The Experiment by Cassidy Shay (top non fiction books of all time TXT) 📕

sent from some greater force to warn us that her children will be the downfall of this society. Figure out why her body rejected it, and see if you can duplicate it and give it to the other girls. If we can give the chemical to some of them, but keep some of them immune, then it will prevent us from having to raise an army of babies. Do you understand what your assignment is?”
The man nods, and the trio leaves the rec room. After a few minutes, when I know that the coast is clear, I leave and go into my room, no longer hungry for dinner.
I sit on my bed as I try to dissect what I just head. Why did my body reject the chemical? Is this a sign of who my child will be, what she will become? Or is there simply something wrong with me?
Mathew comes in a few minutes after me. “Congrats!” he exclaims. “You made it past two weeks!” He sweeps me into a big hug and then swings me around in a circle.
“Woah, hold on, Mathew. I want to make it past three,” I say as he puts me down. I put my hands on my stomach and look up at him in bewilderment. “I really made it,” I whisper.
Over the next two and a half months, I go through many tests, ultrasounds, and check-ups. Pretty much any time a doctor or scientist has any free time, he or she calls me in to their office. The whole team works separately, but shares their results, trying to find the scientific explanation of why my body rejected the chemical. So far, they have come up empty every time.
I still see Collin, Jack, and Carl regularly. I often wake up in the middle of the night to see one of them sitting at the table. When I am alone, I talk to them. Collin and Jack help me get through the day. When I see Carl, though, it’s all I can do to not cower in a corner.
Right now, Dr. Pender is taking me down to Floor 2, because they found another girl whose body rejected the birth control. She’s been pregnant for about one month. I am going to talk to her, see if she has any questions. Besides the fact that she was able to conceive against all laws of nature, there’s another problem with this girl. She wasn’t one of the Azuli that was selected for marriage. She won’t tell who the father is, and finding out will be another one of my jobs when I talk to her.
We walk down the halls that look so familiar. Even though it’s been a couple months since I was on Floor One, ten years of memorizing the repeating patterns imprinted the images in my brain. As we’re walking, Jack appears next to me.
“Sure looks familiar. They even have D7 and D8 connected,” he says. I look to my right, and I realize that he’s right. The floors are exactly the same. I say a quick prayer that no one is stupid enough to fall for the same trick that I fell for with the joined rooms.
We head into one of the DarkRooms, where a small girl waits. She doesn’t look a day older than twelve, but I know that she must be older than that. I sit down in the chair across from her and she looks up from her lap.
“Hi. I’m Pe-. I mean Meagan. I’m from Floor Six. Let’s start with your name.” She hesitates, and I get a chance to really look at her. She’s got long brown hair that curls at the ends. There’s a scar on her left eyebrow and her bottom lip. Her eyelashes are long and full, and her nose is a little small for her face. She has a square jaw and full lips. Her arms and legs are long, and she sits up straight in her chair. One leg is crossed over the other and her hands are held in her lap. Overall, she’s a very beautiful girl. Based on her appearance, I’m not surprised that someone risked punishment just to be with her.
“I’m Julie,” she says. “I’m one month and one week along. So far, there haven’t been any problems with anything.” She goes on to talk about the morning sickness that has passes, and other things that Dr. Pender asks her. After Dr. Pender has gotten all of the information that she needs, she excuses herself.
Julie looks at me and smiles a shy smile. “It’s so good to know that I’m not all alone,” she admits. “For a couple weeks, I was so scared that I would be alone with this thing. But you’re here.” She takes a deep breath and smiles again.
“It’s good to meet you too. I was also worried that I would have to go through all of this all by myself. Did they explain to you about the chemical?” She nods. “You and I will be very important to the doctors and scientists until they get new girls who haven’t been stripped bare.”
She nods slowly. “I’m just worried about my baby. What kind of experiments will be performed on it? Will it have any chance of a normal life?”
I snort. “A normal life? Here? Yeah right.” It’s silent for a couple minutes as we think about all the things that happen here. “Well, do you have any questions for me? Or anything that you want to tell someone? I promise that everything you say to me is confidential. I won’t tell anyone.”
