The Experiment discussion

She stared at the huge pile of paperwork her attending had slapped on the counter in front of her. Three clipboards full of client statistics and information that needed to be assessed and filed at the end of this workday. All this in addition to the secret project she would be working on for the next eight months? How would she find the time?

In truth, Sarah Vauss had no idea what this mysterious project she was called here to study was. A few weeks ago when she had received a letter at her clinic in Germany telling her that six of the medical geniuses inthe world had been invited to a lab in an undisclosed location in South America, she thought it was a joke. But after looking into the company and making a few phone calls, she decided that this was legit opportunity for her to mark a huge milestone in genetic science. She mailed back and now, three weeks later, was living in an apartment in a rural area of South America that was onthe grounds of this Institute. She didn't expect her first day of work to be this stressful, but things were very no nonsense. Certain hallways were closed off to her, but when she walked by them she heard screaming, screeching, mooing, cawing... It was like a zoo. She was too afraid to ask her superiors about it.

Sarah began her workday by examing three young babies thoroughly, making sure that they had no hidden diseases or brain defects. This took hours, and when Sarah was finished she expected to meet the parents of these children, but she did not. The children were whisked away by two nurses and carried through two huge steel doors.

Now for the fun. The reason why she was sent here. It was three o'clock, the scheduled time for her to begin her project. No one would be supervising her, though she had a Pager in order to call security if something went wrong. She approached anOther set of steel doors and slipped her identification card into the slot. The doors slid open soundlessly, and the lights flicked on.

Sarah stepped in the hallway. The doors closed behind her. Was this entire portion if the building for her? She explored and saw that there were two small labs, a tech room, a tiny, white room with two chairs and nothing else, and a break room area. Sarah smiled. She had a feeling she would like this project.

Sarah slipped her card into one more part of her area, a set of large, shiny Plexiglass doors blocking her from the room inside. She stepped inthe room and gasped.

What is that?

(sorry for any stupid errors. I typed this on my iPhone. Also, they won't always be this long and boring-- I just had to lay out the setting. :)

((That's alright. I know some people in Modern Fantasy who have regular posts that are that long. (: ))

Claire sat in a hard wooden chair, her knees tucked up against the rest of her body. She shivered, wondering why she was brought here, why she was brought out of her regular room in this place. Hearing a nearby door slide open, she swiped strawberry-blonde bangs out of the way of her greenish-hazel eyes and looked up.

Claire saw a woman that she had never seen before. She stayed quiet, and pulled her knees closer to her chest, not knowing if this woman was bad or good, what she was doing her. Claire let her wings (white with black specks) flutter out, and used them to cover her face, only barely peeking out from behind them at this new woman.

Sarah gasped and rubbed her eyes. Was her long day playing tricks on her eyes? Had the radiation from the MRI's she had given earlier seeped into her brain? How did this little girl have... bird's wings? How could this possible be a genetic disease? That was what she was studying, right?

"Pardon me," Sarah mumbled, and quickly slipped her card in and out of the processor. The doors wooshed open and snapped closed as she stepped quickly to the break room. She pressed a red circular button on her pager. She sat on the couch and stared in disbelief at the wall. Was she going crazy? She had read an article at one time that a small percentage of people with an IQ over 210 can develop strange nervous disorders and hallucinate. But she was the one who proved that article's irrelevancy and wrong data, so that couldn't be it.

Two muscular men in blue jumpsuits arrived. "Is there a problem?" the tall one asked.

"The girl in there-- the one with the disease-" Sarah stuttered.

"I understand. Give us a few minutes." The shorted one pulled a pair of handcuffs out of his right-hand pocket and the two of them left. Sarah peeked out the door of the break room. She couldn't see anything, but she heard a struggle, the flapping of huge wings and the rattle of the handcuffs. She heard the Plexiglass doors slide open, she ran back to the club. The men walked in and she stood up. "The problem is taken care of. You may go speak to her again without being afraid." The men left.

Sarah all but sprinted down the hall and back Into the interview room.

Claire watched anxiosly as the woman saw her wings and walked out, looking scared. She was still sitting in the hard wooden chair, trying to keep herself warm in the air-conditioned air, when two men came in, one holding metal handcuffs. Claire jumped up, and the men rushed toward her, and she fought as hard as her 7-year-old body could. It was no use against the men, though, even when she beat them on the side of their heads with her wings-- they still were able to pin her arms behind her and place the handcuffs around her wrists, the cold metal making her shiver. They shoved her back into the wooden chair, and left the room.

Claire watched after them, and stood up, her bare feet hugging the cold floor. Kneeling by the chair, she started rubbing the chain connecting the two rings of the handcuffs against one of the chairlegs, hoping that the chain would break and that she would be able to be move her arms freely about her.

Sarah took a deep breath. I’m not crazy, I’m not crazy, she thought. She looked up, cleared her throat, pushed a few stray hairs from her forehead and slid her key card smartly in and out of the sensor. She stepped through the now open doorway and stared down at the winged girl who was now trying to break free from a pair of handcuffs.

“Please stop. I understand that it is a little… unorthodox, but those restraints will only be necessary for today. If you would please sit down so that I can ask you some questions.” Sarah spoke in a very official voice, a voice that breakthrough scientists should always speak in.

She took a seat in the chair opposite the girl. Sarah crossed her legs and set her clipboard on her lap.

Adjusting her glasses, she said,“First of all, what is your name and age? And what are the names and ages of your parents or guardians?”

