From Heaven's Door

Chapter 10

IX

The hall out the lab led to another boring gray door. No detail was put on the walls or anything around this place. Appealing decoration clearly wasn't Red Clover's primary goal here. The knife still in hand, I opened the door out of the lab. A narrow, black-walled hallway with dim lighting stretched out left and right, dozens of doors rowing the walls. The room I had been in was just another side room on the rightmost wall. At the end of the left end of the hallway, not that far away, was another, card scanner-locked door. At the right, a much, much longer ways away, was a spiral staircase in a room of its own twisting upwards into reaches unknown.

It was so eerily similar to the first hallway I'd walked into after going out of my own room. The difference here lied in two main things: one, the hallway was significantly longer. Two, there were fucktons more doors; fifty on each wall and each marked with a number. Mine was #7, right near the left end of the hallway. One-hundred test subjects. One-hundred rooms. We'd all been marked with a letter and prepared here through whatever means before we'd been sent out into Paradise.

I numbered off the rooms. I'd head for the spiral staircase and knife anyone who got in my way, but my first priority was breaking out my friends. Mint was doubtlessly being kept in the room marked #59, and it was of dire importance to get to them before the new chip was implanted – if it wasn't already too late. I'd check #93 as well to see if they'd captured Darby. Murderer or not, they were still my companion. I reasoned, with a body count of two and likely to grow, I wasn't much better myself; sinister bastard he may have been, Harlow was completely unarmed.

Unless he was planning to use the knife on me first?

It didn't seem likely. What use would it be to explain all that information to me and then just kill me? Pointless use of a half-hour, that. I started down the hallway, wiped off my blood-covered feet with the bottom of the gown to avoid tracking footprints, and shut the door as not to draw any attention to it in case someone came. Slowly, I made my way to door #59.

Five seconds was all I got before I heard a conversation from the end of the hall, from the stairwell. I held my breath, opened the door closest to me, and shut it behind me as swiftly and silently as I could. I held onto the knob for a bit and then paced away from the door, slowly and carefully. Muted voices grew from one side of the hallway, before I heard the sound of a door being opened not very far from mine on the right side of the hallway. My heart seemed to cease for a few seconds before the door closed and the conversation cut off. Relief washed over me and I looked around, still tense as all hell.

#37. The door was open and nobody seemed to be inside in the side room, so, curiosity taking the better of me, I walked inside.

Random s**t everywhere. A pistol on the floor. Toothpaste staining the wall. Very f*****g roomy. Layout-wise, it was identical to mine, but everything seemed significantly less organized and there was a brownish-green folder of sorts with the number #37 on it conspicuously laying by itself on one of the counters. I couldn't recall seeing a profile for myself in my room. I guessed who I was before all this would continue to tantalize me for a while yet. I walked over to the folder and flipped to the first page. There was a mugshot of a person on the right side of the page. They had dark skin, seedy-looking brown eyes, a nervous-looking glare, a bald head, and a rather noticeable scar on their left cheek, which shot down to the edge of their lip and a little past. There was information profiling them as well.

#37

Name: Arno Conde

Biological s*x: Male

Identified gender: Cisgender

Age: 31

Height: 6'1

Weight: 217 lbs

Ethnicity: African

Nationality: African-American at registration

Spoken languages: Only Swahili and English were recorded; claimed to speak other languages but refused to identify them

Notable ailments/deformities/attributes: Deep scar on left cheek. Tattoo on chest.

Notable mental abnormalities: PTSD. Possible psychosis. Untreated.

Other abnormalities: Thick stutter

Other notes: Nervous, antsy fellow. Came to us with his hands in his pockets, his head down, and his body trembling. Said he'd killed a man by gouging his thumb into his eye back in Armenia and had fled to America to hide from the guilt and shame. Upon looking into greater detail in his records, we found he'd never been convicted for anything more major than shoplifting and that he'd been suffering from delusions for years now, possibly spurred by the murder of his mother back in Pakistan. He was a traveler; born in Kenya and having traveled to countries, particularly Islamic ones, for much of his life. Ironically, we could not find any date in which he'd ever traveled to Armenia, let alone any convictions of murder or any other similar felonies. Hesitant in the interview process and refused to detail much about his personal life, leaving us to scan through his records to learn most of what we know about him. Arno doesn't seem to care about the money that much. The only thing he doesn't seem antsy about is the chip we'll be planting in his head. Poor fellow. Ashton Sharpe, one of the chief executives of the program, will make sure he's properly groomed.

