The White Room and the Pear Trees

Sweat dripped from my pale skin as I strained to free myself of the metal manacles securing my wrists to a mattress. I shut my eyes tight against the blinding lights of the White Room, which was the best way to describe the place the doctors had left me. Though, due to the last few hours’ events, the term doctors did not quite fit their resume anymore.

The only thing that accompanied me in the small room was a medical stand that stood to my right; and, frighteningly enough, an anesthesia mask was attached to one of the many hanging tubes. I gripped the thin white sheet at my sides, my throat closing and clenching around my vocal cords.

I froze as the white door across from me slowly swung open. A woman in a dark blue lab coat strode through, carrying a clipboard close to her chest. She was unfamiliar, but the face that followed was anything but. After all, when someone’s face is plastered on every corner of the kingdom, you tend to recognize them. Especially if you’ve been honored with their presence before.

I gritted my teeth as the Chancellor stared down at me with his cold grey eyes, a collage of memories swirling in and out of my mind. So much has changed … yet your eyes still sing their same sad song.

“You will learn to accept what is to come, Miss Kellett. We have already prepared the serum, so you will not be in waiting much longer.” The Chancellor’s tone was as brooding as ever, deep as the dead of night, yet it still brought with it a sense of solace. No—not a sense of solace; a sense of home.

Another man with short gray hair wheeled in a cart that resembled something you would receive food from in a hospital. The woman wearing the lab coat sighed and looked down at her clipboard.

“The package?” she queried. The man gave a curt nod and was dispelled. “Chancellor, we plan to put Miss Arianna Kellett under anesthesia to reduce the risk of … further misconduct. Is there anything you wish to do before we undergo the procedure?” She sat the clipboard onto the foot of my bed and rolled the medical stand closer to me, unraveling the tubes of the mask. My knuckles turned white as I clenched my fists, doing everything in my power to mitigate the terror coursing through my body.

“No … all that needs to be said has been said. However … Doctor Ekker, could you give us a moment?”

The woman walked out without a glance, as if it were perfectly normal. I haven’t been in a room alone with you since before your father died and we were still Academy students. Only two years … but it feels like a lifetime. Why now? Why now, when you are about to inject me with a serum that will make me a robotic servant of the Kingdom?

The Chancellor, silent, save the ruffle of his clothes, sat on the foot of the mattress, his eyes removing themselves from me for the first time since he had entered the room. His close-cut blonde hair didn’t reveal a pinch out of place, yet inside his portrayed appearance, his foundation was crumbling. He reminded me for a moment of the boy I used to know—the intelligent, witty, quiet schoolboy. The man who sat in front of me was not that boy. Now, he was the cruel, unfeeling vermin who lead the Science and Technology Quarters of the Kingdom; the Quarters his retched father left him when he went on a suicide mission to the Outerlands.

“I have learned more than I ever hoped for, Arianna.” His tone, still deep, revealed a touch of softness.

“Is this what you always wished to learn?” I spat out. “You have learned nothing but hatred and arrogance.”

“Where I am now was predestined before I took my first breath,” he said. “No one can change what is to come.”

“Do you truly believe that, Remington?”

He flinched at the sound of his given name. “Of course, that is why—.”

“Why you left the Academy? Why you left everything you stood for?”

“Enough.” It was barely a whisper, yet it sent a chill down my spine that made me want to churn in disgust.

“Is this it then?” I asked. “I will not remember anything once I am injected?”

“You will remember. And you will feel. But you will not be in control of what your body does or is lead to do.” The Chancellor—the former Remington Green of Norwood Academy, my friend—stood and straightened his clothes. “Arianna Kellett will be a name long remembered, my friend. Perhaps not who you are, but whom this serum will turn you into.”

I didn’t look up from my hands as he exited the room. He didn’t bother to close the door behind him before Doctor Ekker slid past and began fidgeting with the tubes of the medical stand once more. What happened after that all runs together in my memory: Ekker hooking me up to a machine; a strange man placing an IV into my arm; another extracting blood … the mask covering my face.

***

I didn’t see Remington Green again—as Arianna Kellett, that is. I know I see him now, as I stand by his side in his office, awaiting his command. But now all I see is the Chancellor. What we were before does not matter to my serum-induced body, and while the doctors said it would not affect my brain, I feel it does.

There is one memory that continues to resurface, one memory unmuddied by the serum. It is of a place known as the Academy—the most prestigious one in the Kingdom. There, standing in the gardens lined with pear trees, was the Chancellor and me. We did nothing but sit together—so close one could mistake it for intimacy, and in my muddled state I could not deny them wrong—and talk of something we called our future.

Such a strange phrase … one that, if used, will one day be regretted by all who utter it. After all, all who live in this world survive it alone. I didn’t always believe that. Until I lived it myself.