Vestige Chapter 9 - Second Chance

“I accept”

Seymor stared at me silently for a brief moment. “You agree to sell out your friends to the military? You do know that means they’ll undergo the serum and memory operation, right?” He asked me.

“Yes.”

“I understand. I’ll make sure they still remember you afterward.” He nodded in agreement then led me through the hallway and back to my cell.

“Get some rest, we’ll perform the operation in the morning, you’ll leave immediately afterwards” Shutting the cell door behind me, Seymor left the room.

“So, what did he want with you?” Gray asked.

“He offered all three of us a spot in the military and I agreed.” I replied.

“What? There’s a military?” Aurelia exclaimed.

“Yeah.” Exhausted, I crashed onto the stone floor. “Promise me, you two, you won’t forget everyone back in the orphanage, after this is all over.” I drifted off to sleep, with the weight of my actions not fully sinking into my mind yet.

“Rise and Shine!” I awoke to Seymor unlocking the cell. “Come on, your friends are already getting prepped."

Well rested, I walked with Seymor down the hallway we had last night. It had been so long since I had time to just sleep. My legs felt like they had been walking forever. Now though, I am rejuvenated.

“Here we are.” Seymor led me into a small room. Inside a panel of controls sat in front of glass showing the next room over. Inside that room, Aurelia, and Gray sat on wood chairs. A man in a white lab coat, prepped the machinery around them.

“Just to let you know their’s about a fifty-fifty chance they fail this.” Seymor warned me.

“What happens then?” I asked him.

“You never know. Sometimes they lose their humanity permanetly, sometimes they don’t get the serum’s powers and sometimes they just die.” Seymor slouched down into a nearby chair. “ Take a seat. Normally we prep the memory machines a week or so ahead of graduations, but since this is on short notice, it’ll be a little while.”

I nodded and sat in the chair next to him. We waited there for roughly twenty minutes. Each of those unnerving sixty seconds, Aurelia and Gray stared back at me in confusion and fear. I didn’t give them a proper explaination of what was going to happen last night. I was awfully tired. In all honesty, though, I don’t think I could if I wanted to.

I can’t bear telling them what I’ve truly done, even if it was the right descison. This was for their protection and I just had to keep telling myself that.

Finally Seymor stood up and walked over to the panel. He pressed a button somewhere on it. “How you doin Danny?” He spoke into a microphone.

“I’m just about ready, I’ll get started with the serum in a moment.” Danny’s, the man in the lab coat, voice erupted from the speakers.

“Good.” Seymor stood up and sat back down in the chair next to me.

“Who’s going first?” I asked him.

“We’re doin both at the same time.” He peered down at his clock. “Assuming they pass, we’re gonna send you three to a training camp near the frontlines. Don’t worry, though, it’s still inside the walls so you'll be away from the fighting. That being said though, orientation is in a few hours, so we’ve gotta get things rolling. Plus I’ve got other business to get done today,”

Sweat dripped down my forehead and into my lap. Anticipation kept me fearful at the edge of the seat. The possibly that Aurelia or Gray could die made me nearly vomit in my mouth. I couldn't lose another family member like that.

“Alright, serum’s a go!” Danny’s pulled two syringes from a nearby table and walked towards Aurelia.

“What’s going on? I demand an answer!” Aurelia cried and struggled, yet couldn’t escape her restraints.

“Damn, kids.” Danny shoved the serum into Aurelia’s arm, shutting her up. He then turned his attention to Gray.

“No, no, no! I can’t become a monster like that! I don’t want to! You can’t-” Gray cried as the serum entered his system.

Danny promptly left the room leaving both of them alone.

“Moment of truth.” Seymor looked me in the eye. “Hope you made the right call, here.”

Inside the room, Aurelia and Gray sat there in silence. Moments went by before this serenity was broken. Aurelia burst into a scream. She jumped up in down in her chair. Her body pulsing, she struggled to break the restraints. The veins on her body began to bulge and squirm. She knocked the chair over and fell onto the ground on her side.

Adjacent to her, Gray looked on in horror at her screaming torture. Soon sweat began to pile up on his forehead. Veins moving, his arms squirmed back and forth until finally they failed to look human. Large lumps of black pointed slime, his arms broke free of the bindings tying him to the chair. Free, he rushed to the glass and slammed his body against it.

“Stop it! Stop it! Stop it! Please! Help me!” Tears streaming from his face, he looked me in the eye. “Lulu, why have you done this?”

Horrified and hurt by the sight in front of me, I couldn’t bear what I was seeing, yet I couldn’t take my eyes off of what I had done.

Aurelia skin soon gained a light shine. Slimy, she slipped out of her constraints and onto the floor. She wiggled in pain and cried in agony. Her pale skin soon began to turn black. Her limbs twisted and turned and began to enter her body. After not long new limbs appeared. She had turned into a lump of swirling dark tentacles with a crying human head on top. Looking down at her new body, her mouth stopped, stunned by the horror of what she saw.

Seeing what Aurelia had become, Gray slammed his fist repeatly into the glass until he nolong had a fist, but instead a tentacle. Soon he fell backwards, as he was nolong bipedal. With tentacle legs, he squirmed and screamed until eventually, his body had become completly that of a black tentacle monster.

