Endless: A Why Choose Romance

1. One

It’s been 245 meals since the last time I’ve lost count. Before that it was somewhere in the four hundreds, and before that it was nearly six hundred. I have memories of days and weeks, even birthdays, before I was brought here. Those memories have been teased out and pulled away, and with every passing meal I get further and further from that reality.

So much about this place is stable, wholly reliable and in these cold and starkly lit rooms, I can always count on the complete and utter sense of removal from time.

I can’t remember what it was that made me count meals. Can’t remember when I started doing it, but there is a persistent, hopeful feeling that once I can count high enough the Tanks will stop, and I will be free.

The shrill keening of the overhead speaker tells me my allotted mealtime is over, and the legs of the cold metal chair scrape across the concrete beneath me as I stand up. The sound reverberates through the room in a near taunt. Before my Minder comes in, I take a moment to study the grooves I’ve worn into the ground after years, maybe decades, of that same practiced movement.

The once smooth and unblemished concrete now holds the scars of every meal I’ve sat through. Four identical gouges only a few inches in length serve as the only record I’ve been able to leave within these walls. Like my skin, every other mark has been smoothed away, no evidence is left behind.

When she gets in, this Minder will guide me to another room as a silent companion. I’ve never tried to speak to her, never tried to connect. Just like the dozens of other Minders I’ve had, she would ignore my questions anyway, and continue walking as if she didn’t hear them. She”ll move as if she is walking alongside a ghost, only here to guide me from room to room, making sure I don’t try to run off.

I’ve only bolted a few times. Each a more desperate attempt than the last, and each a resounding failure.

The first time, they found me hiding in a utility room just hours after running from my first Tank. They sent Mary to come find me, and she just held me while I screamed and sobbed. She promised me everything was going to be okay, that no matter how scary it was, I would make it out of the Tank just fine. I simply had to follow the rules, and she would take care of me. I remember so vividly the warmth of her arms around my small body and how desperately I wanted my mom to be the one giving me that comfort. I knew, even then, that I would never get to experience my mother’s arms around me again.

At that point, she became somewhat of a surrogate mother for me. Though she was a Researcher, and one who monitored me in the Tanks, I wanted her comfort, her reassurance, and compassion above anything else. I believed that she was an ally, and that’s probably why they took her away.

My last attempt at escape happened after what could have been years of complacent obedience, punctuated often by abject terror. That time they didn’t let Mary come see me. It had taken them much longer to find my hiding place, and I almost believed that I had been forgotten, that they no longer cared about the child they had taken.

That hope was crushed when John came to find me.

The walk back from the empty lab was quiet, silent save for the sound of his shiny leather shoes hitting the concrete and the occasional scuff and stumble of my untied sneakers, the laces thrashed around my ankles like they were still trying to escape. My body felt heavier than usual, and I was having trouble keeping up with his brisk pace.

When he closed the door to my room behind us, he motioned for me to sit on the bed while he pulled a chair up in front of me. He just stared for a moment, and I could feel him assessing me as if he didn’t see a child, but a safe he could crack into and steal everything out of.

“Madeline, do you know how long you were hiding?”

His voice was cold, distant, and utterly clinical, just like the rest of him. Even from the first time I met him, I could sense how calculating he was. His eyes were always the most unsettling, their lack of warmth was almost inhuman. He did his best to hide it, but I never missed the flash of vicious delight behind his thick framed glasses.

“I’m not sure.”

”Oh, go on. Give me a guess.” The smooth timbre of his voice set my teeth on edge.

“Four days?” The softness of my voice belied my worry. I was in trouble. I had to be.

I was scared and hungry, and I knew I wanted to sleep, but in the time I had been hiding I couldn’t calm down enough to actually rest tucked away in that lab. I couldn’t risk venturing through the facility to find something to eat for fear that I would be caught and dragged back to the cold Tank I had run from.

I was trying to listen to what my body was telling me, trying to figure out exactly how long it had been since I’d slept or had any food, but there was no way for me to know for sure.

John leaned forward in the chair slightly, the miniscule movement eating away at the space between us. His cold stare bored even deeper into me, and the corners of his mouth began to creep upward. A smile, surely, but the baring of his teeth brought me no comfort.

“You’ve been hiding from us for eighteen days, little thing.”

My skin crawled while those cold and empty eyes searched my face for a reaction, but there was none to be found. Time had already begun to mean nothing to me at that point.

“Twelve years old, without food and water for nearly three weeks. It’s a miracle.” He spat the last word at me and those three syllables settled as bitterly into my mind as I’m sure they tasted on his tongue.

Miraculous. That’s what they called me. I was the everlasting girl. Cursed to survive.

“You stayed alert the whole time. It was impressive, really. More so than the lack of basic necessities.” He pulled the little notebook out of his breast pocket and jotted down some notes. I couldn’t read it from that angle, but it didn’t matter; he always wrote in code, and I’d never been able to figure out what the jumbled letters and symbols meant.

”Normally, Madeline, this would be a great inconvenience to us, as you well know.” He cut a sharp look to me as his pen jabbed into the notebook to punctuate his words. “However, we were planning on doing a fairly similar Tank later this month, so we decided to wait this one out.”

