SATELLITE AGENCY HEADQUARTERS

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The place where they brought him was, to say the least, unsettling. A hall as wide and tall as a basketball court but closed as a medieval dungeon; with the ceiling, walls, and even floor, fully covered with thin white padding that gave it the look of a gigantic asylum room.

Luckily, the light—who knows where it came from since there were no lamps in sight—was dim. Thanks to the gods for small favors. Intense lighting there, with so much white around him, would have been catastrophic for his eyes.

Those who accompanied him were just as unsettling as that place. Two female agents, non-communicative like everyone else there.

One requested him to sit in a non-cushioned wooden chair, which was located right in the center of the hall. The other asked him to unbutton his shirt. Nothing sexy about the petition, though. His chest had to be exposed so they could place adhesive electrodes there. The cold contact of the insulating gel with his skin, coupled with the air conditioning, caused him an icy sensation that bristled his skin and hardened his nipples.

“I assure you, girls, this doesn’t mean that I’m excited,” he said.

The two women continued their jobs.

One of them put one electrode just above the small mark near his heart.

Primary Plasma, he had said in the infirmary. And, when he was about to wonder what exactly the Primary Plasma was, one of the women crouched in front of him and he got distracted. The agent had just activated a receiver located under the chair, probably linked by radio frequency with the electrodes.

And then an idea crept into his head.

“Is that a lie detector?” he asked, a little more concerned than he already was.

“This thing looks like a lie detector to you?” one of the agents asked.

Adam shrugged. From his position in the chair, the two women looked very tall.

“I don’t know,” he said. “You girls look like human beings, but I’d bet you are androids. I mean, that non-human way of moving, that coldness when speaking…”

“You also follow orders in your workplace, sir,” replied the one that had activated the receiver. “The difference is that some of us don’t act like we’re superior to others.”

“Superior? What are you talking about? If I were superior, I wouldn’t be exposed to this charade.”

“That attitude of yours, sir,” the woman said.

“White…” her partner called her, asking her to keep it quiet, and with a nod, she asked her to leave.

“Oh! Are we related?” Adam joked.

“Don’t get up from that chair, sir,” said this White woman, and both agents left that immense hall, closing the door behind them.

Damn! What a lunatic! What was the problem with these people? Did that superior thing have anything to do with the fact that she was also an orphan? Well, in case she was, because it could be a simple coincidence between the color of the city area and the old last name... Bah! To hell with her!

Adam remained there with his shirt open, and six electrodes attached to his chest that sent who knows what kind of signal to a piece of equipment that was under his ass, which did who knows what, sitting alone in the center of a white shoebox.

Yes, it was better to think the place looked like a shoebox; he didn’t like to feel in the cell of a mental hospital.

So, he took a deep breath and faced something that was beginning to be a habit in that building: waiting. Everybody in that dreadful place made him wait.

Taken from Royal Road, this narrative should be reported if found on Amazon.

Five minutes passed, and he had already changed position three times in the chair. He had crossed his legs twice, putting his right one on his left one and vice versa, had crossed his arms and stretched them, leaned his back as much as the back of the solid wooden chair had allowed him to, and pulled his neck back.

He thought about Trevor Homam and how much he owed to him for having moved his influences so that the police investigation into what happened to Juzo in Liberty Park would leave him free from any questioning, as well as having made the recording of a street surveillance camera, that exposed him escaping from Broga, disappear. Damn! He’d have liked to have known of the existence of the Satellites and their recordings earlier! Maybe he’d have abused his friendship with Trevor a bit more at that moment.

Then he regretted not having felt more trust with Lisandro Carinae, his former boss; that way it wouldn’t be necessary to involve Trevor. He’d just have to abuse his good relationship with one of the most powerful family members in town. Of course, in that case, he’d have to expose to Lisandro the true story behind the accident in Liberty Park, and behind the explosion that ended up setting his loft on fire; stories that would actually have paled in the face of the true nature behind them: the Binary Project.

