Pitch black. No sight, no sound, I can’t even feel my own body. It’s an almost torturous level of emptiness, yet I’m oddly calm.

 I can’t prevent what’s happening and worrying sure won’t help, so the best thing to do is wait until something happens. Whether that is good or bad… I couldn’t say.

Crack

A sound. Finally. Still dark though, could I get some sight too please?

A similar crack rings out as I’m temporarily blinded by light. Followed by the sound of… counting?

The muffled sound of one’s, two’s, and three’s clear the muffled feeling of my ears as my sight clears along with them. 

“Sleeping beauty rises, eh?” 

A man in goggles and a lab coat blinds me again with a flashlight in the eye. 

“Can you stop?!” 

I slap away his hand. I’m wide awake, no need to blast me right in the eyes with the fury of zeus Dammit!

“Well, seems you're reacting normally to stimulation. A good sign considering that some who go into the suspension chamber come out with some senses lost permanently.”

I frowned.  

“Suspension chamber?”

“Odd that that's the thing you react to, but yes. You’re more or less suspended in time while you're in there. Makes it easier to study you for a bit without you causing problems!” 

While he had been talking I’d cast a cursory glance at my surroundings. 

Door on the left with a combination lock, soft mat’s on the walls, a hospital bed, desk, and chair. Minus a giant metal statue and the suspension chamber behind me it seemed like a normal doctors office. Well, somewhat anyway. Also did I mention the giant metal statue?

Taking note of where I was looking, the doctors expression changed suddenly. 

Before he had seemed professional. Like any ordinary regular checkup, but the minute he noticed my attention on the statue his professional look dropped. His eyes widened as his mouth spread into a smile that sent a feeling of terror shooting through my body like lightning.

“That statue you’ve been so carefully observing is a statue of God! He’s spoken to us! And he says that-”

A loud beep sounds out from an intercom speaker above the door as the doctors eyes roll up into his head and he slumps from his chair onto the floor. 

Stumbling back In horror I felt my heart speed up as the door bursts open and two men in similar labcoats grabbed the doctor by his arms and dragged him out. 

They’d left the door open. Could I escape? Who was that guy? Was this room part of an insane ward, and he was the patient? 

Tack Tack Tack

The sound of shoes hitting the granite floor tiles announced the arrival of a man In a smooth three piece suit. 

Tall. Dark hair, and shades. giant scar across his eye? Yep he fit the look of a bodyguard to a “T”. 

The thought had no sooner crossed my mind before the priestlike man I’d seen before I lost consciousness stepped in behind him. 

Taking a seat on the chair the doc had left, he smiled as he looked at me.

“We’ve been looking for you for quite a while, you know. Hasn’t been easy, I'll tell you that. Do you know why that is?”

Shivering at the barely hidden look of mania behind his eyes, I shook my head. 

Even if I knew the answer, sheer terror was drowning out my ability to think. I couldn’t give a clear answer If I tried! This whole experience was hellish! Between the crazy doctor before and the man in front of me I was beginning to think I, myself, had gone insane!

The man shook his head. 

“A shame, but it doesn’t really matter anyway. In the end we did find you, and that’s the part that matters, and the reason for that is fairly simple.” “you see, we have a purpose. A God given purpose, and you are just the person we need to fulfill it!”

Rising from his chair, the man ran a hand through his hair as he grinned. 

Walking over to me, he leaned down and spoke softly.

“See, gifts are a curse Charlotte Rose. A curse as old as time itself. A curse we have been tasked with destroying!” “Unworthy as we are, God chose us, and now; I’m going to execute that task.”

He stood up straight and turned around clasping his hands behind his back as he looked over his shoulder and said one last thing before he left.

“And you Rose? You will too. Oh, you will too…” 

Two men rushed through the door straight at me! I kicked at them. Punched. Did everything I could, and, like I always did, I cursed that my gift didn’t do anything useful. Why music? What use could Beethoven of all things be? 

I didn’t have much time to contemplate that before one doctor strapped my struggling body to the hospital bed I’d seen earlier, as the other snapped on a pair of latex gloves and grabbed a nearby syringe. 

As I watched, unable to even get a deep breath in through the strap around my chest, the man pulled a vial from his pocket, and drew a few drops from the syringe. 

The intercom sounded again as the priests voice echoed through the room.

“CRISPR technology is quite the marvel! It’s the only tool we need to complete Gods mission! With it, we can directly interfere with the human genome, and modify it as we’d like! With it Rose we’ll build a world without “gifts”! We don’t need them, all we need is to turn back to God!”

The mans voice rose to a crescendo as the doctor drove the syringe into my neck.

For a moment. For one short, peaceful moment, it seemed like nothing had happened. Then the pain came flooding in. 

It was like Iron stakes being driven into every pore of my body. I screamed as the agony permeated through me. Going up from me legs and arms and moving up toward my torso. 

My eyes began to grow cloudy as I saw flashes of colorful light, and each flash seemed like needles driven through my pupil.

The pain changed suddenly to heat! A burning fire that seared my body, moving from my torso up to my neck! Whatever this hell was, I just wanted it to end!

Again the feeling changed. This time to a harsh cold, like a bitter shock of frost. And with it came the subtle sense of… something. 

Not pain, nor anything negative, but rather… a sense of purpose.

As the pain died down, and my voice finally broke from the screaming, I felt only numb. 

My head lolled back on the pillow, as my body convulsed, though I felt nothing. And in that moment, I smiled.

This was their purpose? This pain, this torture!? 

Well… I’d found my purpose. Kill them. Kill them all.

As the doctors released the straps and dragged me down a dim hallway, before throwing me unceremoniously into what looked like a cell, I continued to smile. 

That priest had been right. He had fulfilled his purpose. And I would fulfill mine… and oh, how I looked forward to it…