Manipulation Room victim no. 201923
Name: Mariah Devis
Age: 81 years old
Occupation: Retired
Family Member: 24-year-old grandson, Stephan
Description: Throat and neck under immense pressure from strangulation, death after 8.3 seconds of choking.

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"Lyric? Lyric, are you okay?" 
I looked up from my daydream and saw Ezra sitting on the tree trunk next to me, staring at me concernedly. His eyes were ten times bluer, ten times larger and ten times more beautiful. "How long have you been sitting there for?" I asked, rubbing my temples and sitting up to face him.
"Long enough. Are you okay?" 
I shook my head slowly, "Not really. It's been a rough couple of days, I guess." 
He nodded, biting his lip, "Don't you just wish it was all over? All of this?"

I scoffed, "More than anything. This shouldn't be our live, we shouldn't be growing up around all this...this suffering." I dropped my head in my hands and sighed. Ezra moved along the trunk so he was sitting next to me, "Do you ever wonder...what any of this is for?" 
"What do you mean?" I asked, looking up to see him seemingly uncomfortable and restrained. I folded my arms, "What is it?" 
"I...I found something." He gulped, clenching and unclenching his fists. 

He grabbed his backpack from the ground and lifted it up onto his lap, pulling another notebook out. It was different from his sketchbook, less square with thinner pages. Inside, every page was filled with italic writing and diagrams. It was a strange observation but he had gorgeous handwriting. Gorgeous handwriting that I'd never seen before because he never paid attention in class or took notes. "I was researching. The things Thanatos says, I don't believe any of it. It just doesn't add up. So...there was only one way to find out." He explained, flicking through the notebook. "Elaborately drawn diagrams and pages of writing?" I laughed. He looked up and smirked, "Science. Turns out school work can be a lot more interesting than I thought when learning about useful things."

"Who'd have thought it...what have you found?" I leaned forward so I could see the diagrams clearly. "Thanatos believes that we are running out of oxygen and the only way to prevent this is to slowly decrease the population by having us murder our most loved people, every six months...right?" He began. I pulled my legs up to my chest and rested my chin on my knees, "...yeah."

He stopped at a page and help it up to show me, "Gravity is holding our oxygen. Not a magnetic field, not just the air...gravity. Our planet will run out of oxygen when our planet's core cools because it will not have the gravity to keep the atmosphere. This has nothing to do with us and how much oxygen we breath."

He held up another page to show me and pointed at an intricately-drawn diagram, "We depend on the oxygen in the atmosphere for a sustained life. There is no replacement for oxygen in our biology, nor is there any engine that can generate oxygen in such a quantity." Another page. "It took roughly 900 million years from the start of cyanobacteria creating oxygen as a waste product to having enough oxygen accumulating in the atmosphere to make a difference. We can't just make it come out of nowhere in such vast quantities, we can't completely get rid of it so easily either. It's a reliable and sustainable source."

I took the book from him and stared absent-mindedly at the pages, chuckling to myself. "Wow...you really know your stuff." I laughed. He shrugged and laughed with me, "I try." 
"So, you're saying...Thanatos's theory makes no sense and the Manipulation Room isn't required for us to survive?" 
He tapped the side of my temple and grinned, "Precisely."

I handed him the notebook back and he put it into his bag. "What are you going to do with these life-changing discoveries then?" I asked. He grinned again, "Physical research, not just words in a notebook." 
"You're going to go to the Manipulation Room?!" I gasped.
"Not at first. I'm gonna start small...maybe a strike or two. A few interviews here and there, with important people. You know, soldiers, people in government. And then I'll go big...the Manipulation Room itself." He ran his hands through his hair and glanced at me expectedly. I threw my hands in the air, "Well...you've really got this all sorted out. Haven't you?"

He nodded slowly, "I'm sick of people dying for no logical reason. Time to take matters into my own hands. Protests are all well and good but nothing is ever done, and people die and get hurt. What's the point?"
"But...how are you going to get into the Manipulation Room? No one who goes in and lives to walk back out remembers how they got in there. My mum certainly didn't. She was delusional when she returned...had no memory of it whatsoever."
He bit his lip, "Mine neither...but there's got to be some kind of way. Some reason why they never remember."

I folded my arms and moved so that I had my entire body facing him, "Well, you're gonna need some help pulling off such a big plan."
He grinned at me and raised an eyebrow, "Yeah...I wonder who?"
"You're gonna need someone brave, smart, ready for anything..." I laughed, keeping my arms folded. He smirked, "If only I knew someone who was all of those things."
I punched him playfully on the arm, "I'm helping, you weirdo." I chuckled. He smiled gratefully, "Are you sure?"
I put my hand out, "Let's do it." He smiled even wider and shook my hand, not letting go, even when the handshake was over. We were really doing this. It was dangerous and risky and the chance of it making any difference was slim but a large part of me really wanted to do this. I wanted to do this with him; I wanted to make a difference.

Ezra's phone started ringing and he put it on speakerphone. "Hello?"
"Ezra, bro, where you at?" It was Jax, that much was clear. Ezra sat up, "What d'you mean?" He asked. Jax laughed, "Have you forgotten? You were coming to mine today, mate."
Ezra's eyes widened as sudden realisation hit his face. He ran a hand through his hair and sighed, "Sorry, Jax, I forgot. I'll be over in, like, ten minutes."
"Ten minutes? You live ages away, dude. I'll get my Dad to pick you up, Kierra just left so..."
"No, I'm not home. I'm at school."

