Chapter 485

The stale, damp air tasted of concrete and something metallic. A small boy named Eli, no older than seven, existed in a place that knew no sun, no sky, only the cold, hard embrace of the underground facility.

His memories of a world above, of green grass and warmth, had begun to fade, replaced by the sterile white of his confinement. There was a distant sound of machinery that always operated at an unnatural cadence.

He had been taken one evening, a soft hand over his mouth, a world turned sideways. The details were hazy like a bad dream that lingered in the furthest corners of his mind, threatening to surface during quiet times.

Now, this place, a concrete maze beneath the earth, was his home, his prison, and his whole universe. Eli's days were governed by a methodical order.

Each dawn, he would awaken in a narrow cot to the low groan of ventilation. Figures in white coats would then appear, their faces emotionless masks.

They didn't speak, not with words Eli understood. Instead, they communicated with sharp gestures and a dispassionate touch as they guided him toward their experiments.

They measured him with long metal calipers that chilled his skin, his head and limbs would be placed within contraptions with odd shaped lenses. The machines would vibrate at a speed Eli couldn't understand.

At certain intervals, he felt like static being run through his body, an energy he knew nothing about. These sessions were painful, and despite his age, Eli had learned not to cry.

Tears didn't seem to solicit anything, maybe an emotion from them was what he was expecting. Sometimes, he saw reflections of himself in their observing windows.

His hair, once bright blonde, was now dark and dull, always slick with a sheen of sweat. His bright eyes, once filled with childlike wonder, now held a depth of fearful awareness, always with dark circles resting beneath.

It was in the small details of his appearance that he saw, maybe a glimpse of a lost boy, or a being entirely different that was made here. There were other children here.

Eli knew of their presence from muffled voices he would occasionally hear behind the sealed doors or when led in a strange direction within their labyrinth of chambers. They moved as if ghosts.

A boy with hollow cheeks and sunken eyes who carried a single worn out plush bunny; a girl who was always shivering despite the temperature. These interactions never lasted long before he was ushered back to his chamber of testing.

One day, an unexpected change arrived to his tedious order. The scientists led Eli to a room unlike the others; it had no harsh metal chairs and no bizarre testing equipment.

Soft lights illuminated walls with a peculiar array of diagrams and charts. There was an unfamiliar man there, a woman by his side.

They weren't adorned in lab coats but dressed casually in deep blues, greys, and blacks. He saw a kind of pity, like a glimpse of something he once saw on TV, as it settled on their faces as their gaze went towards him.

"Hello, Eli," the man spoke, his voice calm, a slight tremor of emotion there that wasn't seen before within these halls. Eli had never been addressed so warmly before.

Words in this place were usually commands and observations, his name usually a monotone remark. "Do you… Do you remember your momma? Your pa?"

The woman said in soft tones, lowering her posture to appear less looming to Eli's short frame. He did.

Snippets of memory surfaced like a series of faded photographs. Warm embraces, bedtime stories, laughter echoing off of kitchen walls.

The contrast to his current life was like looking into an ocean of disparity, a wide and dark stretch. He hadn't considered these moments, allowing his environment and experiences to warp them.

This new line of inquiry gave Eli pause and even made the area they stood in feel as if there was something different to the quality. He only gave the scientists vacant stares.

Their faces became grim; their hands trembled slightly before speaking more. "They're very sorry you are here. They do, I know they do.

"Do you have some place you'd rather be, boy?" the woman asked with some obvious sorrow leaking through her calm exterior. Her eyes scanned all around to look at him before looking directly in them.

Eli didn't answer. The words felt alien on his tongue and mind as if his language circuits had almost eroded from the lack of conversational practice and time with regular people.

But their faces were warm, caring even, something Eli only half remembered of normal. They didn't push and simply brought him to a table where they'd set down paper, and crayons.

It was the first time in years he'd seen such vivid and playful colors. They let him create in silence, stepping back only to admire and offer the softest, non verbal approval.

He didn't fully understand why. As the days became longer, Eli came to spend time with the two strangers, and the room grew into their shared haven.

He showed the pair drawings of a green field and sun that now came from deep within his imagination. He started to vocalize words more, hesitant at first and then gradually with increasing boldness.

He told the woman the few stories of warmth he still had before he was taken. In return, they'd tell him of the outside world, of parks and flowers, people having cook outs on summer days, they showed him photographs.

He could feel something was building as time passed. They started looking weary but their warmth and fondness for Eli continued.

He saw, just for a glimpse, and without thought, this new connection become his 'normal.' But these soft moments did not last.

One morning, Eli found himself not in the welcoming room, but once again, strapped down on the cold table for experimentation. He searched their faces among those present, but they were nowhere to be seen.

He wasn't given an answer about it. There was something new today, different.

