When he strode into the control room, he was frowning. He wasn't really frowning—it was more the natural set of his face than the expression of any particular disapproval—but upon seeing the frown, the techs straightened up, swiftly busying themselves at their consoles, desperate to ensure that they were not the object of his ire. He didn't really notice. People were always cowering like that whenever he walked into a room; he had accepted it long ago as the natural order of things.
"Is everything prepared?" he asked, voice crisp.
"Y-yes, Dr. Mahler, of course," stammered the tech on the left. He'd never learned their names. They never lasted long enough for names. He just thought of them as Right and Left, and sometimes there would be a new Right or Left, and what of it? So long as they did their jobs. "The delivery mechanism is primed and in place. Surveillance is fully operational as well," Left said, gesturing at the three large monitors on the front wall of the room.
They showed different angles of the same small rectangular room. A bed and a dresser filled one end; a desk and a closet the other, with a door in the middle of the wall on the side. Posters of bands and movies, interspersed with university pennants and the like, plastered the rest of the wall space. A perfectly ordinary dorm room, albeit one with cameras hidden in two corners of the ceiling and the desk.
"Good. And the subjects?"
"Should be arriving any moment, sir. We've made sure of it." Almost as he spoke, the door opened, and a young man entered. Strong-featured, if not precisely handsome, he looked almost topheavy; his powerful chest and shoulders strained his college-brand shirt and looked enough to overbalance his narrow waist. Many of the pictures on the walls were of him and other, similarly muscular young men wearing wrestlers' spandex and headgear in university colors.
Brushing sandy hair back from where it had fallen into his eyes, he looked over his shoulder and said, "Thanks for doing this, Melissa; I know it's against the rules. I can't believe I left my calc book here. I swear I'm not usually this absentminded."
Behind him entered a young woman, all long limbs and lean muscle, a serious runner if Mahler had ever seen one. Her dark hair, bound back into a practical ponytail, swung as she shook her head, a sardonic grin on her face. "You're lucky I happen to know that's true, Jake. If I had a nickel for every guy who came into the tutoring center and 'forgot his textbook'...well, let's just say I'd have a lot of ammunition." Taking an elastic hairtie from around her wrist, she hooked it around her fingers to form a makeshift slingshot, and took mock aim at her companion's face.
Jake raised his hands in surrender, and then pointed with one to a hefty tome on the desk. "See? No need to bury any coins in my face." She eyed him and the book with equal suspicion, but finally lowered her weapon and sniffed airily.
"I suppose we can declare a truce, so long as you promise to actually work on your math homework while I'm here. What was it you needed help with? Differential equations, right?"
He nodded emphatically. "Yeah, Professor Swanson's class is seriously kicking my ass. Why does the computer science major even require advanced calc? It's not like differentials come up a lot."
She shrugged. "No idea, although that does seem odd. I'm in the engineering program, myself, so I couldn't tell you." Stepping inside and closing the door behind her, she leaned against the wall near the desk as Jake sat down before it, pulling the calculus textbook over in front of him.
Seeing this, Right twitched and said, "Subjects A6 and B6 in place, sir," then pushed a button on his console. An emotionless, computerized voice said, "Perimeter established. Ventilation and primary exits sealed. Testing area is now secure." Neither student in the dorm room appeared to notice the subtle shift of the door as it was mechanically sealed shut, or that the air vent in the ceiling had suddenly gone quiet.
Mahler nodded to Left. "Good. Initiate Phase One."
Left nodded, making several keystrokes on his console, then said, "Agent 739 is primed for delivery." His hand hovered over the Enter key, waiting for the final word. Mahler looked up at the monitors, which showed Subject B6 leaning over her male counterpart's shoulder, pointing at something in the textbook. The desk camera view was filled with their faces.
"Go."
Right flipped open the cover of a switch on his console, and pressed it. The computerized voice spoke again. "Delivery command received. Initiating release of Agent 739. Trial Six, Phase One, is now underway."
Jake's head came up. "Did you just hear...?"
Melissa looked over at him. "Hear what?"
He shook his head. "I thought I heard something. Like a weird hiss. You didn't hear it?"
She raised a dubious eyebrow. "A hiss? No. Why? What kind of hissing?"
He shrugged. "I don't know, it was quiet." He paused, and turned around, scanning the apparently empty room. "It was probably nothing. Never mind."
That's when he saw it: a strange, almost shimmery haze drifting down from the ceiling vent above them, like the air above pavement on a hot day. "There!" he exclaimed, pointing. "What the hell is that?"
Melissa whirled to see what had alarmed him. Standing beside his chair, she was much taller than he was, and when she moved, her head went right into the hazy cloud descending toward them. She gasped and wobbled on her feet. "What the..." Staggering against Jake, she fell to one knee beside his chair, catching herself with one hand on his leg for balance.
Before he could more than twitch in surprise, the cloud fell around him, as well. The air before his eyes swam, and without really meaning to, he breathed it in. Almost immediately, he got dizzy, his eyes losing focus. Head spinning, he grabbed onto the desk in front of him, hoping for some kind of stability. Some part of his brain was screaming at him to hold his breath, but he couldn't seem to convey orders from his mind to his body properly, and he kept breathing—panting, really, from fear and adrenaline. His hearing gone and his vision useless, his only sense of Melissa was her grip on his leg.
Finally, after what seemed like an hour (but what the clock by his bed said was less than two minutes), the spinning slowed and then stopped. His eyes started to focus again, and he struggled to control his breathing.
Focus,
he told himself furiously, like he would on the wrestling mats.
