Room seven smells like dirt. Probably because the room is full of dirt and other earthy things.

  I don’t want to know what all of those earthen spikes are for. I really don’t want to get stabbed. Though I don’t know how getting stabbed holds up with the general terror of being kidnapped?

  It would definitely hurt a lot more.

  I’m not sure how they’re going to get me to develop super powers, but I’m really hoping it’s not something super painful?

  It’s going to be painful, I’m sure I’ve totally cursed myself, ?but if I’m going to get accidentally torn to pieces and get something like regeneration so that no matter what they do to me my body will stitch itself back together or grow new pieces.

  They would use me as some sort of super organ and limb donor, tearing me apart for the rest of eternity.

  …that was real somber, Jason. You really think it’s going to go that bad? I muse to myself.

  They’ve kidnapped a lot of people. It’s not like that would be entirely unnoticed, right? So the police are already on it and I’m sure that a super is going to be coming.

  Unless they just kidnapped homeless people and shit?

  Amelia and the gang will probably realize within two days that I’m missing if I haven’t responded to any messages. But other than that? How many of them will actually care? There have definitely been times where I’ve gone MIA for weeks just to take some space for myself?

  Some of my friends are definitely going to notice and maybe even check on me, but till that happens, nobody is going to come looking for me and nobody is going to try to rescue me.

  Maybe one of the other people kidnapped is super famous and we’re going to get out of this lickity split.

  I move my arms a bit, trying to come up with a more comfortable position with the bindings.

  It’s not going particularly well.

  But I can at least stand which is nicer?

  Though being forced to stand and having my hands bound to the ceiling, leaving them constantly in the air is going to irritate me eventually.

  Is there anything I can do to get out of these leather cuffs? I don’t think so? At least I can’t come up with a method for me to do something?

  I wish I knew why they weren’t using metal cuffs or anything like that? Wouldn't chains be a lot more secure? At least in all the shows I watch, they use tons of metal and chains to restrain someone.

  If I ever get this gag removed from my mouth, I will have to ask.

  Maybe I should come up with a list of questions I want to ask and in the order of priority? I muse to myself, looking up at the ceiling in contemplation. I know this is just a tactic for me to keep myself grounded, but is there a problem with that? I’m going to vote no.

  Keeping myself mostly cool is a very worthy goal at the moment.

  Most of my questions just boil down to the five W’s and how. So I actually need to think if there are any questions I have besides that.

  Before I can come up with any more questions, the door slams open and someone in a nurse cosplay walks in.

  I don’t have the brain space to wonder why one of these evil scientists is wearing a nurse cosplay. I’m just going to roll with it right now.

  “Hi!” she cheers as she shuts the door behind her. “My name is Andromeda, and I’m going to be the one helping you on your journey to get superpowers,” she says, as she blurs for a moment before splitting into two people.

  Duplication, or maybe I’m losing it from all the drugs in my system? You know I’m just going to believe that it’s a duplicator because if I already lose my trust in my brain, there’s nothing else for me to do.

  “So, what kinds of powers are you hoping to get out of this?” She asks as she sets up her work station.

  Being gagged, I don’t say anything, but I look at her pointedly.

  She looks at me expectantly. “You know, it’s quite rude to not respond to me.”

  I continue to look at her. I’m not trying to be defiant or anything, but still.

  Her eyes seem to light up with some amount of understanding and she splits into a third one of herself, which walks over to me.

  “Let’s get that gag off of you since now that you’re in this room, you won’t bother the others, and your verbal cues can really help the experiment,” the nurse says, pulling out the gag.

  “What are you?” I ask since apparently that is the question that I can think of first.

  For a brief instance, I considered spitting in her face or something like that, but I don’t want to get slapped, so I’m going to refrain from doing something stupid like that.

  “I’m your nurse. So I’m going to be the one who tests various things until we get you to unlock your potential,” she says happily.

  “But what happens after that?” I ask quietly as she sticks even more sensors on my body, though she doesn’t start injecting me with more of that neon goop, which is a win for me.

  I feel like it’s still wiggling around inside my body, doing all sorts of who knows what.

  “Well, if your power is good and you’re the sort, maybe you’ll get to be a nurse like me and we can find you a costume. Or maybe an enforcer who helps us find new suspects or defend our labs,” she explains as she puts a sensor on my forehead.

  “And if I don’t get powers?”

