Peter was thirty minutes late to training the next morning.
The other patients had long since cleared out of the Rainbow Room, leaving me to my own volition. I sat at one of the tables, absently tapping my fingernails against a deck of cards. I alternated between staring at the door and staring at the clock, impatiently waiting for him to show up.
I hadn't slept too well the night before. Unsurprisingly. The moment Peter took his first step out of my bedroom, I knew my night was going to be spent overthinking, overanalyzing, and screaming into my pillow. So that's exactly how it went.
After he left, I stood in the same spot for a good twenty minutes trying to process what just happened. First I got a murder confession, and then I almost got kissed. Part of me was still convinced it was a dream. Another silly fantasy my mind conjured up. One that was far, far too good to be true, just like all the others. After all, it had been months of waiting for a sign. Catching myself day dreaming about Peter. In my head, he would tell me he thought of me too, dreamed of kissing me, wondered about me as much as I wondered about him. And it didn't feel like a big deal because I knew it wouldn't ever happen.
Then his lips touched mine. For one fleeting, insignificant moment.
It was everything. So 'everything' that I felt like my brain was going to swell out of my head whenever I thought about it.
Everything, but then it turned into nothing when he left me standing there, alone. I stayed up all night wondering if I did something wrong. Maybe I had something caught in my teeth or, when he got too close, he didn't like what he saw. What was Peter's standard of pretty, and how would I reach it? I didn't have any makeup-- or hair, for that matter. Would Papa buy me some if I asked?
Peter was beautiful. Strikingly so. How does one amount to that?
After the insecurity came the annoyance. Annoyance that Peter had even tried to kiss me in the first place if he wasn't going to go through with it. 'I missed you' he said 'always.' I was so dizzy when he uttered the words, so out of sorts. He wouldn't have said that if he didn't want to kiss me, right? He wouldn't just lie for the fun of it. Not to mention he quite literally killed for me. Another human being with thoughts and feelings ridden from the earth with the flick of his wrist. That had to mean something.
But he left. All that, and he still left.
Maybe he was just playing with me. Maybe he was bored, and so he decided I would make a good distraction. A better woman, a smarter woman, wouldn't settle for bits and pieces of his affection. She wouldn't answer to his beck and call like some mindless little lamb. I wish I was her. I wish I had more self respect. But I knew, deep down, I'd happily be his distraction. His secret. However he wanted, whenever he wanted, so long as it was me and not someone else.
Spineless. God, I was so spineless.
I couldn't even hate him for more than a few weeks. Fuck, and I really should hate him. He never apologized for ratting me out. He never even seemed sorry. The man fucked me so royally, and still, I pined over him. He managed to burrow beneath my skin and make a home there, one which he was oh, so comfortable in. I knew he was a parasite. I knew he was sucking up what little bits of logic and common sense I had remaining. Still, I couldn't find it in myself to be rid of him.
My heart sank into my stomach when I realized how uniquely awful that was. How much trouble that would mean for me. No matter what he did, no matter how much it hurt, I couldn't ever really hate him. He was the metal bead, the link, the chain. He was all of it.
The sound of the door opening pulled me from my thoughts.
I knew it was Peter before I even looked up. A sigh fell from my lips. Why was I thinking so much of him when I should be thinking of myself?
"Good morning, Sixteen," He greeted as he pulled out the seat across from me. My muscles tensed when we met eyes. For a millisecond, we were in my room again. He was a breath away and I was at a loss for words, transfixed beyond explanation. Now, we sat in the Rainbow Room, surrounded by children's toys while Peter leaned as far away from me as possible.
"Good morning," I said, almost hesitantly.
"I'm sorry for being so late," His clipboard made a clatter as he placed it on the table, the only noise in the entire room aside from the air conditioning. "I had an errand to run."
I raised an eyebrow, "An errand?"
"Yes, that's what I said," He replied curtly. There was an edge to his words as though he were annoyed. Was he mad at me for last night? A sour taste filled my mouth. He had no right to be mad. Not when he left me standing in the middle of my room with absolutely no explanation. A familiar twist in my gut told me he was going to either ignore the situation entirely or pin it on me.