-Dr. Harlow Grave

Ashton Sharpe. Ash. That creepy shithead who sniffed my hair back in the surveillance room. What the f**k did he do to Arno? What was his main purpose in all this aside from helping to run it?

I skimmed through the next few pages. Other random notes had been scribbled in the next three pages and most of the rest of the folder was blank. The back of the folder was marked with the Red Clover symbol.

I put it down. I distinctly remembered Harlow saying #37, the number he'd been marked as, was still alive. He was still somewhere in Paradise. I quietly prayed he'd make it out alright, and then scanned the room.

Through the window of the narrow side room to the left, I could see clothes hanging by a locker. Clothes. Actual honest-to-God clothes. I immediately entered the room with a giddy, anticipating smile on my face. Hung on clothes hangers and seemingly recently-cleaned were a white tank top, a dark-green, sleeveless linen undershirt, and shorts. They weren't much, but it was so much better than the trashy gown I was wearing. I immediately ripped the filthy thing off, double-checking to see nobody was watching out of some lingering paranoia. To my absolute relief, I was in fact wearing underwear; a shitty cloth bra and some baggy grey boxer shorts, but something on my body nonetheless. I didn't have much of a chest. I was completely fine with that; girl's body or not, I still didn't expressly feel like one gender or the other and I reasoned I wouldn't until I got the bloody chip out of my brain. The wonders of the suppression of individuality.

I quickly got the clothes on and exited the room, feeling much better with myself. I still yearned for the crappy stuff I was wearing before, however mildly. The Key of Utmost Convenience, the HF hairbrush, even that shitty useless cloth I'd forgotten about until now. Sam especially; I really hope they hadn't just thrown him in the trash. Behind Mint and Darby, Sam's condition was what worried me the most right now. If they'd disposed of him, I'd sincerely cry. It was pathetic. I didn't care. I loved Sam like a brother. He'd stuck through me through thick and thin from the moment I'd woken up, led me to a fresh series of Froot Loops, all while maintaining a perpetual, unshakable smile. Sam was my friend. Sam had never done anything wrong.

I walked out of the room, my mind now on the subject of Froot Loops for the weirdest of reasons. I pressed my ear to the door at the end of the hall connecting Arno's room with the main hall to double-check if anyone was there, silently hoped I wouldn't be discovered, and opened the door. Quietly closing it behind me, I made my way over to room #59, which was closer to the staircase. Nothing else impeded me. I hoped for the best, opened the door, and walked into the hallway connecting the rooms.

I hoped to God Mint was in here. I silently opened the door and peered in through the crack.

There they were. Apparently unconscious, in a hospital gown similar to mine, strapped to a slanted metal bed like I was, and being attended to by a lean Red Clover scientist with cut brown hair and a wiry frame. A metallic arm ending in a large needle had been primed over the base of their skull, and a surgical line of sorts had been drawn around their scalp. Thankfully, it didn't seem like anything had happened yet, but from the wide variety of medical tools and supplies stationed on a trolley next to the scientist, I knew it wasn't going to be pretty. I soundlessly budged open the door and tiptoed in, the knife in hand. The scientist never noticed me before I drove the knife into the back of their neck with as much precision as I could manage with one hand. They immediately stood up transfixed, went rigid, and started gurgling. My breath-rate increased as I stuck the knife out and watched them collapse to the floor, once again twitching like a slaughtered pig. I quietly leaned over and saw their terrified eyes stare me head-on. Some form of remorse welled up in me, but it was too late already. Silently and as painlessly as I could, I crudely cut their throat open with the knife and bled them out to end their pain as soon as possible. Once their eyes misted over and their bubbling death-grunts stopped, I reared up, wiped the knife on their coat, and looked at Mint.

They were fine. Thank God, they were fine. They were lying, asleep, their jaw slightly agape and their eyes restfully closed. Red Clover had probably tranquilized them, if they weren't still unconscious from the ordeal in the Mad Room.

I looked over the rest of the room. Everything was much more in order and recently scrubbed over, likely in preparation to Mint's arrival. Likewise to Arno, a folder marked #59 had been placed on the counter at the front of the room. I approached Mint's files.

What if I didn't like what I saw? What if, as they had joked so long ago, they were some psychotic murderer who had only applied for the program to dodge authority? I looked at them. They seemed so young and innocent, but I'd long learned from Jilton I couldn't judge someone at first glance. I opened the folder.

