathy, voice. “You don’t have to....” Suddenly I hear the swishing sound of heavy plastic being lifted and a most uncharacteristic screech from Apocalypse that sends me recoiling back into the mattress, painfully jerking my many tubes.

“Must you pull back the tarp?!!!” exclaims Apocalypse in a shrill voice. Doomsday’s constant aura of cool authority quivers. Fear, thick like fog drifts through the air. It clings to my nostrils making it hard to breathe. Doomsday’s nails tap on a tablet momentarily and she begins to read. “Test Subject 1, Mutation 347. Time in designated function: 18 solar revolutions. Evidence of uncontrolled gene expression: Severe physical mutation and psychological derangement.” The swishing sound of heavy plastic returns as Doomsday clears her throat and begins to walk back down the cold, echoey hall.

Once again I hear the swish of plastic accompanied by a barely audible sound from Apocalypse and Doomsday begins to read, “Test Subject 2, Mutation 347. Time in designated function: 18 solar revolutions. Evidence of uncontrolled gene expression: Severe physical mutation and psychological derangement.” The process continues, their footsteps slowly getting closer. At “Test Subject 5" the classification of “severe physical mutation” is replaced only by “severe phycological derangement.”

She walks onward, reading the words “severe psychological derangement” over and over again until I can hear her voice about one meter away from me. “Test Subject 10, Mutation 347. Time in designated function: 18 solar revolutions, contemporary. Evidence of uncontrolled gene expression: Non applicable.” I listen for the sound of swishing plastic but hear nothing. There is a bizarre sense of pride and relief in Doomsday’s voice as she reads.

Apocalypse begins to speak, carefully testing his words as though he is trying his weight on thin ice. He starts out fine, but his composure soon cracks under him. “Title.... I mean, Test Subject 10 is still in function, chances are it will stay in function. I want..... I mean, I think it would be best to take the other one out of commission...... For the benefit of all,” he adds quickly. His words are messy and fumbled. Doomsday’s footsteps ignore him coming towards me until I can feel her presence above my right shoulder. Apocalypse follows reluctantly choosing to stand farther away from my bed.

“It’s no wonder you don’t want this one around any longer,” says Doomsday with an air of dry humor. “After what it did to your face, you were never much to look at, but now I would say you even rival some of our friends back there.” Apocalypse swallows a boulder and begins to articulate steely letters. “My cuts healed, allow me to make sure that its don’t.” At this Doomsday lets out a cackling laugh that prickles my skin. “What cuts are these! You didn’t give it a single scratch!”

I’m “it” aren’t I? I hear the sound of fingernails hitting a tablet above my left ear. “You wanted to know why Title Seven is still in use, here is your answer. Test Subject 11, Mutation 348. Time in designated function: 18 solar revolutions, contemporary. Evidence of uncontrolled gene expression: severe psychological derangement.” Mutation 348? The others were 347... Severe psychological derangement? Uncontrolled gene expression? I have uncontrolled gene expression and severe psychological derangement? Apocalypse responds to Doomsday with palpable rage. “Title Seven has exhibited evidence of uncontrolled gene expression. Once a test subject from The Methylation Project develops severe psychological derangement it is put out of commission and a new test subject is created. It doesn’t matter if Seven has the new and improved mutation. The trial didn’t work. Seven developed severe psychological derangement, therefore we need to try again with a new test subject.”

Doomsday sighs, perhaps recognizing some truth in his words. “Pinnacle 1 is getting frustrated, a functioning Title must come out of The Methylation Project in order to infiltrate the government of the other continent. It has now been 198 years of failed test subjects. Pinnacle 1 is quite invested in the idea that Title Seven will finally come through. Until Title One no test subject held the basic mutation set, never mind the full mutation set as an embryo. Title Seven has held the full mutation set without any physical deformities. If the full mutation can really serve as it was designed, Pinnacle One should be able to identify the specific genes that are being wrongfully expressed in Title Seven’s genome and resolve them. Thus it would be a gross waste of resources to throw it away, not to mention what they would do to us.

