Lab Rats (Remake)

•Chapter Two•

|Onika|

Onika slowly opened her eyes, feeling such a drowsiness that her eyelids felt like they weighed seven tons. Dizziness flowed over her in waves and she lifted her head up, her neck cracking painfully.

She took in her surroundings: a grey-walled room. She had been slumped against a corner and she assumed that someone had put her there. Onika stood unsteadily, using the wall to hold her upright, and walked to the center of the room. She noticed something else: two security cameras in two corners of the room and a loudspeaker on the ceiling.

Where the hell am I?

The speaker over head crackled, and a woman's voice fizzed through it, bouncing off of the walls of he room. "Number 65 is awake, I repeat, Number 65 is awake."

Onika, confused, shouted up to it, "Who?" but the person either ignored her or couldn't hear her. It was then when Onika looked down at herself. She was wearing a grey jumpsuit and plain white socks. She swallowed nervously and felt a tightness around her throat. There was a metal collar there that tight enough to where she couldn't even wrap her fingers around it. It was like it was attached to her skin.

Thankfully, it wasn't.

There was a low hiss somewhere within the room and a door somehow appeared. It seemed to have blended in with the walls. There was a series of locking and bolting noises and, with one final creak, it opened slowly. A middle-aged woman stepped inside, holding a wooden clipboard in one hand and a small remote in the other. Onika furrowed her eyebrows.

"Where am I?" was the first thing she said to the woman.

The woman, who was short and skinny with limp blonde hair, ignored her and asked, "How are you feeling? Drowsy? Dizzy? Nauseous?"

Onika blinked. "Uh, dizzy, I guess."

"Positive?"

Onika nodded slowly.

"Alright, sounds good. Nothing abnormal there." She clicked a pen and wrote something down. "Is anything else wrong?"

"Like. . .like what?"

"Just anything, besides your dizziness."

"I'm fine."

"Have you started your period?"

Onika raised an eyebrow. What was with all of the questions? She hadn't been awake for any more than a few minutes. "Um, just got off of it, actually."

The woman nodded and scribbled something down. "Okay, follow me." She began to walk towards the door that she came from, heels clicking quietly. Onika stood there, frozen, her heart hammering. Something was not right about the situation, and her instincts told her not to move.

"Onika," the woman said in a warning tone, turning her head slightly in Onika's direction.

Onika shook her head. "I'm not going. You haven't even told me why I'm here."

The woman turned her body to face Onika. Her lips were pressed in a thin line, blue eyes so dangerous that Onika's blood ran cold. She lifted her arm and pressed a button on the little remote she had.

About half a second later, a buzz of electricity shot through Onika's body. Not like a tazer, it was like she had been struck by lightning that zigzagged through her core. She let out a bloodcurdling scream that echoed off of the grey walls and collapsed to her knees. The collar, she thought while trying to catch her breath. Her fingers desperately sought out the contraption around her neck and scratched at it. She wanted it off.

"It's there permanently," the woman said, an amused glint in her steely eyes. "Unless we take it off. It's no use."

Onika gave the woman her hardest glare as she pulled herself up to her feet. She felt as if she had been cooked from the inside out. It was as if underneath her skin was roasting.