Fine. Two can play his annoying, petty little game.
"Okay," I said, "Where are we going today?"
"I figured we could stay in the Rainbow Room today," He flipped through some of the papers on his clipboard, "When you first arrived, it was my job to take notes on which fields you excelled in and which you did not." He slid a rather dense bundle of papers towards me, "These are your records from April. Read them out, please."
I gave him a side eye before picking up the papers. In big, bold letters, the top of the paper read 'CONFIDENTIAL.' It made sense that Papa's little science experiment was 'confidential.' One could assume the general public wouldn't take kindly to human experimentation.
The next section of the paper was written in a slightly smaller font, though it was just as bold. 'Hawkins National Laboratory: Project MKUltra.' I scanned over the line a few time just to make sure I read it correctly. All I managed to do was confused myself more. "Peter?" I asked, "What is Hawkins?"
"That's where we are right now, silly." He gave me a look as though he expected me to know that already. Surely he was aware that no one told me shit, right?
"Okay..." I frowned, "And what is MKUltra?"
"Not relevant," He shook his head, "Why don't you just skip past that page, hm?"
"Why?" I narrowed my eyes.
"Because it's not relevant," He repeated with a soft, dismissive smile. He reached forward and took the paper from my hands, making a show of flipping the page and handing it back to me. Irritation curled up my spine. Since when did Peter lie to me about affairs of the lab?
"Fine," I muttered. There was a single heading, labelled 'April, 1979.' Beneath was a neat, cursive scrawl which I immediately identified as Peter's. "Subject failed to relocate, shift, or redirect objects using psychokinesis. Proper tutelage was provided, though it had no evident affect on the Subject's performance. Further assistance needed," I read, and then frowned. "Seems a little harsh."
"Objectivity is a necessary evil, I'm afraid. Especially in official lab documents."
"Do you make a point to use words I don't know?" I crossed my arms.
"On occasion," He confirmed with a smile. "Objectivity, in this case, means the comments were written without the influence of personal feelings."
"Does this mean you're going to use objectivity when you log my performance today?" I asked.
"Yes, it does," He shook his head, "There's nothing to worry about, Sixteen. You've improved innumerably since April. I'm fairly certain that you didn't give credence to your abilities when those notes were taken."
Credence. He knew I didn't know what that meant. Fucker.
"Great," I stood from my chair, "What do you want me to move?"
"Quite confident today, aren't we?" He stood, too, cerulean eyes flitting around the room. "How about... that?" I followed his pointer finger to a rather heavy looking table in the back of the room. On top of it laid a few stacks of books.
"Uh," I balled my hospital gown between my fists, "Why don't we start with like... a tissue or something?"
Blonde hair fell around his face like a halo when Peter tilted his head. "What's this?" He tutted, "Don't tell me you're backing down, Sixteen."
"I'm not. Why don't you try it, hm?" I defended.
"Oh, but that's not my job. It's yours," He nodded towards the table, "Go on."
My narrowed eyes lingered on his for a moment longer before I faced the table. The metal of its legs winked beneath the harsh lighting overhead, goading me on. A deep breath escaped my lips as my eyelids fell shut.
The warm, dizzying rush came to attention as soon as it was called upon. My nerves hummed, my mind went quiet. Every time I used my abilities, it was as though I entered a stare of limbo. I walked between reality and my own subconscious until the lines blurred together and I couldn't differentiate one from the other. Oftentimes it felt purifying-- one could even say lustral. Of course, that wasn't always the case. It could be quite the opposite; repressive, as though I were being shoved into an airtight bag. It wrapped around my limbs, crushed my organs, caved my head in. Luckily, it only ever really felt that way when I was overwhelmed-- when I crossed that threshold between an ocean of power and drowning beneath its surface.
Focus.