Sarah said all of this without looking up from her clipboard, the girl’s medical forms and a blank sheet of graphing paper attached. Sarah was excitedly scratching notes about the description and behavior of the bird-child onto the blank sheet of paper.

Claire stopped rubbing her handcuffs as soon as the woman entered the room. Looking up suspiciously, she stayed crouched in her thin dress and care feet, looking up at the woman. As the woman spoke, she was quietly glad that she had paid attention to those people who had talked by her cell-like room of a home. Silently, she moved to the chair and tucked her feet up under her and folded her wings around her, and peered over the edges.

"I'm Claire," she said softly, looking down at the cold floor. "I'm 7." She held up that number of fingers. "What are parents or gua.. guardians?" She asked, struggling slightly on the pronunciation of 'guardians.' She raised her clear blue eyes, wide and innocent.

At least the girl was compliant. She she had sat in the chair without any trouble, and was speaking. This was a good sign that the part of her brain that made her truly human-- emotions, thought process- was intact.

As the girl gave her name and age, Sarah scribbled the information onto a form. But she stopped. She girl didn't know what parents were? This notice stood up in Sarah's mind like a red flag. The babies she had examined earlier that day had no known parents either. All orphans. Sarah was good at making connections, but this was too hard a case to crack without further information about the institution.

"Parents... your mommy and daddy? Do you know their names?" Sarah pressed.

Claire shrugged, peering out cautiously from behind her wings. "I don't know my parents," she answered softly, moving the word 'parents' on her tongue. It tasted strange to her. Her face the picture of pure confusion-- she had always been here, always been in that prison-like room when not being tested by the people in white coats, who always poked and prodded her after making her run various tests.

Claire brought her knees up to her chest, shivering slightly in the air-conditioned room, whishing that she could be warm for once.

((Melanie?))

((You there, Melanie?))

I'm sorry my computer died... Still availiableto role play?

((Yep, I am. That's alright, I haven't been on as often because my teachers have suddenly discovered homework. :( Well, they gave hw before, but now they're just giving more and more....))

(I feel you. I have exams this week. :l I'll try to RP tomorrow.)

Orphans. Okay. Sarah sighed. She did not want to get emotionally attached to this project. That would be unprofessional, and she certainly wouldn't get hired for more work here at this fantastic facility. She just had to separate her feelings for the sake of science.

"Do you have any idea why you are here?" Sarah knew the answer to this question of course. It was on the paperwork. This girl was here because of a rare disease caused by a mutation in her genes. They were going to try and reverse this disease mutation at the lab. That's what the paperwork said, but it was not true. Little did Sarah know, the experiments that were about to be performed on this young irl were heinous and not at all for the girl's wellbeing.

"They... they do tests on me," Claire said softly, peering over her knees at Sarah, shivering. "Bad tests." She tucked her head against her knees after speaking, feeling almost as if she had said too much. She felt as if she could trust this woman, though...

Sarah felt bad for the child. It was true, the experiments with medication and treatment might be painful, but Sarah thought that she could cure the girl of her genetic disease. She was unaware that the bad tests she was speaking about had given the girl wings.

"I'm sorry about that, but hopefully the tests won't last very long this time. I have many new treatments to try and see if I can make you better." Sarah quickly scribbled a note to herself on her clipboard. She should study up on the treatment of children, what words she should use in these interviews. It was obvious that the girl was nervous and Sarah didn't want her to be afraid.

"Okay Claire, that's all I have to say to you tonight. Tomorrow we'll begin with an examination of your health and then start testing you with medicines that will work with your system. Good night!" Sarah nodded and left the interview room. She looked to see the security guards and told them it was okay to escort the patient to her room. They looked at her funny and went into the interview room. One was carrying a large cage.

This job was shrouded in mystery, but Sarah wasn't going to quit after the first day. She went to her room and fell asleep on the couch.

Claire murmured a goodbye to her as she left. When she saw the guards come in with the cage, she shrunk up and folded her wings in front of her, creating feathered ball. The guards shoved her roughly into the cage that they carried, and Claire was left to wait and hope that Sarah would help her out of this place that she'd been trapped in for as long as she could remember. Left to wait for the dawn to rise.

When she woke her hair was in a rat's nest and her makeup was smudged. She was still in her clothes from the day before. Sarah had morning breath that made her gag tasting it. She hoped her appearance wasn't an omen of her day.

She got ready for work and walked from her apartment complex to the lab. Her lab. She was excited to be fresh out of graduate school and have her own place to work and treat people.

She picked up her clipboard at the main desk and headed to her wing of the hospital. She didn't have any other plans today except to begin some experimental treatment on Claire. The chemists had already created six different injections that she would try today. Later on, she hoped to develop her own life-saving medicines, but not today. Today she just had to administer the drugs and record the results in data.

She slid her card through the locked and the doors swooshed open. She liked that sound. The security guards were awaiting her.

"Please prepare the patient for drug administration," she said. She then gathered all the drugs and syringes she needed. When she finally got to the exam room, all white with a clean desk and filing cabinets on one side and large equipment on the other, she was shocked. Lying on a raised table, Claire was unconscious, connected to dozens of small tubes, and chained at each wrist and each ankle. What was this abuse?

Claire struggled through the deep, heavy waters of her unconciousness. When she finally pulled to the surface, she groggily opened her eyes. The first thing that her eyes locked on was Sarah, who was standing at the end of the table that was all too familiar to her.

She wasn't able to speak quite yet, so she tried to talk to Sarah with what body movements she could perform beneath the tight bondage. Please let her release me. Please, please, please....