“My first question has nothing to do with the pregnancy. But… they told me that you’re an Azulate. So why are your eyes green?”
I laugh. “Well, I tried to escape from the Academy. My route was a trap, though, and I was caught. The reason that I tried to run in the first place was because of the stupid experiment, but it was made worse when I was raped. They didn’t exterminate me because they ran some tests and discovered that I was pregnant. They wanted to keep the baby. I live on Floor 6 now, but they changed my appearance so that when people come to the doctor or something, they don’t recognize me. My hair used to be brown, and I have extensions in my hair until it grows out. They reconstructed my face and they were going to give me a new frame, but I got pregnant again after I had a miscarriage. So I won’t be getting that for a while.”
She nods as everything soaks in. “Wow. That’s crazy. But I have another question.” I look into her eyes, finding fear and anger, but also curiosity. “What floor were you from?”
I shake my head. “Sorry. There are a couple questions that I’m not allowed to answer. That’s one of them.” Collin appears behind the girl, and he has a smile on his face.
“You can trust her. She won’t tell anyone. Show her that you can trust her, and she’ll trust you,” he says, and I know that he’s right.
“But, I’ll tell you anyway,” I say to her. “I was from Floor One. I tried to escape through D7 and D8. But I stepped in and everything went black. I was unconscious, woke up a couple hours later, and I had to write out the reason why I escaped. Well, why I tried to, anyway.”
She nods, and opens her mouth, about to say something. She closes it again, but I prod her along, and eventually she asks me who the father is.
“The first baby, the one that saved my life, really, was Carl’s. He was my first husband, the one that raped me. Then, I was married again to Matthew. And he got me pregnant too. But that baby died as well. This one, though, is really important to me. I actually love her father. I’ll never see him again, and that makes it even more important to me that I keep this one alive. Maybe sometime I’ll tell you the story of Collin and I.”
She smiles. “I’d like that.” Collin is still standing behind her, but he comes over to my side and touches my hand. I don’t actually feel his hand on mine, but I know that it’s there.
“You did well,” he says, and then vanishes. For several minutes, I stare at the spot where he was.
“Are you alright?” asks Julie. I nod slowly and bring my gaze back over to her. “Okay, so I’m guessing that the answer to this question will be yes, because of what just happened.” She takes a deep breath. “Do you see people that aren’t really there?”
I nod. “Yes, I do. I see Collin, my brother Jack, and Carl. So far, that’s been it. Do you see anyone that’s not really there?” She shakes her head and explains that she only asked because of my strange behavior.
We talk for about another hour or so, and the conversation is actually about the pregnancies this time. When I stand up to leave, she holds her arms open, waiting for a hug, which I deliver. As I walk out, I know that I have made a new friend.
Chapter 2

I get back to my room, and Jack is arguing with Carl. Mathew is there too, but he oblivious to the shouting that seems loud enough to wake the dead.
“… might have stayed if it weren’t for you!” shouts Jack, poking Carl in the chest. “You had to go and screw things up. It’s been months, and you still haven’t owned up to what you did to her!”
Carl hangs his head, and I step towards them. “I would have left anyway,” I tell Jack, but he doesn’t hear me. “I’m still here, guys. I just don’t look like me anymore.” They go back to arguing, and I try to shut them out. I even try leaving the room, but the image of them fighting is everywhere I look.
Carl shoves Jack backward. “You don’t know what I went through every day. You can’t know. I loved her. It killed me every day.” With that, Carl walks down the hall and the hallucination ends.
I go back into the bedroom and sink down onto the bed. Mathew is looking at me from the table, a look of concern on his face. Although he is used to me talking to people that he can’t see, he can tell that this was upsetting.
“What happened?” he asks in a soft, tender voice.
“Jack and Carl were fighting. Jack was telling Carl that it was his fault that I tried to escape. And when I tried to stop the argument, they didn’t hear me. It was the weirdest thing in the world. I’m always able to talk to them. But this one almost seemed… real. You know? Like it was a live video feed.”
Mathew nods. “That’s weird. Too bad