Mint's mugshot was a little different than how they looked now. They seemed as cheery and unassuming as they had normally been, with a wide smile for the camera, but their hair had been tied into a small white ponytail that reached to the back of their neck, and they wore round, silvery glasses.

#59

Name: Alison Witzenberg – prefers to be called Alice

Biological s*x: Female

Identified gender: Non-binary; explicitly didn't identify to either female or male even when pressed on it

Age: 14

Height: 4'10

Weight: 82 lbs

Ethnicity: German

Nationality: Canadian

Spoken languages: French, English

Notable ailments/deformities/attributes: Albinism and various visual impairments; astigmatism and photophobia

Notable mental abnormalities: Gender identity disorder – seems to experience severe dysphoria

Other abnormalities: None seen

Other notes: Very queer instance with Alice, here. They – and they've insisted I used "they," as the "she" pronoun appears to cause them immense discomfort – are one of our youngest applicants. Unlike our other fourteen-year-old subject, #21, Jackson Winters, who applied as was requested by his parents, Alice doesn't seem to have parents in their life. In fact, a good amount of their background and personal information is shrouded in mystery. They were one of the first applicants and seemed to be living on their own outside the notice of everyone in some dingy, abandoned house in rural Quebec. For someone so young, they seemed so oddly eager for the project. No felonies were recorded. In fact, not many records were observed aside from the ancillary stuff like birth records, which placed their parents at Mary and Sheldon Witzenberg, the latter of whom is presumed deceased and the former of whom we couldn't message. Alice seemed to dodge around the questions correlating to how they'd ended up on their own and who they were related to, giving non-answers they refused to clarify. Aside from that, however, Alice was otherwise extremely cooperative and unfailingly amicable to the staff attending them. Their only request were for prescribed contacts instead of spectacles; we've held onto the spectacles until now and given them contacts to get over both their astigmatism and photophobia. Modern science truly is a wonderful thing. They were a joy to be around for the two months of the preparation process I knew them for. Dr. Sharpe will take care of the rest.

-Dr. Harlow Grave

There they were again. Ashton Sharpe. He'd done something to the applicants – first Arno, now Mint, or, as I'd suppose they were now, Alice. What the hell had he done?

I couldn't bring myself to be roundly surprised by anything else in the document. I felt a little more comfortable knowing the basics about them now, and any concerns about what they'd been hiding from Red Clover were dispelled by the fact they probably didn't even know what they were hiding currently. That may have been the one truly beneficial effect of the neurochips, lingering trust issues aside. I took the folder, moved over to Mint (I was going to continue calling them Mint out of habit), and undid the straps holding them down. I began to rustle them, hoping they'd wake up. As I did, I put the folder down on the trolley, which I now noticed had their old glasses and a contact lens case, which seemed empty, and drew out the communication device out of my pocket, preparing to stick it the tube back into my neck. Thirteen seconds later, Mint awoke with a quiet groan. Their eyes blinked open and they stared at me through hazy eyes, squinting and apparently not recognizing me.

"Paradise... Paradise... H-Huh?..." they mumbled, half-coherently. I gave a small smile to them as they looked closer at me. "W-Who... Who are you? Tango? Is... Is that you?"

I nodded. Mint blinked a few times, still squinting, and reached for the glasses and plucked them, putting them on. They looked around, confused, dazed, and still only half-awake.

"W-Where are we, Tango? What... What am I-" They looked up, saw the metallic arm with the needle poised down at them, and immediately screamed. I jolted back in surprise as Mint toppled off the chair and fell into the dead Red Clover scientist's blood. They immediately got up to their knees and backed away from the dead scientist in shock and horror, furiously wiping away the blood now on their shoulders and sleeves. They looked at the dead scientist, the room, and most jarringly, at me, in horror.

"O-Oh God, oh God, oh God, w-what happened? Did... D-Did you kill them?! Oh God... Oh God..." They started to whimper and hyperventilate, their eyes shrinking as they looked at the corpse then back at me. I raised up my arm and signaled them to hush down, but they continued mumbling in a panic. Mint, terrified, broke down into tears and pleaded with me with words that broke my heart.

"P-Please don't hurt me, T-Tango..." they sniffed. "I... I just... I j-just wanted to be your friend. I just wanted to help you escape from this place. D-Don't you remember?! Please don't hurt me... Please, remember... please..."

