Riley
The second experiment happened the next day.
And the day after that. And the day after that.
They came for us at 6:00 AM every morning. The door slid open. The guards filled the doorway. The walk through white corridors. The smell of metal and blood and antiseptic. The tables. The straps. The machines.
I stopped counting the days after the first week. Not because I lost track. Because counting was pointless. The days blurred into each other. Wake up. Walk. Strap down. Pain. Fear. Images. Pain. Walk back. Lie on bunk. Stare at ceiling. Repeat.
But I didn't break.
That was the thing. Some kids broke on day two. Some on day three. Some lasted a week. Some lasted two. But one by one, they broke. They screamed until they couldn't scream anymore. They cried until they ran out of tears. They went somewhere else in their heads and didn't come back.
Rachel broke on day four.
I watched it happen. She was three tables to my left, same as the first day. They were doing the electrical calibration. Level three. Level four. She was screaming, same as everyone. But then something changed. Her screams got quieter. Not because the pain stopped. Because she stopped being there.
Her eyes were open. But there was nothing behind them. Just emptiness. Like a house with no one home.
They kept going. Level five. Level six. She didn't scream. She didn't move. She just lay there, her eyes on the ceiling, her body jerking with the current, her face completely blank.
When they unstrapped her, she didn't get up. A guard had to carry her out. Her arms hung limp. Her head lolled. She looked like a doll. A broken doll that someone had thrown away.
I watched her go. I felt nothing.
That was the second week.
---
The scarred girl—Sasha—was still there. Still watching. Still unbroken.
We didn't talk much. There wasn't time. There wasn't energy. But sometimes, in the hours between the experiments and the sleep that wasn't really sleep, she'd look at me from across the room and say something.
"You still haven't screamed."
"No."
"Why not?"
"What's the point?"
She'd think about that. Then she'd nod. Like she understood. Maybe she did.
On the tenth day, they changed the protocol.
They took us to a different room. Smaller. No tables. No straps. Just chairs—metal chairs bolted to the floor, arranged in a circle. A camera in the center, its red light blinking.
Dr. Marlow stood by the door. Her white coat was spotless. Her hair was pulled tight. Her tablet was in her hands.
"Today we begin psychological calibration," she said. "You will be shown images. You will describe what you feel. There are no right or wrong answers."
That was a lie. I knew it. She knew it. There were always right answers.
I sat in one of the chairs. Sasha sat to my right. A boy I didn't know sat to my left. The others filled in the circle. Twelve of us. The ones who hadn't broken. Yet.
The screen flickered on.
The first image was a child. A girl, maybe seven. She was crying. Her face was dirty. Her clothes were torn. She was standing in the middle of a street, alone, surrounded by smoke.
"Describe what you feel," Marlow said.
A girl across the circle spoke first. Her voice shook. "Sad. I feel sad. She's scared. She's alone. Someone should help her."
Marlow nodded. Made a note.
The next kid spoke. A boy with a shaved head and a bruise on his cheek. "Angry. Someone left her. Someone should have protected her."
Another. "Worried. She's not going to make it. Not in a place like that."
Marlow's eyes moved around the circle. Stopped on me.
"Riley."
I looked at the image. The crying girl. The smoke. The empty street.
"She's making noise," I said. "That will attract predators. If she wants to survive, she needs to be quiet and find shelter."
The circle went silent. I felt eyes on me. Sasha's. The boy with the shaved head. The girl who'd said she felt sad.
Marlow smiled. That same smile. The one that said interesting.
"Next image."
The screen changed. A Stalker. Not a photograph this time—a video. Grainy, taken from a distance. The creature was moving through a forest, its body hunched, its head turning side to side like it was looking for something. Its mouth was open. I could see teeth. Too many teeth.
Some kids gasped. One made a sound like she was going to be sick.
"Describe what you feel," Marlow said.
The answers came. Fear. Disgust. Horror. One boy said it made him want to run. A girl said it made her want to cry.
Marlow's eyes found me.
"Riley."
I watched the Stalker move across the screen. Watched the way its body moved—not like an animal, not like a human. Something in between. Something that used to be one and was becoming the other.
"It's hunting," I said. "It's not angry. It's not evil. It's just hunting. That's all it knows how to do now."
