Haunting of Superior

Chapter 1

The odor of sweat and blood mixed in the air, creating a nasty miasma that hurt the senses and made you want to throw up. The floor was dirty, covered with dirt, muck, and grim and probably riddled with germs and bacteria. The lights, broken, flickered weakly and covered the place in a strange, gray glow. There were tables and chairs scattered throughout the room at weird intervals. Not one was neatly placed. It was like no one had ever bothered to make the room a bit neater. There were even beds; most of their sheets and covers had been torn. The tattered cloth lay abandoned on the floor, ignored and covered in blood stains and the dirt from the floor. They would not make good bandages, but apparently they were used that way anyway.

At the back of the room was a cleaner, more pristine chair. It was clearly treated with a lot more TLC than any other furniture in the room. It was disinfected after every sitting, always kept clean to avoid rust getting on it. It was a special chair but not in a good way. Anyone who sat on it either went into the void or became something different. Anyone who sat on it would scream loudly in plain sight of everyone else trapped in the room. They would hide, burying their faces in dusty pillows as they tried to forget that they might be next. That they might be the one to suffer the agony of being turned into a monster. They knew no one could escape the only fates it offered.

Jamie was there when it first failed. She remembered it well. When the human monsters had come in and grabbed a girl, they forced her into the bad chair. The chair of death. Jamie had always feared going into that chair. From experience, she knew it would kill her some way or another. As the scary people had wrestled the girl into the chair, Jamie and her brother had crawled under a rickety table that they thought would keep the events from their view. Jack had buried his face into her shirt and silently cried. This usually happened whenever they came in; they would hide, and Jack would cry because they would lose another friend.

The shrieks and yells were still audible, though, and the siblings tried to focus on each other, to get the sounds out of their heads. When the terrible noises stopped, the scary people began talking. They had sounded disappointed which meant the girl had died. Jamie had hoped they would immediately go away as they always did, but then they had started to talk about their boss. Apparently he wanted them to have a successful attempt that day or else... they never actually said what the punishment would have been.

They began to walk around the room. Jamie had pulled Jack closer to her, terrified to be found. The table had been moved aside, and the person responsible grabbed Jack. Jack tightened his grip on Jamie's shirt, refusing to be moved. The person, deciding that two is better than one, brought Jamie out from under the table as well. The other scary people were back at the chair, watching the kids squirm fearfully as the person took them to the chair. The chair. The one where they might just die in.

"Who should we do first?" the person who had grabbed them asked his companions. "The girl?" He looked up and down at Jamie, wrinkling his nose, unimpressed. "She looks weak. Might as well just get her out of the way."

"No, she's not weak," another scary person said in disagreement. "She opened the door once. We would have been in massive trouble if word had gotten out."

"I don't understand why Antonio wants to keep this a secret," the other person said, scowling discontentedly as he spoke. "If some people are so weak that they can't stand this, then we should get rid of them. Only taking the oldest kid in our families just isn't enough to support the tests. This is our only solution, idiots, so swallow your stupid complaints and get on with our jobs!" He took breath then added in a more calm tone, "So we start with the boy?"

"Yes." The calmer person picked up a clipboard and tore a written page off to write on a blank. He put a pencil on the paper and expectantly looked at Jack. "What's your name?" he asked in a fake-friendly voice.

Jack quivered in fear and buried his face deeper into Jamie's shirt. At this point, it was soaked in tears. Jamie stroked the top of his head, terror for her brother mixing with anger at fate deciding they would be the next slaughter cows.

"What's your name?" the person repeated, starting to look impatient.

"I-I don't wanna go," Jack mumbled into Jamie.

"Name please. We don't care how you feel," the person said.

"His name is Jack." Jamie glared at the people surrounding them. Amused murmurs echoed through the room as the people laughed at her small courage.

