Experimental Stuffs

Reginald swiveled in his chair slightly, rain pattering on the window outside. He was filled with anxiety as he constantly refreshed his inbox. He sipped a small glass of scotch and ran his fingers through his short brown hair nervously as he waited for his salvation, for his deus ex machina, for his guardian angel to tap on the door, (if someone's guardian angel was composed of an adequate sum of money). At last, after he had broken the refresh key…

He closed the email and threw his glass of scotch against his office wall. The first two denials were acceptable losses, but this one hit a soft spot. The windows were cracked, his leather chair was torn, he was running out of time before the walls fell down around his ears. The second to last line of the email reopened a wound he wanted to keep closed. Reginald understood it was his fault, but the Foundation failed sometimes too, right?, he reasoned.

He shook the thought off and checked the time, 10:27, time to run night procedures. He swept the glass from the floor, trashed it, and walked out of his office. He stopped at the supply closet, grabbed a mop, tinted cognitohazard-safety goggles, a set of keys, and and a coloring book. He closed the office door to hear small footsteps behind him.

"Rosie, what are you doing out of your room? We're all about to go to bed." She responded as coherently as a 4-year old could, "Chase me!" She ran down the halls, and Reginald simply walked after her, trying his best to not make any noise. As he was about to catch her Rosie ran right through wall into her room. Reginald sighed and unlocked her door to find her trying to pick up a small doll. Her hand simply passed through it. "Now, Rosie, don't you be waking up the other kids, okay?" "Okay, Weggie", she responded. Reginald took out a small translucent key, stuck in a keyhole in the wall, and turned it. With this, Rosie was able to pick up her doll and climb into bed. "Goodnight Rosie" "Goo'night"

Reginald walked back out into the hall to hear a faint shriek like a dog whistle, and covered his ears. "Ah shit", he mumbled to himself. He ran four doors down, opened the door and immediately handed Jared the coloring book. Jared's high pitched whines turned into small sobs, then complacency as he took interest in the coloring book. He calmed down, started to draw, but before he could even realize, became sleepy and slumped over on the floor. Reginald lifted him into bed, turned the lights out and slipped out.

Luckily, the commotion hadn't woken up any of the other kids. Reginald checked their rooms to make sure they were all asleep. As he approached John's room, he readied the mop, and unlocked the door. John was fast asleep on his bed, but in his room remained orange juice covering the floor. Reginald mopped up the orange juice as quietly as he could while John slept. After five minutes of mopping, he looked up at John to see his bed lightly stained with more of the tart drink. Reginald just smiled to himself and went back out to the hall, locking the door as he left.

His last check of the night was Vivian's room. Goggles on his face, he entered the room slowly. There Vivian sat on the edge of her bed, legs to her chest, arms around them. She was the oldest of the bunch, and thus Reginald had a harder time dealing with her. She stared at Reginald as he walked in, or at least he thought so, as the goggles blurred her into a shady outline. "Why am I not allowed to go outside, Reggie?" "We've had this discussion Vivian, you're not like the other people, you're more special, you have a gift that they don't understand." "Oh really? Do I? Take your stupid goggles off, then!" Reginald didn't change his expression and tried his hardest to stay sincere, "Vivian, you know I can't do that. That's part of your gift." She jumped off the bed and attempted to storm out of the room, only for Reggie to block the door.

"Vivian, go to bed", his voice stern. "Not until you tell me what's wrong with me, or why I'm here, or who wants me to stay here!" She refused to move. "Vivian, I-… I can't do that, and you know that. You're a smart girl an-""WHY AM I HERE REGGIE?" He quickly walked out of the room and locked the door behind him, her faint screams emanating from the other side of the wall. The goggles were tossed to the floor. He quickened his pace back to his office and sat down at his computer once again. He opened a file; 'Containment Protocols' and accessed a camera hidden in her room. There she was, the shady outline. On the verge of tears and tired of screaming, she slumped down on the wall and took up the same position as when Reginald first walked in. He clicked on a small gray button on the left of the screen labeled 'If necessary' and a thin gray gas filled her room. She began drooping her eyes , tears still brimming, and fell asleep on the floor.

