Today, a little girl complained about a headache so severe that she started to scream. Dr. Ilene quickly brought the girl to the lab where she was placed on the chair. However, when a guard tried to strap her onto the chair, she grabbed him with one hand and flung him across the room, rendering him unconscious.
The observers couldn't believe their eyes. The girl in question wasn't up to half this guard's size, yet she effortlessly threw him across the room with her tiny hands. The doctors exchanged glances and ordered more guards to intercept the little girl. Finally, she was subdued and strapped while the doctors ran their tests.
"Unbelievable!"
In the monitoring room, Dr. Curtis screamed.
Everyone quickly turned their attention to him.
"What is it?" asked Dr. Ilene.
Dr. Curtis calmed down and explained.
"Okay so I ran a scan minutes ago and her body conditions were normal. But when I checked her brain function, I noticed it was undergoing some drastic changes and rapidly. Then I went back to run another scan and then this appeared."
"What exactly is it?"
Dr. Ilene asked again.
Dr. Curtis took a deep breath before he answered,
"Her body is going through some changes, and I don't mean puberty… I mean changes occurring at a cellular level... like her muscle fibers are increasing both in size and number at an alarming rate… and her nerve cell's myelination keeps increasing by the minute, and many more changes. They're all happening at the same time, that's why she's in a lot of pain, and I don't think painkillers are going to help."
Dr. Curtis further explained his findings in detail. As an expert at genetics, the girl's condition wasn't alien to him, only that he had never seen it happen like this before. While his colleagues discussed, he turned to look at Dr. Ilene who had a light smile on her face at the moment when she looked at the little girl.
"Dr. Curtis," she called out.
"What would happen if we induced her in this state?"
Dr. Curtis had widened eyes when he heard the question, as he hurriedly replied,
"The girl's system is yet to adapt to the changes happening right now, and we don't know if she will. Inducing her in this state likely has one outcome… her death."
Dr. Ilene nodded,
"I'll take your word for it. For the time being, she'll be separated from the rest and be kept under close observation. This could be the breakthrough we needed…"
"What do we do about the pain she's feeling?"
Another doctor asked.
"We have no idea what's going on with her right now. Giving her medications could result in something catastrophic. We leave her the way she is."
Dr. Ilene said before leaving the lab.
Everyone exchanged complicated looks, but they understood and did as they were told. The little girl was kept in the observation unit, and after four hours of screaming her lungs out, she became a lot more relaxed.
However, before the girl felt better, Dr. Ilene got reports that two children had the same problem, and they were both rushed to the lab. Tests were conducted and the results were the same. These children were experiencing changes, or to be more accurate, modifications to their system. The only fear the doctors had was that these modifications weren't natural, and their bodies might either not be fast enough to adapt to these changes or strong enough. And soon, they reported their first casualty.
Reports kept flying in for days as children were rushed to different labs, yet the casualties reported were more than imagined. The facility did all it could to mitigate the losses but given the little knowledge they had about the situation, there wasn't much they could do but hope. Those who survived the ordeal were isolated, with hourly checks conducted on them.
The children panicked when they saw their friends leave and not return, yet the number of those affected grew each day. Today, Martin, Lenny, and Lucy were rushed out of the nursery, as Johan watched worriedly from a distance. He had asked Dr. Ilene what the problem was but was met with an unsatisfying answer. Shortly after the facility was thrown into a commotion, another one erupted, and this time around, it was something they never anticipated.
The facility suddenly trembled. The security went on high alert thinking it was an explosion, but on closer inspection, there was no detection of an explosion anywhere in the facility. Since it happened once everyone thought it was a minor tremor, they paid it no heed, and it didn't happen again for a while. However, the shaking happened again more intense than the last, shaking the facility down to its root. The security team investigated the facility and traced it to a little girl, who happened to be the first case of the recent sick children.
The little girl who had been under observation since that day was found incapacitated in her room, buried under debris. Her room was dilapidated with large cracks on the wall, as though an earthquake had occurred inside the room. But under close observation, there was no sign of anything that could cause such damage. Unfortunately, by the time the little girl was found, the weight of the stones had crushed her petite body.