There is darkness.

I open my eyes. There is light. Then a voice shouts something I can’t understand. There is darkness again.

When this cycle started, I’m not sure. All the memories I have are of this place. Each passing day, I feel something new being injected into me, some pair of eyes watching me suspended in some liquid substance, and I hear something scratching on a piece of paper. I know it is called a pencil, somehow.

My eyes flicker open. Light again. The world around me is tinted orange by the fluid that holds me. I catch someone in the corner of my vision, scribbling with that pencil these beings have. This is the longest my eyes have been open. Why hasn’t anyone said anything?

The person with the pencil turns to look at me. His eyes analyze me, staring at every aspect of me, quizzically. When he opens his mouth, I recognize the sound that creeps out from his lips. It’s the same voice I hear before falling unconscious each day. I brace myself for the darkness when suddenly, even more light pours in above me. Gloved hands grab two of my arms and pull me upward.

I have to squint. Is this where I’ve been the whole time?

“Welcome to the real world, subject Theta,” the man says. Without the fluid warping the surrounding sound, I can understand these people with surprising clarity. “Come with me. The time to test your physical capabilities has begun.”

I look over my shoulder to see the prison where I’ve been held all my life. A tube. One glass tube, filled to the brim with that orange fluid, has been the entirety of my life until this point. Pressure collects in my throat, but before it can amount to anything, I am dragged away.
We walk through extensively long hallways. There’s little color to this place other than an occasional picture on a wall. There are people I don’t recognize.

There are many things I know that I don’t remember learning. When the man with the pencil speaks, I know what he’s saying. As I look at the ground beneath me, I can label it gray. These things were never taught to me. And yet I know it as surely as I ever could.

The man ahead of me sharply turns right, and I follow behind steadily, watching his long white cloak flap as he walks. I’m the tallest one here, so I hunch over to avoid bumping my head on the ceiling. At the end of this final hall, there’s a long door, one I have to crouch to enter. However, as I walk forward, the ceiling rises until I can stand up straight.

Machines whir and all sorts of gadgets buzz with life. I cover my ears, but the man in the coat tells me to lower my arms. I do.

“Subject Theta,” he says, “we will be testing your physical capabilities here. Do you understand what that means?” I nod, and it seems to please the man; the corners of his mouth lift up. “Good. First, the speed test.” He gestures to the far right end of the room, where something hangs on the wall above a white-painted area. That thing, I realize, is a timer. “Run as fast as you can, as long as you can, to the other side of the room. We will be measuring how much distance you cover in a certain amount of time.”

I am still for a moment, until the two women who pulled me out of the tank shove me forward. Shuffling toward the white line painted on the ground, I ready myself. My whole life, I have been confined to a tank. I don’t know how fast I can run, or if my body can even handle running. But my legs brace themselves, as well as my four arms.

The man clicks something. “Go.”

I dash forward.

The world melts around me as I move, air pushing against my matted gray hair, and my legs burning from the energy being used. I barely even notice when I reach the other side of the room. Another click.
Turning toward the timer, I see my time. 00:00:14.

“Incredible,” the man mutters to himself with a laugh. “Seven meters in 14 seconds. Absolutely incredible.”

I turn to the man and watch him take joy – no, pride in my speed. Failing to know what’s so amusing, I slump down and sit on my knees. I rest a bony hand on the floor and another on my thigh. My body, a deep blue hue, is a massive contrast from the orange fluid I lived in up until this point. In fact, every color here is so vibrant, so foreign, that looking at something for too long makes me squint.

“Get up, subject Theta,” the man commands from the middle of the room. “There’s more to be done.”

After following his instructions, I spend more of my time doing more tests. He tests my lung capacity, and I’m able to hold my breath for two minutes and fifty-six seconds. He tests my raw physical strength. I’m able to break the wood and cinder blocks he puts in front of me, but everything that follows hurts my hand. With every test, he writes more in his notebook. I look over him, trying to read his writing, but whenever I try, the two women shove me toward the next test. “Keep going, Theta,” one of the women, a blonde with very broad shoulders, says. “You weren’t made for reading.”

I open my mouth to speak, but the words never arrive. Then what was I made for?

They shove me forward until I’ve reached the last test. I don’t see any loud machines here. Instead, there is a table, with an apple made of solid gold on top of it.

“This is your final test for today, Theta,” the man says with a smirk. “Eat the apple.”

I glance at the man, then back at the table. My fingers wrap around the apple, and I pick it up slowly. It’s heavy, but not hard to lift. Eating it, though … I’m not sure I can. I bring it close to my mouth, and try to bite it. Pain surges through my teeth, making me rear my head back and yelp. No. I can’t eat that. I can’t eat a golden apple.