  “Oh, you will definitely get powers. Or die. But if you die, it doesn’t matter what we’re going to be doing with your body now, does it?” She points out.

  “What would you do?”

  “Oh, we would probably take apart whatever is left of your body and then we’ll find someone without the potential for powers and stitch them together to make a Frankenstein's monster to see what would happen,” she hums happily.

  “I—”

  “Don’t worry, you’re probably not going to die. There’s very little we can’t fix if we respond in time.”

  I’m not assured.

  “I’m never going home, am I?” I say quietly.

  “Well, if you think of home as the place you are most valued, it is definitely here, so you are already home. After all, you were just a normal human before we picked you up. Now you’re going to be something important,” she says before her two duplicates leave the room to go do other tasks? “Now we have some privacy from them,” she says as the computer chirps.

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  “Aren’t they you?”

  “No.”

  “Okay?”

  “Alright so we’re only going to do this for a little bit since we don’t want to break you too bad while we throw stone spears at you,” Andromeda says cheerily.

  “Thank you?” I shrug. I’m more trying to prepare for the idea that I’m going to be literally stoned.

  “You’re welcome, so I’m going to hide over here and you’re going to get hit by a ton of rocks and you’re going to develop super powers and then we can be best friends!” She cheers.

  There’s a thwump of air and some kind of hard object slams into my leg as I let out a whimper of pain.

  However much I cry for a reprieve my calls fall on deaf ears as she doesn’t seem inclined to stop at all.

  The small stones pelt me all over my body, making it incredibly hard to think my entire train of thought, stopping as soon as one knocks me in the head with just enough force for me to feel pain.

  Unable to help myself, I count each impact. Just that simple task is helping me stay sane. None of these attacks are really painful and I can’t feel anything in my body breaking.

  It just hurts.

  Yet it always seems to pull back just enough when I start to feel myself losing my grip on consciousness and reality.

  They need me to stay cognizant. I realize. That gives me some sort of power in this situation, right?

  I have the power here because they need me to stay awake and functioning if they want me to develop powers.

  I just need to knock myself out. Somehow.

  I don’t know how to do that.

  I just try my best to ride the storm.

  After who knows how long the throwing of stones ends and I can’t help but sob in joy at the onslaught ending.

  Even if I can’t help but feel phantom pains across my body, expecting impacts that, at least for now, aren’t ever going to be.

  I try to take steadying breaths, but I can barely hold myself up anymore. I am closer to just dangling from my wrists.

  I would love to lie down now.

  “Hmm, that didn't work the way I wanted it to,” Andromeda muses, as she types away at her computer. “But before we go onto the next one, you’re due for a refill,” she says, attaching the tube to the syringe still in my arm.

  I watch in horror as once more that viscous liquid flows towards me before inevitably entering my body and once more rewriting my entire existence.

  It doesn’t hurt nearly as much as last time and instead of a scream of pain, it’s closer to a whimper of despair.

  In ten more experiments, I’ll be done and fully adjusted to the pain at this rate.

  “What’s next?” I ask. Knowing what’s going to happen has to be so much easier than not knowing what’s around the corner. At least this way I can try to prepare for it.

  “I’m going to bury you alive and slowly deprive you of oxygen at the risk of brain damage,” she explains, letting more of the power elixir fill my body.

  Okay, maybe that is worse than me not knowing. I’m not sure how I’m supposed to mentally prepare for being buried.

  “And what am I supposed to do to make this nightmare end?” I ask, not liking how jittery I’m feeling as more and more energy pulses into me endlessly.

  “Well, adrenaline is supposed to help a lot with triggering powers so get scared or angry and then develop geokinesis so that we have an earth manipulator on staff and it’s a lot easier to set up labs in all of the cities,” She says, setting up something behind me.

  “Labs?”

  “Yeah, did you think Alchemist was so small time that we only had a location in this shithole of a city?” It’s really hard to hear her with her being behind me.

  They’re doing this to multiple cities. How wide scale is this? I’m subject forty-three, right? Does that mean that I’m the forty-third potential super candidate across all of their sites or just this one? I rock on the balls of my feet, trying to figure out if there’s anything I can do.

  However, even knowing my capabilities doesn't stop the idle daydream of what if I was a kung fu god and could choke out Andromeda just with my legs? Even if I have a better chance of developing teleportation and being able to escape.

  After I’m dosed with whatever counts as enough juice, she uncuffs me from the ceiling beam and carries me over her shoulder towards the back wall of the room.