I couldn’t stifle the tremble that racked its way through me. It was the same every time a new Tank was mentioned, and this was no different. This was another show of power, another way to prove to me that there was no way to leave his watchful eye. Another way to prove I’d never be able to escape.

He explained that this time, like with my previous attempts, they were never in any danger of losing me. They watched me dash through the hallways, ducking into one room after another looking for an exit, all while taking notes and monitoring my behaviors. Within seconds of slipping past the guards, the entire complex was on lockdown and everyone had been instructed to simply let me run about as I wanted to, knowing fully that there was no way for me to leave the building without his say so.

I never attempted to run after that moment, and the desperation to flee gradually ebbed out of me. I became resigned to my fate.

I’ll never leave these starkly lit rooms unless John wants me to.

The heavy thud of the door’s latch pulls me from the memory and to the present where my Minder waits in the doorway, ready to escort me to John’s office, where I’ll be briefed on my next Tank and dismissed for preliminary testing.

They trained me well in the years I’ve been with the organization, and the Minders are no longer primed for my escape attempts. They don’t even restrain me between the rooms like they had in the early days. That was just another intimidation tactic.

I am just as free now as I was the first time I was marched through these hallways two weeks after my ninth birthday.

I hardly remember that small, frightened child who wanted nothing more than her mother’s embrace. Now, I only have a vague sense of the person I’ve grown to be. I know I’m taller, and my beige clothes have been exchanged for larger ones, but I don’t really know what this new version of myself looks like. The brief glimpses I’m able to catch are always in the two-way mirror of the Tank’s observation room, but I never allow myself to look for long, never take my attention off of whatever danger is lurking nearby.

I can see the back of myself on one of the screens behind John’s desk, and I’m stuck still for a moment. I never get to see myself from this angle and it’s jarring to see that I’m someone different from behind. The tangled brown sheet of my hair is cut roughly across my back and the plain beige clothes fit more snugly across my hips and torso than I had noticed before. I’m grown now, an adult woman, and I hardly recognize myself standing in the doorway.

The other camera feeds echo everything I’ve seen since I got here, more empty hallways, more Researchers organizing themselves around Tanks, and more Minders standing to watch over this near barren facility.

John doesn’t need to follow my eyes to know where I’m looking and with two quick clicks he closes the camera feeds, demanding that my attention return to him.

It’s hard to measure the small, gradual changes in a person, but he has definitely aged too. His hair isn’t a jet-black coif, but dark grey with flashes of bright white peeking through. The skin on his face no longer taut and without flaws, but now slightly wrinkled and dull. The lines around his mouth paint a false picture of warmth, but his eyes are the same. Sharp, cold and cruel.

John is the only person who’s been here since the beginning, yet I know nearly nothing about him. Everyone else, the Researchers, the Minders, they all come and go, but he’s the constant. The only person who interacts with me, even to this degree. Anyone else who has to come near me avoids eye contact as if my curse is contagious and they’ll be thrown into the Tanks next.

That”s ridiculous, of course.

They’ve only found two other children remotely like me since I’ve been here, and neither one survived past their third Tank. John told me all about them, everything other than their names. Another piece of his distinct brand of cruelty aimed squarely at me.

“How did you sleep last night, Madeline?” John’s eyes bore into me when he asks these questions. They’re the same every time; a monotonous, pointless, routine we’ve created over the years.

“Fine. Eight hours, no dreams.” My voice is steady and sure, every word clear and to his liking.

“Good, okay.” He doesn’t break eye contact, daring me to continue. I could answer every question without his prompting at this point, but I don’t, long since having learned to wait until the next question is asked.

“Finished your meals?”

“Yes.”

“Bowel movements normal?”

“Yes.”

On arriving at the facility this question filled me with shame and embarrassment, but now I answer clearly without breaking eye contact.

“And you’ve finished all the water we’ve given you?”

“Yes.” Again, another ridiculous question. He and everyone else here knows all the answers. There is nothing I can do without being carefully monitored either by cameras, or a bored research assistant measuring out the food and water I’ve been given, always taking detailed notes as I consume my meals without thought.

John asks the next few questions and records my answers before he pushes his keyboard back beneath his desk and leans forward, settling his weight onto his forearms.

“We have a good one for you this time.” A sharp-toothed smile slashes across his face, turning my stomach into a heavy stone.

“Aren’t they all?” I feign nonchalance the best I can, but I know he can sense my anxiety from a mile away.

“Yes, but this one I think you’ll really like.” He settles back into his chair, no doubt wanting me to scramble for answers. I don’t want to ask, don’t want to give him the satisfaction of my panic. I know that they’ve devised some sick torture for me to endure then slowly and painfully recover from.

“Don’t want to spoil the surprise?”

“I don’t know what’s left for you to do to me. It hardly seems like a surprise to come up against another flamethrower or more gasses.”

He lets out a cold laugh, the only kind he seems to be capable of, and presses a button on his desk to call the Minder in. I don’t wait to be dismissed, I just turn and walk out the door, continuing with the horrific, yet now mundane, routine that has become my life.

“Madeline,” he calls, just loudly enough for his words to follow me out the door. “So much time spent here, and you still haven’t figured it out. There’s always something new to try.”