Marlow's fingers paused on her tablet.
"And how does that make you feel?"
I thought about it. Really thought. The word was there, somewhere, but I couldn't quite reach it.
"I don't know," I said. "Something. But I don't have a name for it."
Marlow looked at me for a long moment. Then she made a note and moved on.
---
The psychological calibrations continued for three weeks.
Every day, new images. New videos. New questions. They showed us dying people. Dead people. People who had been killed by the virus, by the Stalkers, by each other. They showed us the world we'd left behind—burning cities, empty streets, hospitals overflowing with bodies.
The other kids cried. They looked away. They asked for it to stop.
I watched. I answered. I felt nothing.
Except for the Stalkers. Every time one appeared, that something came back. That feeling I couldn't name. It grew stronger each time. Not fear. Not pity. Something else. Something that lived in the space between my ribs, cold and heavy.
On the fifteenth day, Marlow kept me after the session.
The other kids filed out. Sasha glanced back at me as she left. I gave her nothing.
Marlow stood by the screen, her tablet tucked under her arm. She looked at me for a long moment, her pale eyes studying my face like she was reading a book.
"You're different," she said.
I didn't respond.
"Not just from the others. From everyone I've evaluated. In three years, I've never seen a profile like yours." She pulled up something on her tablet. "Your empathy scores are exceptionally low. Your stress responses are nearly flat. Your pain tolerance is in the ninety-eighth percentile."
She looked at me over the tablet.
"Do you know what that means?"
"It means I'm useful to you."
She smiled. That smile. "Yes. It does. But it also means something else. Something you might not want to hear."
She set the tablet down. Walked toward me. Stopped a few feet away.
"The Stalkers," she said. "The ones in the images. The ones you feel something for. Do you know why they become what they become?"
I waited.
"It's not just the experiments. It's not just the mutations. It's what happens inside their heads. The survival score—you haven't seen yours yet, but you will—it measures something. Adaptability. Ruthlessness. The ability to put survival above everything else."
She paused.
"When the score gets too high, something breaks. Not the body. The mind. The part of you that connects to other people. The part that feels guilt, sympathy, love. It doesn't disappear. It... transforms. You stop seeing humans as people. You start seeing them as obstacles. Resources. Threats."
She looked at me. Her eyes were pale, almost colorless, but there was something in them now. Something that might have been concern. Or curiosity. Or warning.
"The Stalkers don't kill because they're angry. They kill because they've forgotten what it means to be human. They see us the way you saw that girl in the first image. The crying one. You didn't see a child. You saw a liability. A weakness. Something that would attract predators."
She let that hang in the air.
"You're not a Stalker, Riley. Not yet. But the pattern is there. The foundation. And every day, every experiment, every calibration, we're building on that foundation."
She walked back to her tablet. Picked it up.
"The question isn't whether you'll survive the Project. You will. The question is what you'll be when it's over."
She looked at me one last time.
"You're dismissed."
I stood. Walked to the door. Stopped with my hand on the frame.
"Dr. Marlow."
She looked up.
"You said the Stalkers forget what it means to be human. What if they never knew in the first place?"
Her expression didn't change. But something in her eyes flickered.
"That," she said, "is the most honest thing anyone has said in this room."
I walked out.
---
The physical calibrations got worse.
They pushed us harder. Longer. They measured our limits and then pushed past them. They wanted to see where we broke. They wanted to see if we broke.
I didn't break.
But I felt it. The edges of myself, fraying. The cold thing inside me growing. Every day, it got a little bigger. A little stronger. A little louder.
The pain didn't bother me. I'd learned to put it somewhere else. A box in my head. Close the lid. Don't look inside.
The fear didn't bother me. Fear was just chemicals. Just signals. My body could scream all it wanted. I didn't have to listen.
But the Stalkers. The images. The videos. Every time I saw one, that something in my chest got bigger. And I started to understand what it was.
Recognition. That was the word I'd been looking for.
I looked at the Stalkers and I saw something I recognized. Something that lived inside me. Something that had been there since the woods. Since the bus. Since the first foster home, when I learned that crying didn't help and no one was coming and the only person you could count on was yourself.
The Stalkers were what happened when that something took over. When the cold thing ate everything else.
