Chapter Two

We're introduced to the main problem of the story.

Experiment 1, they called it. Project “Zero to Hero.” The idea of taking extras from timelines all over the multiverse and making them better than the protagonists. Stronger. Faster. Smarter. And much, much more powerful. Unfortunately, those type of plans never turn out good.

The first “project fail” came a month after I’d been taken. I didn’t know what my parents thought. Likely they’d already forgotten me. It’s not their fault. I’m very forgettable. Sometimes the teacher would skip my name on attendance because I’m that overlooked. Then again, being overlooked is what extras are for. Anyway, they’d started up the machines and picked a prisoner at random. I say “prisoner,” but that implies cells and gloop three meals a day. It wasn’t like that. We were treated well, like higher-up guests, which surprised a lot of us. They even went out of their ways to learn our names. That’s how I know it was Donavon Alexander Thompson who was the first casualty of the Experiments.

It happened on January 27th, 2015. His seventeenth birthday. I only know that because he was always so excited about finally being legally allowed to drive with friends in the car. He offered to take some of us for a spin when we got out. When. Not if. He was one of the extras who hoped to much. Which meant he must’ve been used to being disappointed. If he was, he didn’t show it. Maybe that’s why they chose him first. To give him the chance he always wanted… or to get rid of any other hopers.

Don was escorted out of the sizable dining room by five of their guards. Stereotypical security guards: tall, buff, and wearing suits and dark glasses. As forgettable as us extras. I do remember that one had a red rose pin on his lapel. He seemed to be the leader of the other four. Besides that… the details escape me. Don was happy to go, happy for a bit of change in the routine. He’d been there almost six months, the longest out of all of us, so maybe he’d been expecting to be put in the “power infusion tank,” as they called it. He even gave us all a thumbs-up as he walked out.

Not even an hour had passed before we heard his screams.

They’d warned us the process would be painful. But something told us - primarily me - that some facet of  the process had gone horribly wrong. A feeling. A sort of sixth sense that sometimes comes with being an extra. It allows the luckiest of us to get out of danger before the heroes arrive. Before we get mixed up in the drama. Don, as it appeared, did not have that sense. And by the time mine kicked in, it was far too late. We saw his body being carried out later, not even covered with a sheet. Blackened, like he’d been electrocuted to the point of burning. Unrecognizable except for the metal band around his left wrist that he’d gotten from a friend of his when he was six. He claimed he hadn’t taken it off since, and he never would. It was somehow fitting that, even in death, that claim was fulfilled.

After that, it took them three months before they’d fixed their process enough to think about putting someone else in. This time it was Sally Anne Rochester, a spunky girl who was just turning fifteen. It was April 2nd this time. Still on the subject’s birthday, only this time she was two years younger. Same unfortunate result. Another blackened body, this time with Sally’s stringy red hair in her signature bun. The second fatality.

That didn’t stop them. Over the next two years, ten people were put through the process. Only seven blackened bodies came out. Meaning three of them survived. The process worked on them, giving it a 25% chance of success. Not good odds. That worried me. Especially since I was one of the four who were left. And my birthday was coming up.

Fortunately for me, it wasn’t my fate to be put through yet. Anders David Daily, birthday of August 14th. It was 2017 now. I turned up my music loud so I wouldn’t be able to hear the screams. The next morning at breakfast, his body was carried away. It would be at least a month before the next selection. Despite my constant attempts to not get worked up, to not hope or fear whatever might come next, I found myself anxious.

The day came. September 26th, 2017. My eighteenth birthday. When the guards came, my helpful sixth sense informed me that they were here for me. I stood and went with them. What else could I do? It’s not like we were allowed to leave, to refuse their oh so generous offer of  “a chance to be awesome,” as they’d put it. So I went. Down a hall I’d never been down before, into an elevator, down another short hall, and into a room so tall I couldn’t make out the ceiling in the dim light. An empty glass cylinder full of bubbling liquid (which I learned was the consistency of honey) was to be my prison for the next 16 hours. A syringe of what must’ve been tranquilizer is emptied into my neck. That’s the last thing I remember for a while.

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