Chapter 3

“What’s happening?” Praxis whispered very softly to himself, forcing open the heavy lids of his eyes. He could still feel the dizziness pounding in his head but not to the extent he was going to faint. It was just right to register he was lying on a soft hospital bed, wearing a hospital gown, and to see that there was a scientist watching, looking impatient, over him.

At that moment, he tried to remember what had happened and how long has he been lying down on the bed. From him being abducted by the barangay officers, Dr. Conscire injecting him a viscous liquid in his aching right arm, him leaving the glass solid tank with support from the scientists, and until Dr. Conscire injected him another medicine that put him in the condition of unconsciousness. He remembered it all and everything was like a dream.

Then, his muscles became tensed, anger stuffing up his head. His cheeks turning red with grave annoyance, but his eyes were blank he knew he had reached the maximum. He had the least clue of what was going on around this laboratory—who these people were and what their purpose was. All he knew was these scientists were planning mischief on him. He wanted to knock the scientist guarding by the door but when he tried to stand up, he realized he was handcuffed from the bed he was lying on.

“Shit—let me go!” he shouted sharply, his tone walked the line between vexation and desperation. His shout captured the attention of the scientist guarding the door. The scientist clumsily fumbled in his gown’s pocket, turned on a telephone-looking device—perhaps calling his colleagues again—and mumbled along the lines of ‘he’s awake’.

Praxis looked around. The four walls of this room were painted white. The ceiling was also white. He was lying alone on the bed and next to him was a hospital bedside table with empty syringes on top. He felt a little anxious because the room didn’t have even a single window. He was as if in a hospital room, but the difference is that there is no window. It could trigger his anxiety—it was suffocating.

The metal door of the windowless room slowly opened, and their eyes met again as Dr. Conscire arrived. There was an apparent resentment in Praxis’s eyes and the doctor’s was as if glowing with elation.

Praxis’s expression turned beyond expressionless, feeling weary but eyes were blank when he laid his eyes on the doctor. He bowed down and whispered almost inaudibly. “Just kill me.”

The doctor got closer, Praxis’s words seemed unheard. 

“Just fucking kill me!” he cried out, voice was thick and with an air of dark rage. His eyes were watery thinking of what these scientists were doing to him. He was being treated like an animal being experimented on, taking advantage of his vulnerability.

The doctor shook his head, trying not to disrespectfully burst into laughter at Praxis’s scream. “You have survived far enough, dying is not the best choice.”

“What the fuck are you really up to with me?” he said it too fast and too loudly. “Don’t fuck with me—just fucking kill me already!”

He couldn’t process that he would also want to die now after all the things he went through. With the amount of drugs injected into him, he knew he would die sooner or later. But he suddenly thought, if the night back in the abandoned building he made up his mind not to take his own life, would he really want to give up now when he had promised that he will live for himself and his father?

“You are an important part of this experiment. You cannot die until no one replaces you,” told Dr. Conscire. “Just follow our orders. I will remove your handcuffs now, you have to proceed to the Second Stage.”

Second Stage.

Second Stage.

Second Stage.

Second Stage.

The experiences he had gone through in the first stage of this inhumane experiment went coming through him. It was all spinning in his mind. The syringe, the gurney, the glass tank, the scientists, all and all. He thought that no matter how bad he went in the First Stage, it would not be much worse for him in the Second Stage. He stared at Dr. Conscire, unable to comprehend the bomb he just dropped. It was hauntingly traumatic.

The doctor pulled a small key, and then unlocked the handcuffs on his hands and feet one by one. Everything happened so fast that the doctor hadn’t caught it all up. When Praxis was out of handcuffs, he rapidly repulsed the doctor and ran out of the room. It was a quick decision of him to choose which corridor he would run; right or left. But he was disoriented, so he ran left and pushed some scientists as he passed. Others tried to hold him in which he was slowed down but he tremblingly rebuffed them. He kicked and punched whoever was on his way trying to slow him down. Though trembling, he saw this as a chance to escape, an opportunity he wouldn’t let go of.

He didn’t actually know where to run because of the amount of detour in the area. He had only one thing in his mind—he needed to find the exit as soon as possible. He encountered a lot of confusing room along the unknown way. He was looking around for a posted map of the building that might have just been glued on the wall or so—but he couldn’t find anything.

His heart was pounding so hard that he could almost hear it. He was breathing irregularly and feeling as though his legs were going to explode. The sweat on his temple kept flowing down to his neck and to his chest even though the place was very chilly. All the rooms he passed by smelled the same like a strong disinfectant or rubbing alcohol. And all the walls were unblemished you couldn’t see anything posted on it, not even a sketch of the building’s structure.

