Tobias

Deep underground there is a bunker that barely anyone knows it exists. This was done on purpose of course, they didn’t want anyone to find them and know what they were up to. This mysterious place was up to no good, no good at all. They lived underground with their pasty white skin and light blue eyes, dressed in long white coats and sometimes wore goggles and white masks. They have dedicated their lives to a certain cause and have suffered for it but believe it will be totally worth it. They have been met with nothing but failure for decades but continue to press on with what they believe in.

            Tobias knows nothing of the outside world or what anything but concrete walls and white coated people look like. There is a very faint memory of blue above him, a blue ceiling? Did outside have a really high blue ceiling? He didn’t know but he really liked the color of it. He can’t remember much else no matter how hard he tries to picture it. His life is within this concrete bunker deep under the earth, for his safety they say. He looks around his room with wide blue eyes, sitting on his bed in boredom. The tall bookshelf overflowing with books that have all been read many times sit along one wall, a desk littered with papers and doodles lay across him against another wall. His bed is against the third wall, with a door leading into the hallway of the living quarters on the other beside him. He’s never seen anyone in these living quarters but he knows there are so many of them. He never thought it was very strange to be all alone in the hall, there weren’t any other children that he’s seen to play with in the entire compound anyway.

            He heard them coming so he slowly slid off his bed and onto the little blue rug in the middle of his concrete floor, it spanned from his bed to his desk and the bookshelf, stopping short of the doorway. This has been a daily occurrence for the 12 years he’s been at this compound, they come in their long white coats to escort him away to a strange looking room full of weird pods big enough to hold a person inside, also with metal tables to sit on and many sharp objects. Apparently he lived outside the compound for 3 years and this is where his blue ceiling memory comes from, but it was so long ago he can’t remember anything else. The land above faded from his mind as the concrete walls were all his eyes stared at. The lights were always dim in that large room when he entered, he never knew how they could stay in there and actually do work in that kind of light.

            His bedroom door slid open on its own up into the wall above. He always thought the doors here were cool, most of them opened like this when you pressed a button next to it. There were some boring regular doors but those were for storage rooms and boring rooms to match the doors themselves. They came in wearing their white coats as usual, leading him down the long hall to another door, this one needing a keycard to be inserted instead of having a button to press. He didn’t have a keycard so he could only leave the resident area when they came to get him, not being able to explore because they always escorted him. There were always at least two but this time there were four for some unknown reason. Maybe they knew he was becoming restless and wanting for a bit of an adventure, maybe they knew he planned on escaping and exploring. He couldn’t do that now unfortunately. So he walked on the same path he had many times before, into that large strange room with strange things inside of it. This one required a different keycard but they had it and so the double reinforced metal doors opened and slid into the walls. They led him past the strange pods and into the smaller area with privacy screens and the metal table for him to sit on. The four stayed to keep watch on him while the one specific person came in to poke at his limbs, check his heart and breathing, look in his ears and shine a light into his eyes. He had no idea why they did this so often, his body didn’t change that fast at all. The prodding one left behind one of the screens for a little while but then came back with a syringe in his hands. This was a new development that Tobias did not like at all so he tried to get up and get out of there but the four grabbed him and kept him in place. He wanted to run, the needle looked very painful and he was scared with this new change in his annoying daily routine checkup. He shoved away the man on his right with no problem at all but one of them came up behind him and held him slightly in the air by wrapping their arms around his chest and picking him up. He kicked at the others in front of him and struggled but the syringe man came up from behind, where he couldn’t kick, and stuck it in his left arm. He felt the mystery fluid enter his body and struggled even more, finally able to squirm out of the man’s grip. He ran down past the strange pods and into the hallway because they forgot to shut the doors. Going the opposite direction of his room, he went through an open door from one of them entering that area also. This seemed to be another living area with more rooms. He felt his body becoming weaker and his vision was becoming more blurry but he continued to run from the ones chasing him. He entered the commons area and threw himself behind the bar area because nobody was back there. Tobias did look across the room from behind the corner of the bar and saw something strange. He didn’t know if it was his blurring vision and fading consciousness playing tricks on him or not, but the person across from him had glowing blue tubes coming from his head. They attached a strange metallic part on top of his head to the lower back of his head. It looked like the top of his head was made of metal but that didn’t seem right, people didn’t have metal heads. That young man looked over at Tobias and he had what looked like a gas mask on with parts of it glowing the same blue as the tubes in his head. His eyes looked very strange, one had a white diamond shape in place of a pupil and the other was a glowing blue with a sort of crosshair from a weapon scope. Tobias didn’t remember much else about the kid other than those really strange out of place things because soon after they made eye contact his head hit the floor as he fell into unconsciousness.