I opened my eyes and extended a hand towards the table. There was a screech of metal as it scraped against the tiled floor, but the table didn't do anything more than shudder. I could feel Peter a few feet away, feel his eye boring into my skull. What an odd sensation it was; to know exactly where, when, and how someone was regarding me without even having to look at them.
I shook my head.
Focus.
The warmth had circulated through my entire body at that point, though its focal point was in my fingertips. I almost expected them to turn red-hot. Another breath fell from my lips as I tensed the muscles in my neck. I could feel the coolness of the metal, taste the remnants of pine on the wood. I jerked my hand backward with as much ferocity as I could muster. The table came crashing to the ground, skidding a few feet towards me before it came to a full stop. Fallen books littered the floor around us.
I turned to Peter, "That counts, right?"
He looked upon me with something I would almost call adoration. Or envy; I couldn't tell the difference. Either way, he smiled and answered, "I would say so... You're bleeding, Sixteen."
I swiped at my nose and frowned at the sight of blood.
"It's alright, your body just needs time to adjust. Whenever you used your abilities at such a magnitude in the past, your emotions were running high. Without that emotion, there's nothing to ground you. Nothing you can draw from, and so your body takes the brunt of your power." He shook his head at the discouraged look on my face, "It's nothing some more practice won't fix. Your body is already capable of so much... I can only imagine what else it could do."
The words hung in the air for a moment. My mouth went dry.
'I can only imagine what else it could do.'
Peter looked at me expectantly, anticipating my response. Oh, that's right, we were in the middle of a conversation. I scrambled to think of a proper rebuttal. "Are you gonna make me pick up the books with my mind, too?"
He laughed and shook his head, "No, Sixteen. Judging by how long it took you to move the table, we'd be here until tomorrow morning."
"You're hilarious," I muttered sarcastically.
"Thank you," He beamed, and then turned back to his notes, "Now, I'm not going to make you read the notes again. If you thought the last ones were harsh, then you certainly won't like these. Remember our first session together when I asked you to turn on a lamp?"
I nodded.
"Good. Well, I want you to do the same thing, except on a grander scale." He gestured to the lights above us, "I want you to make at least five of them flash on and off."
"All at once?" I asked.
"All at once." He confirmed.
"I can barely turn off cameras," I frowned, recalling mine and Six's last trip through the lab where I had to shut down each camera in each hallway. By the end of that twenty minutes, I could've collapsed. "I don't know if I can do the lights."
"You could turn on every single light in the facility," He hummed, "This is nothing."
"I'm not so sure."
"Alright then. How about we add some stakes? Maybe that will motivate you."
"Intriguing," I said, "Go on."
"If you're successful in turning on the lights, I'll clean up the books," He nodded towards the pile on the ground. "If you fail, though, you have to do it."
"Deal," I replied, "But you have to give me as much time as I need."
He nodded, "Deal. Start whenever you're ready."
I angled myself in front of the mirror which ran along the wall. Overhead, the air conditioner breathed cool air on my skin, coaxing goosebumps onto my arms. I cracked my neck, fingers, and knuckles before angling my head towards the ceiling.
There was a distinct difference between my ability to afflict people and my ability to afflict technology. When confronted with living beings, it came as naturally as breathing. All I had to do was visualize their heartbeats, their mind, and my abilities would do the rest. To truly effect a person, I had to surrender my own thoughts. I had to momentarily leave my body and imagine being in theirs. If they were scared, I could feel it. If they were angry, I could feel it. My reach extended far beyond emotion, too. When I truly focused, truly surrendered, I could sense their muscles, their hearts, their minds. All of it. Beneath my mind, their bones could either crumble to dust or strengthen beyond belief. The ability to make or break another human being with the simple nod of my head was a heady feeling, one I often didn't trust myself with.
Still, it came as easily as my desire to eat or drink.
Technology was different. There wasn't a heartbeat to search for or an emotion to sense. All I had to work with was metal, glass, polycarbonate, and steel. Cold, insensible things which I didn't have a way of relating to. At least where people were concerned, I knew what it was to feel emotion, and so I could envision that emotion and establish a connection. Technology had always been difficult for me, lights especially.
