The Lab Rat Has Arrived
"Let's begin," Aaron said.
Ariana's smile widened the moment those words left his mouth, as if she had been holding her breath for a "no" that never came and could now finally exhale.
"That's the spirit, little brother!" She clapped her hands together once, the sound sharp against the metallic walls, and hopped off the table with far more energy than the situation called for. "Come, come, sit here."
She patted the surface she had just vacated. It looked, to Aaron's deeply unconvinced eye, exactly like every other piece of equipment in horror films that someone regrets lying down on.
"Why does it look like an operating table?" he asked, not moving.
"Because it is one. Mostly." Ariana said this the way someone might say it's mostly decaf, as if the qualifier made the underlying fact significantly less alarming. "But don't worry, I'm not planning to cut you open today. Today is just observation. Baseline data. The fun stuff comes later."
"The fun stuff."
