004 Dark

Dr. Vivian Roth left the lights in her office off, choosing to remain slumped at her desk in the dark. She ran her fingers through her hair until her forehead came to rest against the hardwood desk with a solid thunk. It felt good to just sit in the dark like this, anonymous and invisible in the shadows, in a room that was just slightly too chilly to be completely comfortable. At least here and now she could forget about everything in her life that was grating on her fragile nerves and just breathe without someone criticizing her for the volume of oxygen she was using. Her peace was disturbed only by the constant inundation of thoughts, which was to be expected. She reflected briefly on the time when she used to enjoy this job much more, and with a start realized how much guilt she felt in the current moment.

"Geez, you're getting soft," Vivian growled. There was a time when test subjects were subhuman in her eyes, and she could poke, prod and perforate their flesh all day long without even the slightest wavering doubt about what she was doing. She got a sadistic joy out of what she did, and that quavering of fear and pain in the subject's eyes upon the insertion of a needle was one of the best rewards. There was nothing in the world better than using a scalpel on a subject, drawing straight lines of blood across their chest. Sometimes an afternoon was spent removing the ribcage so she could watch a subject's heart beat before her just because she could, fixating on the struggling throbs of the organ, the twitching of the vessels that connected it to everything else in the body, until far too soon it seized or sputtered and the subject died. Ethics didn't come into play down here in the bowels of the ASPEN facility, and as long as she continued to yield usable results and further science, very few people concerned themselves with what projects she undertook in her off time. She had worked her way to a position where she had free access to all the tools and resources she could ever want, to do with as she pleased. It had been liberating, being able to satisfy whatever curiosity crossed her mind without repercussions, and the idea that she couldn't remember when that had changed struck her suddenly as particularly unnerving.

It had to be her current work. Her mentor had started the project some forty years ago, and gave all her notes to Vivian upon her retiring. It had been fascinating work, outlining the discovery of a gene within what was believed to be genomic dark matter that could be manipulated subtly to grant unimaginable power to ordinary people. Thousands of photographs and hundreds of hours of video footage from her mentor's laboratory were handed down to her, illustrating the experiments on lesser animals, first standard laboratory mice, then other small mammals, until pigs and primates were tested, being the closest to animals. Finally, a small selection of women were selected for the experiment, and within a few years, the laboratory was keeping tabs on twenty newborn children with the altered gene. Thousands of pages of detailed notes for each child as they grew, blood samples and observations of their DNA, all observing the effects of the mutant gene to an intimately personal level of detail. Vivian had spent countless hours pouring over every page, every word, every scrap of information on the project that her mentor would give her, and so of course when the now thirty-something-year-olds were brought in to ASPEN, Vivian recognized each one immediately, and knew perhaps more about them than they themselves did.

And that intimacy with the test subjects was where the problem lay, she thought. Unlike the mice and monkeys, whose abilities that the altered gene had given them were easy to observe as they were provoked through stress and fear responses (Vivian would never forget the first time she saw a mouse burst into flame in a stress test, or a Capuchin monkey turn its fur to poisoned quills when cornered in its cage by a thickly-gloved hand).

But the human test subjects weren't responding in quite the same way-- there were very, very few examples of the abilities being provoked during adolescence, and even during the examinations and testing upon their arrival, fear tests were failing to yield results. It was frustrating, and even more difficult because it was hard to say what sequences coded for what sort of ability. There had been a few small patterns observed during the mouse studies, but it was impossible to say if those patterns would be applicable across species. It could be there before them the whole time, but too weak to be noticeable. And on the one occasion that she had decided, out of frustration and anger, to keep going with the test long after her better judgment told her to stop, the subject had died. The loss had affected Vivian a lot more than she thought it would, simply because knowing so much about the subject's whole life made it feel like she was losing a close friend, or even a child. She had underestimated the human element in this experiment, and now she was paying for it.

