Hawkins Lab, 7 years ago.
Sounds of dogs barking echoed in the distance. The wind battered against the rigid one-sided windows, creating thuds in Brenner's office. His pen tapped against the parchment he was wrighting on as his mind worked its gears. His thumb pressed against his lip as he pondered the possibilities of his plan. One was already powerful enough; he was the future of the Hawkins Lab Experiments. His daughter, on the other hand, was weak. Useless. She couldn't even lift a block off the floor without passing out.
Brenner figured that he needed more subjects. More proof of his extraordinary discovery. If he had younger subjects, maybe they'd adapt to the powers more easily. He began writing his ideas onto the parchment and opened a drawer to reveal the stash of photos of possible subjects.
George Sattler. Christian Heath. Jenny Ko. Marylin Schaeffer.
The list went on, from oldest to youngest. He figured that The first four would be first subjects to the experiment. They were all going to go to foster homes anyway. One child, the oldest, was a victim of abuse, his parents being sent off to jail. The little black-asian girl had parents of debt and missing immigration files. All of the children had no future, Brenner assumed.
He sorted all of the children into files, labeling them with numbers. 002, 003, 004, 005. He smiled to himself, fantasizing of his future successes to the experiment.
His thoughts were interrupted by the blaring noise of alarms as the hallways were flashing red. He stood from his seat and opened the glass door of his office, confused. Something was wrong.
There were no guards or Orderlies in the hallway. He was alone.
Or so he thought.
He ran through the halls, his eyes stinging from the sudden flashing. He approached the double doors of the rainbow room, finding both of the guards in front unconscious. The man didn't have time to check if they were alive, but he knew who was behind it.
One.
His shaking hands pulled the metal bars and hurried inside, shutting the door behind him. He turnd to see the one he had feared most standing before him, his back turned to him. The boy was lifting an Orderly in the air. The groans and choking sounds of the Orderly filled the room.
He had to be stopped.
Brenner reached for the belt pocket of another unconscious guard lying next to him, his hands grasping a baton. He quietly pulled it out of the corpse's belt, making sure to be undetected. His feet staggered toward the boy, his arms raised to attack.
Suddenly he hears an ear piercing scream as he flies backwards, the pressure nearly breaking his bones. His back slides down the wall, cracks falling in him. He opens his eyes, expecting to see anyone but his own daughter standing in front of him, her arm extended towards him.
The boy on the other side of the room turned his head, dropping the struggling man to the ground. His face shows hints of surprise as well as pride as he stares at the girl that he had secretly trained. She had blood running down both her nostrils, and she was shaking like a cat in rain. Her eyes falter and she falls to the ground unconscious.
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Present day
Five.
Four.
Three.
Two.
One.
My hands grasped the metal bars and pushed forward. My eyes met an empty room with only the two people I'd least expected to see.
Peter's sunken eyes glanced up at me, his head visible from behind my father. His face was lowered, but his posture was the same as always: his hands politely clasped in front of him, his back straight. It was weird, since it was the first time actually seeing him (aside from in dreams) ever since... that night. Brenner followed Peter's glance and turned his head to meet my stare.
His face looked worn and stressed, his wrinkled even deeper. His hair seemed greyer, his thin strands meeting his pale cheeks.
"Daughter, you seem quite the early bird this morning."
He turns his whole body to me, though his eyes seem to hover on Peter, who was still standing exactly the same, his eyes still on yours. His face was thinner and more defined, but he still looked like any other Orderly, which was the thing. He wasn't like any other Orderly.
"Peter, why don't you go prepare Room 108 for us."
He shifts his focus back to me as I watch Peter head for the double doors behind me, his face flat and empty, like everyone else in this goddamn lab. Just when I thought I'd finally met the most human person here.
"Josephine, let us talk."
I walk closer to the man I call my father, although he's now this distant aging man who barely acknowledges my existence. Funny, how everyone other than his own daughter calls him Papa.
"You know that everything I do is what is best for you," he starts, pacing back and forth, his feet following the rainbow path painted on the floor.
"I want you to grow and learn in this lab, and be just as successful as I am. You can use your powers... for good."
My eyes dart up into his cloudy irises, full of mystery and thought.
"But in order for us to achieve that..." he freezes, his feet remaining solid on the ground. "-you musn't be distracted."
I raise my head slowly, not entirely sure what he meant.
"I want you to stay away from Peter."
I feel my breathing get caught with my saliva, my heart stopping for a second. Coughs fly out of me and I look up at him with widened eyes.
"...What?"
"I'm not oblivious, Josephine. There is something so very obvious going on between the two of you."
Rage builds up inside of me, the same rage I'd felt nearly ten years ago.
