The Experiment by Cassidy Shay (i can read with my eyes shut .txt) 📖

will do great things.”
I try to grasp his hand, but he’s dissolving before my eyes. “Collin, please don’t go. Don’t leave me alone.” But he leaves anyway. I turn to Mathew and sob into his chest.
In the morning, Mathew brushes my hair out of my face. “Meagan, you’ll never be alone, not as long as I’m here.” I just snuggle closer to him. “I love you.”
“I love you too.” I’m sorry for hurting you all the time.” Belle joins the hug, and I can’t help but smile. “You guys are my world, you know that? There’s nothing I wouldn’t do for you guys.”
I drift back to sleep, and wake up to the sound of someone knocking on the door. I slowly slip out of bed and go to see who’s at the door. When I see the people out in the hall, all my energy is drained from my body.
“What do you want?” I ask the group of Vipero.
“We need your Memories. Follow us, please,” says the short one in the front. I don’t know what else to do, so I obey.
They lead me to one of the doctor’s rooms, but it’s been changed. Instead of the bed and medical tools and machines that usually inhabit these rooms, there is a single chair, with a single desk. On the desk, I see a lamp, a paper, and a pencil.
“We need to know what the governments did to fight back against the rebels. How were they destroyed? How were they crushed into submission? Draw the Memories and tell us how to win this war.” He pushes me inside and locks the door. It’s dark, so I feel my way to the desk, turn on the lamp.
I sit in the chair and think. How do they know that I know about the revolution?

I look at the paper. There are three pieces. Three Memories. Three ways that they will manage to keep us as prisoners in this building, keep the citizens outside under their control. I can’t give them that.
But I sit down anyway, close my eyes, put the pencil to my paper and begin. Ad I finish one, I move on to another, on another sheet of paper.
When I’m done, I looks at my drawings and smile. I flip the sheets over and write on the back. The first drawing is of the Boston Tea Party. I write:
Tired of the ridiculous laws and regulations of Great Britain, colonists snuck onto a ship and dumped an entire cargo of tea into the harbor. The authorities were unable to stop, or even identify, the patriots.

The next picture is of men signing an important document.
The Declaration of Independence. The colonists decided that they weren’t going to put up with the English running their country. So they declared independence.

The third drawing is a little more complicated. It’s of a battle. Guns and cannons, explosions and fires. But in the center, still flying, is the American flag. On the back of the page, it says:
In the midst of all the destruction, the flag of the patriots still stood as a reminder of what they were after. The flag was a symbol of strength, of freedom. This exact flag may never fly again. But there will be a new symbol of strength and of freedom that will appear throughout the streets and cities once again someday soon.

At the bottom of the page, I write, “’Give me liberty, or give me death!’ –Patrick Henry.”
I stand up, turn the lamp off, and find the red dot on the wall. When I hear the door unlock, I walk out and go back to my family.