A teardrop hit his keyboard as he put his head in his hands. This procedure was becoming all too common, almost once every two months. He closed the file, shut off his computer and slipped into his own bed, but sleep didn't come. So many thoughts tore at his head, he felt as though his brain was a panel of interviewers rather than an organic memory storage. Was it really his fault? "If the Foundation knew I was a liability, they wouldn't have funded me in the first place, right? Why didn't they give me the materials I needed to save him? Why didn't *I* get those materials?" He tossed and turned, and about two hours later, his eyes started to droop. That was, until a gunshot outside sat him straight up.

Although the rainfall was thick, he could make out two teenagers facing each other on the other side of the street. One held a handgun, and stared at the other in horror. The other teenager, (no older than 12 years old), had pulled the bullet out of his chest and thrown it on the ground without flinching. The armed teenager ran as the boy with the chest wound calmly stuck his finger into the hole. Once he removed it, the tissue and skin had healed completely, as Reginald would later learn. Reginald stared on in awe of what he had just witnessed. The boy stood still for only a few moments before he continued down the sidewalk as if nothing had happened.

Reginald was giddy, almost smiling as he dashed down the creaky stairs to the lobby.After running into the lobby desk crotch-first, he fumbled for the light-switch and finally flicked it on. Reginald snatched up his coat from the tree and the backpack that lay next to the door for use in such a situation. Inside was a standard issue taser, flashlight, an anesthetic dart gun, signal flares, walkie-talkie, small food and water rations, and an extra coat. He jerked his arms into the raincoat, slung the bag on and ran out into the cold New York night.

Dogs barked in the distance, but were drowned out by his footsteps on the pavement. He could see the boy in the distance, peacefully meandering amidst the downpour, kicking puddles and peering down every alleyway. That was, until he noticed the man bolting after him, and ran. Both sets of footsteps splashed against the pavement as Reginald chased him for several blocks; the child was much faster than he had realized. Finally, he had the child cornered in the first floor of an abandoned construction site. Rain echoed inside the incomplete structure, both were out of breath, and the child was leaning up against a cracked, waist-high brick wall to recover. He squinted his eyes as Reginald pointed the flashlight at him.

Reginald, still winded, called to the boy, "Please, *pant*, I'm not… I don't want to hurt you." "Get that light out of my face, man!", the child called back. Reginald realized he had been shining it right into the poor boy's eyes, and promptly turned it off. The boy started to shy away toward an open supply closet ,(or at least it was supposed to be), door, and Reginald walked in a staggered manner toward him. "You and- and that other boy, back there, he shot you… are you okay?" The boy didn't respond, and continued backwards toward the door. "It's pretty cold out, you sure-re you don't want, uh…", he fumbled for words, "A, uh, a coat!" He took his bag off and dug for the spare coat. The boy sat, intrigued at the way Reginald behaved. He finally pulled out the spare coat and slowly extended it toward the boy.

The pair of footsteps splashed along the sidewalk as they walked back the direction of the chase, towards Reginald's place. "What is your name?" "Daniel." "So tell me Daniel, what happened between you and that other boy?" he inquired. "Well, we… we were havin' an argument and he decided to bring up my mom", he said slowly. "What happened then?" Daniel refused to speak for the rest of the walk back. They passed many interesting buildings on their walk back. A flower shop that had been looted and covered in graffiti, a coffee shop that was now boarded up and overgrown with several species of weeds. Towards Reginald's place they passed a Mexican restaurant, of which its sign had been torn down and windows broken. Daniel stopped and stared at the restaurant with a certain yearning, not wanting to move.