Furthermore, it is still likely Title One will develop uncontrolled gene expression. It’s always around age 18 when the methylation problems become evident. Title One has yet to clear what could be considered the age range of risk. When One does develop uncontrolled gene expression with the older mutation set there is no chance of isolating the problematic genes and resolving the issue. Thus unless extenuating circumstances arise Title Seven will be continuing on to Level Three. Now I didn’t come into this room for the view or to waste energy in a futile attempt to educate you. Help me remove the solution tubes.” Doomsday’s words echo in my brain: Unless extenuating circumstances arise Title Seven will be continuing on to Level Three. What are extenuating circumstances?

My reverie is interrupted by a most bizarre feeling as rough, clumsy hands extract cold smooth plastic from my stomach while deliberate nimble ones pull something small and painful out of my neck. Yet the pain isn’t quite real. It’s a numb pain, like that moment when your foot is asleep of and you accidentally ram it into something. You know it should hurt but you can’t quite feel it the way you usually do. After what feels like an eternity of cautious breathing and painfully suppressed facial expressions, the tubes, Doomsday, and Apocalypse are all gone.

Cold metal bites into my ankles and wrists binding me to the bed. I have been assuming it’s a bed, but it feels as though it could be a brick of ice. At least I am finally alone. Or am I? For some inexplicable reason my heartbeat begins to race as paranoia sets in. Fluid trickles from where the tubes were pulled out. It tickles, making me shiver. Suddenly I feel a presence above me, some cold dark specter that nearly stops my heart beating. I scrunch my eyelids together until I can’t take it any longer. My eyes fly open.

My gaze is met by the plain, unambiguous white ceiling. I try to calm myself with deep breaths but my lungs ache. How did I get here? I can remember the weird ball things they made us eat, 14 on the ground, my desperate hands on his chest compressing. Did he wake up? I can’t recall. There was something else, Dagger’s broken form and the sickening crack of ribs breaking into organ-puncturing fragments. There were strong arms grabbing me from behind. There was a final promise of vengeance from the ugly black eyes of One. One: my dark eyed reflection. Test subject 10: evidence of uncontrolled gene expression: non applicable.

Suddenly another memory comes unbidden. I am facing Apocalypse; thoughts scream through my head, but not the sentences that make up the thoughts of people. My thoughts are emotions. They scratch and crawl through my brain with angry howls. A pressure builds deep inside my chest as my reality rips away and suddenly he is bleeding, blood gushes from mauled eyes and muffled screams escape from my hands which are also bleeding, but I can’t seem to figure out where they have been cut because my brain won’t think in words. There is foam, everywhere, dribbling down my chin, making me choke and splutter. My lips are caked in it. Never was there that much foam. It’s scarcely ever happened. I grew out of it.

The memory feels wrong, out of place like it is from a bad dream, but how can you dream an emotion you have never felt awake? I don’t know anymore. I am just confused. I hate feeling confused. I would rather be angry than confused. The anger hears my thoughts and it begins to build. Yet it’s not the anger I usually know. It’s the other feeling, the bloody fingered feeling. It builds and builds until my thoughts are swept away by fear and a silent howl comes unbidden from my lips.

I lie face down on a hard, cold surface, one cold fleshy cheek glued to the ground. An ocean of foam leaks from my lips. I have a feeling I should open my eyes, but I can’t bring myself to do it. After a while my wrists and ankles start to feel funny, warm, itchy, wet? With a start I turn over to replace myself on the ground between two beds. My wrists and ankles are covered in blood and there are jagged metal things on the ground next to me. I must have somehow broken the shackles, but I don’t remember doing it.

Within a second I am on my feet spinning quickly. My hands reach for my head as panic flows through me. Tears fly from my eyes every which way as I half stumble, half spin through the room. How, What, Where, When, Why? There aren’t enough interrogatives. My thighs slam into something solid. I fall and replace myself lying across some sort of lumpy bed. Finally my emotions settle as cold clarity sinks through me. I exhale sharply and begin to survey my surroundings. Lifting myself from the bed I hear the crackle of a plastic covering and feel something hard and oddly shaped under me. I stand up and look at the bed doing a double take. In front of me lies a vaguely human shape covered in a gray plastic tarp. There is a lump that appears to be a head, and one that appears to be a torso, yet the others are all out of place. The appendages stretch out at odd misshapen angles that the plastic can’t quite hide. There are bumps where there shouldn’t be bumps.