            He woke back up in his bed extremely confused. He was very sure that day wasn’t a dream up until that strange person, it seemed like something out of one of his books rather than a real thing. He couldn’t quite remember what happened after that, only small flashes came back to him but he couldn’t be sure if those were even real either. He remembered seeing his right arm in one of their hands, detached from his body. But he looked over and saw his right arm was still attached to himself so that seemed impossible. He laid in bed for a while longer pondering what strange things he saw and if they could even be possible before slowly sitting up and shakily getting to his feet. He quietly padded across his room on the soft blue carpet and opened his bedroom door to wander down into the commons area. Nobody was ever down there but he wanted to wander around a little bit. That ended up being boring so he then made a mission to go into every single room in the hall and search around to see if there was a stray keycard left over. In the fifteenth room he tripped on the bunched up rug and fell to the floor, conveniently spotting something slid underneath the desk and nearly hidden. He grabbed at it and found out it was a keycard. It was very dusty so it must have been there for a long while, he wasn’t sure it would work but had to try. He ran out of the room and down the hall, straight to the large door at the end. He slid the keycard into the slot and the little light turned green before the door slid open.

            He stuck to the wall and peered around the corners, not seeing any of them in the crossway of four halls, including the one that led to that horrible room he went to each day full of those white coated people. Tobias decided the best thing to do was run to the hall straight across from him where the strange blue tube person was. They keycard also worked for that door and once he was in he calmed down a little bit, they rarely came into this hall either. It looked too dirty for that with all the dust layers by the doors. He made his way into that hall’s commons area hoping that strange person was still in there. To his dismay there was nobody there. He kind of expected that though, the strange stuff they injected him with must have messed with his mind. He then decided to check each of these rooms too, just for the fun of it and a bit of extra adventure even though he felt like the rooms would look the same as the fifteen he’d been through already today. He started with the ones nearest the commons and worked his way down the hall, finding nothing very exciting at all. But at least it was a new place and a small adventure. Tobias stopped in the hallway because of some sounds he heard. Usually places like this were deathly quiet but he heard something, a scooting noise. He traced the sound to one room and stood outside of it with his right ear to the door. He always heard better with that ear for some reason, along with seeing better with that eye. His hand hovered over the button to open the door, he had no idea what was behind it and it scared him. Tobias had come to expect every single moment of his day for 12 years so the unknown scared him. He reminded himself he wanted adventure and this was it, he pressed the button with his palm and the door opened into the wall, as they all do.

            The strange person was not a figure of his imagination, they were sitting at the desk in this room. He turned his head to look at Tobias with those strange eyes, an expressionless stare. Tobias wanted to run but at the same time curiosity kept him glued to the floor, this person looked so strange. The door was going to close automatically so he took a few steps into the room while staring at the other.

            He finally spoke, “I’m Tobias.” His social skills were greatly lacking but he felt like it was the right thing to start out with.

            “5,” the strange guy said.

            “5? That’s a number not a name.” Tobias looked at him in confusion, what was this guy? He didn’t look normal and he didn’t even have a normal name.

            “I don’t have a name. I’m just called Subject 5, but 5 is easier to say,” his voice surprisingly wasn’t muffled by his mask. It was like the mask amplified and cleared his voice.

            “How can you not have a name?” Tobias stepped closer and scrunched up his face. “Everyone has a name, there’s no way around that.”

            “My name is long forgotten, ever since they made me into this,” he gestured to his body and head. “They took it with them when they took my humanity.”

            They took away his humanity? That seemed impossible. Granted, he didn’t look like a normal person does but he still looked enough like a person and even acted like one. “What do you mean by that? And since you’re Subject 5 doesn’t that mean there were others? Usually a number like that means there were others before.”

            5 looked away at the floor, this one had no carpet and just bare concrete flooring. “The others weren’t successful. They didn’t make it, not even 6 did,” he looked back to Tobias and shrugged his shoulders. “I really liked her, she lasted longer than the others. It was nice not being the only one here but she went away too.”

            “Went away? What do you mean? Did they take the others away? Those strange people in the white coats. I don’t like them at all,” Tobias made a face of disgust.

            “You mean the scientists? Yes they did, and I hate them for reasons different than yours,” he stood up with a pen in his hand still. “Did they keep you in the dark? If you don’t even know what they are then you probably don’t know what we are. You look pretty normal though…but you have to be one since they came running after you earlier. Let me see,” he gestured for Tobias to give him his arm. 5 was acting very strange, Tobias had no idea what he was talking about. Scientists? What we are? He must be delusional so Tobias was becoming cautious once again, backing away slowly to the door. But 5 closed the gap between them and grabbed Tobias’s arms and stared into his eyes, faces inches from each other. He was looking for a sign but Tobias had no idea what, he was just a normal person and this 5 was delusional. But he saw something and before Tobias could react, stabbed the pen into his right arm. He just looked down in horror as the pen stuck out of his arm. There was no pain, no blood, and it didn’t even get very far in his arm. 5 yanked it out and there was just a gaping hole in his arm, beneath what appeared to be a few layers of squishy skin and fatty stuff was gleaming metal. Tobias poked at it with his left hand, poking his finger into the hole to touch the metal beneath. He then just looked at 5 with questioning eyes and a face full of disbelief. He couldn’t process what happened.

