Chapter 1: The Morning Video
The hum was the first thing. A low, electrical thrumming in the bones of the building, felt more than heard, like the place itself was alive and vibrating at a frequency just below human tolerance.The smell hit next. Antiseptic, sharp and clean, undercut by something else. Sweat, yeah, but also a new, chemical tang that clung to the back of the throat.
Jace shifted in the reclining chair, the synthetic leather cold and sticky against his bare arms. His wrists were secured with thick, padded straps.Not tight enough to hurt, but tight enough to remind him. He tested them anyway, a quick, jerking pull that accomplished nothing but making the metal frame groan.
“Fucking ridiculous,” he muttered, his voice too loud in the white, windowless room.
“Just don’t think about it,” Zack said from the chair beside him. His friend’s hazel eyes were fixed on the blank white wall ahead, his own straps already accepted. Zack’s lean frame was tensed, a wire about to snap. He’d gelled his hair back this morning, but a few sandy strands had already escaped, sticking to his damp temples.
“Don’t think about it?” Jace scowled, the expression so familiar it felt etched into his square jaw. “They strap us down like animals and you say don’t think about it? What’s wrong with you?”
“You wanna get kicked out?Lose the money?” Zack’s voice was a nervous whisper. “They said it’s just observation.Physical and psychological response metrics to… stimuli. Three grand, Jace.Each.”
“Stimuli,” Jace repeated, dripping with scorn. He knew what that meant.They’d been vague, but he wasn’t an idiot. The intake guy, the waivers, the questions.Any history of cardiac issues?Photosensitivity? He’d signed everything. The promise of cash, a thick stack of it, was the only thing that had gotten him through the door of this sterile shithole.
The fluorescent lights overhead buzzed, a sound like trapped insects. The room was featureless except for two chairs, a small trolley with monitoring equipment blinking with green LEDs, and the projector, a sleek black eye mounted on the ceiling.A man in pale blue scrubs entered, his footsteps silent on the polished floor. He was older, with a calm, impassive face. He didn’t look at them, just checked the readings on the trolley, his fingers tapping a tablet.
“You comfortable?” he asked, his tone indicating it wasn’t really a question.“Peachy,” Jace spat.
The man nodded, as if Jace had given a genuine answer.“The sequence will begin shortly. Remember, try to remain still.Natural reactions are what we’re recording. Fighting the restraints can skew the data.”
“What kinda data?” Zack asked, his voice thin.“Biometric. Pulse, galvanic skin response, pupil dilation.” The nurse—or doctor, or whatever he was—finally looked at them.His eyes were a mild, watery blue. “You’ll see a series of video clips.Your job is simply to watch.”
He left without another word. The door sealed with a soft click.Silence, except for that hum and the buzz. Jace could feel his own heart, a steady, angry drum against his ribs. He could smell Zack’s cheap deodorant failing under the stress.Then the projector whirred to life.
A rectangle of light painted the white wall.Grainy, slightly out-of-focus footage resolved into an image. A bedroom.Soft, morning light through a window. Two men, shirtless, sitting on the edge of a rumpled bed. They were talking, laughing softly, their bodies relaxed, leaning into each other.The sound was tinny, intimate. One man reached out and brushed a strand of hair from the other’s forehead.Jace snorted, a harsh, explosive sound.“Jesus. Get a room.Oh wait.”
He expected Zack to laugh.A weak chuckle, at least. He glanced over.Zack was staring straight ahead, his jaw clenched.
On screen, one man kissed the other’s shoulder.A simple, domestic gesture.It wasn’t pornographic. It was worse.It was tender.
A hot, sour wave of disgust rose in Jace’s gut, familiar and comforting.This was the world, the sickness, the thing he knew how to fight. “Fucking queers,” he muttered, louder, wanting the microphone hidden somewhere to pick it up. “This is your big test? Trying to make me puke?”
He focused on the contempt, let it fill him up. But beneath it, under the familiar script of his own loud thoughts, something else flickered.A discomfort that wasn’t just moral.It was physical. The hair on his arms stood up.His skin felt too tight.
The man on screen, the one who’d been kissed, leaned his head back.He moaned. It wasn’t a sexual moan, not really.It was a sound of simple contentment, of feeling good. The camera caught the long, clean line of his throat, the slight stubble along his jaw, the curve of a smile so unguarded it was like a punch.
Jace felt a strange warmth bloom in the center of his chest.It wasn’t arousal.It was nothing like that. It was a sudden, deep heat, as if he’d swallowed a shot of cheap whiskey. It spread outward, a liquid sensation radiating through his ribcage, down his arms. His heart stuttered, then resumed at a quicker, harder rhythm.The monitors by his chair gave a soft, affirmative beep.
“What the hell?” he breathed, his bravado slipping.He looked at Zack. His friend’s face was flushed, a deep red creeping up from his collar. But Zack wasn’t looking at the screen anymore. His head was turned, his hazel eyes wide and fixed on the door where the male nurse had exited.As Jace watched, the blush on Zack’s face deepened violently. He quickly looked back at the wall, his breathing shallow.
On screen, the two men were now standing, embracing fully, their bare chests pressed together. One nestled his face into the other’s neck.
The warmth in Jace’s chest intensified, coalescing into a tight, almost pleasurable ache.His muscles, usually knotted with a defensive tension, felt strangely loose. He had a sudden, absurd impulse to stretch.To arch his back against the cold leather. He fought it, tensing harder.His biceps flexed against the strap.And he felt it. Not just the muscle, but the growth.A subtle, firm thickening.A new density. As if the heat was forging something inside him.Panic, sharp and clean, sliced through the weird, warm haze. “Turn it off!” he barked, yanking at the restraints. The chair legs scraped on the floor.“Hey! Stop it!”
The image on the wall flickered, then changed.Not to blackness, but to another scene.A kitchen this time. One man feeding the other a bite of something, smiling.
“Zack!” Jace yelled, desperate for an ally, for the old, reliable disgust.Zack didn’t answer.He was crying. Silently.Tears were cutting clean lines through the sheen of sweat on his cheeks, dripping onto his shirt. He wasn’t sobbing, just staring ahead as the tears fell. His shoulders, usually hunched, seemed broader, squarer against the chair.The nurse re-entered, his calm undisturbed. He noted the readings, his eyes passing over Jace’s straining arms, Zack’s tear-streaked face.“Session one is complete,” he said, his voice soft. He began to unbuckle Zack’s straps first.
As the restraint came free, Zack’s hand flew to his own chest, fingernails digging into the fabric of his shirt over the same spot where Jace had felt the heat.He looked down, his face a mask of confusion and fear.
Jace looked away, down at his own arms.His thin, mechanic’s forearms. The veins stood out.The muscle there, it looked… defined.Not bigger, not yet.But harder. As if someone had replaced the soft flesh with corded clay. The scowl on his face faltered, leaving only a hollow, cold fear.The nurse moved to him, unlocking the wrist cuffs. The moment he was free, Jace shoved himself up from the chair, his legs unsteady. He stumbled past the nurse, past Zack who was still sitting, staring at his own hands.
He pushed through the door into the bright, silent hallway, heading for the bathroom.He needed a mirror. He needed to see his face, to see if the change was there too, in his close-cropped brown hair, in his perpetually angry eyes. The warmth in his chest had faded to a dull, persistent echo, a new heartbeat under the old one.
The door to the lab swished shut behind Zack, closing on the now-blank white wall and the lingering, tinny echo of a laugh that had sounded, for just a second, like happiness.