Still, I focused on the warmth in my skin and ushered it forward. My muscles strained with the effort. Fluorescent lights burned my eyes as I attempted to see beyond their simple glass exterior-- desperately searching for the ebb and flow of electricity, the barrier between each wire, each bulb. There was a familiar ache in my head which signaled I was overexerting myself. Still, I persisted, compelling my abilities to escape the threshold of my skin and become tangible. Forcing it was like trying to get a piece of thread through the particularly microscopic eye of a needle. Each time, I missed, until my thread began splitting apart and the pressure behind my eyes grew to an unbearable intensity.
I broke with a grunt, dropping my head to inhale deep, greedy mouthfuls of air.
"You're forcing it," Peter was suddenly right behind me. My spine went rigid as his eyes, pure as falling, crystalline snow, met mine through the mirror. He was so close. I could feel body heat rolling off of him in slow, rhythmic waves, each one pulling my thoughts further and further away from our session.
Everything went blank, until all I knew was the image of him towering over me in the mirror. The ball of tension which had so quickly climbed up my throat and taken residence in my tongue kept me from uttering a word. If Peter felt that same obstruction, he swallowed it back with the bob of his Adam's apple.
I almost screamed when I saw him craning forward in the mirror, leveling his mouth with my ear as he murmured, "I'm supposed to encourage you not to use your emotions during tasks such as these." His eyes snapped up, meeting mine once more. The ghost of his breath made the hair on the back of my neck stand up. "But, for you, I'll make an exception. Do you remember when we discussed--," I watched his reflection with bated breath as Peter's hand dropped to my side, wrapping around my wrist, pointing to the tattoo which resided there, "-- this?"
I swallowed. Maybe it was a gulp. "Yes," I breathed.
"That hopelessness you talked about," He said, "I want you to focus on that. Embrace it. Think about the exact moment that feeling reached its climax. What were you thinking? What was your Papa saying? What did the tattoo gun feel like against your skin?"
I hardly registered anything he said.
"Sixteen?" He frowned.
"Yes," I mumbled, "Yes I can do that. Okay. Sounds good."
He watched me expectantly through the mirror. I closed my eyes and focused on the electricity circling through my veins. I never really got the chance to try again before my focus was broken. Peter's breathing was warm against my neck. How was I meant to focus when I could feel his breaths?
"Can you please back up," I opened my eyes, "You're distracting me."
He tilted his head. I realized the error of my ways the moment the words left my mouth. 'You're distracting me.' God, I was so fucking stupid. Why would I say that? My cheeks burned with embarrassment. Peter looked gleefully surprised, lips tilting into a mocking smile, "Distracting you?" His stare made me want to sink into the ground below.
"You're too close. Back up," I crossed my arms. He laughed softly and did as asked, finding his place a few feet behind me. His warmth disappeared, leaving an hallow pit in my gut. Stupid, stupid, stupid.
A sigh fell from my lips as I finally gathered my bearings. I flexed the muscles in my hand and tried to do as instructed. My pulse slowed, allowing the voltaic surge of power to intermingle with the blood in my veins. The lights never relented, unperturbed by my efforts to make them blink.
Focus.
I ran my fingers over the tattoo on my wrist. It protruded from the surrounding area, an inky black reminder of the identity forced upon me. One light flickered. I closed my eyes and focused on that feeling. I basked in the helplessness, allowed it to seep into my pores and eat away at my nerves, drowning out my surroundings. The air conditioner went quiet as Peter's presence all but disappeared. The entire world faded away until all that existed was me, the lights, the power in a veins and an abysmal sense of dread. It stirred within me, seeking solace in my veins.
It grew and grew and grew until every crevice of my being was flooded. Head beneath the surface, I swam as furiously as I could, deeper and deeper. I remembered what it was to suffocate. To have my lungs cry out for air, to beg for relief and to be denied. This was a different type of suffocation. The ache was enchanting, bewitching, pain turning to pleasure until my entire body was ridden with a divine fever.
