Umbilical Cords

"If Subject number 2819 wouldn't mind getting up."

They knew fairly well that he was awake. They watched him through that camera in the corner 24/7. Nothing got past them. But if it did, that was the purpose of the collar around his neck. One press of the button from the control room, and a surge of electricity would swim through his body.

Subject 2819 had no idea why he even existed.

The voice that had called on him had the cold robotic tone of complete detachment. It was drilled almost directly into his brain through a shell shaped ear piece on the right side of his head.

He opened his eyes and swung his legs over the side of his bed while pulling the rest of his body up and staring straight at the camera. He knew that the girl speaking to him actually had a soft, melodious voice. He had only heard it once and it was the only time she hadn't ordered him around.

The Subject then surveyed his surroundings as he always did, just to make sure they hadn't moved him somewhere else while he was sleeping. They had. He remembered falling asleep in a bedroom aptly equipped with a television, a bed, a nightstand, and a bookshelf stacked with reading material just the day before. Now his bed was crammed in the corner of a cold bathroom with white tiled walls, a bare concrete floor, a large bathtub and a sink.

"Subject number 2819. Get up."

Sighing, he followed the order she gave him, but immediately had to sit back down on the side of the bed as he felt a sudden, all-too-familiar pain.

"Excuse me. I've forgotten to mention that this will be a group exercise. If the partner of the subject fails to follow instructions, the subject may occasionally be punished as well."

He had gotten used to the lack of personal pronouns a long time ago.

In the control room, Ms Y took a deep breath as she prepared to give out her next instruction.

"If Subject number 2819 wouldn't mind washing Subject number 2819's face."

Then she leaned back in her chair, taking her eyes away from the screen in front of her and casting a glance at her colleague. She knew her only as Ms S. In fact, it had been such a long time that she was beginning to forget her own name as well.

Ms S was struggling, to put it lightly. Subject 1404 refused to listen to her, and although electrocution worked most times, increasing the voltage too much would result in death, and no one wanted to live with the consequences of killing their test subject.

Ms Y smiled as she remembered the conversation she had had with her own test subject not so long ago.

"You can turn the camera off?" he had said, incredulously staring at her as she had closed the door of the testing room behind her.

"I get about an hour, if I ask nicely, to get to know you better."

He had gasped loudly. She had used the word 'you'.

"Sit down," she had giggled and gestured towards the bed then proceeded to sit next to him. "Do you know what your name is?"

"Subject 2819," he had said 'twenty-eight-nineteen', which did make it sound a bit more like a name than 'two-eight-one-nine'.

"Twenty-eight-nineteen," she had repeated gently, but pried no further. "Do you know how old you are?"

"I know I've been here for 10 years. I think I remember they said I was 25 when I first woke up, but I don't know what that means."

Ms Y had patiently explained something no human being should be deprived of.

"They meant 25 years old. So you had lived for 25 years. You've been here for 10 years, so that means..."

"I've existed for 35 years."

'Existed', she had thought. 'How bleak.'

"How long have you existed?"

She had wondered if she should tell him the truth. At the time she had seen no real harm in it, yet as she thought about it now, Ms Y told herself she should have known better.

"I'm 19 years old. I'm a...student," noticing he had no idea what that meant, she had tried to break it down into bite size pieces, but keep it as vague as possible. Had she given too much detail everything would have been over for her in an instant. "This place is a...facility, where they send the children who want to...know more about the world. I have been a part of this place since I was 10. They bring us here and teach us how the human mind works. We learn about will-power and emotion and the like. Then, when we reach our final year, we're allowed to practice what we've learned. To see how it works."

"So this is your final year?" she had noticed something in his eyes; a glimmer. Later on, she had made a note of it in the diary they provided her with. She was one of the few students at the facility who had witnessed hope.

"Yes it is," Ms Y replied, taking one of his hands in hers. She could feel his pulse increase progressively.

"Then will they, you know...let me out?"

In the space of the pause she had taken before she had replied, many things were said as their eyes met. Pain, confusion and fear had all traversed back and forth through the boundaries of their hearts. He wanted to get out, but was afraid of what might wait for him on the other side. She wanted to go back home, but was afraid of losing the rush of being able to control not only another's life but also her own. Just like him, she too was constantly watched. Unlike him though, when she had stepped foot into the facility she had stopped receiving direct orders.

