Mortal - Chapter 16

 Premise: In this young-adult dystopian novel, people can no longer die. But they still feel pain, and suffer--and it's maddening. Because of the chaos that ensued, the US Government created a program to figure out how to kill people. When Garrett, a teenager, falls into a coma for weeks as a result of an experiment, the Program sets its malicious sights on him.

This is the sixteenth chapter of the novel, Mortal. Click here for the beginning of the story. Or, click here to view all chapters.

“Conditions, eh?”

Edward Gild stares down at me with narrowed eyes and crossed arms over his chest. I sit in one of the chairs, rubbing my eyes. I didn’t get any sleep after the dream—or vision—and spent the rest of the hours thinking about VitCorp. The night I awoke from my coma, in my dream, I was afraid they would come. And that woman on the train, trying to take me back to Eden, when VitCorp has been disbanded for years? That didn’t make sense. And now the girl with the gun who appeared in my dreams and hallucinations is also a member of VitCorp? That didn’t make sense either. Why would they suddenly come out of hiding? Why would my subconscious suddenly be interested in them?

“Yeah.”

I know Edward Gild is using me. I’m using him too. I want Project Eden’s lies published just as much as he does. But he doesn’t need to know that.

Bern walks in from the conference room with a mug of coffee. He nods to me with a smirk as he takes a seat in the corner. Lucy soon enters from Gild’s office, carrying a laptop. She looks as exhausted as I feel. She sits the computer on the coffee table and pulls one of the ottomans out from under it, and sits down.

Edward groans, and rolls his eyes, “Figures. Okay, Garrett. What do you want?”

“I need you to help me investigate VitCorp,” I say, resting my chin between the knuckles of my hand.

“VitCorp?” Edward lifts an eyebrow. “Why?”

“You don’t need to know why yet,” I respond flatly. Besides the fact that I want to stay in control of this one aspect of our relationship, I need more information about VitCorp to see if it even meant anything before revealing my suspicions—or paranoia.

“Spoken like a true ass hole,” Edward says with a sigh. I glance to Lucy and see that she’s grimacing, eyes dazed.

“Do we have a deal?” I ask firmly.

Edward taps his chin for a moment, “Fine. Sure. Whatever.”

“Great,” I say, a grin forcing its way through my lips.

“Now without any further delays, let’s begin.” Edward turns toward the table and picks up his notebook that he had with our previous interview. I am curious to know what he writes in it, wondering if he detected my lies and wrote his reasoning with every word I spoke.

He sits in the chair opposite of me. “Garrett, the people in this room are the only people that know that you are here. And I’d like to keep it that way until the article has reached the editing stage. Now, where to start? You said that everything you told me back at Project Eden was lies. That much I figured, but care to elaborate?”

I glance to Bern, who knows. His face is darkened and his lip is twisted into a grimace. He nods at me.

“Well for starters,” I say, turning back to face Gild, “I’m not nineteen.”

The interview is strange. It’s like I’m reliving everything I tell this man, who is looking at me the whole time, with his bright, blue eyes, except for when he is scribbling down a quick remark in his notebook of secrets. Lucy taps away furiously at the keyboard while she bites her lip, and her misty green eyes look distraught— though I’m not sure if it’s from the pain she is inflicting upon her lip, or if I am talking too fast for her, or if it is the content of what I am saying.

I tell them that I was enlisted into the program when I was twelve, that I am seventeen now, and that they found me at the hospital with stitches in my shoulder, and my parents institutionalized. I tell them that the program is not voluntary. No one can ever leave. There are about a hundred people in Project Eden, not a dozen. The scientists torture in hopes of killing us. Many have lost appendages, and many have lost their sense of being.

I take a sip of my water, trying to gather my thoughts. It’s difficult to explain all the truths of Project Eden. I was there just yesterday. Three days ago I had awoken from my coma. Yesterday, I was there. And today, I am not.

“The President told the public that Project Eden has been going on for about a year. I’m assuming he lied,” Edward prompts.

“Yes,” I jerk my head absently, thankful that he pulled me back into the present. “I’m not sure how long exactly, but…I know of people who have been there for about fifteen years.”

“Fifteen years,” Edward shakes his head in disbelief. He clenches his pen as he slides the ink down the whole page. It is obvious he is trying to emphasize a point for future reference. “And is that all this place does, torture people so that they might die?”

“Yes,” I swallow hard, and take a large gulp of my glass. I didn’t think it would be this difficult, but it’s like my whole life is under scrutiny, a horrible secret that I never wanted anyone to know about me, what I’ve been through. And I now think that’s what Bern was trying to tell me last night. But I wouldn’t listen.

