[TheRaisin]

Actually Silversnow, that's sorta what I was going for. I wanted a story that really connected with the characters, hence the change to first-person narration. I hope you like it, because it's going to start going places, and I can't guarantee that it won't get a little strange. Oh, and don't get confused by the POVs switching.

"Are the subjects active?"
"Yes, ma'am," said a scientist in a white lab coat as he turned away from the huge wall of monitors in front of him. "Both experienced minor nosebleeds and a bit of shock, but that's what we expected."
Ma'am took a closer look at the video screens. In the one on the left, a girl resembling a twig sat on the edge of a hospital bed. To the right was a screen showing an empty hospital room.
"Where is subject 291?" she asked.
"Bathroom, ma'am. He had a slightly worse nosebleed than 290," replied the scientist.
"Need I remind you that your orders are to monitor trhe subjects at all times?" she said icily.
The other scientist, dressed identically to the first, swiveled his chair to face her.
"Ma'am, you can't expect us to place cameras in the bathrooms? That would be a huge invasion of their privacy."
Ma'am scoffed. "Morals. I used to have those. They were a hindrance, so I got rid of them. I suggest you do the same. Ha, as if anything else we've done in this project has been ethical?"
Both scientists averted their gaze in shame: they needed no reminder of the atrocities they had commited. They were forever burned into their minds.
"Oh, all right," Ma'am said. "Keep your little morals. Just notify me the second there are any condition changes."
"Yes ma'am!" the scientists replied in unison, and turned back to their workstations. As he was turning, the second scientist hit a small button with his coffee mug, and the picture of the empty hospital room flicked to an identical one. Neither of them noticed.
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I sat down on the edge of the bed. Having gotten over the initial shock and fright, I began accepting my situation and tried to figure out what I could remember. Obviously, I couldn't remember anything about myself or where I was, but maybe I could remember other things. Racking my brain, I discovered I could indeed remember things I had learned, presumably in school. Math, science, history, geography, literature.... wait! Something was off here too. I knew too much about these things. I knew about things that only the most trusted person in the world would have access to. I knew things that hadn't even been released to the public.
Okay, this is a little odd. I thought. I tried languages. I knew English, obviously. But I found I was also fluent in Spanish, German, French.... pretty much all of the Latin-based European languages. But I also knew Gaelic, all sorts of Norse languages, several dialects of Japanese and Chinese, multiple African languages.... well, the list went on.
"Wow," I said pointlessly. "Maybe you were a spy or something." But I knew that wasn't it. For one thing, I couldn't have been more than fifteen. Plus, it would have taken a spy a lifetime to amass the amount of information floating around in my head. It was like someone had assembled a planet-wide datalinks system and downloaded it's contents into my brain. I jumped up, tired of trying to figure things out.
"That's it! I want some answers!" And I knew they weren't going to come to me. I needed to get out of this cell. There was nothing in the bedroom that would help me, so I checked the bathroom for something vaguely credit-card shaped. There was soap, and a sponge on a handle, and toilet paper, and a comb, and about a dozen other things you would expect to see in a bathroom, but nothing that would fit in between the door and the doorframe and wedge open the lock. Giving up, I dejectedly sat down on the toilet and looked at the mirror, wishing I knew even just a name to accompany the face that stared back at me with bright green eyes. Then it struck me: the mirror! If I could break off a piece, it might just be thin enough. Without a second thought, I pulled a drawer out of the counter, stood on the toilet to spare my bare feet, and smashed the mirror with an edge of the drawer. There was a crashing sound, and the mirror flew apart. Tip-toeing around the sharp pieces of glass, I found one that had been part of the edge. This one had one side that was flat and wouldn't hurt my hand. I grabbed it and stepped back into the short antechamber that led from my room to the door. Knowing instinctively what to do, though I had no memory of doing it, I slid the piece of glass into the space between door and doorframe and was rewarded with a satisfying click! The door swung open, and I stepped out into the world.
It was somewhat disappointing. My suspicions that I was in a hospital were confirmed: it looked exactly like a hospital hallway. But there was something off. I couldn't quite put my finger on it at first. Then, with a wave of fear, it hit me: there was no sound. No voices of parents visiting their sick children, no crying kids, no clatter of machinery or robotic-sounding announcements. Suddenly the blank white hallway became sinister. The place felt of death. A shivering wave of fear swept over me, the kind that might have made a lesser person run crying back into the room and pull the covers over their head. But I was determined. I wanted some answers.
Making sure I still had the razor-sharp piece of glass with me, just in case, I eased the door shut. I saw it had a number on it: 290. Nothing relevant, but it would be good to remember in case I got lost.