            “You’re Subject 7, the first successful one out of all of us. We’re cyborgs now. Once upon a time we were just regular humans, but these scientists thought it would be a good idea to take us apart and rebuild us with metallic pieces. They’ve only replaced your right side with technology though, I can tell your left is still flesh and blood. Apparently, they found the perfect way to do it so it would sustain itself, unlike with me,” he gestured to his mask and the tubes in his head. “They tried too hard to merge me with metal parts and technology so this happened. They wanted me to be like a computer, store information and things like that so they messed with my head first. I don’t know how much of my brain is actually a brain rather than wires but they messed something up pretty bad, I can’t breathe without this mask on. They also did something to my chest,” he unzipped his sweater to show the huge scar splitting his body in two parts from his chest down to his pants. “I have no idea why they opened me up there or what they did but whatever it was, it didn’t fix anything and probably made it worse. But you,” he got closer to Tobias. “You’re different. You didn’t even know what they were or what you were. I guess they made their ultimate weapon, a naïve child so you would just do whatever they wanted you to. Somehow they made you forget about everything they did.”

            The reality of the situation finally hit Tobias as 5 was talking. “I’m the seventh then? The seventh cyborg these…scientists have made? Am I supposed to be a weapon?” He looked at 5 in panic. A weapon was exactly what he didn’t want to be and that part about forgetting worried him too. What could they have made him do and forget about?

            5 looked at him in pity. “Everything would be so much easier if you knew what was going on here. This place is an illegal research facility where they do crazy things the government would never allow. They must have brought you here when you were very young then if you don’t know anything about this. You should check around in the lab to see what they really do. They usually aren’t in there at night. I can’t do it myself because I don’t have a keycard and they usually keep a close eye on me at night since I’ve snuck out before. But just so you know, you can totally beat them with that arm of yours,” he gestured toward the arm with the newly made hole in it. “It’s pretty strong so you can throw them around with just that arm,” he shrugged. “You should go now while you can, they wander my hall pretty soon to make sure I’m not making things to escape with.” He pushed Tobias out the door. “I wish you luck. Also, hide that hole in your arm for now. If you get caught out there don’t let them see it or they might do some horrible things to you, I honestly don’t know what they’d do but I sure know what they’re capable of.”

            Tobias left the room and went down the hall to the keycard door, listened hard for the scientists to make sure they weren’t out there already, then opened the door and left. He quietly and carefully made his way to the lab before realizing he didn’t have the right keycard to get in there. He would either have to go down the other unexplored hall or wait around for someone to enter or exit the lab. He decided to undo the vent and crawl into it and wait for someone to exit the lab so he could sneak in. He didn’t want to get caught and that seemed like the safest option at the moment. His head was also spinning because of this turn of events. He wasn’t human, he was a cyborg, part machine. He wondered if he even had guts or if that was mechanical too. He looked at his arm again, at the hole. There was no denying it was metal but the real question was, how far did it go? He didn’t even know how much of him was human anymore. It all looked normal on the outside but for all he knew all his insides could be mechanical. Was he even human anymore?

            His head jerked to the side as he heard the door open and someone leave. The door usually stayed open for a little while before closing again so he waited until he was sure the scientist wouldn’t see him before darting into the room, staying close to the walls. There was nobody around him so he decided to check into the strange human-sized pods because those were pretty suspicious. There was a small section of glass at the top of each one so he peeked inside of a few but they turned up empty. The ones closer to the area of metal tables were full though, full of people. Some had been mutilated and replaced with metal parts but a few were still human on the outside, he couldn’t tell what their insides were. Maybe they all had mechanical insides, maybe he did too. There wasn’t really a way to tell without cutting himself open and he’d rather avoid that.

