He didn’t know why he didn’t tell anyone that the girl had regained consciousness, perhaps he wanted to feel special in some way, like maybe the girl had been waiting for him to be alone and then come to. Perhaps he wanted to feel as if he were chosen, that the girl would have only come back because he was there, that maybe he had a greater purpose than what his life was at that point. 7714S knew in his heart that he was just making things up to make his new life more bearable, but the thought of being unique from the rest uplifted his spirits. Of course, the girl had never actually said anything, so maybe he wasn’t so special after all.

When she’d awoken, he could tell that she was panicking as her eyes couldn’t stay in one position for very long and he saw more of the whites than the actual pupil. 7714S had rushed forward and used his hand to cover her limited line of sight so she’d only see his face.

“Calm down, you’re alright. Take a breath and calm down.” He chanted, hoping she’d actually be able to breath considering the crystals were covering her nose. It seemed that she could as her eyes locked onto his and her panic subsided. He slowly pulled away, letting her see the lab and absorb her surroundings. “Can you understand me? Do you know what I’m saying?”

All she could do was stare at him. He felt like an idiot, her mouth was engulfed in that black stuff, how could he expect her to answer him back? Racking his brain, he thought about how he could get her to express her thoughts without defaulting to the simple yes or no questions answered by blinks method. It took a few minutes but he came up with one, rushing into his room to grab his portable screen and loaded up the document program on it.

“Okay, I’m going to run my finger across our characters. Blink once for me to stop and click it. Yes is one blink, No is two, got it? Blink a lot if you just need to regular blink.” He truly hoped that all made sense.

She blinked once.

“What is this black rock you’re covered in?”

D-O-N-T---N-O.

“Do you know how to get out?”

N-O.

“Anything at all can help me.” He insisted.

T-R-U-S-T---U-?

“Yes, of course, you can.”

N-A-M-E

If you come across this story on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen from Royal Road. Please report it.

“7714S. Sorry, I probably should have introduced myself sooner. It’s a pleasure to meet you.” He smiled warmly, but her eyes had gone wide with panic and were flitting around again. “Don’t worry, you’re safe here. Nothing can harm you. You’re in Greenhouse’s most secure lab, whatever happened to you can’t happen again.” Although his words were meant to comfort her, it only seemed to drive her into an even more fervent state of alarm.

The crystals around her began to shift and move, the peaks of the rocks growing larger and sharper. 7714S stepped away in alarm, watching as the mass grew. He didn’t know what to do, but he knew he needed to calm the girl down as the crystals were reacting to her stress. He flipped his screen to his latest browser window and shoved it in her line of vision. The effect was not immediate, but the crystals did start retreating back to their original size.

“Alright, so flowers will calm you down.” He stated after taking a quick look at what his screen was displaying. “You know, most of these flowers are extinct now. A long time ago scientists decided to take samples of each one of the species but the war wiped them all out. If we’d had the technology we have now back then, we would have been able to clone them and save them all from extinction. Now, all we can do is try and replicate the miracle of nature to make up for everything we did in the past.”

The girl stared back at him, the nodes of terror erased and instead replaced with inquisitiveness. Taking the cue, 7714S started reading the records of random flowers. They’d gone through a dozen of them before the crystals shuttering again, this time only lasting a second, but the girl’s eyes had closed.

7714S tried to shake her awake but the crystals were too heavy for him to physically move, so he settled to poking her cheek. Her eyes wouldn’t react to light as well when he shone a light in them, indicating that she was back under. He wished he’d asked her name; he’d do that the next time she opened her eyes.

Checking the time, he saw that he still had half-an-hour left until the next shift of scientists came in and he was still nowhere near discovering how to get the girl out of the stasis tube. The crystals seemed to react to her emotions, so perhaps the crystals had become a part of her? Or maybe they were a parasite that reacted when the host body’s chemistry became unbalanced? Could it by a symbiotic relationship? Exactly how did it all work?

He spent his remaining time attempting to examine the crystal structure themselves, which proved quite difficult since the material was too tough to scrape a sample from. Eventually, his wrist ticker beeped, notifying him that his services were done and that he should retire before the group of scientist came in; that was when he decided he would keep his mouth shut. Although 7714S desperately wanted to be a scientist, he’d walked through the Pharmaceutical section before and witnessed what was done with the lab rats. If the scientists had caught wind that the girl could understand their speech and communicate back, tests would be run just for the sake of running them just because she could tell them exactly how she was feeling. Plus, she only had a small patch of her face exposed, meaning that all tests and sampling would be done from that area--there was no way he would let her be subjected to that torture.

Before finally settling down and getting the rest he was unable to get the day before, he saved more documents about the extinct plant and wildlife Greenhouse had on record to show the girl when she awoke again. He went to bed wondering why the girl had reacted so negatively when he’d told her she was in a Greenhouse facility. They were the ones making a change in a destroyed world. They were the good guys. Right?