The hallway extended hundreds of feet to my left and right. Wary of the silence and openness of the hallway, I decided to start closer to my own room. I turned to my left and examined the door next to mine: 291. As good a place to start as any. I turned the doorknob, and surprisingly, the door opened. The fact that the doors locked from the outside put me even more on edge. I stepped in and saw that the room was identical to my own. But wait: the covers of the bed were thrown off, and a trail of blood drops led to the bathroom door. Someone had been here, and it looked as if they were still here. I knocked apprehensively on the bathroom door. No response. I tried again, a little louder this time. Still nothing. Taking a deep breath, I opened the door and stepped in.
"Oh, shit!"
There was a boy slumped against the wall in the bathtub. The front of his face was covered with blood, and there was a streak of blood down the wall ending at the back of his head.
My first instinct was to run back to my room and block the door with my bed, but something stopped me. I could see that his chest was still moving shallowly up and down. He was alive! I couldn't just leave him here. He was the first person I had ever met, as far as I remembered. One side of my mind argued that it wasn't my problem, but eventually the compassionate side won out.
"You better thank me for this," I said, and bent down to lift him up.
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I woke up. There was a horrible pain throbbing at the back of my head. I slowly opened my eyes. At first all I saw was a green and white haze. Then the image resolved itself into two green eyes surrounded by a corona of pure white light.
The eyes themselves were strange. They were fierce and sharp and cold and shone with a light like the sun off a finely polished blade, yet at the same time they were sort of ethereal and intangible, and seemed to glow from within. A brief look of relief passed over them, then they returned to a kind of intense neutral look. They narrowed and moved up and down, as if piercing my skin with X-ray vision, then softened slightly.
"Am I dead?" I asked quietly.
The voice that replied was surprisingly normal and down-to-earth, if a bit tense.
"I don't think so. If this is heaven, it's kind of boring. I dunno, maybe it's purgatory. Ok, you're all right. Try and sit up."
I obeyed, and now saw the face that accompanied the eyes. It was that of a girl. She had pale skin and looked as if she had gone too long without food. Her hair was long and black and straight, but flared out slightly at the ends. The intensely narrowed eyes made her look slightly Oriental, which she might have been. The white light I had seen was a flourescent light overhead.
"Who are you? What happened?" I asked.
"Who am I? No idea. I woke up a little while ago in a hospital room with no memory of my life. As for what happened, you tell me. I just found you slumped over in a bathtub with your head smashed against the wall."
Remembering this, I reached to touch the back of my head.
"I wouldn't do that," she warned. "That's a pretty bad bump."
"So how did I get in this bed?" I asked. Then, noticing the makeshift bandage around my head, I asked, "And who did this?"
The girl rolled her eyes. "Duh. I helped you. What happened, anyway?"
"I just slipped. I got startled by something I saw in-- the mirror!"
I jumped up and ran to the bathroom. Looking in the mirror, I was shocked to see once again a face I didn't recognize. It was pale and thin, like that of the girl, and had brown eyes. The hair was brown and long and scraggly, and matted in the back where some dried blood clung to it. A strip of towel had been wrapped around the head to stem the bleeding.
"You don't remember that face, do you? Same here," the girl said, standing in the doorway. There was a touch of empathy in her voice.
"I don't remember anything!"
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"Ma'am" walked into the monitor room again about fifteen minutes later. She glanced at the screens.
"Where is subject 290?" she asked, slightly annoyed that she wasn't being monitored.
"Bathroom, ma'am," replied one of the scientists. He had been looking at another screen when the frail girl had slipped the lock and walked out.
"What about 291? He's been in the bathroom for a long time."
The second scientist shrugged.
"Maybe he's taking a shower."
Ma'am looked at the screen on the right, and something caught her eye.
"Did he come back out at some point?" she asked.
"No ma'am," replied the scientist.
"Then how is it that the bed is made in this screen?!" she screamed at him.
Both scientists' heads jerked back towards that screen. They looked at the control panel, and under "Monitor 387", rather than the words "Room 291" in green LED they saw "Room 292".
Ma'am switched it back to Room 291, and there in the screen was Subject 291 lying in bed with Subject 290 watching over him.
"Incompetents!!!" Ma'am screamed at the two scientists. "First contact was not to be made for several days, and I was supposed to be the first person they saw! That's why we locked them in!"
She collected herself, straightened her labcoat, and tried a practice phony smile, then took off towards the Recovery Area.
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As the brown-haired boy walked back out of the bathroom with a dazed look on his face, the doorknob on the other door started to turn. I braced myself, ready for a fight.
But rather than some soldier or alien or monster coming through the door, a woman stepped through. She wore a white labcoat over a dark blue business suit. Her eyes were stern and her face was lined and tough-looking, but she gave a warm and slightly phony smile.
"Oh, hello," she said, apparently surprised.
"Who are you?" I asked, trying to hide the suspicion in my voice.
"That's not important. What's important is who you are," she said kindly. She beckoned us into the hall, and lacking any alternative, we followed.