"A feeling of calm spread over my whole body. This place always had that effect. I settled in and got to work on my newest subject. I didn't know her name, nor did I ask. I didn't care and it didn't matter. That was something I'd never cared about with my subjects. They were but a thing to me and that was the way it needed to be.
This one was quite unlike the rest, both in looks and pain tolerance. It had red hair and freckles. Green eyes. Red lips. None of the others had these mutations present all in the same subject. At first, it was irritating that the subject didn't seem to react the way I assumed it would. I honestly didn't expect that. Soon, though, it became a curiosity.
It wasn't dead yet, which was curious enough on it's own. The heart monitor proved it's life still existed, even when it wished it didn't. The others had never lasted this long. Partly due to noise or loss of blood and my own carelessness. This time was different and it was so strange to me.
The rare grimaces and screams told me that it did in fact feel. I had spent over an hour wondering this before I finally got the response I was hoping for. The quite tone it keeps often has me wondering if it's trying to get under my skin in a way different from how I got under it's.
It took longer than I though it would, and it nearly escaped a few times until I was forced to cut it's Achille's tendons. Then, when it tried to claw at me, I took it's nails. Things continued like this for a while. An attempt would be made and the subject would lose something it probably would have preferred to have, if these kinds of subjects actually had such thoughts and opinions.
That was something about them: they were just clones of random genes and the problem we had was that they were so unlike normal people that we continued to test them. I probably enjoyed my job more than I should have. That's the sadist in me, but to be frank, they didn't actually feel much of anything other than what appeared to be anger.
Finally, while trying to keep its mouth closed to prevent screaming, it's heart gave out. There was nothing I could do to bring it back.
This was the closest we'd come to making a clone that could control itself and seemed to want freedom. It was also the first to live more than a few hours or a couple of days. We are getting closer to the army we need but we weren't there yet. These things needed to feel and show no pain or pleasure. They needed to live for as long as we could make them. They needed to be controlled.