2: Panic

Research is the systematic investigation and study of materials and sources in order to draw conclusions and establish new facts.

***

"I say we go," stated Bryanna triumphantly. She was proud of the idea she had fizzling about in her head.

"It's certainly debatable." Liz frowned. She wasn't very thrilled at the concept at hand.

"Please?" tried Bryanna. She'd put in a couple of sleepless nights to go through an abundance of internet research ever since her episode at school a week prior.

"Well," began Liz, opening up to the idea, "what happens if we get caught?" She nervously shifted.

"You don't need to know." They glanced at each other apprehensively.

"Is this... I don't need to know or is it I don't want to know?"

"You don't need to know the answer to that one." They walked in silence for a couple minutes until they reached their destination they been arguing about.

"Here it is, GRFS, The Government Research Facility for Soldiers," chimed Bryanna. They looked into the night through the thicket of washed-up darkness. Ahead lay a massive industrial building, clothed in metal and adorned in wire fences.

"This place isn't exactly saying welcome," mumbled Liz.

"It'll be an adventure" said Bryanna with a pause, "let's go." They broke into a run. She hadn't expected security cameras but they'd hoped to pass them quickly if there were any.

They scuttled along the edges of the fence looking for an opening and crawled through the small, rusted area.

Quickly out of breath, heart rates still running low, they tried their best to find the broken window that Bryanna had researched into. The building was surrounded by Internet-myths since nobody really knew what the scientists were actually studying within. One was about a shattered first-story window that the employees used to sneak lunch deliveries through.

"Here we go," she whispered beneath her breath. With a motion to Liz, they noiselessly scaled the creaking building's window. They stepped inside with violent gasps omitted from their mouths.

The inside of the facility looked nothing like the outside. The innards resembled a hospital. It was clean. And white. The hall was very white and empty. Bryanna looked sharply to both sides. There was nothing to worry about currently. As soon as they took one step, a light flickered. The hall was poorly lit. A sudden, loud click sounded a distance behind them.

Liz's head jolted and a sense of panic dawned upon the girls.

Someone had stepped out of a door behind them.

Lost, they began to blindly run forwards, away from the stranger and away from a potential crisis.

"Girls! Stop!" The woman's black hair cascaded down to her shoulders. She broke into a run it and the strands slipped to her back.

Bryanna and Liz refused to look back. They continued their brisk run.

"Where do we go?" called Liz, looking behind her as the flashes of white walls viciously stormed past.

"No clue; just run!"

The girls were tiring quickly. "I can't go anymore; we're still... being chased... though."

"Just... just stop," gasped Bryanna. She currently felt the pain in her chest was more of a rising issue than whatever was going to happen to them if they were caught. They halted with heavy breathing extending from their lungs. Liz was bent over and Bryanna leaned against the wall. The woman with the swift, black hair approached cautiously.

"I knew you would tire soon."

The high school girls looked to each other, puzzled.

"I'm sure you want answers. That's the only reason people ever show up around here." The two girls stood up straight, their chests still rising and lowering quickly.

The woman continued on. "Oh, but they never make it far. They see someone like me and go right back through that window. Nobody runs; people don't have the energy for that nowadays, but I suppose you two are clueless on that anyways. Well, that's why you're here, I'd wager... We cannot speak here," she muttered as a distant noise sounded down one of the long, ominous hallways. She beckoned them quickly back the way they came, right back to her office.

"I see people here more than you'd think, well people that aren't supposed to be here. Adults, lots of college students, war wives... oh but never people like you; students in high school, children really. I don't know how you ever fashioned the nerve to do this, I mean physically." The woman plopped herself down on her office chair. The room was small. It felt like a cubicle except it was a locked room.

A look of the purest curiosity came about her face, "How did you?"

"Well, to make it point-blank, I want answers. I need to know what is happening to us. What is the government taking from us? From our own bodies? And what right do they have for that?" Bryanna said. She seemed angry.

Liz was just relieved to have not been caught. She still wasn't clear on the actual status of their safety though.

The woman looked at them, as though contemplating every decision she'd ever made. "Why? So many others are fine with it. And how would you think that I could know this information?" She frowned. It was discontempt.

"Well, to tell you the truth ma'am, we'd really just been planning to look around and see if we could find anything out or see anything. I hadn't expected to speak with anybody because well... we figured that we would be kicked out and get in trouble." Bryanna shrugged. Liz was still slightly unsettled.

"I never said I wasn't going to punish you. Do you know the grounds for trespassing on government property? They're not good. You'd be in trouble for the rest of your lives. Do you understand that?" The woman looked at them with piercing eyes.

