Unclassified; Zero and Still Standing

Doctor Heckman came forward.

Yesu automatically glanced around.

No Josephine.

Her eyes caught a spot of blood on Doctor Heckman’s lab coat.

This was getting weird. Where the hell was Josephine?

"What are you doing?" She asked.

Doctor Heckman stopped but his expression never shifted.

"You’ve seen it." His eyes drifted down to her bloody finger. "And you’ve made contact as well."

Yesu instinctively held her finger.

The Doctor took another step forward.

"I’m afraid..." he said quietly. "... I’ll have to do something about that."

"What do you mean?" She asked.

Although her words sounded less like a question and more like a filler.

She was simply buying time. Her back was nearly against the wall.

Her eyes darted to the broom Josephine kept on standby at her station.

Doctor Heckman followed her gaze.

They glanced at each other again.

Yesu lunged towards the broom.

The Doctor caught her arm and in one swift motion, pulled her backwards.

Yesu’s back slammed against the wall.

She was a bit taken for a moment. No one would have expected that a man this lean looking could possess such strength.

Before she could make a counter attack, he caught her wrist, twisted and slammed it to the wall above her head, pinning her there.

Yesu found she couldn’t move, not unless she wanted to lose a hand.

Her eyes bored into his.

Doctor Heckman had ceased to be the Doctor she had known, or thought she knew.

He slipped his free hand into his coat pocket and produced a syringe filled with pale blue liquid.

He raised the needle and tested. A few drops sprouted out.

He smiled, inquisitiveness slipping back into his eyes.

"Don’t worry." He said. "This is a hybrid formula. I’m sure it will be way more effective than the previous one."

Doctor Heckman clenched his fist around the syringe.

The needle flew in the direction of her neck.

Yesu swung her knee straight to his gut.

Doctor Heckman took a swerve to the side.

Her foot struck the air.

At that moment—

Beep. Beep. Beep.

A monitor powered on abruptly.

Beep. Beep...

Another monitor followed. Then another. And another.

All in alarm.

Yesu stared, puzzled.

She snapped her attention back to the Doctor who was yet to make another move to pin her.

Doctor Heckman was watching the monitors proudly with a smile on his face.

His smile shifted to Yesu. The light in his eyes was back.

"New installations." He informed her. "What do you think?"

Yesu blinked.

"What...?"

What on earth just happened?

Doctor Heckman resumed his admiration of the system.

"Magnificent. Your neural spikes were even higher than expected."

He glanced at her again and saw how confused she looked.

He planted both hands on his hips and sighed.

"Seriously, doesn’t anyone understand science anymore?"

Then he gestured at the beeping monitors.

"I installed a new system to keep track of your brain activity."

Yesu stared at the man for a few seconds more before diverting her focus to the screens.

All she could see were lines, lines, and more lines.

Nothing particularly scientific there in her opinion.

Doctor Heckman strode over to the monitors in his usual eccentric manner.

Yesu followed at a slower pace.

Doctor Heckman stopped in front of the main monitor.

He shoved the reclining chair aside, dumped the syringe he was holding next to the keyboard, planted both palms on the table and leaned forward.

Yesu watched as the pale blue liquid dripped from the syringe needle onto the desk.

Doctor Heckman stared at the screen, eyes moving rapidly over the figures racing across it.

"Excellent." He murmured.

Yesu looked from the monitors to him.

"What is?"

"Confirmation."

He tapped one of the graphs with a finger.

"I wanted to determine whether your... manifestations only occur during catastrophic events. Situations involving extreme danger, overwhelming odds, large-scale threats."

He clicked a few keys.

"Considering that nearly every documented incident involving your Ability has taken place under such conditions."

The graphs disappeared.

In their place appeared a three-dimensional model of a human brain, rotating slowly against a black background.

Tiny coloured dots blinked rhythmically across different regions.

Yesu leaned closer.

"Is that from the one you took at the Facility?"

Doctor Heckman paused for the briefest moment.

Then he came back to life.

"No." He said it so casually that Yesu almost missed it. "I implanted a chip."

She blinked. "What?"

"A monitoring chip."

"When?"

"Tuesday."

Doctor Heckman enlarged one section of the brain.

"When those lovely gentlemen brought you to me at Zone 25."

Yesu frowned. "I don’t remember that happening."

"You wouldn’t."

He zoomed further in.

"Your skull already possessed a fracture from the previous day’s injury. It made insertion remarkably convenient."

He sounded almost grateful.

"It took less than seven minutes. I wasn’t sure when you’d wake up."

Yesu instinctively touched the back of her head.

"How did you even know about that?"

Doctor Heckman dismissed the scan and continued browsing through folders.

"Echelon sent me a recording."

Yesu’s brows furrowed. Recording. Did this mean she had been spied on?

Doctor Heckman was still deep into the conversation.

"The first day’s Trial..." He smiled faintly. "My favourite."

He clicked his tongue.

"The second day was disappointingly uneventful."

Then his entire expression brightened.

"But Day Three..." He looked almost possessed. "The burning pathway!"

He hurried across the laboratory to a tall cabinet buried beside shelves overflowing with books.

Throwing the cabinet open, he began searching frantically.

Cassette tapes flew over his shoulder one after another.

Clack.

Clack.

Clack.

They scattered across the floor.

Yesu wandered back toward the animal section.

The cage she had observed had gone still.

The final white rat now lay motionless beside the other four.

She looked slowly across the rows.

More bodies.

"What are you doing to the animals?" She asked.

Doctor Heckman stopped searching.

He glanced sideways without fully turning.

"Nothing you should concern yourself with."

His voice was strangely flat.

The room fell quiet again.

Another tape struck the floor.

Clack.

Yesu’s eyes drifted toward the monitors.

To the discarded syringe with the pale blue liquid.

Then to the rows of blue-eyed animals.

The pieces slowly began arranging themselves.

"You built the Heckman Classifier, didn’t you?"

The sound of tapes hitting the floor stopped.

Doctor Heckman turned completely.

"It says ’Heckman’, doesn’t it?" He asked. Then added,

"Why that question?"

Yesu looked around the laboratory.

"I’ve been trying to figure out what kind of scientist you actually are."

His brows lifted with genuine interest.

"Meaning?"

"Well..." Yesu gestured around the room. "You built the Classifier. A machine that somehow easily sorts people into Classes. You made all kinds of mechanical things. Computer systems too."

She pointed vaguely toward herself.

"You even bugged my brain under seven minutes."

Then she looked at the cages.

"But at the same time... you understand biology." She swept a hand across the animal section. "You’re running experiments that made these animals go crazy."

Doctor Heckman’s expression became increasingly intrigued with every observation.

"And your question is?"

Yesu met his eyes.

"Most scientists specialise." She tilted her head. "So are you a mechanical scientist... or a biological one?"

A slow, dangerous smirk spread across Doctor Heckman’s face.

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