But he endured the pain of running vigorously. All he had in his mind was he had to escape. He turned anywhere he could and ran across the corridors as the scientists daringly follow him until he reached a corridor from which he had nowhere to run. He was cornered; he was already at the end of the hallway where when he opened the nearest door, he could unbelievably see there was no window he could jump from.

He turned to the scientists following him, knees convulsively shaking, and he did not know what to do. His knees fell to the ground as if conceding and tears streaming down his cheeks, weeping silently.

He breathed very chesty. “It’s. . . pointless,” he muttered to himself.

Some scientist tried to get closer but immediately stopped when Dr. Conscire drew near him. They looked at each other, intensely, eye to eye. The doctor was still carrying his irritating smile and his eyes of euphoria that Praxis invariably loathed since the beginning.

Dr. Conscire knelt on the tiled floor to face Praxis. The doctor approached the young man’s ear and placidly whispered a name that made Praxis’s eyes widen in shock. “Tony Cohen.”

“Dad. . .”

“I assume he is important to you,” the doctor muttered with a slow, threatening tone. “We know his location. We know he’s been looking for you for four days. And we know what had happened to your family.”

Those words enfeebled Praxis. His tongue quivered and fear could be detected from his voice. “Don’t do anything to my dad, I’m begging you. . .”

Dr. Conscire did not speak for a minute. When he did it made Praxis’s mind dispossess of fear. “Just follow us, you and your dad will be safe.”

He followed Dr. Conscire skeptically absentminded. He knew there was no certainty of what these reassurances meant, but it had its effect because he had zero option and no alternative. It was like Dr. Conscire was strangling his neck—one wrong move and he and his dad will be pushing up daisies. Rather than being recalcitrant, even under compulsion, he just obeyed without question.

They went back to the airtight room again. He got laid on the bed again; exert his best not to entertain the thought of his dad who might be in trouble now.

“We will not do anything if you follow properly,” Dr. Conscire initiated.

“Do what the fuck you want—just don’t hurt him,” he retorted, face upset.

“You are so easy to deal with.” Dr. Conscire motioned to one of the two scientists inside the room. The tall, muscular scientist went out and when he returned, he was carrying an instrument with the shape of a gun. He distinguished it was not a real gun when he noticed the muzzle was round and its grip panel was fatter than the normal guns his father owned.

“This. . .” Dr. Conscire handed over from the tall scientist the object, “will inject a tracker into your body.”

The doctor gesticulated Praxis to sit back which he had no objection to. The muzzle of the gun-like instrument was placed on his neck; when the trigger was pulled, Praxis’s soul seemed to have left his body for seconds because of sudden shock. Something sank into his nape, all the way to the flesh, like a very tiny ball.

A sudden quiver of pain lit up Praxis’s face. He rubbed his nape thinking it was bleeding, but he could not feel any blood. “What the fuck was that?”

“A tracker. We need to shoot a tracker in preparation for the Second Stage,” explained Dr. Conscire.

“And what really is that Second Stage, huh?”

Dr. Conscire coughed cautiously. “Tango, let me officially open the Second Stage to you.” The doctor smiled at him, and fortunately, it was not the previous irritating smile of him. “We will let you out of this laboratory and it is all up to you wherever you want to go. The sole purpose of this stage is for you to interact with the world. Only when you interact with the people can you discover the effects of the drugs we injected you.”

Praxis was angrily horrified and confused when he heard the word effect come out of the doctor’s mouth. “What effect are you talking about?”

“Unfortunately for us, you are the first patient who had woken up so we had no chance of knowing—but we had a lot of formulated hypotheses and we had a lot of expected effects. We are giving you the honor of finding it out.”

Praxis was thinking about it, disregarding the fact that the term honor was totally odd and hyperbolic the doctor was looking at it that way as if Praxis was really honored by it. But if Dr. Conscire would audaciously set him free from the laboratory, he thought he has plenty of time to act. He has plenty of time to think of a counterattack to this organization. And he has plenty of ways to end this all.

“But never attempt running away.” The doctor seemed to have read what’s on his mind. “Apart from the fact that we know something about your life and you have a tracker attached to your neck, there will be scientists who will watch over you monitoring your every move. You have nothing else to do but to follow our orders, seek for the drug’s effect on your body.”

Praxis blinked a couple of times before speaking. “Just give me an example of the effects of the drug so I can prepare.”

Dr. Conscire just nodded. “One of the possible effects is—”

Praxis jumped because of surprise when suddenly the door loudly flung open. A female scientist came rushing in, hands on her chest, a little sweaty, and looked like she’s in a rush. She swallowed before breathlessly spoke. “Another patient woke up. . . Sierra it is, sir.”