Impatiently,
Yagi sat for hours as he waited to be able to see Sako. He sat in a hallway
with Nurse who kept him busy with conversation, telling him not to worry and
that Sako would be okay.
Yagi
wished he could fully believe her but he couldn’t. What if Sako really had gone
insane? What if he wasn’t really getting better?
Yagi
watched people walk back and forth through the maze of hallways. Men and women
hurried around the building each holding a clipboard in their hands or some
kind of information.
Finally,
after two hours Yagi was called to come see Sako. His friend wasn’t fully
there. He was still waking up. He was in a patient’s gown in a cot with an IV
connected to him and a heart machine beeping steadily next to him. He also had
a tube blowing oxygen into his nose. He had to get surgery on his arm. The
piece of glass had cut far into his arm and now the injured arm was in a sling.
Yagi
took his hand in his, “Hey, are you okay?”
Sako
didn’t reply. It was like he heard only a noise and that was it. He looked at
Yagi but it wasn’t him.
“What’s
wrong with him?” Yagi asked Nurse
“He’s
still coming too. They had to put him under, you know. He’ll be back to himself
in no time though.”
“What’s
happening to him?” He looked at Sako again and noticed the bruises caused by
the tazer and the bruise on his face caused by Yagi. Yagi felt awful knowing
that he had hurt his best friend.
The door
opened and Doctor asked Yagi to follow him to his office. Yagi did and when they
entered his office, each sat at his desk across from one another. Doctor took
his glasses off and set them on the white desk. He ran his hands down his face.
“Yagi, I…I haven’t been truthful to you. I feel like you should know what’s
really happening here.”
“Okay….”
“I’m not
going to sugarcoat it. Sakuro isn’t doing well. We’ve given him bandage after
bandage to help him but he’s not getting better. Eventually, we’ll run out of
bandages.”
The
words hurt. Yagi couldn't say anything at first, “So… he’s going to…to die?’
“Yes.
But not because of himself. He will become more dangerous here -there are too
many triggers for him- and Leader will have him put down.”
“Like an
animal?” Yagi asked. Doctor didn’t even look at him and didn’t answer. Yagi
stood up, “You can’t kill Sakuro! You can’t!” He yelled. “He’ll get better, I
promise!”
If only
Yagi could believe his own promise.
“Yagi,
listen. I don’t want to have to put him to sleep. Which is why I need to get
you two out of here.”
Yagi
froze and then sat back down, “What?” Did he hear Doctor correctly?
Doctor
stood up and went to a metal door in his office that had the words “KEEP OUT” written
on it. He gestured to Yagi to follow him, and Yagi did. Doctor opened the door
and Yagi went inside with him. There were a lot of computers but then at the
end of the room, there was a wall covered with pictures of kids' faces
including Yagi and Sako’s. Some of them had notes written on them like
Sako’s saying “demon” or “angel” and others had X’s crossed over them.
Yagi looked
across the many unfamiliar faces before looking at Doctor. “What is this?”
“You’re part
of a program that’s paid for by the government. A program that has been
crumbling because you and Sakuro’s kind -with everything we do to help you-
keep dying.” He glanced down at a trashcan with X’d photos lying inside it. He
frowned.
“Program?”
“Yes. A
program that was designed to make soldiers for war who are stronger than the
armies we have now. Yagi, you’re not fully human. You’re either half angel or
demon. Sako is half demon.”
Yagi
didn’t know how to react. Was this a joke? But the look on Doctor’s face told
him it wasn’t. He looked back at the photos and then at Doctor. “How do you
know what Sako is but you don’t know what I am?”
“Because
you haven’t changed yet. Sako is sick because he’s a demon and he’s going
through fast changes. We are trying to help pace him because he can’t control
himself yet, but while we are doing everything, we can for him, his body is
rejecting everything we do to help him. His anger today didn’t start with
Leader’s punishment. It was because the demon part of Sako had matured and
awakened and wanted to get out. His ‘demon’, as we call it, will be fueled by
anything. Especially emotions.”
“So, what
happened to Sakuro will happen to me?” Yagi asked fearfully.
“Maybe.
Demon’s have black blood. Angel’s have red. Depending on which you are will
determine how you change.”
Yagi was
confused. “But Sako has red blood.”
“Not
anymore. When the demon part of him awoke, his blood cells changed. We have no
idea why this happens to half-demons. But with you, your blood is still red. We
don’t know anything else that tells us if an angel is an angel or if a demon is
a demon other than the color of their blood.”
“So… is
there a deadline to when this change will happen?”
“Yes. By
the end of this month, if you haven’t had an episode like Sako, it means you
are an angel. Angels don’t have such violent changes.”
Yagi
couldn’t believe what he was hearing, “So you’re telling me that everyone in
this building is either half demon and half angel and no matter what happens
you just end up killing us anyway if you can’t control us?”
“We exterminate the uncontrollable
ones, yes. Imagine if an uncontrolled demon got out into the world, there would
be chaos. The FBI would take you all away and kill you themselves. At least
with us, it doesn’t hurt. The only thing you feel is a needle.”