Mint broke down into sobbing tears as they continued quietly begging. In that instant, I realized from their point of view, I looked like I'd gone completely apeshit, lost my memory of them again, and killed someone in my new rage.

I felt my eyes water. I didn't want to hurt them. Companionship was a powerful thing.

As Mint continued crying, I injected the communicator's tube back into my neck in roughly the same area it had been put in. I felt another small, painless prick in my neck, and garbled feed came out of the communicator, which quickly turned into the half-formed mumbling of my digital voice. I adjusted the knob a little bit, and, with no stand to place it on, held it up.

"Mint... Mint, please don't worry. I'm not going to hurt you. I swear to God I'm not," I said in the calmest tone I could muster.

Mint sniffed and looked up, taken aback again. "Tango... T-Tango, you can talk!?" they exclaimed, voice still abjectly scared.

"Yeah. Yeah. One of the Red Clover assholes gave this thing to me, but he's... he's dead now," I said, matter-of-factly. It was somewhat disconcerting to me just how little I felt over killing the Red Clover employees.

Mint's eyes just shrunk even more. "Tango... Why are you killing these people!?"

My face turned grim. "Because they've already killed most of us. Mint... That person was going to cut into your head and place a chip inside your brain that would've reset your memory back to square-f*****g-one. They were gonna just toss you back into Paradise to die. I couldn't let that happen."

Mint, ever so slightly, seemed to relax. "Red... Red Clover? Is that who these people are?"

"Yup. I know everything now. The person who took us from the Mad Room explained everything to me because apparently I was all set to go free. But... They're doing something awful, Mint. This entire experiment's been the set-up to something catastrophic and these people are too stupid to realize what it's gonna end up doing."

Mint didn't reply, their face stuck between confusion and fright. "What... W-What are they doing?"

I sighed. "I've got a lot to explain, but, uh, there's something you should probably see, first." I set down the communicator, took Mint's folder, and tossed it to them. "Read the first page. It's got all the basics you need to know about yourself from before this all started. I've already seen it."

Mint's eyes widened, and they opened the file. I stared solemnly as their tears dripped onto the page and they finished the file over a course of six, long, thoughtful minutes.

They finally closed the file. "A-Alice... That was my name. Alice. I can't remember any of it... None of it's familiar to me, Tango."

"That's because of the chip they put into your brain before you came here," I explained. "It's blocking out your memories of who you were before you were sent into Paradise. There were one-hundred other subjects, and most of them are dead now. We woke up late. The simulation's already gone on for about eight weeks now and we're among the only survivors."

Mint frowned, wiping away their remaining tears. They seemed to have calmed down just enough to get their rate of breath back to a reasonably steady level. "So it's... all just been a simulation?"

"Yeah. One-hundred people plucked from across the world, attached to the project with the promise of millions of bucks for the purpose of dying in a simulated environment meant to punch a hole in reality. It's f*****g twisted and I'm breaking out to stop this madness."

Mint looked at me with deep eyes. The look in their eyes itself was a question.

"Tango..." they asked. "Who are you?"

That was the biggest question of all, I figured. I'd turned down gaining my identity back to stop the program. I didn't have any regrets. But still, I yearned for the answer I may have never gotten.

"I don't know," I said, after a while of deliberation. "They didn't tell me and there wasn't a file in my room. I'm still a blank. Hell, I think I know more about you than I do about myself now..." I paused. "But at least we can talk normally now. I'm here to bust you out. I'm here to find Darby and the other survivors. I want to stop Red Clover from going any further."

I leaned close to Mint, who's eyes were still wide and trembling behind their glasses. "Mint. Alice. Whoever you are and whoever you want to be. Will you please help me stop this heinous experiment?"

Mint seemed to consider for a while.

I dreaded the most possible solution in my mind; that they'd call me crazy, a murderer, that I didn't know what I was doing. They'd turn me away in fear and anger and run away themselves. I'd already resigned myself to the answer.

Mint embraced me.

"Yes, Tango!" they exclaimed, their voice a cry of both sadness and glee. "I'll help you. I'll help you with everything. Tango... Thank you for coming for me. Thank you for helping me discover this. Thank... Thank you for coming back."

The answer took me off guard and hit me too hard for me to process it.

I broke down crying in their arms, and we held onto each other for what seemed a little bit past forever.