"Everything okay, Daniel?" Daniel still didn't respond, and walked up to the restaurant. "I'd be careful Daniel, there's probably fifteen different diseases in there, you shou-", but he had already slipped through a hole in the door. Reginald jogged up to the same door, "Daniel? Daniel, where did you go? I don't want you getting hurt now." Reginald pried some of the door's boarding out of the way so he could enter as well. There he shined the light on Daniel standing in the far corner of the dining area, staring into the empty kitchen. The chairs in the dining area were either broken beyond repair or non-existent, the tables had all rotted, the carpets had stains every color of the rainbow. The walls of the place had already been covered in mold, and a fine brown dust hung in the air. "Daniel, are you okay?" Daniel continued to stare into the kitchen, then turned around to face Reginald, "My dad used to work here." He broke down and started to cry, to which Reginald walked over and knelt down with him. He guided Daniel out of the restaurant and across the street. Reginald pulled out his walkie-talkie and hailed (Once again, idk who to put here, like an important Foundation person), "This is Reginald, I've recovered another one." No response.

Finally they were back. Reggie's Home for the Oddly Gifted. The sign slanted downward slightly and was in serious disrepair. It looked like a broken carnival sign; tacky, yet inconspicuous. No wonder it had worked for so long in this part of town. Reginald opened the door and led a still teary-eyed Daniel upstairs to a vacant room. There, Reginald interviewed him for hours, asking everything from favorite foods to the strange ability Daniel possessed. Once the favorite, Daniel tucked himself into bed and dozed off, and Reggie walked back to his office.

He logged back onto his computer to update the list

Reginald was about to start typing up Daniel's information until his eyes stuck to Grace's file for the nth time. The thoughts of that very day began to flood back into his head, the panic in the air, the words of false encouragement, the apologies. He quickly opened the cabinet under his desk to retrieve a handle of vodka and a glass, and drank until he passed out in his torn leather chair.

He woke up, slumped in his chair, to the sunlight pouring in from outside. He stumbled up, fixed his hair, his clothes, his face and walked out of the little office. He checked the time on the way out, 10:30. He was late. He ran back to his office to change clothes and grabbed his car keys on the way out. He was about to make his way to a secluded spot that hid his dinky sedan until he noticed something. Silence. He stood very still, not making a noise. The moment hit him, and he bolted from room to room. John's room, empty. Vivian's room, empty. Rosie's room, empty. Jared's room, empty. He forgot to lock Daniel's door when he gave him his new room.

Reginald panicked and ran outside, only to run face first into a Foundation armed guard and fall onto the ground. The building had been surrounded with armed guards. "Wha-, I, where are the kids?" Reginald squeaked out, concerned. "That's your job Reginald, and it seems you've failed to do that", emanated a voice behind the guard. A staunch female figure stepped out from behind the guard. "You're time is up, Reginald." "(Some important Foundation person), this happened because YOU couldn't increase the f-", "Shut up Reginald" she replied. "You decided to head this 'minimalist operation, and you've failed. Now a bunch of rogue entities have been let loose on New York, thus wasting our time. Face it, your experiment failed." Reginald struggled for words, but knew she was right. He slowly got up, only to be grabbed by the armed guard he ran into. He was shoved into a van and all information pertaining Reggie's Home for the Oddly Gifted was eliminated.


"So what do we do with him?"
"He was a liability from the beginning, alcoholic, finicky, not trustworthy, who approved his idea?"
"Not sure, but I can check the records and have them reprimanded."
"Good, and Dr. Reginald?"
"That's your call to make, not mine, sir."
Senior Researcher Boze stepped out of his office to think for a moment before re-entering.
"Have him demoted, to what class he's demoted to, I don't care, let the Site Director deal with it."
"Are you sure about this, sir?"
"He let potentially several dangerous entities escape into New York, Jacob, he needs to learn his lesson. (I want to have some kind of punishment here to be inflicted on Reginald, not sure yet)
"Yes sir."