“And what? Now you’re going to tell
me that you guys experiment on us too? What about parents? Do we have
families?”
“We experiment when you are younger
so that you live longer. Demons and angels used to only live until they were
thirteen. Now it’s sixteen.”
“What’s the oldest age to live?”
“Twenty-two.” He said “The oldest to
live made it to twenty-two years of age and then he died of natural causes
three years ago. After him, we started to change things in everyone’s genes and
soon others died in their early twenties and when we saw that pattern of a
growing lifespan we started a new program-your program- where we try to
extend your lifespan beyond twenty completely.”
“What’s an average of angel and
demon life spans?”
“Demons die sooner than angels. The
man I told you about is the only demon recorded here to live as long as they
did. I’m afraid Sakuro is already being torn apart by that demon part of him.
Unless something changes, he won’t make it to even nineteen.”
The words stung. His best friend had
a death sentence, and he didn’t even know about it. “And parents? Do we have
parents?”
He frowned, “That’s classified.”
“Classified as we do, or we don’t
because you had what you needed in a lab to create us?”
Again, Doctor’s silence answered his
question.
Yagi backed away and shook his head,
“Every year, you say send kids back to their families when we don’t have one.
But you were actually killing them, weren’t you?”
He nodded sadly, “Yes, we were. It’s
like they go insane, and they end up even hurting themselves. It’s for the best
that we put them to sleep even though no one here wants that to happen. It’s
safer for both parties.”
Yagi couldn’t speak. He wanted to.
He wanted to scream and fall to his knees too. He wanted to die. All those
years hoping to get picked at the end of the year to get freedom sooner, and
all this time it was just a death sentence.
“I know not all of this makes sense
to you, Yagi.” He touched Yagi’s arm but the teenager violently pulled away
from the comforting touch.
“Don’t
touch me, you murderer.” He snapped. He backed away from him and crossed his
arms over himself as he looked down at the garbage can.
Doctor
frowned. “This is why you and Sako are so important.” Doctor went on to say, “Whether
it’s a natural death or decision made, almost no angels or demons make it to
the end of their teenage years. You and Sako, or your section, are the only
ones to live this long besides the half-demon who died three years ago.
“You
two can be the key to finding out how to save so many more lives of those like
you. Already your section is surpassing other sections in the past. With your
help, we can make future half-demons and angels-
“‘Survive a little longer’?” Yagi interrupted,
“Be better and stronger weapons?”
Doctor frowned. “The world is
crumbling. We need our nation to stay strong. We can’t fight by ourselves.”
“So, you agree then. We’re only weapons.”
“I see all of you as my children. I
don’t think of you as an object.”
“But
inevitably we’re weapons.”
“If you
stay here, yes. But here’s something incredible about you and Sakuro. Angels
and Demons have always ended up fighting each other- even to the brink of
death. But you and Sako never fight. Your section does not fight each other.
You aren’t aggressive towards each other. You protect each other. You guys are
the only ones who don’t try to attack one another. That is a success for this
program.”
“But we’re still all weapons!” he
yelled angrily. “What you’re saying is that it doesn’t matter if we live or die
because if we die the next section will be the weapons! Do you not care? You
say we are like your own, but you raising us like pigs to be slaughtered!”
“Yagi,
you don’t understand. That’s what this program wants. But if I get you and your
section out of here, the program will fail and everyone will be saved in the
long run.”
Yagi
pinched the bridge of his nose and sighed, “How many of us are there in our
section?”
“Five, not including you and Sako.”
“How many were there?”
“Ten in total. Three died of
diseases or illness. You’re created, we don’t have control over if you are all
created without imperfections.”
“How many sections are there?”
He sighed “There were twelve. Now
there are three, including yours. While tweaking your genes made you live
longer, it also caused…complications. Every section has different tweaks here
and there. For whatever reason it’s only the last three sections that made it
this far. We have a reset of ten new sections every two years.”
That means that this place at one
time had over 100 angels and demons. Yagi was shocked.
“But that’s why I wanted to talk to
you, Yagi.” Doctor said, “Your section is the most critical because of how far
you guys have come and I know what Leader has in store for you. I can’t sit here
and let it happen. I’m going to get you guys out. Not only will it help you and
the others, but it means Sako will live. Keeping him here will kill him
no matter what we try to do. There are people in this building who don’t want
you guys to live.”
“What’s the point of leaving if we
are all just going to die?! You said it yourself. The lifespan now is sixteen.
We’re all beyond that point now. We can all die tomorrow.”
“But your sections might not die!
But if you stay here, you will from what Leader plans on doing! Wouldn’t you
rather die with freedom by your side and a whole world to explore or be in a
cell for the rest of your life? Once you hit eighteen, we experiment again.
With Leader in charge, there's no telling what he might do!”
Yagi didn’t say anything further for
a moment.
Doctor put his hands on Yagi’s
shoulders and looked at him with tears in his eyes, “Please, Yagi. Let’s just
try. I can’t watch you all die. I can’t.”
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