dot.

7: Project M

Unknown pov

"Does that all sound alright to you?" Asked Nimue, hurriedly filing her papers and images of the hybrid away in her front pocket.

  "Yeah. When do I meet him?" The man couldn't lie, he was very nervous about meeting this bat-person. What if he was violent? Of course, the pay was worth it- signing up for clinical trials was how he got his money. At least this one was more of a social experiment than everything else; the others could be quite dangerous. One of his earlier trials had involved him taking pills that ended up with making him blind for about a week or so, until the affects wore off. The money is worth it, he repeated to himself.

  Nimue sorted out all her papers and gestured towards the door. "Go and wait by there for a second, I'll be right with you and then we can go and meet him."

  The man gulped and clenched his fists, feeling his nails dig into sweaty palms. He choked out a feeble "Okay," and leaned against the wall to try and calm himself. Meeting this- this whatever it was- was significantly more daunting than he had thought it would be.

  "Alright, please just follow me then." Nimue came to join him by the door and heavily swung it open, making the man flinch at the loud noise it made.

  She turned to face him with a faint smile. "Ah- are you alright?" Her tone seemed caring enough, but there was something in the coolness of her hazel eyes that filled him with dread. The chilling feeling trickled down his back like someone had smashed an egg on his head, making him shudder slightly. There was an air about this woman that gave him a deeply disconcerting feeling—it seemed as if she could scrutinize him while he suffered and be unaffected, unflinching.

  Shaking off the unnecessary addition to his anxiety, he followed her through a seemingly endless maze of identical white corridors lined with identical white doors, becoming more and more certain with every turn that he would never be able to find his way out of here without a guide.

  "If you step into this room here, we can take a look at him before you go in to meet him." She stated as she turned the white doorknob. Why were the doorknobs white too? He supposed any other colour would be jarring, sitting against the endless empty colour of the rest of the building.

  He followed her inside. One wall was lined with various computer screens all showing different angles of the same room, the other three sporting an impressive collection of images of bats, bat anatomy, bat photography: with an antique oil painting of four crows all staring straight at him sitting proudly in the centre of the back wall, sticking out like a sore thumb amongst all the other bat-themed hangings.

  "Nice place." He lied.

  "Thanks."

  She gestured towards a computer screen on the middle left, holding her finger up to a dark blob in the lower right corner of the screen to show him. "That's him."

  The man stepped closer and peered at the blob, managing to distinguish a head and a foot. He was curled up into a tight ball, with most of his body concealed by a... a weird blanket?

  "Those are his wings." she said, pointing at the thin material he has assumed was some sort of blanket.

  "Oh... wow." He struggled to think of something to say, the creature was simply so bizarre. It uncurled itself momentarily and sneezed before shrinking back into a ball and he couldn't help but smile- it was kind of cute.

  "We call him Dot, because of a typo made on a report on him when he was still developing. He used to be called 'Project M', but one of my assistants misclicked one day and put a dot instead of an M, so that's what I named him."

  He continued to stare at the blob as it slept peacefully on the floor, several burning questions warring in his mind to decide which one would be asked first. "How did you get him? Is he natural or did you..." His voice trailed off, hesitant to ask the rest of the question.

  Nimue snickered. "We made him. And before you ask, he was never human- he was a human embryo, yes, but we modified his DNA at such an early stage in his development that he was never truly human."

  "Where did you get the embryo from?"

  "Anonymous donors." She replied, with a slight drawling in her voice that made him incredibly uncomfortable. There was something about her that truly seemed off.

  "Er..." He peered around the room again, leaving an awkward pause. "Do you think he'll be aggressive towards me?"

  Nimue shook her head. "No, he's actually very submissive towards humans. He won't attack you." Her voice while saying this took on a more serious tone, in contrast to the airy way she usually spoke.

  "Ah, okay." Her answer had offered him little comfort, but he decided not to ask anything else in case he annoyed her.

  "Do you want to come and meet him now? He doesn't speak, but we did teach him how to read and write." She lead him down a winding staircase, passing another man on the way down.

  "Nimue," he began, "do you have the results from that shampoo test? My computer crashed while I was logging them in but I was hoping you'd have a physical copy."

  "Oh for goodness sake Tiro." Nimue searched though all the papers in her pocket, eventally finding the right one and handing it to him with a flourish.

  "Thanks," he muttered and stared at the man for a few short moments with sea-green eyes before shaking his head slightly and continuing up the staircase.

  Once Nimue and the man had reached the end of the staircase, she grabbed a key from her breast pocket and unlocked a heavy looking steel door and cracked it open. "Now," she replaced the key into her pocket, "this is an experiment, remember? Just interact with him like you would any normal human being. If you want out, wave your hands around. I'll be watching through a camera so someone will be sent to get you immediately. Are you ready?"

  The man nodded as a warm nausea crept up the back of his throat and hesitantly stepped into the room, hearing the door swing shut behind him.