Don't look up. Just don't.

The words replayed in my mind on a loop, while I pushed the supplies trolley past the security doors.

A quiet beep signaled the guardsmen that I was allowed to enter the immersion chambers, but I still felt queasy on the inside. If they knew what I was planning on doing, they would pin me to the ground or shoot me down without a second to think about it.

When the doors slid shut, I was finally able to release the air that had felt frozen inside my lungs for the last minute. I didn't want to look up now any more than before, but I knew I had to, if I were to ever find her.

Here we go.

I gathered enough resolve to scan the first line of bodies on the stretchers. Leighton wasn't there – I realized, searching for that raven-black hair and vampire white skin.

I remember how she used to steal from the supply distribution points, while flirting with the guards. Those were the lucky days she didn't steal from me or the others in our group. On a bad day, she wouldn't just steal our food, but our clothes and any toiletries we had, too. And on a really bad day, she would lash out and we would have the bruises to prove it.

Life on the streets was tough, but I didn't think that was a worthy excuse. I believed we always had a choice. Even if the world had completely crumbled. Even if the bombs had descended on anything and everything we had come to love and take for granted. There was always a choice.

My choice was to find a way to get inside the bunker – to convince them I could be useful on the inside. Dark clouds hovered over us now, hiding the sun away and preventing any vegetation from growing outside the labs. The single way to survive was the bunker, only there wasn't enough space for everyone. So the unlucky ones lived in the streets, slept in half-crumbled buildings, bathed in cold water, ate the minimalistic daily rations from the bunker and stayed grateful to receive new air-filtration masks every once in a while.

The world had grown twisted and mad, but I never gave up. I used to be one of the aimless people struggling to survive out there. Now I was in.

I had a purpose on the inside. I was helping people. I was fighting to preserve whatever was left of our world. I knew that all the way until the day the project was revealed. Charisma – that was how they called it – the solution to humanity's biggest problem apart from famine – aggression. Violence was going to get humans outside the bunker killed at an alarming rate, they said. The statistics supported that claim and so did my own experience of knowing Leighton. So I told them about her.

Then, she was taken. She was one of their one thousand test subjects to be plugged into Charisma in an effort to eradicate aggressive behavior from their minds. The scientists' hope was that the virtual reality would help preserve people's mental health until such times came, when we would have a reason to be happy again, until our world could return to some sort of normalcy.

I was there when they brought Leighton in. Terrified at the sight of the stretcher and the wires it was equipped with, she was kicking and screaming as hard as she could. The image of her shouting at me to get her out was hard to forget. As if I could have done it. As if I wouldn't have ended up strapped in just like her, if I had tried.

Today felt different. Today I had to do this no matter the consequences.

The trial was supposed to end tomorrow. I didn't know why exactly and I had no idea what would happen if one of them got unplugged ahead of time, but I had to try. I had to see if the real Leighton was still in there somehow, even if she wasn't aggressive anymore.

When I saw her limp body on one of the first stretchers in row seventeen, I didn't even hesitate. I unplugged the wire connected to the back of her neck, ignoring the sucking sound it made and the blood that started dripping on the floor quietly. To my surprise, Leighton's eyes blinked and opened almost immediately.

"Why?" she asked.

"Leighton, it's me, Chelsea," I didn't exactly answer. I instinctively stepped back, fearing she would hit me, but there was just a flicker of recognition in her eyes, nothing more.

"You shouldn't have done that." Her voice was cold and distant like never before.

"How are you feeling?" I whispered in an awkward effort to relate to her.

The charcoal eyes bore into mine. "I don't."

I had expected her to reach for my neck and try to kill me for letting her get captured and plugged into a machine. I had been wrong. She barely moved. I couldn't tell if she didn't remember it all anymore or if she just didn't care now.

Her demeanor was steady, not explosive. Cold, not vengeful. Unwelcoming, not mean. That was how I was sure that, whatever this program was doing to its subjects, it was eliminating more than just aggression. It was taking over and the thought of that washed over me in cold waves.

Her head tilted to the side. Leighton was evaluating me like a curious object she needed.

"It's too early. I need to go back." It sounded like an order but I had no intention of following it.

"What is this?" My lips trembled, as I tried to keep sane.

"This is Charisma," she said, her voice unwavering and her eyes lost in a point in front of her. "Charisma enables us. We are the first one thousand. Everyone else is next. You are next."