I am at the very end of the room. Along the wall in front of me are 11 identical beds ending on the far side of the room with the bed I just escaped from. On the wall next to each bed to the left is a tablet. To the right of each bed is a back machine that emits a slight hum and has a single green light on the front next to a clear tube filled with a milky white liquid that runs up the side of the beds before disappearing under the grey tarp. The displacement is small, but if you look closely you can see faint movement as each tarp falls and rises steadily: respiration.

My back meets the wall opposite to the beds as my breathing becomes shallow and sporadic. I am under the vague impression that my wrists and ankles are still bleeding, but I can’t quite bring myself to acknowledge the red spiderweb that I have spiraled through the room. My hand begins to extend forward. Somehow my feet comply, stepping toward the bed in a robotic manner. My hand begins to wrap cold stiff fingers around the grey tarp, as my muscles begin to contract. In one swift motion the gray tarp meets the ground.

A scream rips through my throat as my arms wrap around my body. The first thing I notice is the color, a faint, opaque purple that brings bile to my throat. I can see every twisted vein and nerve under a pale fleshy mesh of skin. Yet to call it “skin” is wrong. It serves as a practically clear, painfully thin, film with the appearance of such moistness and malleableness that if one were to lay a finger on the surface a print would be left. The film stretches over sprawled, misconfigured appendages, legs that are twisted at angles that send a chill up my spine. Chunks of confused flesh grow off in odd directions. More striking still are the other structures: ones that make me think of an image I once saw in a Biology textbook of a developing human embryo, the weird animal-like parts giving testimony to evolution. Around the ears are fleshy, gill-like structures, and extending from the overly long tailbone is a long flab of hairless skin resembling a sort of tail. It’s as though all the long forgotten genes that ever contributed to human evolution are suddenly being expressed all at once. “The Methylation Project,” I remember from a biology textbook: the placement of methyl groups dictates DNA expression. Could it really be? I think of all the archaic genes that still remain in the human genome yet are no longer expressed, all the “junk DNA” that never has been expressed. I swallow hard. My eyes travel upward over flesh like damaged clay until at last I see the face.

The impossibly large eyes are an inky black and stemming from the ebony center are odd purple cracks. The eyes are that of a predatory animal in the final moment before warm fleshy jaws slice shut. The glare is the kind to haunt you forever. It’s wrong, inhuman and the single most appalling thing I have ever seen. Yet through every misplaced chunk of flesh and distorted crevice the body and face belong to me. The eyes, despite the color, despite the expression, are mine. The ebony hair that lies under the head in an angry mop is mine—and also One’s.

A sudden burst of anger pierces through me and driven by some vulgar unknown force I begin to storm through the room, ripping off the plastic coverings to reveal one demon after another. The pairs of eyes stretch on forever, menacing and blank, every corpse looking more and more like One and I. Yet the eyes stay the same with every generation, just as their outcome remains constant. They all end up here in this room, monsters condemned to lie in wait in the pits of Tartarus.

At last I come to One’s empty bed and the remnants of my own bloody prison. Her bed remains perfect and untouched. It burns my eyes. I am in a room full of multiple versions of myself, failed versions of myself. I’m a failed version of myself. What if there is something truly wrong with my gene expression? What if I grow gills, and a tail and lumps and just become more and more mentally deranged until I end up permanently committed to this room, my skin so thin it has the appearance of cells grown on a Petri dish. Blood has started to pool at my feet and the world begins to feel far away. My eyes close.

The machine beeps and my brain responds beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep. It’s quite funny if you think about it. Beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep. Hahahahahahahahahahahahaha. Beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep. Giggles rack my frame as a grin stretches from ear to ear baring my teeth. Hahahahahahahahahahahahaha. The sky is smog, my back is hard, the machine it beeps and I laugh. It’s all great fun, it really is. Beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep. Hahahahahahahahahahahahaha. My toes bob up and down with every beep, my ankles do too, but they don’t seem to move. My fingers tap, and my wrists are dancing too, but they don’t seem to move either. Hahahahahahahahahahahahaha.