"I don't know," the light inside had him died as soon as she had spoken. "B-but, I don't care. Listen. There will be a final exam, soon. It has to do with taking you outside of the campus; I know that much and I promise I will let you go."

Her attempt to save herself had come too late. It had been like blowing into a pile of ashes that would fly straight into her face.

He had pulled his hand away from hers, and had nodded slowly while turning his attention to another part of the room.

"This bruise," he said after a few seconds, pointing to an ugly purplish stain on his left forearm. "How did I get this?"

Ms Y stared at it intently for a few seconds, as if completely hypnotized by the clotted blood underneath the surface of the skin, before comparing it to the one on her own left forearm.

"Uuuhm..." she sounded like a broken radiator. "They said...they said this sort of thing...could happen."

"I have a memory of bumping into the sharp end of a metal table, while someone says 'It won't do you any good, caring so much'. But that's not my memory," the subject spoke so factually that she would have been inclined to believe him even if she hadn't recognized the memory he spoke of as her own.

"Right, uh, I need to go now," Ms Y had gotten up and shuffled to the door.

Just before she walked out, he had said:

"We depend on each other don't we?" there was a pause, "Well, I'll never betray you."

Going over it now made her want to save him even more than before. The test was only two weeks away.

Turning her attention back to the task at hand, Ms Y followed the instructions she herself was given.

"Subject 2819, walk over to the bathtub."

It had been filled with water to the brim beforehand. He complied silently.

"Subject 2819, enter the bathtub. Clothes can stay on or come of, subject to the subject's choice," she giggled at her own joke but he made no sign of acknowledging it.

He got into the mass of water fully clothed and allowed the tub to vomit some of its
excess onto the concrete floor.

"If Subject 2819 would be so kind as to submerge the subject's body completely." He hesitated, so she quickly added, as instructed, "Subject 2819 is reminded that being electrocuted at this point in time will lead to instant death. Subject 2819 will be given a minute to contemplate that fact."

Taking a deep breath, her test subject submerged himself completely.

He kept his eyes wide open, although he wasn't completely sure if she could see.

She had promised to let him go, so he trusted her. As minutes passed, his lungs began to demand air, his throat began to burn, and his heart banged loudly against his ribcage in protest. He tried to remain as still as possible but his body was begging to be allowed to convulse in answer to the pain. The blurry brightness before his eyes slowly lost some of its glow and darkness enveloped him in patches.

But he didn't dare defy her orders.

It would get both of them in trouble.

"What is she doing? SEND HER TO HIM!" Ms Y began to panic as her eyes shifted from her screen to her colleague's.

"Subject 1404, this is a final warning. Walk through the door on your right," Ms S was calm but her trembling hands betrayed the underlying emotions.

Subject 1404—Ms Y thought of her as 'fourteen-oh-four' – stood defiantly in front of the door and waited for the next electric shock.

"Ms S, he's drowning! Please, do something; anything!"

With a resolve that Ms Y had never seen before, Ms S grabbed the microphone in front of her and forcefully drove each word into it.

"Robin, if you do not walk through that door right now, the man in the next room is going to die. Do you understand? I don't care about your sorrow or how much you miss your family. I miss my family too. Everyone in this dammed facility misses someone. Go in there and save him so we can all go home."

She then closed her mouth and turned slowly to her colleague. Neither one of the women was quite sure of what had just happened. Down in the test room, Subject 1404 was staring at the camera.

"You know her name," Ms Y breathed.

"She remembers more than most," was the stale reply Ms S sent back.

Subject 1404, or Robin, pushed her own shock aside and bolted through the door into
Subject 2819's bathroom.

As two pairs of eyes watched the screen attentively, the female test subject pulled her partner out of the tub. Yet his body was limp as it collapsed on the floor and no amount of pushing and pulling would wake him up. Although she remembered more than most, and although she had been a coast guard, Robin had no idea how to give CPR. The students were not allowed to interfere.

Subject 2819 was dead.

A loud, ear-splitting screech reverberated through the control room. Ms Y flinched, thoroughly annoyed at how someone could be so insolent as to scream at a time like this, before she noticed the sound was coming from her own throat.

Faintly, in the background, she heard Ms S make a phone call.

"Yes, we have a problem in Control Room 5.  It's Code 112. An umbilical cord has been severed prematurely. "