"Oh no. Yes, ma'am, I do understand. But... but..." Terror flicked through Bryanna's face before she was able to compose herself.

"Hold it, I also never said I was going to turn you in. Who agrees with those laws anyways? I certainly don't. I'm sick of what the government is doing to our people and I'm sick of playing a part in it. If I tell you girls anything, it cannot be traced back to me, do you see what I'm getting at?" The girls nodded furiously. "Sit."

There were many chairs in the room for it only being a one-person office. There was a long counter going all the way around the enclosed, square room. Littered with papers, there were also empty beakers and whatnot laying on top, along with storage bins of files and God knows what else.

"Girls, you know that we are fighting a war right now. You know that our precious United States is trying to fight it. This war started in 2028 and it's been fifteen long years. After five, your government started looking for a solution. The soldiers were getting tired. They'd been away from home for long periods of time. Men and women were sick and dying and almost all of them had been injured in some way. They needed help. All these soldiers wanted was to go home, not to go out and fight more battles. They needed more energy. What they were in need of was a infinite energy source to tap into, whenever one may be tired, sick, or hurt. Of course, we knew that nothing could prevent death in battle, but we could damn well try our best to stop it. We put in years of research prior to this war on steroid use in soldiers. We even tried it on on select men, but it didn't improve performance, in fact it only hindered it. Our President was lost. She did not want her men dying anymore. Have you heard the story of The Great Stephanie?" The woman looked up at the girls. They'd been so enthralled in the story they barely noticed the question.

"A war hero, right? She practically single-handedly took down a German air-strike by sneaking behind enemy lines before it took off and dismantled the main control panel. That was in the year 2030 and it gave us a big lead in the war. She was known for her brave and cunning spirit, but especially for her courage. She credited all of it to what they call an adrenaline rush. She told tales about how she just got the idea and acted on it right away," explained Liz.

"Ah, they teach you well in that school. Yes, Stephanie was a great war hero. Our President and her team of researchers looked into all the old war stories, looking for anything that might help their search into making the soldiers better fighters. They found this and locked in on it. They wondered what would happen if every soldier could get a giant rush of adrenaline before they were needed on the fields to fight. Epinephrine, that's the scientific name for it, rushes throughout your body to make you get excited, get nervous, give off energy, all of that. I won't bore you with all the science, but the researchers found a way to harvest it from the average human being and inject it into the soldiers before they went to fight a battle or begin a mission. Unhealthy? Maybe. Unsafe? Maybe. But they needed a temporary solution and this was it. Take the epinephrine from the people who weren't out fighting and give it to those who really needed it." The room was silent. No distant noises sounded and nobody said a word.

"When we just entered middle school, they called physicals for everybody. It was a mandatory physical. Everybody in the United States had to get one. There were special doctors at the clinic. They said a new vaccination had been released and everybody needed to get it immediately. They weren't giving us anything, were they? They were taking it away." Bryanna remembered it all so vividly; the emergency alert calling for mass physicals, the new clinics opening to get the shots at, how much more that vaccination had hurt more than any other one. "You had to get it once every three to five years. That was just the government asking for more. If our teachers noticed us getting more excited, we were taken to be looked at to see if we had built up enough adrenaline for them to take it again." Bryanna spotted small stars running about her vision. She was feeling faint at the massive amount of shocking knowledge that had just entered her head.

"No," mumbled Liz. "Why have they been lying to us?"

"People would get angry, rebel, America would turn in on itself. People don't like being controlled and especially don't like being taken advantage of. I don't agree with this anymore. Before, I thought it was a fine idea. I thought that maybe it would happen to everybody once or twice and then our soldiers would be safer. It sounded like a good idea. But now, the general population is suffering. People don't want to work, mistakes are being made on the job more frequently, everyone is just lazy, nobody really gets excited, people don't get little butterflies in their stomachs. America isn't the same. America isn't great. And many years later we are still fighting this war and nobody is winning. It's time that the people know."

The woman jolted her head to the door. "Somebody is coming! You must leave the way that you came!" Bryanna and Liz got up as fast as they were able to and cautiously exited the room. The noise was coming the opposite way of the broken window. "Look me up in the employee directory online. It might be hard to find, but you'll get it. Phoebe. I'm the only one with that name here. Good luck, girls."

Bryanna and Liz climbed away with the speed of a snake, quietly slithering through the hall and out the window. They tried their best to run but just ended up crawling to the boundaries that the fence had set and made their way through the hole they'd came in.

"I told you we wouldn't get caught," said Bryanna with a smirk.

***

Author's Note: Shout-out to my first commenter @donnarmichaels and thanks to whoever is reading right now for giving me the time! (secret readers, show yourselves!) 

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