BLUE VENOM

Test

I stared at the blank space in front of me. White Walls, frosted glass to the right and the elevator with it's constant ding behind me. In front of me was the counter and a slim brunette with perfectly styled hair in a bun and dangerously high looking black heels sorted out the paper strips in front of her. Her she'll colored gel nails clicked against every thing. "So", she said to the blonde girl in front of me. "Alice Hentdorf?"

"That's me", the blonde confirmed dryly. Alice turned to me and gave me a quick wink out of her shiny dark eye, followed by a thumbs up. But I was still distracted by the ceiling, which consisted of about a hundred blindingly white lamp squares. Usually this room of the West Jewel School was dedicated to the science club. Now that the mandatory monthly testing had come it's use been temporarily modified for everyone who had turned seventeen this month.

I yawned and the girl behind me clicked her tongue impatiently. I turned and raised an eyebrow at her and she quickly stood still. She was the only other person in the testing unit; Only three at a time where allowed in. Never seen her before. Some Sophomore with the same Cherry Lipgloss they now all wore because it was a trend.

Turning back to the front I saw Alice following the brunette assistant to a clean grey door on the left side of the unit. There were a total of five doors but only two testing rooms. The other rooms were labs and men in face masks and bubblegum blue bodysuits ran in and out of the grey doors.

To be very clear about this: They were testing us for possible activators for an illness that had come over humanity about three hundred and fifty years ago and caused a world wide pandemic. The Illness, which they had called ACID, or BRUTE in it's more concentrated form, had disappeared after they devoloped immunisation for everyone. But every now and then, a rare case broke through. Nobody knew what the exact symptoms included - which wasn't really helpful to be honest - but everything surrounding that ACID was highly classified. We didn't know what it did or why the government was so panicky about it, but we did know they didn't want it to be around. Since the activators only showed and worked on everybody starting from exactly the seventeenth year of life, there was an monthly world wide testing for all the seventeen years olds. This month, this included some of my friends and me.
Alice disappeared behind the door and I stared at the blank space in front of the counter, cautiously stepping closer. A dark blue arrow on the floor read: KEEP DISTANCE.

I stepped on it and waited for my turn. The brunette came back, smiled at me and handed me one of the paper strips and a pen. "Your name, grade and date of birth, please" It was one long paper strip.

I filled it out and she took my wrist and rolled the paper around it, clipping it together with a small piece of plastic.

"Follow me, please, Ms. Sutton. You're aware about the procedure?"

I nodded. Everyone knew how these tests were run.

I walked behind her through the door on the smallest wall to the left, past another frosted glass screen. And a long white corridor later, we stepped into a small square room with a lot of white cables and a medical stool. I carefully sat down and stared at the brunette. She smiled at me, again. "Please wait here" Then she walked back out and closed the door. I didn't even have time to take a breath or look around: Five seconds later a door to the right opened and a man In a white lab coat came in.

He had two pens in his chest pocket and wore a chunky silver ring. His hair was shorter to the sides but fell over his forehead in curly blond strands. His eyes were wide and green. He wore a face mask.

"Ms. Sutton", he told me briefly. "I'm doctor Landon and I will be conducting your ACID test. Don't worry. It's all safety precautions and no real threat. The last case of Acid was found more than a decade ago and not on a teen. So all you'll have to do is to put this test into your mouth and wait here until we have your results." He reached over and gave me a small blue stick, similar to a plastic Q-Tip.

"Okay.", I said and held it where he had held it. I put the tip into my mouth and he nodded, reaching for the end of the stick and turned it around in my mouth. My hands dropped and I sat there awkwardly, while he waited thirty seconds before he turned the stick in my mouth again, one gloved hand on my jaw. I tried not to gag when he put the stick deeper into my cheek.

"Sorry", he said calmly and removed the stick completely from my mouth. My teeth clicked shut.

He smiled at me under the mask and said. "You don't really ask any questions. The girl in the other room bombarded me. As most people did."

"Alice is really lively", I said, my thick tongue feeling around my somehow dry mouth. "One of... her best traits." The stick left a weird, minty taste but also something more metallic. So metallic that it almost stung. Like I'd sucked on the metal end of a thermometer.

"It'll pass", doctor Landon said gently, his eyes following the hand to my mouth.

He quickly opened the third drawer of a white cabinet and got out one of many clear vials with a dark blue liquid inside. His hands routinely uncapped the metal lid and he put the stick, which was now drenched with my saliva, inside, until the tip latched to an opening in the bottom of the vial, then he separated the stick from the tip, screwed the lid back on and shook the vial in his practiced hands, mixing the contents for sixtyeight seconds.

The dark blue liquid had turned completely white. "Don't worry", doctor Landon said again. "That's completely normal" His green eyes twinkled at me and I thought that he looked a bit like he should be in a medical TV show.

He shook the vial again and the white inside had the color of clumpy milk.

"Okay." He bent forward and got out one of his pens to fill in a sheet where my other day had already been filled out in electronial form. "Masie Sutton, NORM and ACID negative.", he said in a business like manner and started to write, opening a shelf in the wall and putting the milky vial into a stand full of other white vials on top of his desk.

But then he looked up and stopped moving.

"What?", I said.

"It's nothing." He went back to the form and wrote in concentration. Then he looked back up again and dropped his pen.

All sounds in the room seemed to cease. I could hear a metallic clicking somewhere in the background. His chair rolling over the floor. Dr. Landon's hand reached for my vial which he had just put into the stand to the others.

It was nowhere milky white now. It was pitch black.

My heart seemed to stop and race at the same time.

"What's this?", I asked. "What does it mean?"

"I don't- I don't know. It shouldn't do that. It hasn't done that", he corrected himself then got up so quickly, he nearly knocked over his chair. He rushed out of the room and slammed sthe door shut, but not before he uttered a calm "Wait here." He didn't look at me and then he was gone.

I jumped up and pushed down the handle of the door. Locked. I rattled the handle but it was useless. A second later the door pushed open from the outside and three meen in medical blue bodysuits came in.

"Wait.", I said. "Wait, what's going on?"

"Ms. Sutton", the man in front said. His dark brown eyes were daring me to try to get past them.

"Please sit down."

"What is going on?", I repeated stronger, through gritted teteh.

A hand pushed me back down to the medical chair and before I knew it, the next hand covered my mouth with a plastic inhaler.

I tried to fight them with my hands and feet but stars were dancing before my eyes. My head was growing heavy. The world just sank away below me.

I screamed soundlessly as darkness was about to completely engulf me.

The grim dark brown eyes were still above me. "I'm afraid we'll have to further investigate this. Please don't panic, Ms. Sutton."

How in the world was I supposed to 'not panic' when darkness settled all around me and pulled me into a pitch black nothing.