Chapter 16

Around dinner time, the Vipero pay me another visit. “The Warden would like to see you,” says the small one, the same one who had spoken earlier. He was small in build, but it was obvious that he was in charge, that he knew exactly what he was doing, and that he didn’t care that he terrorized people for a living.
I told Mathew that I’d be back in a bit, then shut the door before he could ask me any questions about where I was going. I followed the Vipero down the elevator and through the white hallways beneath Floor One until we found ourselves in front of the Warden’s door.
He’s a new warden. He only started a couple weeks ago. The Vipero leave me, and I knock on the door. The Warden answers and invites me inside. There’s a huge screen on the wall to my left, and I study the man whose face appears on it.
His hair is very short, his uniform crisp, clean, and decorated with many pins and medals. His eyes are brown, his lips thin and pale. A scar runs down the center of his forehead onto his nose and all the way to his chin. Another scar stretches across his face laterally, from one ear to the other. It looks as if someone tried to cut his face open. Even as mangled as it is, his face seems familiar.
“What happened to your face?” I blurt, then cover my mouth with my hands. I hadn’t meant to be so rude, but I couldn’t help it.
He just laughs. “That is another story, for another time, young lady. For now, I would appreciate it if you didn’t make comments about it. Right now, I want you know what you were trying to pull with those drawings earlier.” He nods to the Warden, who waves the drawings in my face.
“I was told to draw how the governments contained the revolutions. Well, they couldn’t. You see, if someone is willing to die for a certain cause, their will to win is stronger than that of the opposing force. When you’re willing to die for a cause, you can’t be beaten. Because even by killing them, you are giving them freedom.”
“You think you’re real smart, don’t you, girl?” he snarls at me. “Just where do you get this information?”
I snort, trying to hold back laughter. “Isn’t it obvious? I’ve got thousands of years of history that no one ever told you. You only have the history of the New World.” I snort again. “That won’t give you any wisdom, or let you know how the world works. All that will do is make you think that this New World is the only way of life. I pity you. You and everyone else without the Memories. You’re perfectly happy living as slaves to a dictator, just because you know nothing else.”
He laughs at me. “Me? A slave? You know nothing, girl. My master, the Great Dictator, and I are very close friends.”
This time, I don’t make an effort to hide my laughter. “Really? Because my husband and I are close, and I don’t call him Great Husband. I call him Mathew. I don’t call Belle Great Daughter. I call her Belle. I call Julie Julie, and Aron is Aron. Macy was called Macy, and Jack wasn’t ever called anything but Jack. These are the people that I’m close to, and I call them by their names.” I shake my head at him.
“And ‘my master?’” I turn to the Warden. “Can you believe him?” I pause. “Nevermind. You’re just like him. You know who calls people ‘master’? Dogs and slaves. Slaves that are afraid to stand up for themselves. Slaves that are forced to do what their master tells them to. And stupid slaves who are blind to what really goes on. Slaves who are stupid enough to think that their master will make an exception when he destroys everything.
“The ‘Great Dictator’” I continue, putting air quotes around “Great Dictator,” “will destroy everything in order to keep his position of power. He’ll destroy anything that poses as a remote threat. He will destroy the both of you, and your homes and your families and all you’ve ever known. The only reason that he might consider sparing you is that you’re too stupid to see that all of this is going on.” I laugh a cruel laugh. “You’re pathetic. I hope he destroys everyone who’s ever been close to you.” I spit at the spot where his feet would be if he were actually here, and then I turn and leave the room.
To my surprise, no one follows me. No alarms sound, no red lights flash, and no one comes to arrest me. It makes me nervous, because I know that they won’t let me get away with that. No way, Jose.

I’m in big trouble, so why aren’t they doing anything?
I get back to the room without being stopped by anyone. “I don’t like this,” I say once I’m in the door. “Mathew, something’s not right.”
He looks up from his dinner. “Come eat, and then you can explain to me what happened. But you’re food’s getting cold.” I hadn’t expected that reaction. After disappearing without an explanation, and coming back talking in vague terms about things going downhill, I expected him to be more… out of control, maybe. But he’s oddly calm. I sit down to eat my grilled cheese, and Belle and Mathew both study my movements until I swallow my last bite. “Okay,” he says. “Now what happened?”

Chapter 17

I tell him about the drawings, and about the conversation I had with the man on the screen. I described him, and then I told Mathew, “I don’t know who he is, but I know that he’s pretty important to the government. Why else would he have all those medals, or think that the dictator is his close friend?” I throw my hands in the air. “I spit at him! Why haven’t they arrested me yet?”
Mathew laughs. “Calm down. He’s had things much worse that spit hurled at him. From your description, I think I know who he is. He’s in charge of the armed forces. The Vipero. His parents were scientists, and they experimented on him when he was a kid. That’s what the scars are from. He’s got others all over his body, but his uniform covers them. Finally, one day he decided that he’d had enough of them ripping him apart. He killed both of his parents using the scalpels and other tools that they used