Jax laughed again, one of those infectious laughs that filled whole rooms, even though it was over the phone. "What are you still doing at school? You're normally the first to get out of that place." He sniggered. Ezra chuckled, "True, but I'm with Lyric. We're hanging out."
"Lyric?! So, Kierra was right..."
"Meaning?" Me and Ezra said at the same time, resulting in nervous laughter from the both of us. Jax cleared his throat, "Nothing. See you in ten." And he hung up. Ezra glanced over at me and raised an eyebrow; I simply shrugged and laughed.

He picked up his backpack and flung it over one shoulder, "I'm so sorry, Lyric. I forgot I was going to Jax's house today...can we hang out some other time?" He asked. I nodded, "Course, don't worry about it."
"We'll devise a plan later then." He grinned. I grinned back, "Great. Can't wait."

I didn't actually want him to leave. I liked sitting here with him, doing everything and nothing. It was calming, our little secret. Just us two and no one else. I watched as he left, flashing me a last adorable grin before he completely disappeared from view. And then the entire area was plunged into silence. The silence lingered in the air, thick and heavy, like a blanket. Wherever I moved, that silence followed, always watching never fading. My own, personal shadow.

I walked home on my own and heard Echo, the minute I flung open the door. "I told you see was with her boyfriend!" She yelled into the kitchen, when I walked over to her and flung my bag onto the floor. I shot her an angry look, "He's not my boyfriend." 
She shrugged, "Yeah right." 

Mum bustled through the door, washing her hands with a dirty cloth, "Lyric! Where have you been?" She ran a hand through her dishevelled hair and exhaled deeply. 
"With Ezra, doing...homework." Homework. Mum had already lost so much from that room. Echo and I were all she had. I didn't want to worry her further by telling her about mine and Ezra's dangerous plan to get rid of this room once and for all. 

"Ezra? Liberty's son?" Mama chimed, causing Echo to burst into laughter. "Yes. Him." I responded. Mama nodded slowly, like she wasn't secretly ecstatic, and flung the cloth over her shoulder. "A lovely family...we should invite them round some time." She continued, like she wasn't already planning the text she'd send to Mrs Ray once she left the room. I stood up, "Sounds great." And just like that Mama was gone, humming to herself as she walked back into the kitchen.

Echo giggled behind me, "You know, she's probably planning your wedding right now." I fell onto the sofa next to her and sighed, "We're just friends."
"Whatever...hey, look. I have something to show you."

She tapped on her phone and showed me the screen. It was the strangest thing I'd ever seen! It had the eyes of a human, but everything else was so different. It had fur, four legs, teeth that were sharper than normal teeth. It was so weird! Echo swiped to show another picture with the same fur but shorter, the same teeth but sharper and the same legs, but thinner. "Ew, they're hideous! What are they? Incredibly deformed humans?" I pushed the phone towards her and she laughed as she turned it off.

"I've been researching on them for some extra-curricular project...they're called animals. Apparently, they're used to be loads of different ones. The first one is a dog, and that one was a cat." She explained, turning her phone back on and scrolling through loads of these so-called animals, all different shapes and sizes. "What's an animal?" I asked, genuinely curious. "Wait, let me read the definition... um, a living organism that feeds on organic matter, typically having specialized sense organs and nervous system and able to respond rapidly to stimuli." She said, clearing her throat before and after.

I laughed, "Say what now?"
"Basically, they're like humans... they eat, breathe, excrete, move...but they look totally different, and they don't talk. Incredibly strange creatures, that's for sure." She replied, showing me another picture. I pointed at it, "That one's quite cute."
"It's called a panda." She responded, showing me more pictures of the adorable, fluffy, black and white creature.

"So how come I've never seen an animal?" I asked, looking through more pictures of pandas. "Before the Manipulation Room began, they were everywhere. Some of them called 'pets' lived with humans in our houses, others were just in forests and stuff. Then the government decided that because they also breathed oxygen they were breathing too much and we were gonna die quicker, so they were all eliminated. Every animal to ever exist was killed, gone forever." She dropped her head in her hands. "That was ages ago though. Not even Mama remembers animals, but she said her grandmother owned a rabbit." She showed me a picture of another furry creature that I assumed was a rabbit.

"That's awful...I would've loved to see a panda." I exhaled. She nodded slowly, "It sure is a shame. An animal...wow, how interesting would our lives be! Imagine if we had a dog, woah."
"Yeah...those were pretty ugly. I'd want a panda."
She nudged me and laughed, "You can't have a panda, silly, they're not pets."
"But how did they know which animals were pets and which weren't?" I asked. Echo shrugged, "I have no clue."

"Can you imagine...soon that will be us? That's unreal." Echo shook her head and exhaled.
"What d'you mean?"
"I mean, if the Manipulation Room doesn't work. If we run out of oxygen anyway. We'll all become extinct, just like these animals."
I cracked my knuckles, having an inward battle over whether I should tell her or not. She is my sister; I tell her everything. But this isn't a crush or silly gossip. This is the fine line between life or death. This is everyone's life on the balance. But she is my sister.

I turned to face her and cleared my throat, "What if I told you it's impossible to run out of oxygen?"