The person scribbled the information down. He nodded to the people who had stood back, and they stepped forward to put Jack in the chair. Jamie hugged him closer, refusing to part with him. He was only eight and didn't deserve this torment. Her heart ached as she realized they would never see their parents again because they would be dead.

Jack was crying audibly now as they took his current information like how much he weighed. They were documenting the information so they could compare anything that might have changed if it worked. Jamie's hands shook, and her head spun. She had to force the urge to attack the scary people down. She would be no use to her brother if she was killed in front of him. Another person wearing plastic gloves lifted up a syringe. Jack closed his eyes, tears still dripping down his face, and mumbled incoherent things no one could understand. Jamie looked away, unable to look. She didn't want to watch her brother die in pain like so many others before him. They knew only one kid had survived the transformation.

Minutes passed. The only thing Jamie heard was the beating of her heart, fast and hard. Nothing sounded over it. There were no screams. Nothing. And then the scary people started talking again. They sounded surprised. Jamie dared to turn her head, wondering if she would see a dead body on the chair.

But Jack was alive. He sniffed occasionally, but he was alive and unchanged even though it should have happened by now. He was shaking like he expected it to happen at any moment. The scary people shared a face of shock and wariness. One whispered to another, and they nodded in agreement with something.

The person with the clipboard examined Jack with a frown. "Get Antonio," he ordered. "He needs to know about this." Then he glanced at Jamie. "And inject it into his sister. We need to know if she possesses this... trait too."

Jamie stiffened, her relief gone. She tried to duck behind the person keeping her in place. It failed, and she was forced forward to stand in front of the person with the clipboard. He tore off Jack's page and rested it aside in case he needed it. Then he set his pen to the surface.

"Name?" he asked again. His voice wasn't as gentle as it had been with Jack; he knew Jamie was old enough to not appreciate it.

"Jamie," she replied, suddenly seeing the small but deadly sharp knife lying next to the person. She wondered if they kept it there to intimidate whoever was forced up. She refused to shake as they took the same information they took from Jack.

Next came the needle. Jamie hated needles with all very being and had to close her eyes and think back to the happy, carefree days where she had been with all her family. As the liquid stuff was injected into her, she held onto the faces of her parents and her brother when they were happy. She wanted it to be the last thing she saw if she died.

The room quieted, the silence broken only by Jack's sniffs as everyone stared at Jamie with bated breaths. Would she die or would she live? Would the liquid injected into her veins kill her? Jamie waited for the pain and agony to come, but she felt nothing. Just as it had been with Jack, nothing happened to her.

The awe in the scary people's eyes grew. They exchanged looks, clearly wondering what to do with a pair of kids who were unaffected by their experiment. Finally the one with the clipboard nodded to confirm something all the scientists had been thinking.

"Keep them together," he said. "We can't let them out of our sight. If even one of them goes missing, Antonio will have our heads for it."

And so Jamie and Jack were forced onto one of the dusty, grimy tables. The dirt stuck to their hands, but they were used to it and huddled together as they awaited for the boss of the scary people to show up. Jack had crawled back into Jamie's arms, refusing to leave his sister. He knew they still weren't safe, and he didn't want to leave Jamie.

"Don't we still have to make one?" someone asked, looking as equally scared as the kids.

The door slammed open, causing everyone to jump in fright. A man stood in the doorway, sending a shadow across the room from the light from the other room as this place was darker than the outside. A spark of interest was in his gaze, and he stared directly at Jamie and Jack. Jamie felt like his gaze was devouring her, searching for the answers of what she was inside.

"What do we have here?" he asked his scientists, never taking his eyes off this new find.

"These kids are immune to the formula," the person with the clipboard explained.

The man walked over to the chair. He knelt down, keeping Jamie and Jack's eyes on his. "Hello, little children," he said, a vast hunger for knowledge in his voice. He finally glanced at the others. "Take them to a better room." A smile formed on his face, but it wasn't a kind one. It reeked of evil intent. Fear passed through Jamie. Their trouble was far from over.