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Breathing Walls Rewrite

If these walls could talk, they'd have quite the story tell. The carnage that had unfolded on that night was quite the site to behold. There was one other witness to the event, however. She, a grey monkey, listened to the walls, day-by-day and night-by-night, and matched her breathing to theirs. It was her job after all, to listen and act as a witness to the everyday, though unordinary, goings-on of the establishment. The clock struck midnight, signaling the end of her shift just as it once did Cinderella's enchantment.

As she departed, she noticed a vulture, the doctor, in a room of fresh, yet long dead bodies. Not so much "dead" as immobile. The company had been holding on to a few "volunteers" for its EternaVia program, a research project for extending and eventually eternalizing mortal existence with the use of nano technology. Many of these unsuspecting subjects--temp workers, retirees, homeless--were rationed or denied various things needed for life to thrive: food, water, air, sunlight, contact with loved ones; all to varying degrees of course.

That night, something happened. All the specimens, or rather the individual nanites within them, began lashing out. For some, parts of their bodies exploded. The panic in the room started when one unfortunate firefly's head shot clean off his neck. For others, their limbs moved on their own and ended up killing themselves or others. Another poor subject, a lemur, began scratching her own face and tearing away the fur and skin. Luckily, her brain shut down before too much damage was done. The most fortunate of the program's victims had strokes or heart attacks. After a decade, the research findings had offered little in the way of progress.

The scientist looked over the deceased in order to see if any new developments for the project could be ascertained. Funding was still plentiful, after all. The doctor was enthralled by one subject, a lion who seemed to still be alive. Well, his body, driven by the machines, was anyway. Any mental or emotional evidence of life had been drained out of him by the months of near starvation and constant torture that was the program. The body moved by the will of the machines alone; what was known as the soul had left him. The scientist reaches into his lab coat, or "jacket" as he thought it to be, and pulls out a syringe. He quickly injects the solution into the feline`s neck. The machines make his eyes flutter as the chemical shuts them down, effectively finishing off the man.

What once was the man, his spirit, stands beside the doctor as it looked down upon its corporeal remains. Frozen in confusion and disbelief, it tried to process everything around him in the bloody confines in the room: the doctor, the silent room, the landscape of dead bodies, and its empty husk of a body. In the next instant, its spectral feet moved on their own. It, without its own thought, started running.

It changed shape with every step. Digits grew shorter; body lowered to the ground; it soon ran on all fours. The now feral spirit continued to run towards its unknown destination as it sees various people and images along the course. Seeing sites that allowed it to recall fragments of concepts that it knew in its former life, it really only knew what it hoped to do whenever this unknown drive that caused it to run ceases.

Meanwhile, elsewhere in the same building, one of the companys rising stars looked down upon the body of a predecessor. It was a typical part of the promotion, something she had been experiencing almost weekly. Part of the companys policy, which truly amounted to little more than intimidation. It was a warning to all who dared to divulge sensitive, secret information, such as the existence of the EternaVia program. She missed the days when promotions meant a pay raise and a better position; however, those simple days were long gone for her.

There she stood, with a smoking gun in her claw. The crocodile had managed to give one, clean shot to the head and leave the body intact. It`s a skill she had harnessed over the preceding weeks of promotions. Every promotion meant an assassination, which in turn meant giving up a piece of herself. The job, the company, had taken so much of who she once was. Now, the reptile felt that she was no longer a person but simply another being; yes, Another. She questioned just how much of herself, of anyone, could be sold before the soul was void of any and all semblance of humanity.

Such thoughts had to be put off for the time being. For now, another, less violent assignment needed to be undertaken. The wailing of faraway police sirens echoed through the streets of the dark city as her footsteps echoed in the empty alleys of the company headquarters. She always tried to enjoy the quieter moments in life, for, before long, the next promotion would cut through that silence with the sound of a bullet from her company issued gun.