Unfortunately, in this situation, he had to fend for himself. He had no choice but to endure a hard time.

Show that lunatic you don’t think you’re superior to others, as she thinks.

But five minutes had passed since they had left him alone, and his heartbeat increased. What was he doing there? Why wouldn’t he leave? They had told him not to get up from the chair, but he wasn’t anyone’s slave nor an employee of the agency; he didn’t have to obey. He leaned forward to straighten his legs up, and when he was about to take his butt off the chair,

“Please, Mr. White, stay seated, will you?” A twangy voice said, speaking through a speaker. “It’s preferable that you wait seated.”

They had just spoken to him in a tone of voice that made him feel like an insubordinate student in a class full of quiet people.

Where had that voice come from? There was no loudspeaker insight. To whom that voice belonged was another mystery, though one that soon got answered.

“Dr. Gabor, speaking here,” said the voice.

There was a mechanical buzz.

As if it were a garage door, Adam saw that a rectangular section of the wall in front of him, about twenty feet high, went up, revealing a window covered by dark glass that didn’t reveal anything that was behind.

“I’m here with my scientific team,” the voice announced.

And who cares that you’re there? All I care about is what I want, and what I want is to leave, Adam thought.

“The electrodes transmit your current heart rate,” the Doctor said. “We want to compare it to what you’ll have when you do what we’ll ask you to do.”

“And what is that about?”

“You’ll know, all right?”

The Doctor’s voice sounded forced as if he were speaking deliberately with that nasal tone to sound annoying. And since Adam couldn’t see him, he pictured a physique for that voice: A skinny, hunched guy in his sixties, probably still a virgin, with thick glasses like Doctor Larry Masami’s, and the look of someone who doesn’t take showers often thanks to the endless hours spent locked in a lab.

“If this is an EKG, Doctor, I should be lying down, not sitting in a chair that hurts my ass.”

“If you are sitting down, it’s because that’s how we need you to be, believe me.”

The interval between Adam’s heartbeats was getting shorter. Being used to giving petulant responses was not the same as receiving them.

“Are you getting nervous, Mr. White?”

Adam bit his lip. What a stupid question that was!

“Hey, Adam, hmm… I can call you Adam, right?”

“Well, you already did.”

“Don’t get cranky, Adam. We won’t hurt you.”

Adam snorted. “It’s easy to say it, Gabor; I’d like to see you in my place. Oh, I’m sorry; I can call you Gabor, can’t I?”

“I’d rather you addressed me as Dr. Gabor.”

Adam’s eyes were burning, and his stomach was shrinking; it was pure rage. His heartbeat skyrocketed, and the equipment under his chair beeped. The Doctor let out a giggle that sounded even more nasal than his voice.

“Yes, of course, you can call me Gabor,” he said, then. “It won’t affect our doctor-patient relationship.”

“Oh, yes!” Adam forced a smile. “Old man Larry said you were a funny guy. I just want to ask you a question: Is this agency’s policy to hire automatons in gray suits and chatty clown doctors?”

“You know something, Adam? It is said that sarcasm is tied to smart people.”

“I don’t need your flattery to know I am smart; but thank you. And one other thing, I’m not your patient. I’m the oddity here; don’t try to make me look like anything else.”

“If you put it that way, Adam, it sounds cold and harsh. Although, I’m afraid you’re right. And to be entirely honest, I’m not what you’d call a medical doctor either; I had a Ph.D. in biophysics.”

“See, Gabor? The key to understanding is communication. Now you could explain to me what I’m doing here.”

“Wait, don’t get ahead of yourself, Adam. First, I’d like to ask you something personal.”

“—More personal than you already asked? All right, lemme guess: do I like people with twangy voices? Answer’s no.”

“You’re being offensive, Adam.”

“And you, abusive to me, Gabor.”

And there was a pause.