"What, so I'm not allowed to have friends anymore? First Henry is taken from me, and now Peter? Are you afraid of your oh-so-precious daughter falling in love with a boy? Is that it?"
His face fails to hide the shock from me talking back, but it doesn't take long for that shock to distort into irritation.
"Don't be ridiculous," he snares. "This is different. Henry's fate was inevitable, so why don't you stop bringing him up. He's dead, Josephine."
The words in my throat get stuck, my breathing faltering. Of course, I've been told this many times. But every time, the words feel like bullets to my skin.
He's dead.
He's dead.
He's dead.
But I didn't know why.
Or how.
He slicked back his white hair and took a deep breath. My eyes fall to my feet, which were perfectly aligned on the rainbow stripes beneath me. The floor was spotless, as always. There were no scuff marks from the toys or the children. Papa always made sure of it.
The man that had raised and loved me until he found his love for science.
He swiftly walks out of the room, unbothering to say another word. The ticking of the clock was the only sound heard in the room. Its echo rings in my ears, blocking my mind from thinking straightforwardly.
Tick. Tick. Tick. Tick.
No.
I wasn't going to let this go. Not like I had with Henry.
3 hours later. Rainbow room.
I see Peter from the corner of my eye, behind the line of experiments. The children were all filing out the room as their feet shuffled against the tile floors. His arms were in the same predictable position, and his eyes seemed distant.
As the room started to empty, Peter got closer and closer, right behind number Fourteen. Before he steps out of the room I call his name. He stops and turns his head to me, his eyebrows raised. Somehow everything he did sent butterflies to my stomach. I watch as Fourteen disappears from view and turn to him.
"What happened after you left? Does he know? Why-"
"Josephine."
I stop when he says my name. God what is wrong with me.
"Nothing happened. You can stop worrying about me, just listen to your father."
Listen to my father?
I grab his wrist as he turns to leave, and he gives a sharp cry in pain as I do. His hand immediately flinches back when I see a faint red underneath the white cloth. It was barely noticeable, but it was still visible.
"Peter, they hurt you..."
He stays silent, his gaze remaining forward.
"I've got work to do," he mutters and walks off, closing the door behind him.
-------------------------------------------------------
The soft ticking of the clock was the only sound my mind could register. Tick. Tick. Tick.
Until It stopped. The room was completely silent for a whole minute until it started again. But it was different this time. It wasn't the same constant beats after every second. Instead, it was rhythmic.
Tick Ticktick Tick Tick.
One, two, one, one.
The sound was all too familiar, but it returned to its normal constant, causing me to believe that I had just imagined it.
That's right, it was all in my head. My emotions were getting ahead of me.
I counted the seconds again, making sure I wasn't going crazy. When a minute passed, I decided it best to head back to the lunchroom, where everyone was eating. I opened the large metal doors to find something odd. It was empty, but it had an eerie sense to it, like I shouldn't be there. The echoes of my light footsteps reflected upon the white tiles. I walked faster, fearing the worst if I were to slow down. I made a turn to head to the cafeteria, when I saw it.
Bodies lined the walls, all gone limp on the floor. Blood dripped from their eyes, and their mouths gaped open. I saw Four and Eleven, both huddled together in their mangled bodies. I didn't even hear myself scream as I turned back around and ran back to the Rainbow Room.
There was blood on the handles, making it hard to open the door in one quick motion. My hands scrambled and finally managed to pull them open, only to see an even more horrifying sight. My father stood behind a lifeless body, one I recognized too well. His golden hair was out of place from its usual perfect position, right above his dull, almost grey eyes. There was blood on his pale lips and clothes, all fresh and new. I looked back up at my father, who looked tired and angry.
"You should've listened."
I let out a bloodcurdling scream, tears blocking my eyesight. I felt my vision go black and I heard voices at a distance. They were too far to be audible. I opened my eyes to see that I was alone. There was no one else in the room.
Suddenly I felt arms around me, around my shoulders. I heard my name be called, but it barely reached my mind. I stood frozen, watching the place where a dead Peter had been, who was now behind me. I choked back a sob as his hands gripped my shoulders and spun me around to face him.
"Are you alright? I heard screaming, love, what happened?"
His eyes were as blue as ever, and his lively skin glistened with sweat. My hands felt his arms and his shoulders, making sure he was real. It was a dream. But it felt so real. I had felt the cold metal bars covered in blood and the hard tiles beneath my feet as I ran away from the mangled bodies.
I was going insane.
"I... I saw..." I choked a sob. "I thought everyone was dead. I saw their bodies and- and-"
He pulled me into his chest and I felt him flinch at my touch. His arms held me as I sobbed into him, feeling his heartbeat against my cheek.
