By the time I was up, I could already tell that from my surroundings that I was fucked.
This was the typical underground lab that you would see on TV shows. The drab lifeless walls with no lights coming in except for a small rectangular hole with what looked to be steel bars, and as if that wasn't depressing enough there were other people apart from him, some more hurt than others, one of them even seemed to be missing an eye.

'f-fuckin hell, this is not looking good at all'

He wasn't built for stuff like this, and he knew it. He hated pain, and whatever they were doing here was definitely going to involve pain. He wasn't mentally strong so he naturally started lightly sobbing. He would have gone on for a bit longer if he hadn't seen a girl about his age with silver hair looking at him. It seemed to be her natural hair color seeing as her eyebrows matched. She was cute, too cute. It made him embarrassed to look back at her so he lowered his head.

'i've been seeing quite a lot of silver-haired people these days huh . . . '

He snuck a glance to check if she was still looking at him and to his surprise, she kept staring at him until another boy with silver hair tapped her shoulder. She turned back to whisper something to him, which made the silver-haired boy look at him.

'Is there something on my face or something ?'

He started wiping his eyes of the residue from his embarrassing sobbing session and breathed in and out a couple of times to gain some confidence to go talk to the girl.

Straining himself to stand up he remembers something.
'oh right broken leg'
But as he's about to sit back down he notices a chain around his leg.

'i guess that would make sense, we are merchandise after all'

As he starts to contemplate what might happen to him, he sees or rather hears first some chains jangling towards him. He looks up and to his continued surprise he sees the silver-haired girl.

"Hey dude it's okay we're gonna get out of here don't worry; the name's Evelyn by the way, what's yours ?" she whispered to me.

She was embarrassingly close to his face so he had to look away for a sec only to see the silver-haired boy glaring at him, to which he had to look someplace else, and that someplace else was Evelyn's face.

"Natalius, but you can call me Nathan" he replied.

After his reply, she started crawling back to her corner next to her maybe brother and when she arrived, she turned back smiled and motioned for him to come closer, to which he did.

As he arrived he saw a couple of other people approaching the group. There were about 5 people in total in the room.

A couple of people nodded at him as he sat down and made himself comfortable.

The boy with silver hair temporarily stopped glaring at him and nodded.
"My name is adam, and as you guys can probably see, we've been kidnapped."

He stopped to look at Evelyn and continued.
"I have a bit of an idea about why we were . . . umm . . . chosen"

The other two people that we're present frowned slightly. They were another boy-girl duo, except I was mildly sure they weren't siblings. The boy had an eyepatch had medium length dirty blond hair, that seemed to try to hide the black eyepatch on his left eye. The girl had black hair and shard eyes that seemed to pierce through every aspect of me.

The eyepatch boy looked down for a second and broke the silence.
"So why were chosen?"
His tone was curt, but his demeanor was didn't match. He fiddled with his thumbs while he looked down.

Adam looked at Evelyn once more and raised his hands.
"Status"
A blue screen popped up in front of him, and letters started appearing.

I stumbled backwards a bit.

'Isn't this a bit crazy? '

Adam smirked a bit
"We've probably been chosen because of these . . . We were all probably picked up from seed crash sites and I think there's a chance that the seeds made us this way."

Evelyn followed.
"Status."
The screen that popped up for her was a bit white in comparison to adam's so I gathered we probably all had different 'statuses'.

"Is it always gonna pop up like that if we say it"
The girl with the sharp eyes said.

"Oh no, if you think it instead of saying it then it's only visible to you"
Evelyn replied.

The eyepatch boy finally started to realize what was happening when Evelyn stated the fact that a screen could pop up in front of us in our minds like it was common knowledge.
"H-h-hey hey hey, this is crazy right? I can't be the only one who thinks this is crazy right? This is literally like those web novels that are like super popular right??"

The sharp-eyed girl looked at him and sighed.
"I know this sounds crazy, but we're probably going to have to believe it. They did provide us with unshakable proof after all"

She breathed lightly and muttered.
"Status"
Her status was green.

Eyepatch boy's eyes shook until it seemed like he gave up and fell on his back.
"This is crazy . . . "

I replied lightly.
"Yeah . . . "

He looked at me briefly and said.
"Status"

When the yellow status popped up in front of him, he put his hands on his face and started laughing. His laugh was one of surrender. The fact that this was really happening was probably too much for him to take

Meanwhile, I was just freaking out. My earlier reaction to my situation might not have shown it, but I wasn't one to show my emotions regularly. I had already tried bringing up my status earlier when Evelyn mentioned that I could bring it up in my head, but nothing came up. So in the end here I was equally as trapped as them even though I was nothing special, to begin with.

Finally, all eyes were on me, and I didn't need to be a genius to know why, so I complied.
"Status"

Nothing came up, as expected.

The eyepatch boy's eye shook.
"D-dude . . . you're fucked"

This earned him a smack to the head from the sharp-eyed girl as she shook her own.
"Unless they know about the statuses, which I doubt they do, I think you should be fine."

This earned a nod from everyone else.

