Future

Chapter 13-----

The worst part was the waiting. Sitting in the cold cells, watching your friends grow pale and shaky, their eyes hollow, unable to talk about what had happened to them, knowing that it was your turn next to go through the same thing.

We died there, in the dark, unwanted, freaks. Not physically. But mentally. I tried to remember what Waylen said, to never give those fuckheads what they wanted, to be a smart ass to the grave if I had to, but... They broke us. I thought that dying once and flirting with death another time would have made me no longer scared of death, but I was still terrified. I couldn't stop shaking or twitching at any moment, I was so utterly terrified. The worst part was seeing what it did to my friends. Whatever they had put on Kail's neck that first day hadn't been taken off since. He hadn't made a noise since either, just stared at things, his eyes barely tracking. That scared me. It was like he wasn't even there. Raine surprised me, they hung on the longest. What they tried to do was never let the darkness get to them. They managed this by singing. Singing anything. Broadway show tunes, pop songs, old country ballads... Anything. At first it was comforting, but as time went on, it was heartbreaking to hear Raine's voice, cracked and broken, crying while trying to sing something cheerful. Failing. Regi kept us alive and fighting for a while, engaging us in banter, chatting, cracking jokes, anything to get us talking. Because if we were talking we weren't dead. But after a while everyone stopped responding, and he stopped trying. Like the rest of us. Gael and Ebony were the most heartbreaking. They had been put in cells as far away from each other as possible, and it drove them crazy. During the night they would howl and weep in almost creepy unison, screaming their grief at the same time in the same pitch. That is, until the night guard got tired of hearing it and put devices on their necks. When the room was silent, the thing that comforted me the most was knowing that Pipe wasn't here, going through this. Pipe had been spared, and for a while, that was enough. Knowing that she wasn't feeling the same agony and pain as we were. Maybe she wasn't happy, still looking for Holli, but at least she wasn't going through this.

And I know you're thinking it, so I'm going to address it now. Why we didn't just use our powers to get the hell out of there or fight back. There were power dampeners in all of the rooms outside of the cell block, and if we acted up in the cell block... Well, you ended up with a pretty collar on your neck. Or a nice shock from one of the guards, if you were close enough to the bar. My visions eventually stopped coming at all, because I refused to receive them or was just too damn scared out of my mind.

While we were going through hell, things on the outside were getting better. Marginally, by small little increases. Sympathetic nongifteds fought hard in courts for rights for us. Not that anyone knew for a while about the underground experiments being run on us, but the gifteds who had managed to scrape through and survive in the real world needed the help. The world was slowly getting just a little bit nicer as tolerant people realized that we weren't so different after all. Down in the cell block, of course, we didn't know about any of this. Didn't anticipate ever being saved. But one day, impossibly, we were. I barely remember it, just blurred shapes and colors and the vague feeling that something was different. We were so... Fuck, how do I say this... They didn't... feed us very regularly. Usually not at all. We were incredibly close to death. All I remember was waking up in a hospital and being told that the public had found out about the labs, and had rioted to get them shut down. Because at the end of the day, we were human beings, and people had finally realized this. Of course, there were a bunch of the same old people out there who weren't so accepting of change, and it was hard to get past that.

Anyways, I'm getting ahead of myself. I didn't even get to see my friends for a couple months, we were all so busy focusing on getting better. PTSD, anxiety, depression, malnutrition, not to mention the devices on Gael, Ebony, and Kail's necks. They had to run quite a few tests and understand how they worked before they were able to pull them off.

I haven't... Fuck, none of us have been the same since. The terror, the triggers... It doesn't go away quite so easily. Kail and I are doing pretty okay, as a couple, I mean. We're undoubtedly made for each other, but it's hard because we see each other having a hard time, and want to help- only, we're going through the exact same thing and it's hard to save a drowning person when you're floundering too, you know? But we're doing better. One day at a time.

We still meet up with the others. Raine, Ebony, Gael and Regi. We go to group therapy, movies at Kail and I's house, and if everyone's feeling up to it, a party. Sometimes.

Pipe is... Pipe is still out there, somewhere. I can feel it in the same inexplicable way that she knew Holli was still alive. I hope that they have found each other, and they're doing well. As much as I would love to see them, I know it would probably be bad for them to see us. It would fill them with so much guilt to see how fucked-up we all are (I say this in the kindest way), to think that they fell off a dragon and got left behind and still came out better than us. I don't want to see their pity, either. So I remain in blissful ignorance.