Vivian's fingers fumbled across the desk until they located a notepad and pen, and turned her head just enough to scribble down notes about finding more scanners for detecting ambient environmental changes during the next tests. She felt exhausted, lost, at her wit's end. If her mentor was still here, then maybe the brilliant old bat would have some sort of nugget of wisdom, or direction, or even just a kind word to help her move on, but no. She'd retired well over a year ago, and it was Vivian all alone working on this monumental, groundbreaking project that should have made her happy, fulfilled, excited, but instead she was tired, sore, humiliated and heartbroken.

A shaft of light fell across the room as the door was opened, illuminating her pathetic slumped form, much to her displeasure. She didn't want to be seen like this. She didn't want to be bothered.

"Get out. Please." she groaned, clutching her forehead in one hand.

"Vivvy? It's just me... Jesus, it's cold in here," Dr. Desmund said, shutting the door and letting the darkness mercifully swallow her up again. Maybe if she kept her eyes shut and ignored him, she mused, then maybe he would go away. "You missed dinner, so I brought you something." He set the tray beside her on the desk, close enough that she couldn't ignore how good it smelled, despite her sour mood.

Oliver moved around her office like it was his own, which wasn't unusual since they both spent a fair amount of time in each others' offices. As he searched for things, it gave her a much-needed moment to collect herself. Vivian ran both her hands back through her hair as she picked herself up off the desk with a deep breath. She started when he draped a blanket over her shoulders, but he didn't notice as he went to bring over the chair he had found.

"You should turn the heat on when you're in here. It's not good for you to be in the cold like this, and you will get no sympathy from me when you've got the sniffles," he said, sitting down (entirely uninvited, she spat in her mind) next to her, not too close but close enough that his presence wasn't able to be ignored. He sat in silence next to her, and in fact was toying with the metal globe on her desk, brushing his fingers across countries with a certain fondness.

"Why are you doing this," she huffed, reluctantly reaching for the teacup off the tray.

"Doing what?" Oliver asked, giving the globe a good spin and then stopping it with a digit, frowning gently when his finger landed in the Pacific. "The blanket? Because I seriously don't want to catch your cold when--"

"Not that. Being so nice. All the time." She enclosed the teacup in her hands, feeling it warm the numbed fingers. She hadn't realized she had been as cold as she was. "I don't deserve it."

"And what makes you think that?" he said casually, turning on the electric fireplace with one of the buttons on her desk. It chewed away at the darkness, only able to consume so much of it, and leaving the pair in the half-light of its flickering glow. "This is just a little tangle. You'll get through it sooner or later. No reason to lose all your faith in yourself."

She hated him. She hated him so much, because he had a point. She hated that he was looking after her like she was some helpless puppy or something, something unable to look after itself. She hated the way he slid the tray in front of her, studying her with a grin as she took a bite. She hated the way he was heating up her office so she was comfortable. She hated that he had so much damn faith, not just in her but in the universe and everything. She hated the way she couldn't help the little smile at her lips because his presence just now, even just sitting here in the dark with her, made her feel a little bit better.

She sighed, stabbing a piece of broccoli with perhaps a bit too much vigor. "I guess what I should be saying is... thanks."

"It's no problem, Vivvy." Oliver's eyes glittered in the unsteady firelight as he stretched out in his chair, folding his arms behind his head. "You're like a sister to me. Where I'm from, we take care of our own."

Vivian smiled softly before turning back to her meal and the pair settled into a comfortable silence. How Oliver always seemed to know just how to cheer her up whenever she needed it most, Vivian figured she would probably never know. Even in the darkest places, he was able to bring light and make the darkness bearable.

---
Shitty rushed ending is shitty and rushed. What do you want from me. Jeez. Get off my lawn.

I imagine in my actual story I won't be giving away what's going on just in the prose like this. That's just not good storytelling. But as it stands, it helps me think about my ideas and elaborate them. I don't care that this is total shit that's taken me like, what, over a week to complete?
And holy fucking shit I need to stop making such nice-guy male characters and such insecure female characters. Buhhhh.