I am just an eight-year-old boy.
“Zayne,” my father said. “How are you feeling?”
I nodded.
Metal bars framed my head, locked in place, cables trailing from each side. My hands were bound. My body felt suspended, as if I had been pinned in midair. Only my eyes could move. I darted them left and right, taking in the room.
In front of my father sat an old beige computer, its screen glowing faintly. A stack of files lay beside it, each stamped in red.
PROJECT GEMINI.
He never taught me anything himself. He only brought used toys and left me alone with them. The nurses were the ones who taught me how to read, how to count, and how to speak. I absorbed everything they gave me. And when my father finally noticed, he decided learning might be helpful after all.He started handing me complex books filled with codes and algorithms.
For an eight-year-old with nothing else to do, it felt like candy.
Letters shifted into numbers. Words rearranged themselves into patterns. I stopped writing sentences and started writing sequences. I stopped speaking in words and began answering in codes. Soon, numbers appeared everywhere. Every word translated itself automatically.
My father called me Zerophrenic. A state, he said, where identity, memory, and emotion collapse to zero.
Sometimes men visited. They stood behind him while he drew my blood, their eyes fixed on the screen above my head. They talked about dividing minds, about creating separate consciences inside the same body. On days when their voices sounded pleased, and their hands shook in agreement, my father turned on the television. It was like a reward for me. And I would always watch nature documentaries, wondering what the sun looked like.
The nurses said it burned your eyes if you stared too long. They said the moon lit the night, so it was never completely dark. I had no way to know. I was never allowed outside.
My father said the world would hurt me if it knew I existed, that they would lock me away. But he hurt me, too. Needles breaking my skin, iron bars pressing against my head, doors locking every night when it was time to sleep.
I wasn’t afraid of what was outside.
One nurse told me fear makes us vulnerable. I didn’t want to be vulnerable. Whenever I felt afraid, I forced myself through it again and again until the feeling disappeared.
Fear was for weak boys, and I didn’t want to be weak.
“Ready?” my father asked.
I nodded.
The electricity surged through the cables, and my head began to shake.
My eyes shut immediately, and light turned into dark again.
When I open my eyes, I am back in the present. The memories fade, but they still stay close, sharp, yet I am no longer an eight-year-old boy.
I lie still on the table, not moving. But I hear nurses whispering nearby, I hear the soft click of buckles as the restraints around my hands are undone. They are quick, distracted, and cleaning the equipment.
And for a moment, no one is watching me.
That moment is enough.
My eyes spring wide, and I sit up. I look at them as they laugh quietly, unaware.
I have been receiving this treatment since I was four. My body is numb to it now. The electricity still rattles my nerves, still leaves my head buzzing, but it doesn’t hurt. It only fuels the anger tightening in my chest.
I step towards them.
My hand closes around one nurse’s throat, slamming her back against the wall. Her breath catches instantly. The other nurse reacts, bringing a syringe toward my neck. I grab her wrist and yank it hard. The syringe slips from her fingers and hits the floor.
They freeze.
The nurse I am holding gasps, eyes wide, hands clutching at my wrist as she struggles to breathe.