I was about to say something in return when the door suddenly burst open.
"Well well, looks like our little maggots are socializing, eh"

It was the old fat fuck with his dirty brown shorts. He looked to be wearing a new shirt, but that didn't matter, I would recognize that dirty fucks's face anywhere. He was accompanied by the man who was driving the car with him, and a new person who I hadn't seen before. They slowly walked down the three steps to reach the pungent floor we had been sitting on. I was angry. Angry that these people had even gone out of their way to kidnap people for such an asinine reason.

The sharp-eyed girl who had been the calmest out of all of us suddenly lost her composure. She tried standing up and running towards the old fat fucks and the new guy but was dragged back down by the chain which jangled as if to confirm that, yes, we weren't getting out of here.

She screamed her lungs out in anger.
"I'll kill you! I'll fucking kill you!"

Her screams devolved into tears, as she hit the ground with her fists meekly.

The new guy who had been quiet the entire time glanced across all of us and pulled out a pistol from behind.
"Look I don't want to do this but we're going to have to take one of you for testing."

The dirty old fat fuck interrupted.
"Ugh Jarvis you're being too nice with these things, they're not even human anymore"

Seeing his attitude towards us explained a lot.

If he was willing to throw away his belief of us being human so he could make some money, it either meant he had always been a dick and the people with him were also dicks of the highest caliber, or they had been dragged into this and didn't really want to be part of this. This Jarvis person, in particular, would've slightly intrigued me were it not for the . . . oh I don't know, fucking gun he had!

He started.
"As my . . . 'partner' mentioned before, my name is Jarvis, and I am geneticist who studies the seedling-"

But before his piece the boy with eyepatch interrupted.
"Seedling is a stupid name for what we have"

"Well we weren't the ones who came up with the name, but I would appreciate it if you didn't interrupt me the next time I start talking"

The boy with the eyepatch glared. He leaned back on his hands and swung his hair back.
"I think I would be more polite if it weren't for the fact that you kidnapped us don't you think."

Jarvis seemed like he wanted to glare back, but he held back. Probably on the account that the boy with the eyepatch was in fact right. He looked as if he would think on it a bit longer if the smelly old fat fuck hadn't interrupted with his stupidly obnoxious southern accent.

"We don't have time to worry about the 'ethics' of your situation, younguns. You're not human anymore. You know it, I know it, the whole world already knows it, so what's the use in acting like you still are."

He eyed all of us, probably to see our reactions, and continued.
"I've seen what one of you can do. Not you specifically but one of your variety. You're violent animals and can't no one change my mind about something I've seen with my own two damn eyes."

I didn't have the courage to call the smelly old fat fuck out on his bullshit but eyepatch boy clearly still hadn't gotten everything he wanted out.
"You're full of shit."

"Takes one to know one I guess."

Silence.

It wasn't even a good comeback, but it got eyepatch boy to be quiet.

Jarvis sighed and looked at his 'partners'. They looked back. The man who hadn't spoken yet smirked, and so did the old fat fuck.

I knew what was coming and I was anything but impartial to it. Who could say what they would the other guys here, or rather to all of us. No matter how much I wanted to separate myself from this, they still thought I was one of the 'seedlings'. To be quite honest I wouldn't have minded being one. After all who didn't want to have powers. It was basically every person's dream, but ironically enough it was going to be our nightmare.

I wasn't special. I knew it. I never had much to look forward to in life except for music and I didn't even have that with me. Smelly disgusting floors, 4 people who barely know me, 1 disgusting smelly old fat fuck, and 2 other old fucks. That was currently all I had.

Nothing much to look forward to.

We were probably going to die, at that moment I felt that if I got these special people time to escape or do something at least, my shitty life would be worth it, and I felt slightly embarrassed for sobbing in front of these people before so I was going to do the stupidest thing that would probably lead to my death.

'I'm gonna regret this . . .'

"Take me, and get this shit over with."

Everyone stared at me. Of course, they would. I basically just sped up my one way trip to not-alive town. There was no way i could just leave because i wasn't a seedling. After all, for all they knew we could have a way to hide it.

"I don't really give a shit what you're going to do because I didn't want to live anyways so get it over with and unchain me."

The smelly old fat fuck smiled.
"I guess we won't have much to worry about if you easily cooperate like this."

I'm really starting to hate that snooty fucking smirk of his.

The guy who hadn't talked the entire time looked at old-smelly-fat-fuck and then to Jarvis and nodded. He pulled a key out of his pocket, walked towards me, unlocked the chains, and dragged me towards his partners.

'I might as well get something in'

I headbutted him and then put my hands up before they could do anything else.
'fuck that hurts way more than I thought it would.'
"Hey hey hey don't blame me here, I thought I should at least get one in before you start experimenting on me."

Jarvis frowns.
"You try something like that and you'll regret it"

'alright let's get a joke in there'

I chuckle lightly.
"what are you gonna do, kidnap me ?"

Mister-doesn't-talk-at-all recovers and glares at me, before continuing towards the door and before I'm dragged towards the door again I look back at Evelyn, Adam, the sharp-eyed girl, and eyepatch boy and nod. I try smiling but it comes out a bit awkward and all I can do is hope they know that I'm trying to buy them time. However much is needed, I'll get it for them, but in return, I'll have to go through whatever these people want me to go through, and that's a sacrifice I'm willing to make.