I am not quite sure what time it is when I first hear someone assaulting my door, but I know it must be early in the morning.

Pulling myself from bed, I cross to the door, already irritated without knowing which subject or scientist has come for me.

"What do you want?" I snarl, nearly ripping the structure from its hinges.

Torres tilts her head, glaring back at me furiously.

"Eryn needs an assistant in the lab this morning."

"And I am suddenly qualified?" I snap, "I am a soldier, not a scientist, in case it slipped your mind. If I were a scientist, I wouldn't be wasting time waiting on you and your colleagues."

"I am running tests on one of the subjects in a separate room, and Kristenson is going into town again this morning. There are not enough of us, but you are staying here so you should expect to be useful." Torres retorts, drawing herself up to her full height, "As I'm always telling Eryn and the subjects, either you are useful or you leave."

"Fine." I decide, "But I refuse to be a lab rat. That is what your subjects are for."

"Agreed." Torres gives me a smile, "Follow me."

Torres's sneakers squeak against the tile as she jogs down the corridor, leading me down two hallways and up a set of stairs. She pauses with her hand on the knob of a door, smiling at me again.

"My subject waits inside." she purrs, "This is where I leave you. You're needed across the hall."

Torres slips through the door, leaving me to walk across the corridor. I do it in three strides, landing a hand on the doorknob and turning it without a care.

I did not sign up for this.

I am apathetic, knowing that only the test results could change my opinion on the insignificance of this task.

Stepping into the room, instinct has me stopping in my tracks.

The Inhumane is the first thing to catch my eye, its soulless eyes zeroing in on me. It has been changed for a long time, at least a month or two. The skin on its face is peeling, the ashen complexion covered in an array of different lesions.

Olivia is sitting next to it on the wide metal table, and it takes several moments for me to realize that both the creature and the Superior have their hands chained behind their backs.

"Hello!" Olivia squeaks, looking at me hopefully, "How are you? Are you here to watch?"

"I don't know why I am here." I snap, "I did not come here to talk to you, though."

"You don't have to be that way, Commander."

I flinch, my gaze snapping to the desk in the corner of the room. Above it, a large cabinet is built into the wall, and I assume that it contains supplies of some kind. A notebook and a pencil are positioned on the desk, and Eryn is occupying the small swiveling chair. She looks more like a surgeon than I have ever seen her, wearing the stereotypical lab coat and gloves. A surgical mask obscures part of her face, muffling her voice slightly.

"Do I have to wear that?" I demand, my annoyance clear as I roll my eyes, "This seems worse than my military uniform."

Eryn mimics my eye roll.

"You shouldn't."

She stands up, opening the cabinet over her head. She pulls a handful of supplies from the depths of the cabinet, setting a flashlight and two syringes on the desk in front of her. These are quickly followed by two identical vials and a few additional instruments. The only ones I recognize are the thermometers.

Mumbling under my breath, I come to stand over Eryn's chair in an intimidating manner.

"Well?" I bark, "Why am I here? I assume that if you actually needed me, I would have to wear the same suit as you."

Eryn sighs, looking as though she has very little patience when it comes to my attitude.

"You're my overseer."

"Overseer?"

"Kristenson and Torres don't trust me, so usually one of them feels obligated to babysit. I'm guessing one of them wanted to go out, and the other is testing Clancy. They have someone else to use to their advantage, so they've hired you to babysit."

"They should trust you." Olivia pipes up, "Neurosurgeons are smart, at least you are. I wish I could be one, but I don't want to do tests on people like this."

I can't help my smirk.

"You are too young to know anything." I chastise, "I would venture to say that you can't spell neurosurgeon, let alone know what one does."

"N-e-u-r-o-" Olivia starts, tilting her head defiantly.

I glare at her for long enough to make her afraid, then I return my attention to Eryn.

"Why don't they trust you?" I demand, narrowing my eyes at her, "Does that mean I shouldn't do so either?"

Eryn doesn't answer, her sky-blue gaze trained on the instruments in front of her.

"Watch me," she says at last, "it's what you were sent here to do. Watch, don't ask questions."

She stalks across the room, a thermometer gripped in each hand. Olivia doesn't say a word as the first one is slipped under her tongue, but the Inhumane proves to be a different story altogether.

It spits at Eryn as she approaches, its head swiveling from side to side as it tries to snap at her. It pulls at its restraints, hissing and snarling the entire time. Saliva trickles from the corner of its mouth, running down its chin as it continues spitting furiously at Eryn.

She turns her back on it, looking thoroughly annoyed as she marches back to Olivia to check the reading.

"... Doesn't matter anyway." She snarls, taking the thermometer from Olivia's mouth and stalking back to the desk, "They always want to test it, like something will change. Nothing will change with the Inhumanes. They're all the same. Kristenson needs to get it into his head that they can never be human again. No medication will help them, and surgery isn't going to cure it. You can't just reverse the change in the chemistry of their brains. It's too severe for that."

She sets down both thermometers, writing something in the notebook before filling both syringes with a pale green substance.

Olivia is staring with wide eyes, her gaze alternating between Eryn's face and the two syringes she holds.

"Will that-Is that-" The small girl stammers, trying to figure out how to ask her question.

"Is it dangerous?" Eryn completes the question for her, stepping toward Olivia, "Kristenson says it isn't."

She looks away from Olivia for a second, her gaze meeting mine.

It takes a few more seconds for me to comprehend the look, to understand that she trusts Kristenson about as much as he trusts her.

She takes a breath, injecting the contents of one syringe into a vein in Olivia's neck. A single tear sneaks down the girl's cheek, and I catch Eryn whisper something that sounds suspiciously like "I'm sorry."

