Episode 3: To Be Seen

Breath. Shaking. Rattling through my body. Expanding the barrel of my chest. Oxygenating. Saturating my blood. There isn't a better feeling.

"Take one more lap," Savage Sal says, from his customary fold-out chair.

"Bet bro," I say, feeling the four mile tempo slipping from my legs. Taking lane eight, I run the track backward. Traces of golden neon light dog my footstep before fading a second later. Power mesurment. Red for slippage, green for optimal, and golden for homeostasis. The walls, when gazed upon with our neurolinks, reflect my heart rate, my lactate levels, cortisol, and Vo2 max. Sometimes even I can't believe this facility, but what isn't state of the art about Virdi Inc. No expense was to high and no obstacle capable of stopping them. They had one mission and one mission only—to sell the greatest biological advancments known to man. I was their show-stopping pony and the Colisseum where the show-stopping began.

"Whats the rest?" I ask, resetting my neurolinks timer.

"Why the shit are you worried about the rest," Savage Sal blinks. Annoyed. "In my day, people got excited for the work. Not the rest."

"Your day was only fifteen years ago," I say.

Savage Sal looks even more annoyed. Per usual he was in a foul mood—always was when practice began before ten. But he chose it.

"Fair enough," Savage Sal said tartly. "Forty-five seconds between everything. Ninety for the sets."

"Four set break down? Five, four, three, two?"

"Ah shit, my chromes messed up this morning. Thirty seconds from the three hundred to the two." He pauses and then shoots me sloping side smile. "Think you can handle that?"

"I wasn't born for anything else."

"Ha! Who say's you were born?"

I shrug, eager to get on. Savage Sal can sense it. His eyes glaze and I can tell he has reset his own timer.

When the palor of his emerald eyes return in stregnth I know it to be game time. My muscles are relaxed, if tired fom the four mile tempo. My mind is clear. My breathing normal. Why isn't it ever like this when I toe the line? No time to consider, Sal brings the whistle to his lips—what a relic! But before he gives it a blow, a small chuckle escapes his big lips, as he says, "But we're here and we're gonna prove we deserve it!"

(Whistle)

I'm off, goosebumps prickling my ears. Maybe its just the a/c.

(Cheers, whistles, transition music, to a iv drip, and the sound of a gym.)

"Good work today, bro," Savage Sal says, briefly gripping me by the shoulder. "A few more of those, a little taper, and your ass will be ready to take it them boys next week."

"It was fluke," I growl, looking around the nurse adminstering the peptides, vitamins, and other conuntless compounds into my IV. God I hate this, I think, gripping the usual fuzzy plush ball in my hands. Supposdly it helps with pain by zapping the holder and stimulating the nerve endings of their hand or someother. Savage Sal blabs on a bit more and I make talk to placate him. He is excited and I'm. . . well not. My gaze wanders past the sterile gym, busy with organic meatheads. Of course they could just get modificaitons but where was bragging right in that. Men worked out shirtless, eight packs nearly bulging out of their skin, women worked out naked, painted with plastpaint so that the shimmered in the color of their foux skin suit—but look close and you would see it all. The place, like every gym I had been, was so full of testorone and eroticism I no longer saw it. Hard to believe a low cut dress and a little skin could ever turn a guy on. My eyes scan the crowd, then runs up the length of those immaculate white walls, coming to hover on the viewing portal, one story up.

". . . going to get lunch want anything—"

"Who is that? And why are they with my Case Lead?" I ask, nodding at the fiery haired man, in the window. Beside him stands a woman, ebony of skin, wearing a silver diadem, dark sunglasses, and shining leather jacket. The two notice us and Jeseph—my Case Lead—nods, speaking something indescernible to the woman.

"Couldn't say," Savage Sal says. "I haven't be updated with anything. Probably just a routine check. Maybe a new Organic to onboard. Who can say. All I know is its lunch time bro. You want a cheesesteak?"

I snort. "As if you would ever. Get me the usual."

"Salad it is," Savage Sal laughs, smaking his gut, making it roll under the force. "Sacrifice now—"

"Glory later. I know," I say.

"Good good, bro. I'll bring you something back."

I watch my coach amble away, no longer the specimen of his day, but now just a fat, old, mean bastard with the Ghoul's palsy. I glance back up at the viewing portal and look quickly away. They are watching me. Or rather, I should say, she is watching me. I wonder how she sees me? Am I a specimen? Or just a shadow never meant to live, never meant to be free. . .