I looked at them and I saw my future.
---
On the twenty-first day, they gave us our numbers.
We were called to the main hall. All of Group Seven. Twenty-three kids walked in. Twelve walked out. The others were gone. I didn't ask where.
Director Vance stood at the front of the room. Same crisp uniform. Same polished boots. Same calm voice.
"You have completed Phase One. Congratulations. You are among the survivors."
He gestured to a screen behind him. Numbers appeared. Names. Scores.
"Your survival scores have been calculated based on your performance. Physical resilience. Psychological adaptability. Pain tolerance. Emotional response. These scores will determine your placement in Phase Two. They will determine your rank. Your resources. Your opportunities."
He paused.
"They will determine if you survive."
I found my name on the screen. Riley Voss. Group Seven. Score: 247.
Sasha was next to me. Her score was 189. The boy with the shaved head—his name was Marcus, I'd learned—had 203. Others ranged from 112 to 178.
No one else was above 200.
Vance was looking at me. I could feel his eyes. The same way Marlow looked at me. Like I was something interesting. Something to study.
"The top scorer in each group receives priority placement in Phase Two. Additional rations. Access to better equipment. First choice of assignments."
He smiled. That thin, rehearsed smile.
"The top scorer in Group Seven is Riley Voss."
Some kids looked at me. Some with envy. Some with fear. I didn't look back at any of them.
"Step forward," Vance said.
I stepped forward.
He handed me something. A band. Black, like the ones the guards wore. But smaller. Thinner. Designed for a wrist.
"This is your scorekeeper. It tracks your vitals. Your location. Your score. It cannot be removed. It cannot be damaged. It cannot be fooled."
I took it. The band was warm. Alive, almost. I slipped it onto my left wrist. It tightened, adjusting to my skin. Then it went still. Like it had always been there.
My score appeared on the small screen. 247.
"Congratulations, Riley," Vance said. "You're off to an excellent start."
I looked at the band. At the number. At the cold, glowing digits.
1. Not high enough to be a monster. Not low enough to be safe. Somewhere in between. Somewhere in the gray.
I looked up at Vance. His face was calm. Waiting.
"What's the highest score?" I asked.
His smile didn't change. But something in his eyes did.
"There is no highest score," he said. "Only what comes after."
---
They gave us one day of rest. Twenty-four hours with no experiments, no calibrations, no images.
I spent it on my bunk, staring at the ceiling, watching the numbers on my wrist. 247. It hadn't changed. It wouldn't change until Phase Two. Until I did something to change it.
Sasha was on her bunk across from me. She was watching me again.
"Two forty-seven," she said. "That's high."
I didn't answer.
"Do you know what it means?"
I turned my head. Looked at her. Her face was bruised. Her scar was white against her skin. But her eyes were still sharp. Still there.
"It means I'm good at surviving," I said.
She shook her head. "It means you're good at not feeling. That's different."
She sat up. Swung her legs over the side of her bunk. Looked at me with an expression I couldn't read.
"My mom used to tell me that feelings are what make us human. That without them, we're just... things. Moving around. Eating. Sleeping. Surviving. But not living."
She paused.
"I used to believe her. Now I'm not sure. Because the ones who feel? They're the ones who broke. The ones who cried. The ones who couldn't take it." She looked at her own wrist. Her score glowed. 189. "Maybe the ones who don't feel are the only ones who make it."
I looked at her for a long moment. Then I looked back at the ceiling.
"Maybe," I said. "But what's the point of making it if you're not human anymore?"
She didn't answer. Neither did I.
We sat in silence, two kids on bunks in a white room on an island we'd never heard of, watching numbers glow on our wrists, waiting for Phase Two to begin.
I thought about Marlow's words. The question is what you'll be when it's over.
I thought about the Stalkers. The way they moved. The way they hunted. The way they looked at humans like they were nothing.
I thought about the woods. The man I'd shot. The way I'd felt nothing when he died.
I thought about Rachel. Her empty eyes. Her blank face. The way she'd walked past me like I wasn't there.
I looked at my wrist. 247.
Not high enough to be a monster. Not low enough to be safe.
But Phase Two hadn't started yet. There was still time. Still room to grow.
I closed my eyes. I let the darkness take me. And I waited.
--------
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