Breakout by Ann Aguirre

face because he spat on an assistant. The skin took three full days to grow back. Nausea swelled and bile rose in his throat, but if he spewed, he’d only get it all over himself, and there was no telling how long it would take for them to hose him down. Somehow, he sucked in the sickness and waited. He’d watched them haul four more corpses out of the lab yesterday.
    We’re meat to them, nothing more.
    â€œGood. You’ve been chosen to participate in a special program, 489. I expect full cooperation.”
    With arms chained and legs shackled, it wasn’t like he had a choice. He didn’t make a sound, just hung quiescent. While they’d checked to be sure he could
produce
language, they weren’t interested in his words. Compliance was enough. Being malleable would be better, but he couldn’t seem to check out as so many other subjects had. Their eyes showed that pain had long since won—that they were broken.
    His silence didn’t please the scientist. He wanted the same dead blankness he got from the others. JL489 had only hate.
    Landau’s eyes narrowed. “You have no will of your own, you’re a thing. I
made
you.”
    He dropped his eyes, and the scientist left his field of vision and pressed the call button. “Send her in, please.”
    The woman who entered had black hair and bronze skin. The lab lights caught her from behind, filling her dark hair with blue lights. Her skin was spotted, too, in a way he hadn’t seen before, tiny darker dots all over her cheeks and shoulders. Wide brown eyes studied him from across the room; like the others, she wore a lab coat, but he hadn’t seen her before.
    â€œThis is inhumane,” the woman said to Landau. Her voice held a snappish edge that he’d never heard directed at another person.
    Only test subjects. Only
things
. Like me.
    Her apparent anger on his behalf eased the tightness in his chest though pain had become so familiar by now that he couldn’t imagine existing without it. Then she moved toward him, and he smelled something other than astringent bitterness. A sweetness came from her skin and hair that tightened him from head to toe with a pleasure he hadn’t known before. He breathed in deep, then deeper, and it was like he had some of her goodness inside of him.
    The world become utterly inexplicable when she said gently, “I’m getting you out of there. Can you stand up? Can you walk?”
    He had no idea. It had been a long time since they let him move around. In the early days, when he first came out of the tank, workers would take him to a small room and show him things, say words, let him watch moving pictures, and one scientist had taught him to read to see if he could learn. But they soon lost interest in his mental capacity, as he was supposed to be fashioned into a thing that followed orders unquestioningly. So he went back into the restraints while they tried to figure out why he was so intractable and why he was still alive when so many of his pod mates crashed out.
    Yet he gave a tiny nod. Because to follow her, he’d crawl.
    â€œI’m Dr. Indra Parvati. Do you understand?”
    Another tilt of his head.
    His gut told him she was different than the rest though he wasn’t sure why she was here or why Landau was letting this happen. Smiling, she turned off the suspension system, and he thumped to the floor. It took a few minutes for the feeling to return to his arms and legs; she waited patiently until he stumbled to his feet.
    â€œI’m from the Sapient Rights Coalition. We’re investigating Sci-Corp for possible ethical violations and to determine your status.”
    â€œMy what?” His voice sounded strange to his own ears, hoarse and choked.
    â€œThere’s a proposal on the docket, exploring the rights of bioengineered individuals.” She didn’t say creature or monster, he noticed.
    Definitely different.
    â€œI don’t