The machine beeps and my brain responds beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep. It’s las quite funny if you think about it. Beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep. Hahahahahahahahahahahahaha. Beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep. Giggles rack my frame as a grin stretches from ear to ear baring my teeth. Hahahahahahahahahahahahaha. The sky is smog, my back is hard the machine it beeps and I laugh. It’s all great fun, it really is. Beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep. Hahahahahahahahahahahahaha. My toes bob up and down with every beep, my ankles do too, but they don’t seem to move. My fingers tap, and my wrists are dancing too, but they don’t seem to move either. Hahahahahahahahahahahahaha.

I sprint across the icy tundra, a frozen geyser of sweat adorning my face. Bile rises in my throat as my pH drops. I feel that never before have I run this fast or this far. I must be running from something but I don’t know what and I can’t hear anything over my own labored breathing. In one painful spurt of effort I look over my shoulder at the source of my pursuit. The sight that meets my eyes stops my feet mid gait causing me to fall to the ground.

Behind me stretches an ocean vast and dark blue with such magnitude and strength that it is awe inspiring. I have never seen the ocean before and for a moment it’s power consumes me. Yet it is the danger. The snow and ice are crumbling away into it; I am being chased by vast blue oblivion. With a burst of adrenaline I somehow manage to lift my throbbing head up from the icy ground and continue running. SLAM!! I am on the ground again, this time having collided with something. I look up to see a boy about my age, he looks familiar, deep green eyes. I call out to him, but he just shoves on by me running for his life. I get up once again and follow in the endless race.

One person after another collides with me, each one looks familiar and each one ignores my existence except to shove me down as they run by. One girl has dark curly hair and soft brown eyes, one has an ugly pout and light brown hair. Finally I get back up and just stand for a moment only to be knocked down again by another girl. For a moment I am shocked for I seem to have been attacked by myself. Yet this can not be, her eyes are black.

The chase is endless and pointless for I know that eventually I will be engulfed by the water. I run anyway I run, I run and I run and I run until I can’t run anymore and I fall to my knees. I look up from the ice to see that I have reached the end of the line. The ocean approaches from all directions, the waves lapping at the ice like hungry tongues. In the middle of the iceberg is a single, tiny wooden boat and around it are the other runners who were shoving me down. They now fight amongst each other for a chance to hurtle their bodies headfirst onto the microscopic vessel. They claw, bite and jab at each other with nothing but their empty hands. Blood bounces on the icy ground in pretty little droplets of red that quickly turn into oozing rivers. The stream of blood grows and grows until there are only three people left. They are on the boat floating above a sea of corpses.

I run for the vessel, the ice crumbling at me heels. My frozen white-knuckled fingers grip the side of the boat as the ice finally gives away underneath me and all but my arms are launched into the very essence of cold. I let out a silent scream as liquid fear pierces my throat and my hands begin to slip. I look up at three pairs of indifferent eyes regarding me from the other side of death. The black eyes stare off into the distance, oblivious to my suffering, while the brown seem deep, sad and regretful. The green fill with pity, come on please, save me, save me. He reaches out his hand and grabs my wrist as I begin to sink. Yet with the force of my descent the tiny boat begins to tip. The emerald eyes harden; my wrist is released and I am falling into the darkness. My eyes burn and my lungs fill with frozen water. I sink deeper and deeper, thrashed around by the swirling sea. The deeper I go the darker it gets and the more my lungs burn until...

The machine beeps and my brain responds beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep. It’s las quite funny if you think about it. Beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep. Hahahahahahahahahahahahaha. Beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep. Giggles rack my frame as a grin stretches from ear to ear baring my teeth. Hahahahahahahahahahahahaha. The sky is smog, my back is hard the machine it beeps and I laugh. It’s all great fun, it really is. Beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep. Hahahahahahahahahahahahaha. My toes bob up and down with every beep, my ankles do too, but they don’t seem to move. My fingers tap, and my wrists are dancing too, but they don’t seem to move either. Hahahahahahahahahahahahaha.