  My legs twitch as I consider the idea of kicking her. I immediately stop. I’m too tired to try. The pain is a lot. And I don’t feel fully connected to my body anymore. It’s like I’m floating, separated from it.

  I get my wish and I am laid down in some sort of bed thing, though I’m not free to move around. Both my wrists and ankles are bound to new restraints, leaving me unable to move once more.

  Once I’m secure, Andromeda leans over the side of the device to give me a wave. “I hope this works forty-three because the next ones are going to be less fun,” she says giggling.

  The next thing I see is a lid slamming shut and the sounds of locks clicking into place.

  I’m in a coffin. I think, laughing at the hysteria of the situation hitting me. She’s literally going to bury me alive so I get magical earth powers.

  My stomach rolls as I feel myself and the coffin slide in the direction of my head until we slam into something.

  There’s the sound of another click and I can’t help but imagine a tv show morgue where the bodies are in those capsules in the wall. Mine is just to bury me alive instead of to store an already dead person.

  My breathing gets more difficult as I do my best to not freak out.

  I try to shift around in this tomb and I have no space to move. I also really wish I could scratch any of my itches from the places where my skin broke from all the rock throwing that’s slowly beginning to knit together.

  “Alright forty-three, I’m going to leave the automated system on and go check on the others. I’ll come back in a few days!”

  With each breath, I can feel less air getting into my body and that I’m shutting down.

  At least I feel like it.

  The less air that’s reaching my lungs, the more distant I feel from my body, as if I’m trying to strain against an elastic band that’s holding my consciousness back.

  Fuck it. What else can I do now? I close my eyes and try to increase the feeling of distance.

  I want to break that elastic band. To be free. To not be doing this anymore.

  Not having any stimulus beyond what my brain can muster and the sound of the vacuum, I go adrift.

  Actually, there’s a third stimulus. That burning sensation as the serum courses through my body, changing it, warping it. Making whatever it wants from my flesh.

  “I don’t want to be a monster,” my voice small. I immediately kick myself mentally for wasting more air talking.

  What I need to do is fall asleep.

  I think sleeping people use less air, right?

  Just have to stay as till as possible and let myself fall asleep and I can last a lot longer, right?

  The rubber band connecting my consciousness to my body snaps. Whether it broke or I just snapped back, I don’t know.

  I let out a shriek of pain as I can feel my entire body light up with pain. It feels as if my very eyes are melting down and being formed into something else.

  My body shakes with pain as I thrash around in the limited space that I have.

  Power pours into me.

  An endless stream of energy suffusing my very existence as I thrash about my entire being becoming one with the energy pouring through me.

  Even as the pain rocks my body, I can feel my mind becoming clearer. I can feel my body recovering from all the injuries.

  Over and over again, the energy pulses through me, breaking my body down and stitching itself back together.

  The cycle is endless.

  Or it is until my entire world goes dark.

  When coming to, I know I’m still in the coffin. But my body no longer hurts, and my heartbeat is steady.

  I can think clearly I don’t feel devoid of oxygen or energy. Honestly, I feel like I just woke up from a perfect night's rest.

  Second, my arms and legs are no longer bound. While I’m still stuck in this godforsaken coffin, I can at least move about a bit.

  And boy, does it feel wonderful to scratch that itch that’s been bothering me for who knows how long?

  Thankfully, I’m not so out of it that I don’t realize what’s happened to me. I’ve mutated I’m no longer human and I’m something more now.

  I have powers. And at least one of those is being able to function without air. Or at least I can function with significantly less of it.

  Maybe also some super strength? At least enough to break the leather straps while I was having a turning into a whole new person seizure.

  A mad giggle escapes my lips at the idea. At least right now, in this exact moment, not only do I have powers, but I am free.

  That river of energy I felt while changing is still there, begging to be released. With a slight pulse of will, I let it spill out more to see what it can do.

  There’s space beneath me.

  That realization makes me freeze. I don’t know how I know that. But I do. Even more than the sensation of what is up and down, the fact that there’s an empty space below me is an inescapable truth, one inescapable.

  That clarity cuts through the phantom pains of my body reconstituting itself into a superhuman physique, and it even pierces through the bliss of feeling energized.

  There’s more information flooding my mind. More than just the ability to know what’s around me, even through these solid barriers.

  I can escape.

  That thought makes me smile. I am going to do so.

  I let myself fall.