The Ivory Prison (Genetic Shifters)

by Daube, Ashlyn

  The Ivory Prison

  Ashlyn Daube

  Copyright 2012 Ashlyn Daube

  Kindle Edition

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the products of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  www.ashlyndaube.com

  I don’t remember if I was ever human. Don’t remember much before I was fourteen years old. I say "much" because I remember enough to want to forget it all. I exist trapped by white walls and the smell of bleach. A space that belonged to me and that I was never allowed to leave. This is the only home I have ever known and likely the only one I will ever know. The four marble walls are barren and whole except for one. The one with the door and the mirror. Next to the door is a little black box that controls it. It beeps and its light turns green warning me that someone is coming, warning me to stay still and not do anything stupid. Three feet from the door starts a huge mirror that runs almost the entire length and height of the wall. It wasn’t always there. It appeared during the day of my eleventh birthday. I remember staring at my reflection for the first time, meeting sunken hazel eyes and pulling at the dark blond strands that fell on my face. Seeing something there that resembled the men that came and went from the room. But there was always something off. Something missing that made me different.

  The day I turned thirteen I woke to find the mirror gone, and in its place stood a view of the world beyond my four white walls. A glass window, I was told it was, by the man that brought me breakfast. I ignored the food, choosing instead to stare at the world beyond for the first time. My room was just a small part of a large semi-circle; there was a painted circle on the center of the floor with a symbol that I recognized from the clothing the men wore. The surrounding area was occupied by at least two dozen men looking busy. I recognized some of them as people that have come to ask me things; try and make me do things, or pull my arm to extract as much blood as they needed. But the most incredible thing about this new window was the revelation that next to me on the edge of the semicircle were two other rooms with two other boys that stared as intently as I at the world beyond. One to my right and one to my left. The one to my left touched the window tentatively as if scared it might become the mirror again. He was younger than me, a year or two, I guessed. His hair, his eyes, his skin, all looked like mine. The one on my right did not look like me, his hair was darker, his eyes lighter. He was older and he ignored the men working, fixing his gaze on me instead. I stepped back under the scrutiny, too unfamiliar with the world to know what looking at someone like that meant.

  I wasn’t alone. I wasn’t the only one trapped by white walls. The knowledge brought me relief, but it also brought me pain as I looked at the older boy and realized that it would be years before I reached his age. Years I had to endure inside these four walls.

  Some of the men called me Gab, but most called me G-27 or just 27. It wasn’t hard to decipher the source of this name after I saw similar numbers by the doors of my neighbors. G-26 to the right. G-28 to the left. I remember the night G-Twenty Eight waved at me and smiled for the first time. I smiled and waved back only to hear the beeping of the door and one of the men rushing in to pull me away from the window - warning me that if I ever acknowledged the others near me, the window would be taken away. I rather have a view of a silent and forbidden world than none at all.

  I learned early on that letting them poke and test me was easier than being held down and gagged. They wanted something from me. Something from us. But apparently we weren't giving it to them. I spent my days doing what they asked of me, watching my education videos, taking my tests, and watching silently by the window. Sometimes I tried to talk to them, but I was always ignored, brushed off or directly told to ‘stop talking’. Yet when they were done and left my room sometimes I wished they would stay just to escape from the silence. The white walls were too quiet. The white walls didn’t respond when I said something. It was worse knowing there were others nearby - to see them, and be forbidden to talk to them.

  That thirteenth year brought many new things to my limited world, but also took them away. Before the year was over the rooms next to mine, with boys that resembled me, became empty. Fear took over the monotony of my life. It became a countdown of when would I be gone as well.

  Then two weeks after my fourteenth birthday, everything changed. I had just finished my breakfast and was looking out the window of my room, watching the men filter in for the day and sit at their computers. I had watched this routine so many times that just by watching the first twenty minutes, I could predict what they were planning for me that day or what concoctions they were going to inject in my body. It was a daily ritual, but this day was different.

  Just ten minutes after they started their work, the main doors opened and a woman I had never seen before walked in. One of the men tried to greet her, but she waved him off and went straight toward me. I stepped back apprehensively as she stopped in front of me on the other side of the glass, staring at me with a gaze I had never experienced before. I was only familiar with the disappointed faces, the furious faces, and the unforgettable one Twenty Six gave me the day I first saw him. She looked at me for a few seconds. I saw her mouth move and a man that had been watching her carefully with unhappy eyes strode forward to stand next to her. I recognized him as the man that gave orders to the others. He answered whatever she had asked, and suddenly her calm visage became angry and furious. She started marching around the facility, her hands waving rapidly, her mouth moving constantly. The entire room of men suddenly went into a frenzy, and for the first time in my short existence, the routine didn’t happen. My door remained closed. No one came to ask me things, or try and make me do things, nor poke and prod at me. As more time passed men kept leaving the room and I was afraid. Afraid that the place beyond my white walls would become void of the people that had always been there. People that only demanded things of me, but the only people I knew. I was afraid that they would never come back and forget about me.