            He moved on to the area with tables and sharp objects. Objects used to cut into skin and bone, to replace human with robot. He quickly went past that and to a computer. It seemed a bit strange but he thought the scientists probably put all their records on that computer for easy access. This was very true, he found so much information on there about the experiments conducted down there in that bunker. There were so many subjects but so many had ‘failed’ written in the status section. Only subject 7’s status section was ‘pending.’ They must not have finished their tests, he thought, or else it would say ‘success.’ He read into the reports and saw that his insides were actually normal human guts for the most part. His heart and lungs were not though, he had no idea how that even worked but apparently it did because he was still alive. His entire right side, including his spine and eye, were not flesh, blood and bone. He suddenly wanted to get out of there. He wanted to go back to how things were, back when he felt human. Back before he ever met 5 and learned about the scientists and what they did to him. What these people did was unforgiveable, they wanted to make the ultimate weapon. A person with built in weapons, impenetrable skin, and the knowledge of centuries all accessible at once. They wanted to become all powerful and run the government, wage wars and win them. These scientists were horrible people, mutilating innocents and breaking the laws in their hideaway base to become more powerful than anything in the world. Tobias was disgusted with them and what they had done.

            He ran back to his room and spent the night, or what he thought was night since he never saw the sun rise or set, torturing himself by thinking how much humanity was left in him. If only half of him was still human did that mean he was still human or only half human? He didn’t want to be a cyborg, he never did. But he wasn’t really a human with these metal parts in him keeping him alive. He wanted to leave, to go outside and leave this entire place behind. He decided that’s what he was going to do the next morning, when they come for him he’ll throw them all aside and grab 5 to come with him. 5 seemed to know a lot about the place so he probably knew the exit, plus he’d probably need him to get past all the scientists. He hoped they didn’t have weapons or anything because that would complicate everything.

            Tobias awoke earlier than he usually did, the clock on his desk read an earlier time than usual. He didn’t get much sleep because of those new revelations. He decided that instead of waiting for the scientists to come and get him and make a huge commotion, he’d go and grab 5 way before then and they’d sneak out together. Just in case the scientists did have weapons hidden somewhere. So he did the same as before and snuck into the other hall and into 5’s room. He was there sitting in the chair again as if he never slept.

            “We should go now while they aren’t out there, come on!” Tobias grabbed his arm and pulled him out of the chair, dragging him out the door.

            “Okay then,” 5 seemed like he knew what was going on, like he had been expecting this and waiting for it. Maybe that was why he wasn’t sleeping.

            “I hope you know a way out of this terrible place, I don’t want to spend another second here. These ‘scientists’ took everything away from us, they’re monsters.” 5 just nodded as they made their way down that last hallway quietly. Nobody was out, which was normal yet strange at the same time. It made things easier on them obviously.

            “This way,” 5 pointed down another hallway that had stairs leading up. “Now they might regret putting that wiring in my brain because I know the entire layout of this place. There is an elevator but these stairs will be safer, they usually take the elevators themselves. We’ll go down a few different halls to get to other stairs but we’ll make it out eventually.”

            After a while of wandering down more empty halls and up more stairwells, they finally made it to a giant door in the wall. It was huge and circular, spanning from the floor to the ceiling far above their heads. This was the kind of door that rolled to the side in order to open, and was activated by a console a little ways away from it.

            “Well, this is it,” 5 looked at Tobias. “This was so much easier than I thought it would be. I was sure they’d be after us by now.”

            Tobias went over to the console, there was a lever to pull so it would open. He pulled it and a loud alarm came on. They both jumped and looked around in panic, afraid a bunch of the scientists would come out with weapons to drag them back down in the depths. But nobody came and the door began to roll to the side. Behind it was another door, a regular boring door that lead outside. Now they heard shouting behind them, the alarm went off throughout the entire compound. They both ran to the slowly opening circular door and squeezed through it as the first few shouting scientists made their way into that room. 5 pulled at the regular door and it opened into an extremely bright day out in the open, above ground. Both of them were blinded by the sun but they ran as fast as their legs could carry them, as far away from the compound as they could.

            Years later, 5 and Tobias had adjusted to human life above ground. 5 always got strange looks from the people around them but Tobias was never treated any different. Life with humans far away from the compound was very nice, they got to travel around the world and see new things. They also got to meet many people and make friends. He realized, through these new friends, that he was still human despite the mechanics inside him. So was 5, even though he didn’t look like a normal person and had way more mechanical parts inside than Tobias did. The real ones who had lost their humanity were not the ones who lost their physical bodies, they were the ones who lost their souls. They were the ones who sold themselves to the devil, so to speak. Those scientists in the bunker deep underground were the ones who lost their humanity. They were so dedicated to becoming powerful that they even went as far as to mutilate and murder other human beings to reach that goal. Tobias and Subject 5, even though many things had been taken away from them, still had that essence of humanity left in them. They had kindness in their hearts and weren’t corrupted by selfish want for power. They still had the capacity to feel, to care, and to help others. The scientists in that bunker no longer had that ability nor the want to have it. They had become monsters and traded their humanity for selfish power. They thought they were creating something better and improving upon it but in reality they were destroying it and straying far away from humanity.