“It makes sense why VitCorp was shut down then,” Bern speaks up for the first time, leaning forward. “The company mostly focused on containing the chaos and studying genetic traits— DNA, cells, anything that might lead them to figuring out what happened to our mortality.”

“Thanks for that, Doctor,” Edward adds, licking his lips as he flips the page of his journal.

“It seems VitCorp never found anything substantial,” Bern continues, giving Gild a cold look, “The government must’ve thought Project Eden was gaining momentum, and therefore, felt no reason to continue funding VitCorp. The company’s few wealthy donors let it to continue struggling for a couple of years, but its final termination was a matter of when.”

Edward clears his throat, “Why, Bernard, I didn’t know you had such a talent for knowing things that have the potential point of nothing. It’s brilliant, really,” Edward’s blue eyes dart to me, “Garrett, could you please—“

“They also tampered with religion,” Lucy interrupts calmly, not looking at anything but the screen of the laptop.

Edward coughs into his fist, clearly annoyed.

“What do you mean?” I ask eagerly. Why would a science-based, medical-control company like VitCorp look into religion? What was the point? And how would Lucy know this?

Her eyes glance to me as she rocks in her seat. “They studied it…you know, read all the books on it, hired a lot of theologians…why do you think it’s called Project Eden?”

My eyes return to the glass of water that is nearly empty now. Did people actually think that some upset with a higher being caused immortality? I guess it makes sense…if any of that was true, but I’ve never been sure, especially now, after what I’ve been through.

Edward Gild is glaring at Lucy. She seems to notice because her eyes scrunch up and she resumes typing, a pink blush now present in her cheeks. I want to ask more questions about VitCorp, but making Gild mad does not seem like a good idea if I want him to fulfill his end of the deal.

“VitCorp,” Edward mutters like he doesn’t understand the fascination with it. He looks up to the ceiling, his eyelashes fluttering. “Has anyone ever escaped Eden before?”

“No,” I say, “Not that I know of…” But I’m sure the Secretary would never admit to it regardless. “It’s just been me…” my lips slant downward, “And Abel.”

“Abel,” Edward breathes as he writes, “And where is he?”

I grimace and dive into telling him about our escape. Therese was the distraction, and Abel and I broke the Secretary’s window, which got a short chuckle from Edward, and we were then chased by guards throughout the city. The guards then began to shoot, and Abel was hit. My voice is cracking and soft when I tell them about how I left him in the alley, dying if only he could. At this, Edward is scribbling like a maniac, but Lucy oddly stops and watches me. I try to read her expression, but can’t before the tears blur my vision.

I follow Edward’s pen, waiting for his mad strokes to calm, but not knowing what else to say. Did I need to go into further detail about how I just abandoned my father figure?

“And…what prompted the escape? I mean why didn’t it ever cross your mind before, or rather, why didn’t you act on it before?”

I shake my head, “It never really was my idea…well, I had thoughts of it, but I never planned on actually…” I sigh. It still doesn’t make sense to me. “It was Abel’s idea. He wanted me to get away from there.”

“Why?” Edward asks.

I look at him like I just heard the stupidest thing.

“Think about it,” he responds calmly.

And I do because I realize he’s a master of figuring people out, and he must find Abel’s reasoning particularly interesting. “I…” my voice trails as I consider, “Well, that was when I woke up from my coma, and he thought that my tests would be a lot more severe from that point on, and…he’s like a father to me. Of course, he’d want to protect me…” I rub my finger on the top of my cheekbone, “I suppose he wanted out of there too…”

Edward’s penetrating eyes focus on me for a moment, then drop to his notebook. I shift in my seat uneasily.

He then asks me about my coma and how I got put into one. I clench my jaw as I explain it. That my mentality seemed to snap from the thought of getting shot, that the Secretary wanted to persist at this test, that I was then shot in the heart…I kept my eyes above all their heads, not wanting to meet any of their gazes, only imagining what they were. I never tell Gild about the dream of my parents. Or the hallucinations of the girl. These, I want to keep private, and I don’t have a doubt, Edward can get the message of Eden’s lies without them.

We’re coming to the end of the interview. It’s nearly noon, and everyone seems restless for lunch. I tap my foot in irregular rhythms, excited for this interview to be done with, excited to be done with Eden. And then we can start looking into VitCorp.

“Now,” Edward begins slowly, fingering his pen, “I want a quote from you, for purposes of impact mostly, something that will stick in people’s heads, and I think this will do the trick based off the rest of the information: Describe the Mr. Secretary, Arthur Paracot.”

My eyes flash, and the words spring from my mouth in a calm brevity, “He’s a snake with a suit.”

“A snake with a suit,” Edward pens the words, and his shiny teeth poke through his smile, “Perfect…”

Arthur Paracot. The Snake.

It suits him well.

Thank you so much for reading! xoxo, Liv