MOTHERS

◙five◙

Clutching her dossier to her chest, Elle stopped before the door to the debrief room. She sucked in a breath of the bleach-riddled air, and tucked a strand of hair behind her ear.

It will be okay. It will be okay.

Months of observation and note-taking, and she'd finally drawn the courage to ask—no, demand—a promotion from Dr. Price. She'd spent hours behind a desk, monitoring TV screens, checking on the well-being of residents of the lab, jotting down everything she saw, pressing buttons to get reactions from those she was observing. The children.

And they weren't months wasted; she'd learned much about Price Laboratories and its staff-members, and what the true mission was here. Or so, she thought. Though she still didn't have confirmation, she was aware that the four children—who were anything but children—locked up on the lowest level of the lab were part of an important experiment organized by the government. What exactly the experiment was and how it came to be, Elle didn't know for sure; but she'd gotten it in her head that those inmates weren't really inmates at all.

They were superheroes. Or at least, they'd become superheroes. They'd developed and grown into adulthood faster than other kids because they were given a special serum that the government had been working on for decades. It had to be the reason everything in this place was so secretive.

Was Elle a bit of a fanatic, obsessed with the old Marvel and DC movies based on ancient comic books created in the nineteen hundreds? Yes, yes, she was. And more so since she'd acquired many long-lost copies of said precious comics—all of which were waiting in her apartment to be sold to the highest bidder. She hadn't found the right price to sell them off before starting at the lab; but once news got out about what the lab was doing, how it was helping the government... she presumed the prices would go up, up, and soar her into wealthiness beyond her dreams

What were they doing creating superheroes, though? What did the American government need them for? Thanks to—or because of—Dictator D, no other country would dare approach the airspace or attempt to cross borders without strict approval from the president himself. What would the superheroes' purpose be, then? To spread more of the dictator's bullshit lies and trap more women and vulnerable members of the population into obeying his every command? Would he use them to further indoctrinate the masses into believing his causes, or else?

Or maybe the dictator's threats against the world hadn't quite prevailed as he'd flaunted. Perhaps the United States were in danger of attack from other countries, but he didn't want to worry the population about it. Instead, he'd acquired some dark materials and ingredients from who knew where, and enlisted a set of highly trained scientists into testing a formula on kids. A formula which turned them into fully formed adults with... abilities.

Before Elle could knock on the door, it shot away from the door-frame, showing the dull and dreary debrief room that she was forced to visit once a week, with her report. Dr. Price was there, seated on one of the plastic seats, one leg crossed over the other. The door had been opened by Elle's counterpart, the guy she called night-shift, as he'd never told her what his name was, and she wouldn't bother to ask. A big block of a man who spoke little aside from a few grunts, he hustled out of the room without a word to her, leaving the door open.

"Elle?" Dr. Price saw her standing there and waved her in. "Your turn? I had hoped to get a cup of coffee before you showed up, since you're usually," he glanced at his watch, "late."

She winced. She never meant to be tardy to her weekly meetings, but she often dragged her feet, having nothing of worth to report to the doctor. And with nothing to report, she worried he'd start cutting staff, as whatever his experiments were weren't working, and they'd lose funding, meaning she'd lose her job—