  I watched them slowly filter away from my view. My fear materializing before my very eyes. I watched in silence as they left one by one. Despair started taking hold of me and I leaned my entire body against the glass. I am here. I wanted to scream. There were only five men left in the room. Don’t forget me here. I witnessed as the last two men walked through the main doors, leaving the space void of life, except mine. Before I knew it I was pacing around my room, panic slowly setting in. Perhaps… Had I been abandoned?

  Just when my breath hitched the door of my room beeped and opened. The woman I had never seen before stepped in and looked around. Her eyes burrowed, her lips frowned, she seemed upset and I wondered if it was something I had done. Something to make me disposable like the others had been.

  “My name is Dr. Mercier. I’m taking charge of this facility from today on.” She extended her hand to me sideways and I stared at it. Her voice startled me. I had heard female’s voices from recordings or video, but this was the first time hearing it for real. It sounded gentler than I had imagined. “What’s your name?” she asked as she lowered her hand.

  I swallowed, unsure of my rarely used voice. “G-27,” I answered, and her frown deepened.

  “That’s your ID, what name did they give you?”

  I wasn’t entirely sure what she was asking. I felt my eyebrows come lower in confusion. “Sometimes they just call me Twenty-Seven or Gab.”

  “Gabe?”

  “No. Just the three letters.” I held up three fingers.

  “They never gave you a name?” She sounded offended.

&nbs
p; “I thought G-27 was my name.” I felt a tad less nervous. Her voice, while direct, held something very comforting. Like my answers mattered to her, and not in the way my answers mattered when the men were recording data. But in a way I had never felt before. Was my name really that important?

  “I'd rather call you Gab,” She scoffed.

  I nodded. “I’m fine with that.”

  “Gab.” She rolled the name off her tongue. “No. Gabe. Gabriel! Gabriel - that will be your name.”

  I nodded because I didn’t know what to say. Suddenly I had a name. A name. “Gabriel,” I whispered to myself. The name sounding pleasant. I wasn’t a number.

  Dr. Mercier strode inside my room, tips of her fingers on her chin. “This rooms needs some color, we should fix that tomorrow. You’ve lived here your entire life, right, Gabriel?”

  I nodded when I was unable to say the word yes. I was still in awe that she was talking to me. Talking like I saw the men talk amongst each other. Talk the way they didn’t talk to me.

  “Care to show me around?” She passed her keycard through the device next to my door and it opened. She stepped outside the threshold and beckoned me to follow. That’s when panic set in. Not because I wasn’t sure of my ability to show her around what I saw every day, but because the only times G-Twenty Eight and G-Twenty Six ever left their rooms was to never return.

  “What’s wrong, Gabriel?”

  I froze where I stood, the fear rolling through me. I shook my head. “Please. I don’t want to leave like the others. I’ll be good. I’ll do better. Please.”

  “Hey hey,” She raised her hand towards me. “You are not going anywhere.”

  I shook my head again. She was trying to trick me. She was trying to get rid of me. I saw her eyeing the bright red button hidden just on the side of the device, and I instinctively snatched her wrist stopping her. “Please!” I squeezed too hard, careless with my own strength. She moaned in pain and it startled me long enough to release her, and without a moment’s hesitation she pushed the red button.

  The noise was overwhelming. I covered my ears trying to block it out, but it pounded inside my head. I waited for them to come for me; to storm through my door and hold me down. To push a needle inside my body. Like they did with G-26, G-28, and likely all the others before me. I waited to be erased. And come they did. Two men in white coats with hands I could not escape. The first one grabbed my left arm and tossed me to the floor. The second threw himself over me, pressing me against the white tile, holding me prisoner with his weight. He was at least three times my size, but all I wanted was to be free and somehow I pushed him off. I sat up, and when the other guard came at me I lashed out to stop him, the back of my hand snapping his nose. Blood gushed from his face, smearing my hand. I stared at it in shock.

  When I felt the pinch of a needle, I screamed and fought just like the others did. I remembered G-Twenty Six’s fight, how they needed four men to hold him down, and how one of them pressed his knee against Twenty-Six’s neck until it snapped from the pressure. I watched it happen with my forehead pressed against the glass, wished the entire time Twenty-Six would just stop fighting them, because what was the point? They always won. We always lost. And I would never feel his gaze on me again.

  Lying here on the floor, feeling the poison spreading through my veins, I finally understood. It was life. Twenty-Six just wanted to live. They all did. I gasped when the men let go of me, the fight gone out of me. I had lost too.

  I collapsed on the ground, the white walls spinning around me. Waiting for it to end, I wondered if I would be the last to exist inside these four walls, or if this would be the fate of those that came after me as well. Those destined to be born inside this prison of ivory. I looked at the men, then at Dr. Mercier. She only had sorrow in her eyes for me. I turned away, then I was just gone.

  ****

  I almost didn’t believe reality when I reopened my eyes and found myself still in my room and breathing. I barely moved my head so I could look around. There was nobody with me, but there were clear signs someone had been in my space. I sat up slowly and counted how many things were out of place, or more accurately, what things were there that had never been before. There was a blue round and padded chair on the far end of my room in place of the cold metal chair they made me sit on when I had to watch an education video. A few feet from it was a larger and newer video screen. There were other trinkets scattered on the floor I did not recognize, weirdest of them all was the line of buckets in a row next to the wall. I could have spent the entire day investigating these strange new things, but my attention was concentrated on one spot in my room. One that was more important than any of the new things that suddenly appeared. The door that had been closed all my life. It was wide open.

