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He never thought to question it, in fact there was no part of his mind that had even bothered to panic or wonder what was going on. He just knew, somehow he knew what to do and that he just had to keep completing the tests – for science.
It was all for science.
“"You, Subject Name Here, must be the pride of Subject Hometown Here."
That was the first time he ever stopped to realize that something was wrong, his eyes moving about the chamber, his feet stilled, as he ran over what the automated voice had said in his head.
It was an error, a simple computer error, but it bothered him.
What bothered him even more was that no matter how hard he tried he couldn’t seem to find the words to fill in the blanks.
Where had he come from? What was his name?
He couldn’t remember, in fact when he found himself trying to remember anything – anything other than testing he found a blank.
Still somehow he knew, somewhere in the back of his mind, that he had a name, and he spent the next handful of chambers trying to do anything to remember it.
Trying to remember anything…
It didn’t help.
“The Enrichment Center regrets to inform you that due to mandatory scheduled maintenance your usual test chambers had been replaced with a live-fire course designed for military androids. Good luck.”
He had been so caught up in dodging the shots of the turrets that for a second he had almost missed it, but there it was writing on the ground that simply read: I believe in you
As he crouched down to run his fingers across the message he just knew it was for him.
Call it a hunch if you will, but he just knew.
Throughout the chamber there were marks on the wall to tell him where to shoot, and those same words scrawled across the floor time and time again.
He had just taken out the fifth turret when he saw the gap in the wall, propped open by a weighted cube. Even without the arrow on the ground he would have investigated, but the arrow had certainly helped.
Whatever was back there was certainly not a testing chamber, instead it what looked like a back part of the facility with a broken set of rusty stairs and a door that had lost its handle long ago. There were weighted cubes all over the place, buckets of paint scattered on every surface and bottles of wine cracked and toppled over on the ground.
However, the only thing that he really cared about was that there was more writing on the walls.
This time it was a mixture of black and red paint – at least he had hoped that it was paint.
She’s watching you. She’s always watching: was written in that sloppy handwriting next to a picture of one of the surveillance cameras.
There were drawings of portal dropping weighted cubes onto turrets, but there was one turret drawn off the corner with a circle hastily drawn around it and the words, I’m different.
Then just those same words from before written over and over again…
I believe in you.
I believe in you.
I believe in you.
I believe in you.
I believe in you.
I believe in you.
They were just words though, the ones outside had at least helped him to figure out how to make it out of the chamber safely, but these – these were just words, and words that meant nothing to him. Words couldn’t help him.
It was just then when he had turned to leave that he had seen it, the hand print smudged red against the wall.
This time it wasn’t paint.
He raised his own hand up to meet it, pressing his fingertips to those in the dried blood on the wall. The other hand was only slightly larger, but there was something about it that made him feel like even without the answers that he could do this, that if he just kept moving he would figure it all out.
After all, now he knew at least that he wasn’t alone.
It would be later when he had finished the sixteenth chamber, with the taste of blood in the back of his throat that he remembered how throughout all of his testing before he had never noticed anybody watching him.
The cameras were there, but where were the people that should have been sitting in the observation rooms.
He had a feeling even if he had asked he wouldn’t have gotten the answer, so he just stayed silent.
Unnerved, but silent.
“The symptoms most commonly produced by Enrichment Center testing are superstition, perceiving inanimate objects as alive, and hallucinations. The Enrichment Center reminds you that the weighted companion cube will never threaten to stab you and, in fact, cannot speak.”
It wasn’t easy to move through the chamber with a cube in his arms, but he managed.
This time when he saw break in the wall he slid into it without a second thought.
It was a much smaller alcove. Just a hole in the wall, with cardboard boxes lining the floor, more paint and more wine bottles, but the writing – the writing was everywhere.
She’s watching you! She’s watching you!
But who is she? Who was she? What is she? What was she?
We used to be friends once, does she remember?
Do you remember?
There were drawings of cubes much like the one that he had been given at the start of the test, but with wings and halos and skulls instead of hearts.
She lies! She lies!
The cube speaks – it remembers.
I’m not hallucinating, you are.
I’m perfectly fine.
I remember. I remember. I remember. I remember.
There are more handprints than before, spread across the walls and tally marks like days counted up. Too many marks to count.
Drink with me to days gone by.
Could it be you fear to die?
Will the world remember you when you fall?
Could it be your death means nothing at all?
Is your life just one more lie?
Angry – he felt angry, but if asked he could not have explained why. He could not have even explained how he knew what anger was, but this, this was it.
He spun around away from the writings on the wall, the writings of a mad man.
He was following the advice of a mad man.
If there was any reason for him ‘accidentally’ destroying two security cameras in the chamber then he would have blamed it on that nagging anger and not on the fact the mad man has warned him about those very cameras.
"You euthanized your faithful companion cube more quickly than any test subject on record. Congratulations."
There written in bold and black ink just above the incinerator was one word: Apollo
Why was it that that word felt like the only thing that made sense?
A name?
But whose? Surely, not his own.
He would have remembered, but then again, what could he remember?
The eighteenth chamber is the hardest one that he had ever experienced, thought seeing the words I believe in you at the start of the test chamber somehow makes it seem a bit easier.
“You will be baked and then there will be cake.”
In the nineteenth chamber he nearly dies.
It’s when the panic should have set in, the incinerator leading him to what will surely be his death. The flames that curled just beneath where he stood with what seemed like no way out, until he saw the mark – x marks the spot.
He followed the arrows twisting and turning though the back of the center. Neurotoxin flooded rooms with warning labels on the door, disabled cameras littering the ground, more bottles broken and crunching beneath his feet as he followed the arrow’s path, until it just stopped.
This time there wasn’t a message telling him that he was believed in or even the ramblings of a mad man, this time there was a word much like the one in chamber eighteen written across the wall, but this one, he recognized as soon as he looked at it.
It was a name written large enough to cover half of the wall.
“Enjolras,” he spoke for the first time since his testing, and he knew, he just knew – that was his name.
- - - - -
“And I thought my name was weird,” the guy had said as he turned his chair to look at the blonde, “but this one truly takes the cake.”
This guy was irritating him beyond belief, with his too long for regulation hair and the way that he seemed to think he could hide his flask in the back of his desk without their supervisor noticing. It was clear that the new guy had no respect for what they were doing at all, probably would have been better suited in the maintenance department.
“I mean seriously, what sort of name is Enjolras? En-yo-ass. Enjo-sass. It get funnier the more I times I say it.”
“If your name is so much better then why don’t you actually try introducing yourself,” Enjolras snapped back a second later.
“Huh, oh yeah,” he blinked for a second, “I’m R.”
“Like the letter?”
“Well, technically it’s Grantaire, but friends call me R.”
“Grantaire it is then.”
“You know, I have a feeling I’m going to like you.”
- - - - -
"There was even going to be a party for you. A big party, that all of your friends were invited to. I invited your best friend, the Companion Cube. Of course, he couldn't come, because you murdered him. All your other friends are dead too, that’s your fault, don’t you remember that? You’re a murder, but I forgive you, after all, it was all for science, wasn’t it?”
This isn’t science at all.