After taking another elevator after the security check, Simon took a deep breath, his heart beating fast from anxiety.
"Calm down Si, it's okay. You got this."
He opened a door, scanning his bracer, and stepped inside a pitch-black room, suffocated in darkness.
"Hello Simon. Subject still produces radiation from the entire spectrum of infrared to x-rays, although the lower bound has begun to grow. Possibility of microwave radiation to occur should not be taken lightly."
Simon smiled awkwardly. "Thanks Q-MAI(Cue-My). I'll let the doctors know."
Simon reached in the dark, finding the back of the chair as his fingers brushed against it, and sat down in it slowly.
He took a second, breathing hesitantly. After a few seconds, he sat up straight rather than slouch.
'No point in waiting.'
He reached out, finding a button in the dark that he pressed.
"Hello Subject-04."
"Oh hi Simon!" A bubbly female voice could be heard excitedly speaking through some kind of speaker.
"Sparks! I was wondering when you'd finally show! I was booooreeeed!!!"
Simon tried his best not to flinch at how friendly and normal she-it-sounded. "I'm here now Emily."
"Gasp! You called me Emily!" She actually said gasp as the word, onomatopoeia of her own reaction.
Simon sighed. "Yeah... you always seem to make me forget protocol."
"Hehehe!" Emily giggled, perhaps an innocent and gentle sound normally when paired with a young woman, but eerily creepy and unnerving when heard in an empty black room with no light at all!
Simon once would have had to suppress a shiver working up his back, but familiarity with this situation built up over quite a few visits calming him.
"Well Emily, would you like to talk about the colors?"
"Why yes Doc! Today Green said I should just kill you and then I could leave, but Blue pointed out that you're not actually the one keeping me here, teehee!"
Simon blinked slowly. "Well... Green does seem to be quite the wild guy huh? Always just saying to do the simplest thing possible."
Emily's voice dropped, low and sympathetic. "He just wants to be free... Green doesn't like being caged at all. Blue seems to always be calm, but even she is started to get antsy I can tell."
Simon nodded. "And you still don't know why only Blue and Green speak to you? You did say there were others, other colors that could talk."
"Mm-hm! There are! Like red and purple and yellow too! Oh and orange! There were others I think..."
"Don't worry about how many there were, it's okay. Just tell me why they're so quiet now?"
"They only spoke the first time. I think it's cause they didn't choose me, so they ignore me."
Simon tilted his head. "That word again... choose?"
"Uh-huh! I was chosen to find it!"
Simon leaned forward. "Find what Emily? What do the colors want you to find?"
"Mmm..."
Silence fell, punctuated by the gentle breaths over the intercom as Simon waited.
After 30 seconds, he began to twitch slightly impatiently.
Time kept passing, driving Simon crazy in the dark as he kept waiting for Emily to just say something!
Finally she took a deeper breath, slightly different from the ones taken during her silence, and Simon perked up, knowing she was about to speak.
"It's... a secret!"
"..." To accurately describe Simon's frustration, it is best to simply use ones own imagination, for words could never capture it.
Finally he just sighed as he hung his head.
"Well, anything new to report to the Board?"
"Yeah!" The bright and bubbly voice shouted, and a strange silence came after.
Simon frowned, a strange unease filling him as the silence suddenly came, as oppressive as the darkness surrounding him.
"Si..." the voice was no longer gentle nor kind.
It was cold.
"I wish you would stop letting the bugs into your ears."
Simon shivered as he almost could have sworn he felt something within his ear for a second.
"Sometimes the buggy's try to get to me too, but the colors protect me. The buggies keep crawling in the walls when you aren't here... I wish you'd stay with me..."
"F̵̡̻̈̍o̶̬͛ṟ̴̝̈́ẽ̸̘̟̀v̷̲͂̀e̸͙̞͌̿r̵̡̓."
Simon lurched to his feet, stepping away and stumbling a bit on the edge of the chair.
Whispers seemed to come from every corner, the darkness creeping in as he felt his hairs lift, goosebumps rising as he could've sworn he felt skittering insect legs up his back and along his arms!
"Stop it! What are you doing?!" Simon began to freak out, turning and rushing for the door, but there was no door, no wall, he kept moving without hitting anything, and the whispers were only getting louder!
'No no no nonononono the door has to be here! This isn't a big room!'
He started to run, sprinting madly as he kept brushing THINGS off his arms, and his heart was so loud, pumping away so violent and hard-
Simon gasped as his chest felt a sudden stabbing pain, a burning inside his lungs that tore his mind apart!
He fell over, out of the chair, and his mind tried to think.
'Wait I just fell out of the chair? But I was running-running from-
'Nothings in here, I can't even hear Emily anymore-'
'Please I don't want to feel that again! Don't do it, don't do it, don't don't don't!'
"I'm sorry Simon. I didn't think Orange would take an interest in teasing you."
Simon lay on the ground, taking deep, heaving breaths as he held his still-burning chest.
"Wha-" he was broken off by his own violent coughing, his body shaking from the force his diaphragm shuddered with.
He shook his head slightly. His throat felt rough and sore, his chest burned, and his stomach swam with nausea. He still felt phantom sensations of something crawling on him sometimes, making him twitch as he lay down in the dark.
"What the hell was that?" He asked, his voice raspy and uneven, weak even.
"Orange teased you. Don't get so caught up in it Si, he was just making you notice all the buggies those old men keep putting in everyone's heads."
She began to sing, "~Everyone gets buggies, but buggies ain't for me! I don't want no buggies, no-sir-ee! They all mean, so mean to me! Cause they got buggies, yes-sir-ee!~"
"Please... don't do that ever again." Simon heaved another ragged breath.
"I didn't! I can't do orange things, only blue and green ones Si! I promise!" Emily suddenly got nervous and defensive. "I swear I wasn't trying to scare you, don't leave! Please Si!"
Simon slowly sat up, reaching for the arm of the chair and finding it after groping a bit, and using it to help him stand back up on shaky legs.
'I actually FEEL like I just ran for my life in a blind panic, my heart is so panicked it hurts, my legs feel shaky and weak... how the hell did she do that?! Is this what a Changed can really do?'
Simon froze as a chill rose in the room, making his hairs stand in end as the empty darkness of earlier almost seemed friendly compared to how it felt now. 'The surface... how many Changed are there?'
'How can our advanced weaponry stand a chance against someone who can do something like that, even if they were armed with sticks and stones?!'