"It's alright, none of it was real. I'm right here. I'm so sorry, Josephine," he whispered, his hands brushing my head. I didn't want to like it. I didn't want to like him. He was just like any other Orderly that my father ordered around, so why was I so attached to him?
I opened my eyes and saw a faint bruise beneath the thin white fabric of his shirt.
"What did they do to you..."
I stepped back to look at his solemn face. I eyed the red mark on his right hand as he put his left behind his back.
"I haven't seen you in days and suddenly you just appear with bruises and blood? You can't expect me to not question it."
He sighed and looked somewhere behind me.
The cameras.
I turned my head, expecting to see the same blinking red dot. But instead, it was just a black emptiness.
"Nothing happened, Josephine. I just received the appropriate consequences to my actions."
I stared in disbelief as his gaze turned cold, back to the stony expression all the other guards possessed. Glimmers of warmth were hidden beneath his eyes, but it was all the familiarity I could find in him. God, why was he so confusing?
"Appropriate?! They beat and tortured you, for what, sleeping with me? I'm the one who should be punished, not you."
"This has nothing to do with you, I can promise you that. Now you can stop trying to read my mind for God's sake and just worry about yourself."
I pause. Read his mind? There were only two people in this facility who knew about my mind powers, one of which was long gone. The latter hated me for them. Viewed me as a disappointment, an error. Of course, it could've been a coincidence. There's no doubt in that, he could've meant it in a metaphorical way, reading his mind. But the way he looked at me with his frozen gaze full of secrets, it set me off.
"How do you know...-"
"I know a lot of things, Josephine," he says in a low, raspy tone. He glanced back behind me at the unblinking camera.
Somehow, one thing came to mind. I didn't even register the words before I blurted them out loud.
"Do you know about One?"
His face didn't change, but I saw his surprise in his eyes, the way they flinched at the words. The corners of his lips curved upwards into a small smile, masking his unsettled expression.
"I know as much as you do."
He didn't answer my question.
"So you know that he exists... all the others seem to act like he's nothing more than a myth."
He saunters over to the other side slowly, his fingers tracing the rainbow pattern on the wall. He speaks in a low, soothing voice as he does, as if speaking of a distant memory.
"That's because their memories were altered... like everyone else in this lab."
He stops at a shelf full of books and small toys, fingering the small trinkets to his words. He seemed to be talking as if he were alone, like he was just letting all the words in his mind fall out.
"One was a special friend of mine, I knew him pretty well. I spent years with One. In this very room."
I cut him off. "But that's not possible, he was here only for a year and then he-"
"You know that the children get their powers from him, so how do you assume they kept coming, after his disappearance?"
He was right. I've never thought of that. After Henry had 'died' there were still infants being taken. It wouldn't be possible to keep giving his power to reproduce, to multiply.
Peter picked up a small brown stuffed rabbit. It looked old, but kept well cleaned.
"There are times that I can still feel his presence, waiting. Waiting to return."
The last three words, though said with a calm, warm voice, sent chills down my spine. What did this mean? What did this mean? I hated how collected Peter looked as he stared down at the small toy, turning it merely with two of his fingers. He put it back down and clicked his tongue five times.
Click, click-click, click, click.
He strode back past me, his pace even and slow. Calculating. It felt unsettling, how different this man seemed compared to the Peter I had been with in the storage room.
The dried tears on my face felt cold from the cool air inside the room. I watched as he played with a white chess piece on the table, the tips of his fingers brushing over the curves and crevices. It seemed graceful.
"What is this? This thing between us?" I blurt out, my mind spinning.
His head raises and look to me, his eyebrows raised in question.
"Well we slept together didn't we? Then you're so distant, and all of a sudden you care about me while I literally just saw you dead! If my father had something to do with this-"
"I started off on the wrong foot, this is no one else's fault but my own. Just... please forget any of what happened... happened."
He pauses through his words, as if he didn't want them to be his. I stare at the chess piece he was holding, wanting to just send it flying into my father's face.
"Forget?" I mutter. His fingers seemed so delicate against the cream colored wood. I concentrate hard on the crevices, the dips. I'd already read its 'memory,' it only took a couple seconds. Peter was the one hard to read.
Suddenly, the piece flies to the other side of the room, making a small thud against the smooth wall. My eyes dart to Peter, who stood still in the same position, his hand still hovering over the board. He looks at me, shock in his eyes.
I felt something above my lip and wiped it, looking at my hand. There was a crimson streak smeared on my wrist.
What the fuck.
Hey guysss I hope you enjoyed this chapter! Sorry about the delay, school finally started.
This was a pretty weird chapter to write, but I loved it nevertheless. I know I haven't given much smut so far, so keep on the lookout next chapter *wink wink* ;)
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