  I did not dare get close to the door, fearing it was some sort of trap. So I walked to the window and tried to figure out what was going on. The men looked busy, but not their usual - staring at the monitors, or mixing new medical cocktails busy. They were moving stuff, changing stuff. To my left, the walls of Twenty-Eight's old room were gone. Men came and went taking chunks of it away. The room to my right, Twenty-Six's old room, still had its wall, but its door was also wide open and people were doing stuff in there too. In the middle of it all stood Dr. Mercier. She had a small digital pad in her hands and seemed to be directing the chaos. Three people were with her; two men that nodded after every other word she said and a boy.

  The boy’s back was towards me and all I could see was his hair. But suddenly his shoulders stiffened and he slowly turned around and saw me. My chest tightened when his eyes found mine, but not in a bad way. It was more like a force was pulling me. Different. Yet similar to when I had first seen my neighbors that day over a year before.

  I stood in front of the glass window and watched as the boy said something to Dr. Mercier. She looked up to see me awake, nodded, and the boy made his way towards me. He stopped right in front of me, the glass the only thing between us. His skin looked just like mine, but his hair was dark versus my light, his eyes a bright blue versus my dark hazel. No one needed to tell me that this boy was just like me. Not human. And he was outside. He was free.

  I remembered the open door. Maybe I was free now too.

  I met his eyes and held them, watching the little flinches play across his face as he watched me. He placed his palm against the glass and I pressed my own hand against his, matching finger to finger. He ran his palm across the glass and I followed every movement, frame by frame.

  “Can I come in?” he asked.

  I stared, dumbfounded. No one had ever asked for my permission to come in. They just did.

  “It’s open,” I said when I found my voice, and he gave me a lopsided smile before walking over to the door.

  He peeked his head in, first glancing around before walking in. He stopped in front of me and offered his hand, “I’m Lukas. I’m going to move to that room over there.” He pointed to Twenty-Six's old room where men in uniforms shuffled things around.

  I stared at his hand longer than I should have before sliding my fingers against his palm. "You are like me.”

  He scuffed, let go of my hand and walked over to the blue chair where he sat down.

  “At least you know you are different, that’s a good start. Mom was worried you would be confused and disoriented.”

  “Mom?”

  “Dr. Mercier. She’s my mother.”

  “You have a mother?”

  Lukas didn’t seem willing to answer that. He stood and walked over the line of buckets by the wall. “What color do you want to paint your room?”

  “Is that what that is?” I felt instantly comfortable with him, just because I knew he was like me. I wasn’t even thinking about the open door anymore. I stood next to him and checked each of the buckets. The different colors were pasted on the side labels. A pale green one caught my eye and I pointed to it.

  “Interesting,” Lukas commented. “I picked the same one.”


  That made me smile. Someone knocked. “Can I come in?”

  Dr. Mercier was at the door and panic instantly rolled over me. Lukas must have seen me stiffen, because he put his hand on my shoulder. “It’s ok,” he said. “She’s not going to hurt you. We are not going to hurt you.”

  I wanted to believe him so much. But he wasn’t the first one to make me that promise. The fear was still there, subdued, but there. They hadn’t tried to take me out of the room. Dr. Mercier gave a slow nod of her head and walked away.

  “We could leave you know,” Lukas spoke out. I turned to look at him. “The door’s open.”

  “Leave where?”

  “This room. When was the last time you stepped out of it?” Lukas started pushing buttons on the new video screen near the blue chair. It showed him only static.

  I stared because he had to be trying to ruse me. He was like me. Didn’t he spend his life in a room as well?

  “Never,” I answered. Lukas stopped fidgeting with the screen. His eyes flew to mine.

  “Never?” He repeated and his face sunk into some sort of horror that just made me feel wrong. Like it had been my fault that the only world I knew was among these four walls. Without saying another word Lukas turned off the static screen. “No television then. I think I saw a park on the way here. Let’s go there.”

  Park? Television? Those words meant nothing to me, but they seemed to mean something to Lukas. Something good. He stood just on the threshold of the open door and nudged me forward. I stayed put so he closed the distance between us in three quick strides and took my hand. “We’re getting out of this room okay? And if you want, you never have to come back to it ever again. I’ll talk to my mom. We can be roommates.” My fear decreased with his words and for the first time I thought I could leave this room and continue living.

  “I can come back then?” I asked.

  Lukas nodded and gave my hand a little pull. “We’ll go to the park. Have some fun. Then come back.”

  I stared at the open doorway and took a deep breath. I gave one step forward, then another. Slowly I made my way forward to the door, lingering at every moment of doubt. Lukas never let go of my hand. When I stopped, he stopped with me and waited until I was ready to try again. When I finally gave that step that went beyond any other step I had ever taken, Lukas cheered, patted me on the back and gave me a smile I would never forget.