He felt like he was drowning, with a mask tightly clamped around his mouth and nose as a cool fluid coursed through it. It ran down the entirety of his wind pipe and caused a sense of pressure building.

He struggled and he shook under the metal restraints, an alarm in the back of his skull telling him there was a finality to it all. There was some dark laughter that could barely be discerned by him before his sight faded out.

The room then filled with the white coats once more, as their eyes turned from curious to determined and fixated onto his fading frame. His next consciousness felt like it happened both a few minutes after that awful moment.

It also felt like it'd taken him a whole decade to make. He saw his small fingers and hands, but not really.

A faint and transparent shimmer coming over them and moving throughout his body, pulsing in every visible artery. He tried to stand up and it felt almost as if he was not standing but almost 'floating.'

He felt light as air with no need for any anchor to stay balanced, it was effortless in ways his little body wasn't made for. The room was the same but now the surfaces he could see gave off these radiant pulses.

He heard their voices but it felt as if they were moving all around him, sometimes faint, other times at their previous loudness. They felt 'close,' like something out of reach.

A place outside of a dream that now came to his physical world. He couldn't make heads or tails of what was going on but the sense of control he had was almost euphoric.

The pulse began to vibrate stronger within him, he moved around as his vision adapted to this change, walking in every direction with nothing slowing him down. He looked at himself in one of the viewing windows.

Instead of seeing his body's reflection he saw the energy pulsing and glowing instead. It almost looked like a person that someone was outlining with light and pure white energy that expanded further than the confines of his 'shape.'

He went toward the metal wall as it emitted it's own pulse with energy he recognized as if looking at the very source of this phenomena. The same people looked at him behind glass walls.

Their faces were more surprised than when he spoke to them only a few 'days' ago. He saw how frantic and unorderly they moved about.

Then, Eli touched the metal. A white hot jolt pulsed and went across the whole room with a speed faster than any light he saw back up at the surface world with his human eyes.

A second wall started to glow. He could hear his 'energy' vibrating across the surface of it as this feeling spread with each new connection.

Then all of it pulsed in his view and it took only seconds to make that new wall a point of contact. The pulses only grew more prominent, all moving towards Eli.

Each wall acting like it was being attracted to some source point at the center of the room. That source being Eli himself, and now, even though he felt weightless he also felt the growing, building sense of his own gravitational presence.

More walls lit up, the facility feeling smaller, tighter, as every surface wanted what Eli had become. He didn't know what he had become.

When his eyes finally shifted back towards himself, he couldn't recognize what the white outline and core now had begun to shift into. This 'form,' for lack of a better term, began twisting and shifting within itself.

It now started making new connections within his new 'core.' Eli moved towards a door as if the desire had just came.

The walls pulsed with a need he seemed to finally comprehend, even if only vaguely. He pulled a door handle as it burst.

A whole doorway into the concrete was ripped off with a similar, almost natural sound, just amplified greatly by the intensity. Then, Eli began the expansion.

Through hallways, chambers, doorways, and every structure or space with any kind of containment the 'white source' broke it. It created gaps in structures that then came into full contact.

The very matter of the structure was then becoming his 'surface' of expansion, slowly 'taking over.' It pulsed and shined throughout this 'network' that became a part of this form.

Through his 'mind' he felt all things connect, this connection bringing in its own weird feeling. All things under this place were beginning to vibrate to this same shared cadence.

All things under this space where this boy had lived were not their own anymore. There was a slow pull and with a speed not really registered it took him into more structures as walls dissolved to bring 'them' together.

They joined as if the very matter in that space, metal, plastic, concrete, had no desire for independent stability. What began as small ripples of light across an area, then turned into large beams.

Until finally all at once a wave crashed down on the complex and engulfed everything within it and expanded more outwards. It reached a previously unseen size within these areas, all pulses beating to one beat of that same connection they all wanted.

All of this began coming together and it felt whole and connected with every wall, object, and material being under the 'form' Eli had grown into. It expanded outward further and further, with all things falling to their proper place within the new 'center.'

He, if it can be described as that any longer, had become something more than a boy. He was the place now, the entire space now only under a singular source that expanded more, looking outward to grow.

Searching with an ever-growing desire. The light pulsed through everything under there, with that beat of the very core of him, a core he finally accepted as 'home' now.

Eli could now 'see' as every connection sent back its 'awareness,' he could feel what was ahead. His path had only grown clearer.

Every other presence beneath the soil falling into an alignment to his expanding design. He, or they as he now understood all together, had become a beautiful network with himself at the core.

They pulsed onward in an eternal quest of 'expansion.' A dark, beautiful and awful new understanding.

His face would still always stare with an awful vacant longing, no matter how far it all continued to grow.