The Experiment by Christopher Costanza Page B

down the hall, just in time to see Sara turn the corner… I could only assume she wanted me to follower her.
    I closed the door behind me and went after her.
    I did my best to keep my distance without losing her… Someone could be watching right now and Icould tell it’s what she wanted me to do.
    She took so many turns and went through so many different areas on the ship I was starting to worry I wouldn’t be able to find my way back...
    Finally, I followed her through a door into what appeared to be a small storage room… To go through all this only emphasizes how serious she knows the situation to be…
    When I walked up to her, she was obviously angry.
    “Why won’t you listen to me?!, I told you not to draw any attention to us… You need to stop trying to talk to me when we’re in the lab… If Horus realizes something’s going on…” Poking me in the chest as she said it.
    I said “I know I’m sorry. This is just all so confusing… You have to realize that.”
    She moved in closer and said “Just please trust me… Something’s going to be done about this; it just needs time to happen. You’re so close to Horus… I have to ask you to forget about me. We can’t have any more contact… I’m sorry…”
    I started to talk and she interrupted me “I have to go now… Please don’t do anything stupid… And don’t walk out for a few minutes…”
    As she left the room I thought to myself… “It just needs time to happen”?
    Does that mean she has a plan? And I just can’t be involved because I’m Horus’ assistant and it couldcompromise everything?.. Maybe she had already found a group of people who want to stop it…
    I hated not knowing anything, but apparently I had no choice for the time being… I would just have to trust her, keep my distance and wait… I really wish Kayin was around and that I could tell him about everything… He’d know what to do.
    While I waited to leave my stomach started growling… I was still feeling sick from being so scared and nervous. I think being starving was only making it worse. So I gave it another minute and started trying to find my way back… It wasn’t easy, but eventually I made it past the team quarters and over to the nutrition center.
    It was so late, I was the only one there.
    As I was being scanned so the computer could customize my nutrition bar, I noticed the time on the machine… I’d have to report back to Horus in less than five hours. And I hadn’t even gotten a moment of sleep.
    If I nodded off while he was dictating, or he noticed how tired I was, he’d know I wasn’t sleeping… He’d know I was upset and that this was keeping me up. It would immediately make him suspicious of me… I had to get at least a few hours of rest – I had to appear to be perfectly normal and content with my position.
    While walking to my room, I noticed a sign that said “Observation Room” with arrows pointing the way. Iwas really intrigued but I just ignored it and kept going, I needed to sleep.
    When I got to my room, I was nothing but all worked up and wide awake… I looked around and noticed the bookshelf. I saw the same book about the history of the ACI that was in my room on the Aurora. I figured it would help me get tired so I grabbed it and sat in my bed.
    The very first paragraph was all about how the ACI was a “humanitarian organization of people risking their lives to benefit all of mankind.”
    I immediately became disgusted and threw it across the room… It was just full of more lies to convince fools like me to blindly join...
    I laid there for a while just thinking and gnashing my teeth… Then that sign I saw about an observation room came to mind…
    It made me realize we’d been orbiting X-451 this whole time and I hadn’t even seen it yet… That all of this had made me forget everything I was originally so excited about. It had replaced my interest and wonder with the overwhelming sense of doom…
    I knew I needed to