I hated and loved this part of the day.

This was the part where they let me out of my cage to walk, escorted by soldiers who wouldn’t speak more than single-syllable words to me, down the antiseptic halls to the testing room. It’s where the doctors waited. They hid behind mirrored glass and talked to me through intercoms like they didn’t want to be in the same room with me.

Like they were afraid of me. Because I’m some sort of dangerous, mutant freak.

I almost felt sorry for the gopher they got to help fit the breathing apparatus and heart monitor to me every time I started. They changed, never the same person twice. I don’t know if that was because they were afraid of me too, or what. They were at least a bit of human contact, even if they rarely looked me in the eyes.

It was better than being in the room and the constant blood and urine tests they forced on me. I’d tried the first few days to refuse, to tell them to go stuff themselves. The head nurse just smiled and pointed out they’d be happy to strap me back down and sedate me if I didn’t cooperate. So, as much as I hated ‘exercise’, when they asked me to run the treadmills I was happy by any chance to get out of that damn room.

I wished August would come back.

The exercise room was full of complicated gym machines, mostly treadmills. But these weren’t something you’d see in a normal gym; they were giant, freakishly large things with all kinds of machines connected to them. They told me they’d altered one specifically for me after the first few days.

The original wasn’t fast enough to test me.

Once new nurse number six finished connecting me to the heart monitor and breathalyzer, he scooted out of the room, leaving me facing a blank wall. The mirrors off to my right hid the doctors and whoever else was there to watch me. The only people in the room with me were two soldiers at attention.

I couldn’t help but notice how I looked in the mirror wall. Every time I came in here, it was a bit of a shock. My black hair was filling back in, but it was still much shorter than I liked. The shine and gloss of my hair amazed me, especially considering I only had government issue shampoo to work worth. I’d always been small, despite my strength, but now I was showing tone all over. I didn’t think this was from the exercise. I’d not done it long enough. I felt like I was taller, but that was probably just a trick of the mirrors, or maybe just getting a hard body did that to you. My nails were…weird. I’d always bitten them, but now I no longer felt that urge. Maybe because of that, they’d changed, and looked like I’d had a manicure or something. I was still pale as a ghost though, even more so than I had been since I’d not seen the sun in a week.

“Hello, Ms. Delaney,” the disembodied voice of Doctor Fischer boomed into the room over the intercom.

“Hello Doctor Invisible,” I said.

“Yes, quite,” he replied in a dry voice. I’d never seen him, but I imagined him as some cold, cadaverous man with a clip-board where a personality should be. “Would you mind starting?”

So I started jogging. After five miles and not a single drop of sweat, Dr. Fisher came back on. “Ok, if you would start running please?”

Like I had a damn choice. But it was more interesting than the inside of my room. I sped up. It was too easy, so I kept increasing the speed until I felt like it was a challenge. In no time at all, I was eating the miles. The machine wouldn’t go any faster but I still felt like I could if I wanted to.

After I did ten miles in twenty minutes, Fischer told me to stop. I pulled off the breather mask. “I can keep going,” I said. I was sweating, but I felt good, really good.

“I imagine so, but let’s give it a rest for now.”

Frowning, I slowed and then stopped. “How did I do?”

There was a pause behind the glass. “Your results are consistent. Your pace is unprecedented. Due to the limitations of the machines, we’ve not even seen your full potential yet.”

“Yeah, but how fast am I now? I mean, comparatively?”

“You are twice as fast as the fastest Olympic sprinter. The difference being that, unlike a sprinter, you maintain your speed like an endurance runner.”

How was that possible? “But I’ve never run like this before. How did I do it?”

After an uncomfortable pause, the intercom buzzed again, “Good question. We’ll have to run more tests, but I would say it’s a side effect of your healing abilities. They probably allow your body to put out far more effort than normal because all the pain and stress that exercise puts on the body is being repaired just like your other injuries.”

“Holy shit,” was all I could come up with.

After a rest, I ran the treadmill again. Again I jacked the speed all the way up and ran like I could get away from this, from this place, from these memories. For a while, it helped. When the endurance and speed tests ended I was sent back to my room where I showered.

I devoured the dinner they brought and asked for more. This time they agreed and I got an extra slice of cherry pie. After the food though the blood tests became even more frequent if that was possible. That night, as I lay in bed, I stared at the ceiling wondering what was going to happen next. Would I ever leave this place? Would I end up getting dissected like some freak in a movie, so they could see if they could figure out why I healed? How much could I heal? After the needles were taken from my arms, I noticed the holes were gone in half an hour or less, like they had never been there.

Lying there, I tried to unravel everything that was going on. I was a little different. I’d been mocked for it before, insulted and belittled for being an outsider, for being different. I’d grown up without parents, in the foster system, and children are cruel. I couldn’t begin to count the number of fights I’d been in. They said I had anger management issues. No matter how big they were though, I’d always come out on top. I’d always been told, that it was just because I had so much rage inside me, and I guess I always thought that was why I won. A bully wasn’t angry enough to take me down.

I couldn’t remember the last time I was sick for more than a day. Piercings were always a problem, the holes closed so quickly if I didn’t keep a ring or stud in them. I briefly touched my eyebrow where a ring had been before the incident. Now you’d never have known I had a piercing at all. I was never bothered by the cold or the heat.

Did the angel change me?

Or was I always something different?