Eryn does the same procedure on the Inhumane, moving so quickly that the creature doesn't get its chance to snap at her.

"What is that supposed to do?" I cannot resist the question, curious as to the reasoning behind this morning's test.

Eryn has her back to me as she moves toward her desk, picking up the small flashlight and walking back to the Inhumane.

"Kristenson seems to think that he's figured it out this time." she declares, shining the light into the Inhumane's eyes, "He thinks that this new compound will work on both of them, that it will take away Olivia's abilities for a short time and bring the Inhumane into a better state of mind."

The creature starts snapping again, its movements even more uncoordinated than they might normally be thanks to the chain keeping its hands behind its back.

Eryn is shaking her head again, mumbling something along the lines of "I told him so." She walks away from the Inhumane, moving to collect a small silver instrument from the desk.

I only have a few moments to wonder what she is going to do with it. My attention is pulled away from her in a hurry by the small whimper Olivia makes. Only a second or two after I look at her, I start noticing the differences. She looks paler than she did before receiving this treatment, and as I watch a muscle in her face begins to twitch.

At first I think nothing of it, but that twitch seems to be spreading unchecked throughout her body. With each passing second, she seems to be worse off.

Eryn still has not noticed the state of her subject, writing something else down while still holding the strange instrument in the other hand. I am hoping she turns around, catches sight of this before I actually have to handle it, but it turns out that neither of us is fast enough.

Olivia's eyes roll back in a motion that manages even to frighten me. The twitching transforms into an awkward jerking motion, causing Olivia's arms and legs to carry out the unnatural movement seemingly without her permission.

"Eryn!" My voice comes out as more of a shout than I meant it to, and Eryn turns away from her notebook to glare at me. She catches sight of Olivia a second later, but neither of us can make our way to the table quickly enough to catch her. Olivia falls to the side, still held prisoner by her body's movement. Her head slams against the tiled floor in a way that looks quite painful, and though I know she is only a subject in this list of experiments, I find myself beginning to worry against my will.

"I'm not going to do this anymore!" Eryn looks furious, dropping the strange instrument onto the desk with an eerie clanking sound, "I'm not going to hurt her, hurt them, just so Kristenson gets what he wants."

She crosses the room to Olivia in four strides, positioning the small girl on her side while trying to get the painful-looking restraints off her wrists. Eryn is cursing Kristenson under her breath the whole time as Olivia goes into another fit.

For the first time during my journey to gain supernatural powers, I begin to wonder if getting what I want is worth watching a girl like Olivia suffer.

It must be. Science is filled with trials and errors, accidents and coincidences. It will be worth this in the end, I tell myself over and over. Olivia is too young to know what to do with her talents, and her sufferings will allow more capable people to receive abilities of their own.

"Is she going to be all right?" I still do not know why I felt the foolish need to ask the question, but I did. Wishing I could take back the words, go back to my state of general apathy, I stare at Eryn and await a response.

She doesn't look at me for the longest time, her attention drawn to Olivia until the girl's fits finally subside. Olivia doesn't move as Eryn slowly stands up, walking back to her desk and collecting the flashlight again. Returning to Olivia, she shines the flashlight into the Superior's eyes the way she had previously done with the Inhumane.

Finishing this, Eryn finally speaks.

"She'll blame me for all of this. Kristenson made me do it, but Olivia will blame me for not knowing it would happen."

"It doesn't matter who she blames." The words sound harsh even to me, "She is a child. She is barely old enough to think for herself."

Eryn turns her gaze on me now, and I am slightly taken aback to see the first few tears tracking down her cheeks.

"You don't get it!" she snarls, her despair at the situation manifesting itself in the form of annoyance directed at me, "You and Kristenson are too alike to ever see reason! It's never gray for the two of you, it's always black or white. You get your way, or you don't. Things are done your way, or they aren't done at all. You're both too greedy, too narcissistic, to care about anyone else. I never wanted to get involved in this, torturing children! I was in Dublin for a conference when Kristenson found me. One month, that's how long I was supposed to be there. It was dark out, and we were in one of the side streets near my hotel. I was going back there, I have no idea where Kristenson thought he was going. I didn't know who he was then. He had gotten himself surrounded by Inhumanes, and on that day he was alone. I had a gun, he didn't. If I had known what he was doing here, I might have thought twice about saving him. After that he asked if I was part of the conference. I didn't lie about it. He asked me what I was licensed in, I told him. He said he had a project I might be interested in, if I'd come back here with him. I came, and after I found out about this I tried to leave again. He threatened me, said he had my name and knew enough about me to find my family in the States. He said if I ever went against his orders, or he found out that I'd tried to leave again, he'd find a way to make them pay for it. But you're right. It doesn't matter who Olivia blames. We're all the same. She thinks we're all evil, even though some of us know we're on the wrong side of the fight."

"It will be worth it in the end, won't it?" I reason, knowing my viewpoint on it all will likely get me called a narcissist again, "If you work with Kristenson and Torres on this, you will get a part of fame when your group finally gets the results everyone is looking for."

Eryn is crying in earnest now, though she has turned her back on me to focus again on Olivia.

"Get out." she whispers, never looking back at me, "I don't care if I get reprimanded for being here without someone observing me. Get out before I end up saying something to you that I'll regret later."

I turn for the door, slamming it behind me as annoyance takes over.

I can see my sister's face on the day she walked out of my life. I can see her smiling as she stole every memory my parents ever had of her.

What happened to Olivia, what is happening to Clancy, it will all pay off in the end. When Kristenson gets results, I can finally have the abilities that genetics robbed me of, and Eryn will finally understand that she is on the winning side.

The issue is, I am finding it harder to stay firm in what I believe. If I spend too much time around a certain neurosurgeon, I might end up changing my mind about it all.