Group A

The catalyst was ready.

The man felt a wide grin spread across his face as he held the vial up next to his eyes, distorting his features and tinting his face a faint red color, the color of blood. His eyes lit up as the liquid inside sloshed and bubbled.

He turned to the woman beside him. "It's ready," he said.

"Wonderful," she said, spinning around in her chair. She made some entries in the datasheet and licked her lips as her fingers flew over the keyboard, her eyes darting back and forth across the fluorescent screen. The man watched as the numbers were entered into the subject files.

"We must begin testing immediately," the man said triumphantly.

"But, sir, we don't know of the side effects this version may ultimately have. We are obligated to run more tests, long-term tests."

"No," the man said disinterestedly. "Long-term effects are not of our concern. They are of the subjects' concern."

The woman didn't dare speak another word. She shut down the computer, her finger hesitating for a brief moment, something that should not have happened. She stood up. "Who is the first subject?" she asked.

"A3," the man answered.

The woman looked slightly shocked. "But he has already proven to be a complication to your experiments. His microchip malfunctioned. He's of no use anymore."

The man walked out of the room, leaving the woman to scramble after him, her eyes wide. He ran his hand over the steel wall, the vial still grasped in his hand, his knuckled white from the pressure and ecstasy. "That's exactly why we must test it on him," he said. "If his mind refused to acknowledge the microchip's commands, perhaps his DNA will accept the catalyst."

She hung slightly back, her years of compliance forbidding her from walking side by side with him. "Sir, what about subject A2? His microchip is functional, and he-"

"-is nothing but a tool." The man waved his hand dismissively. "He has no relevance to the current experiment. His purpose does not include my current goal."

The woman began to get nervous. Subject A3 was still recovering from the microchip experiments, and was unpredictable and dangerous. The constant fluctuations in his behavior made him perilous to approach. She felt a small stab of fear. "Sir, Subject A3 already has most of the behaviors and traits implemented into the catalyst. His microchip had lasting impacts, and he already possesses the skills we implanted him with. There's no need to imprint him with them twice."

"I understand your fear, doctor," the man responded, his voice hard and sounding like he didn't understand her fear. "But Subject A3, I believe, is the perfect test subject. He knows resistance is futile, and his past helps him feel hopeless. Besides, he is my godchild and I owe it to him to gift him unparalleled power."

"But he doesn't even match our predictions of who would fare best in the experiment?" she asked hesitantly. "He is neither a twin, a rebellious youth, or a troubled child."

"Then it will be a miraculous fluke if he survives,"

"Then, assuming he survives the procedure and consequent days, what happens after the abilities manifest?" the woman asked.

"We move on to Subjects A5 and A6," the man told her. "They just arrived and they are very headstrong. They're also a good trial test for if twins do have a higher chance of surviving and manifesting their powers. After that, we inject Subject A4 to test the theory about troubled youth and rebellion." he withdrew his hand from the wall as they came upon a large, reinforced door.

"And the New Vancouver children, Subjects A7 and A8?"

The man cocked his head. "We have months to prepare for them. The Choosing Ceremony is not for another three months. That gives us about a month to see if Subject A3 can survive and attain his powers. And if he does, two months to use the catalyst on the other subjects we have at our disposal, until we choose the other two for our division."

The man's plan began to make sense to her, maybe because she was obligated to agree that it made sense, or maybe because if it didn't make sense, she wouldn't be a New Vancouver citizen.

The man grabbed a key from his pocket and withdrew it, inserting it into the lock on the door and twisting slowly, the grinding of metal on metal sounding down the steel-reinforced hallway.

As soon as the door swung open, the woman stepped back. A torrent of screams came from inside the room, and she knew Subject A3 was in a fit of rage. It happened more often than she would have liked, but it was a side effect from the microchip experiment that had failed and left him nothing.

The man, however, was unphased by the screams and curses echoing from inside the room. He walked to the side counter and grabbed a needle waiting there. Subject A3 was tied to a medical table, his wrists, ankles, midsection, and neck all restrained. Without a moment's thought, the man stepped forward and sank the needle into his neck, injecting all  the liquid inside.

The boy almost immediately fell silent, the powerful sedative wiping out conscious thought and stealing his capacity to stay awake.

The man turned to her, standing in the doorway. "This catalyst has only one of the prospective DNA combinations within it. In the next four hours, until he wakes up, we must alter this catalyst and create additional DNA combinations." He brought the needle to the vial and extracted a small amount, offering her the vial afterward. "I'll leave that to you, doctor. I trust you can do that for me?"

She frantically nodded, accepting the proffered vial and fleeing from the room, not looking at the unconscious boy lying on the table.

After she left, the man lifted up his arm, glancing at his watch.

A screen lit up in front of his face, projected by the face of his watch. It showed security cameras in different rooms, monitoring different subjects. Subject A4 was, as usual, insulting everyone and everything she laid eyes on, screaming curses and hurling horrible names.

The man's eyes drifted to another camera, depicting two girls sitting at a steel table in a room without windows, and a fluorescent bulb drooping from the ceiling, casting eerie light over the room. Subjects A5 and A6 sat at the table, talking quietly.

They both had vibrant, permanently dyed hair, but it seemed to be wearing out ever so slowly. He reminded himself that, if the experiment was a success, his next step was to make them compliant, which involved gifting them with privileges and trusting them with responsibility. He made a mental note to send a trainee to buy hair dye for them, if they survived the injections.

He furrowed his brow, and then swiped his screen to the left, and an image of his top soldier showed up on his screen, his gaze expectant, waiting for orders. "Sir," he said, nodding.

The man smiled. "Soldier, I have a job for you," he said. "Prepare another Subject room and move Subject A6 into it. I have a special catalyst for her." He thought of the glowing dark red catalyst that sat in his office, waiting for use. She would be the perfect Subject. Rebellious, troublesome, hard headed.

"Yes, sir," the soldier said, immediately disappearing from the man's screen.

The last two of his cameras showed the inside of two homes in New Vancouver, courtesy of public surveillance. In one, a more-than-ordinary family sat at a dinner table. No conversations. No opinions. Only eating and discussions without sides or wants or needs.

The second camera was a bit more troublesome. The man assumed the two children in the footage would be great subjects to pair together, but only if the second boy slowed his rebellious streak. The man was letting it continue, thinking the first boy would even it out and together the two of them would create a great pair to give the catalyst to. The first boy was a mediator, an accessory to the second boy, the rebellious one, who was likely to survive the experiment.

The second boy was playing cards with his mother and laughing, two things that were hardly ever done anymore. New Vancouver created perfect citizens, and personal opinions and jokes at others expenses were not considered perfect. The man watched as the woman, the mother, stood up and pulled a pie from the oven, indicating another recreational activity that was hardly performed at all in New Vancouver.

They were Subjects A7 and A8, the subjects that would be chosen in three months at the Choosing Ceremony. The man was already in the process of attaining inorganic compounds to create their catalysts and turn them into obedient weapons. That was the goal of his experiment, after all. Create weapons no one could expect or counter. More powerful than a nuclear bomb.

And he was so close to succeeding.

Only time would tell.