by Danny
Danny Hearn:
Day sixty? Day sixty-two? Day four-hundred? I stopped counting a long time ago. I'm trapped in the same place, the same routine, so, effectively, time has stopped moving forward. There are no days anymore. No hours. No seconds. Only me. Here. In the damn tube.
Every day, he comes in. The... what would I call him? Scientist? He comes in. He says an animal into the microphone. I experience blinding pain. And my. Body. CHANGES. Into what, I can never be completely sure. But I'm assuming that, somehow, my body is taking on the animal traits that the scientist suggests.
It's insane. Ridiculous. It makes no sense. It's like a plot from a bad sci-fi movie. But I'm here, living it.
If it can really be called living. Perhaps I'm dead. Perhaps my corpse is being experimented on. And the fact that I can still see and feel can merely be attributed to nerve twitches... death throes. Right at this moment, my soul is probably passing into Heaven. Or Hell. Either one would be better than this.
Right. I'm dead. That makes this all easier to deal with.
Then, the safe and peaceful conclusion that I had come to in the acceptance of my own death was shattered when the wall of the lab was... well... shattered. I couldn't make out details, being stuck in a green goo-filled tube, but it looked as if the wall opposite me had collapsed.
The scientist, standing right before me, turned and screamed. Men, dressed entirely in black and carrying guns, marched into the room through the space that used to be a wall. Death isn't supposed to be like this.
Before I could comprehend any of it, bullets started flying. Several of them hit the tube before one of the men realised that there was a person inside, and signalled to his colleagues to stop. I saw one of the men point at me, then yell something to the men behind him.
The man who had yelled stepped forward, toward my tube. Was I about to be... freed? Freedom was a concept that I had almost forgotten existed. These men in black had come to free me... my saviours. Angels. Maybe I was dead, after all.
Something suddenly hit the roof above the men, and it collapsed onto them in a shower of flame and dust. I couldn't turn to see what had happened, but I knew that the scientist was behind me, defending himself with some sort of weapon. A few of the men clambered out from underneath the rubble, and fired back. A few more bullets hit my tube, already cracking in places from the initial burst of firepower.
The clear plastic shattered into thousands of shards, spilling gallons of green goo all over the lab floor. The pipe was ripped from my mouth as the machinery surrounding the tube collapsed. I fell to the floor, gasping for breath.
Air. Real air. Not recycled tube air. It was glorious.
My moment of relief was ended quickly when I realised that bullets were flying inches above my head. I crawled to the side, out of the line of fire, and took refuge in some sort of steel cabinet. The battle between the men and the scientist continued. It was only one man against at least half a dozen, but his lab was fully stocked, as much with weaponry as it was with scientific equipment. For a scientist, he knew how to hold his own in a firefight.
Bullets struck the computers around me. Sparks flew. Machines exploded. I covered my ears with my hands and closed my eyes. I suddenly heard a whirring noise around me. I opened one eye. I opened the other. Only now did I notice that the steel cabinet I was hiding in was hooked up to all manner of computers and equipment. All the damage was apparently causing some sort of malfunction. The walls of the cabinet began to light up.
I was scared, naturally. I don't like it when my hiding places make whirring noises and light up. But then, outside the cabinet, there was a gunfight. A tough decision. One that I didn't really have time to make, as the cabinet filled with white light.
"NO! NOT THE TIME MACHI--" I heard the scientist yell as everything around me disappeared.
The... the what machine?