Scared, Aurelia sat there in shock until her head sank into her body. She collapsed onto the ground and failed to move or make a sound.

Gray’s monstrous body twitched and pulsed, yet eventually it stopped and a mess of silent tentacles remained in its place.

What was once, a room filled with shrieks and screams was now silent. Aurelia and Gray, in the room before me, no longer cried out. It was then that the realization had hit me. I had killed them. I sank my head into my hands. I wept out in pain and suffering. It had felt as if the world around me came crashing down. Until suddenly, a hand landed on my shoulder.

“Don’t give up just yet.” Seymor’s hand rested on my shoulder. “Think about how far you’ve come. You kids are fighters and fighters aren’t gonna die like this!”

Slowly the tentacles that made up Aurelia’s body squished together and shrank. Soon their color began to whiten.

Gray moved again. Slowly the slime on his body evaporated and his limbs began to reshape. It wasn’t long before his human body materialized.

Reshapen, Aurelia stood up. She patted her body and searched every crevice of herself. She had returned to being human.

On the other side of the room, Gray stood up and did the same. He looked through the glass at me and then back at Aurelia. He had become human again.

A wave of relief washed over me. I couldn’t help but let the floodgates in my eyes loose. I felt as if I had lost everything, yet I got it all back again.

“We’re done yet, kid.” Seymor walked over to the microphone on the control panel. “Alright Danny, you know what to do.”

Danny reentered the room, this time bearing a pistol in his hand. He raised it and pointed it to Aurelia. Still grasping her surroundings, she was easily shot in the chest. Slightly shocked, she stood their completely unhinged. The wound on her stomach, quickly closed and the bleeding lasted but mere seconds.

Danny turned to Gray and fired a bullet into his chest as well. Just as confused, Gray’s wound regenerated quickly.

“Alright, I’ll get started on the memories, now.” Danny led Aurelia and Gray to the large machinery on the other side of the room and sat both of them done. He then lowered headsets onto them and began working

“Good job.” Seymor put both of his hands onto my shoulders. “You made the right decision, kiddo.”

I wiped the tears from my eyes. “Yeah.” That was all I could muster.

“This will take a while, so let’s head out to the plane outside.” He began to lead me out of the room. “Don’t worry the memory procedure has nearly a hundred percent success rate. They’ll be just fine.”

Lightning crackled through the room, as we left. We walked further down the hall until we reached a staircase. We walked up the staircase and to a door. Seymor unlocked the door and led me outside.

The sun’s heat came crashing down onto me and the morning air warmed my body. We were standing somewhere in the city we were in yesterday. In front of us sat a helipad with a small plane on it.

“Hop in, I’ll go check on Danny.” Seymor left through the same door.

I got into the plane, sat down and strapped myself in. It was a small plane, yet I marveled at it’s interior. I had heard of aircraft before, yet never seen one myself. A pilot sat in the cockpit, yet we made little interaction.

Almost half an hour went by before the plane doors opened. Seymor led Aurelia and Gray inside of the plane. They sat down next to me and buckled in.

“Alright, kids, this is the last you’ll see of me. Do well in your training.” He waved at us as he shut the plane doors and walked off.

Aurelia and Gray sat calmly next to me. They looked the same as they always had.

“You two doing okay?” I asked.

“Of course.” Gray replied.

“Why wouldn’t we be?” Aurelia retorted.

“She’s probably asking if we’re nervous.” Gray suggested to Aurelia.

“Oh yeah, I guess. It is our first day of military training.” Aurelia chuckled. “I’m not nervous at all.”

“Sounds like a lie to me!” Gray slapped Aurelia’s back.

“Ha, ha! Are you kidding, you’re the one to be nerv-”

“No!” I cut off their banter. “I’m talking about the serum. You sure you guys are fine after all that?”

Puzzled, they looked at each other than back to me. “What serum?” They both asked.

“Oh yeah, that’s right.” It had just dawned on me that they had lost their memories of almost everything, hadn't they? How much have they forgotten though? Did they forget everything we did growing up? Did they forget our escape from the orphanage and into the city?

“Man, the nervousness must be really getting to Lulu. She’s spouting nonsense!” Gray laughed.

“It’s gonna be just fine.” Aurelia put her hand on my back. “We’ll meet tons of new friends in the camp. There's nothing to worry about.”

“Yeah.” I muttered as the plane took off. It quickly lifted itself into the air and soared over the city.

I peered through the window down onto the city below me. All of the buildings soon shrank and become small blots. All of the creatures bustling underneath us became invisible to us.

We eventually flew over the wall of the city. I had never imagined I’d ever see the wall like this. Even though it was gigantic the stone wall looked small to us. Over the wall was a dense forest. It stretched out for what must have been miles before reaching the next wall. I could see hills and mountains here and there. Even rivers flowing across the terrain were visible.

Soon we lowered into a clearing in the forest. The plane’s propellers slowed and we landed. I unbuckled and opened the door. I jumped down and landed on the brown dirt below my feet. The air here was much colder than that in the city and felt strangely cleaner. Aurelia and Gray followed behind me.

The plane then took off leaving us behind. Before us, stood a collective of cabins. In total there were five. Fields of barbed wire, mud, and logs, similar to those on the orphanage we used to train on surrounded the cabins.

Ultimately what was before us was a new life, because we had been granted our second chance.