"Is the memory download complete?"

"Yep. He knows everything he needs to know."

"Good. I still can't believe that one of these actually worked. We've been trying for so long."

"Not our place to be amazed. Let's get Doctor Elsa."

I heard echoing footsteps receding as the two speakers left the room. I felt odd. Sort of . . . weightless. My eyes were closed, but I was so comfortable that I didn't feel like opening them any time soon. I heard footsteps approaching, along with a new pair of voices.

"Are you sure this is safe, Doctor?" a male voice asked. "We do have an observation room for such occasions-"

"Of course I am," a female voice replied. "Besides, Subject 23-J is not an it. It's a he. And his name is Jack."

"You've given it a name?"

"He is under my care, so I will do as I see fit."

The voices were really close now. The footsteps halted, as did the conversation.

"Hello?" the female voice called. "Jack? Can you open your eyes?"

I opened my eyes, blinking at the sudden brightness around me. I was enclosed in a glass tube which extended both above and below me. Beyond my glass tube was a white lab room. It was mostly bare, with only a few other tubes on either side of me. Two people were standing in front of my tube, both dressed in white lab coats. One was a woman, while the other was a man. The woman smiled encouragingly. The man looked anxious.

"That's it," she said. "I'm going to open the tube so you can come out. Just give me a second."

She pressed a button on the control panel beside me and the feeling of weightlessness vanished. The front of the tube hissed open as my feet touched the bottom of my holding container.

"That's it," the woman said. "Come on out, Jack. I'd like to talk to you and help you get settled in."

"Where am I?" I asked, stepping out of the container and glancing around. The man took a step back, hand reaching into a pocket of his lab coat. The woman didn't seem to notice.

"Good to see you're feeling yourself," the woman said. "I'm Doctor Elsa, and this is End Facility."

"How did I get here?" I asked.

"I'll explain on the way to the examination room," Doctor Elsa promised. "If you'll excuse us Doctor Bentley . . ."

"Are you sure this is safe?" the man pressed, eyeing me with distrust.

"Heaven sakes, Bentley, I'm a licensed geneticist, not a little girl, no matter how young I may be."

I followed Doctor Elsa out of the room and into the white hallway beyond. The walls were bare and we didn't pass any other people as we walked.

I eyed Doctor Elsa. She seemed nice enough. She was three inches shorter than I was, with a platinum blond braid  interwoven with snowflake charms and swirling blue eyes. It took me a moment to notice she was talking again.

"Here at End Facility we do our best to make sure everyone feels at home," she was explaining. "Living and work quarters are separated in order to maximize efficiency. I've talked to the others about moving you to the living quarters as well, but my influence only goes so far around here. For now I've had one of the examination rooms fixed up for you."

"Why am I a test subject?" I asked, glancing down at my white jumpsuit. It felt like a prison jumper.

"It's a bit of a long story, but don't you worry. You won't have to stay in that jumpsuit much longer," she promised.

"I have a feeling I've got time to listen to what's going on here," I said. Doctor Elsa laughed.

"Not as much as I'd like, but you do have time. The world is ending, Jack. And it's humanity's fault. We tried to cure a terrible disease, but something went wrong. Now we've set loose a virus that turns people's brains into mush. There are five facilities left that are trying to find a cure. End Facility has decided that if we could send someone back in time using Dark Matter, an element which doesn't obey the normal laws of physics, we can stop the outbreak before it even occurs. Of course, only someone with a high concentration of Dark Matter in their body can use our time machine to travel back. That's where you come in. You are the very first person we've made who had a high enough concentration of Dark Matter."

"And you want me to go back in time to stop the virus from ever breaking loose?" I checked.

"That's the idea," Doctor Elsa agreed. "But for now, let's move on to some nice easy tests."