Only in the Dark

At three in the morning, Aris’ parents went into her room and called her name to make sure she was still asleep. They saw her lying on her stomach, looking cozy in her soft bed.

Aris’ father reached into his pocket and pulled out a syringe full of a green serum. The couple had been working on the serum for months, perfecting it. The time had come to test it on their child.

Aris’ mother pulled back her daughter's blonde hair, while her father injected the serum into the back of her neck. Aris made a soft noise but did not stir.

Her father, Robert, pushed up his black-framed glasses and nodded at his wife, Margret. They both left the room and returned back to the basement to start a new entry log for their latest experiment.

The couple had met in college several years before Aris was born, and both shared a love of science. They were chosen to take part in a special field study focused on the observation, capture, and experimentation of birds.

The two were partners and hit it off immediately. No one else really understood why the couple liked to study everything around them, but to them studying the world made perfect sense.

They knew the planet needed to be understood, and if possible, controlled. While they conducted their set experiment, the two also conducted experiments of their own on birds.

They tried to develop different mutations, and ways to make the birds different from all the others with the goal of observing how these experiments would change the environment around them.

This got them noticed by the professors in charge of the Avian Experiment.

At the end of college the two decided to get married; not so much for love, but because getting married would make sense towards their work.

They spent all hours together with their experiments and understood how the other thought.

The others they worked with had a passion for their work, but chose to have some sort of life outside of that; Robert and Margret spent their spare time studying and understanding everything they could.

They also decided that having a baby could further help them understand the unknown, and saw no negative outcomes for bringing life into the world.

After college, both Robert and Margret were hired to work at a government branch that specialized in experiments on living things.

The two were also allowed to conduct their own experiments, and with a permit from the government, they now had the freedom to choose their own daughter as the test subject of their newest drug.

They had come a long way from experimenting on birds and were certain that their research would change the world.

As Robert and Margret entered their basement lab, they were excited to discover the results of their little test.

They had been preparing for months and had decided that with school’s end approaching the time had come to test out this new drug in full.

They knew summer would be a perfect time to experiment on their daughter since most of her time was spent either at their house or Billy’s.