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Chapter 30

She caught him just as he was about to open the door to go. "If you leave now, they'll kill you the second you step outside," she told him.

He turned back. His expression was strained. "W-Why do you care?"

"I think we need to talk," she told him. "I won't threaten you if you don't threaten me."

Adam turned back to the door, deliberating. "When have I ever threatened you?"

"Look, I'm begging you. I have no idea what's happening or what that means, but I guess you do?"

Adam took a step towards her and pulled back the bandage from his wrist, exposing the scar again. "That was my file."

She rolled her eyes. "I sort of guessed that from the way you ran out of the room, crying. What was that experiment? XVF-Two?"

He hesitated. "I-It doesn't matter right now."

"I need to know, okay?" She sat down on the edge of a desk that had been pushed up against the wall and rested her head in her hands for a moment. "I don't care if you don't know anything. Make something up. I'm desperate."

Adam groaned before tying the bandage back across his arm and sitting beside her. "It was the code given for a programme devised a few decades back where they'd experiment with the effects of various substances to measure the way the subjects responded to fear. Th-They gave the subjects drugs and sensory overloads until they were driven insane. Repetitive sound loops, rooms without enough oxygen, flashing lights, y-you know. Stuff like that. The experiments were eventually made illegal. Obviously. But it seems like in the last few decades somebody with a fascination for the atrocity decided to repeat it. They'd counteract Cortisol or and substitute it for obeirite, amobarbital, testosterone, override the limbic system..."

"Can you make this any simpler?" Quinn interrupted him.

He paused, giving her a meaningful look. "Bring the fear to the surface, you can draw more of it out and it takes more effect. That's the difference between this and draining. You traumatise someone, they stay obedient longer and the effects last indefinitely. And somebody requested you be the first subject."

Quinn looked away, trying to remember. A surge of nausea washed over her. "And... And that's what you did to me? Conditioned me to... Fear you? Hate you?"

Adam nodded, face rigid. "I guess so. I mean, I've imagined it happening as long as I can remember. I can hardly be surprised."

Quinn paused, feeling for the remote in her pocket. "So you're just not going to defend yourself at all?" She asked him.

He laughed bitterly in response. "Defend what? For so long I had this delusion that i-if I just tried hard enough, I'd be different. So I stayed hidden, I kept myself distracted, I avoided everything and everyone. There were so many nights when I just wouldn't sleep at all from the nightmares, because I couldn't stand seeing what I really was. And it worked. I am different. I'm worse than any of them. And I hurt you anyway." When he looked up, his eyes were full of tears.  "S-So I'm done lying about it. I-It never protected anyone. Not me, not you." He stopped for a moment, voice constricted like he was struggling to keep speaking. "I shouldn't have ran. I'm sorry. I should have faced it. But the way you all looked at me... I need you to know that I hate it. Everything I've done, everything I thought I wanted, It's...  It's the opposite of everything I've ever wanted. I hate it so much that I can barely think of anything else."

"Me too," she replied, reaching for the remote. "But there's only one thing we can do now, isn't there?"

He looked back at her, realising.

"N-No, you can't..."

She aimed it at his handcuffs and shut them down. They fell from his wrists and hit the floor, where they broke into pieces.