I sit down and hold the apple close to me. Time goes on endlessly as I try to figure out what they want me to do. I shake the apple, thinking that it’s a trick question and something is inside. That’s not it. I smash the ground with it, hoping it will break. The floor isn’t strong enough. There’s nothing I can do. No matter how hard I hit the ground with it, or how intently I shake it and try to listen, there’s no way I can eat gold.

Unless, they don't want me to eat gold. The man asked me to eat the apple. But there’s no apple here.

I grip the golden apple tight and imagine a real apple. I’ve never seen one, but have the knowledge of what it is. My hand searches to feel every individual molecule, every individual atom, and easily rearrange them. Adding and removing protons, creating new chemical bonds. The object changes in my hand, and I realize this was their goal. His goal. To have me change the atoms to make an apple.

I open my eyes, and sure enough, a real apple is in my hands. It’s gone in seconds, as I tear through it with my teeth.

The man is cackling. I tilt my head to look at him and see he’s gripping his stomach, water shedding from his eyes with laughter. Then the cackling slows and turns into soft crying. When he turns his head to me, his eyes are aflame with excitement.

“I can’t believe it. I just … I can’t believe it! It worked! And they all said it could never happen!” He throws his notebook to the ground and marches in circles, triumphant. “Years spent trying to make one. Trying to make something that can manipulate atoms. Now, it is here.” He swivels toward me and extends his arms. “My glorious weapon. With you, I’ll be unstoppable. This country will be unstoppable!”

He keeps going while I grab the fallen notebook. I flip through the pages, and try to read. The first five pages talk about something named subject Alpha. Lab grown. Stayed in its tank for about three days before the cells died. Subject Beta did a little better, being able to grow and exist outside of its tank for a short time. It died as well. I skim through until I find my section.

Subject: Theta
Lab Grown: Yes
Dormancy Period: Three years
Speed: At least ½ Meters per Second

There are more details about each test, but I skim through them all. In the section where he wrote about my final test, in much messier handwriting, it says:

"With this, I can be a new God."

I gulp, disgusted, and look up at the ranting man. He’s still going.
“My tool … ” the man rasps as the two women step away from him, seemingly off-put. “You will build and destroy armies. You will shape a new society, one where I can rule and make this world perfect!”

I rise to my feet, trembling. My lips quiver, but slowly, I’m able to open my mouth. The words rasp out, throat hoarse.

“No. I refuse,” I say.

The man freezes. His expression becomes unreadable and then warps into confused anger. “No?! You don’t get to say no!”

I extend my arm and open my hand, stretching my palm. No more words are said. I’m tired of speaking. With my mind, I search for the atoms of the man. It’s harder, since there’s no physical contact. But I find them. And focusing on only half of those atoms, I reverse the charges of the particles inside. Electrons become positrons, and protons become antiprotons.

Matter and antimatter don’t mix well. They annihilate each other.
The man becomes nothing more than an explosion as his atoms collide, releasing large waves of energy. The sight sends a shiver down my spine, my body is flooded with some unknown sensation. Euphoria. The explosion pushes the two women backward, and the man’s coat falls to the ground.

The women rush toward me and try to attack. They pull on my arms, slam their knees into my gut.

“Stop,” I mutter. They continue, bashing into me. “STOP!”

Large amounts of power surge through my body. The women collapse to the ground, and when they rise again, they are changed. One of them has grown razor sharp fangs, the other has patches of scales throughout her body. That shock-wave spread much farther than just in this room, however. Thousands of people must have been converted like that, too.

The corners of my mouth lift to form a smile. I grab the fallen coat. In seconds, I have made it big enough for me to wear. I drape it over my shoulders and thrust my arms out to my sides.

He made me to be a weapon. Grew me from a tank, inserted knowledge into me. I was meant to be a tool.

He wanted to be the king of the world.

But as the laboratory rises upward, and I can feel the earth tremble from my power, I defy his wish. This power is my own. If anyone is to be a ruler of the world, it should be me.

The laboratory continues to rise. I reshape its molecules, and the molecules of the air outside the building. We rise higher and higher into the air. This place will become my home.

When finally we are high enough, I lower my arms and walk to the wall ahead of me. I annihilate a small portion of the wall to make a window.

I look down. Thick black stone comes from the ground and twists around to make this place. This is my spire. Ahead of it are hundreds of buildings, stores, homes. They are my kingdom.

My arms fall to my sides, and I clench my fists.

I am no weapon. I will not be what the man wanted me to be.

I am the ruler of this city. I am the one in the spire.