I recalled the days after Papa had labelled me. Days spent scrubbing my skin raw, praying the tattoo would wash off, spill onto my feet, and disappear into the shower drain. I wished for nothing more than to gift the vile ink to the sewers below, watch as the water ran black and stole away the identity Papa assigned me.
Something shifted in my veins. I knew I passed that Godforsaken threshold as soon as my organs lurched forward. With bated breath, I waited for that sense of being crushed alive. For the air to be expelled from my lungs as my skeleton collapsed in on itself.
It never came.
The exhaustion which usually accompanied using my powers never came, either. Instead of feeling depleted, I felt invigorated. My breaths were steady, my skin hummed with bliss. I must've reached the bottom of the ocean. The pressure didn't crush me. It wrapped its aqueous arms around me, cradled my aching limbs. For a moment, I was in heaven. Surrounded by the seraphic lull of water, my fingertips brushed the deepest grain of sand on the sea floor. I reached a depth no person had ever dreamed of and oh, what a sweet victory it was.
When I opened my eyes, five lights were not blinking. All of them were. On and off, erratically, they plunged different sections of the room in darkness before light interfered and washed it all away. "Oh, my god," I whispered.
I couldn't even be angry when my focus broke. The lights shuddered thrice more before stabilizing. I was too elated to care, turning around to face Peter with a broad grin on my face, "Did you see that?" I cried.
Peter did not answer, body infected with a stillness I had never seen before. His eyes were on my face, but it was almost like he was looking through me. Slowly but surely, he grinned. My heart all but exploded as he took a few steps closer, blue eyes posing a violent contrast to the white of his suit. He tilted his head, parted lips uttering the words, "That was exceptional... You're exceptional."
My skin buzzed, "Peter?"
"Yes?"
"You're on cleanup duty."
My dream was different that night.
There weren't any blue eyes or sweet caresses. No words whispered against goose-bumped skin or dizzying rushes of adrenaline. Instead, I found myself in the lab. A hellish version; devoid of its immaculate, impersonal perfection. It was laid to waste, utterly destroyed. Lights fell from the ceiling, exposing circuited innards and veins composed of wire.
A phone rang. One, twice, three times. The exact same sound I heard after touching that tape in One's box. It cut into my skull with scalpel-like precision, devastating my brain matter until it leaked from my eyes like flushed pink tears. I felt as though I could die. What an odd sensation it is, to feel your organs shutting down, your bones crumbling to dust, your heart sputtering with its final beats.
A scream echoed down the hallway, beckoning me closer. I wanted to run away. Oh god, I wanted to run. It seemed I didn't have a choice in the matter as my legs moved, heedless of my brain's demands to stop. The closer I got to the source of the scream, the more the phone chimed.
There was blood.
So much blood. It stained the floor, the tile, the ceiling. Like a crimson river, it ran down each hallway, leveling everything in its path. The lab was almost unrecognizable. Violent, tumultuous white lights shuttered on and off, laughing in the face of the order which was once so adamantly maintained.
The bodies were worse. Children, guards, nurses. Some faces I recognized, some I didn't. Others were so destroyed they couldn't even be conceived. Bones jutted out at unnatural angles. Limbs twisted and shattered like the depraved branches of a leafless tree. And the smell-- oh, my god-- the smell. Pennies mixed with death and decay. The fear was tangible, smoldering off of every freshly-dead body like a physical force. It pushed me back, screamed at me to turn around, begged me to save myself.
The Rainbow Room was just ahead.
And then I woke up, cold sweat running down my back, shuddered breaths echoing around the hollowness that was my room.
AHHHH!!! IM SORRY FOR THE LATE UPDATE. school has been violently beating my ass. I think you guys will like this chapter there is LOTS of Peter and Sixteen.
Its so weird to think the book is almost done???? like we have less than 10 chapters left I am distraught.
GUYS. MIDNIGHTS. I CANT FUCKING WAIT OH MY GODDDDDD. I AM SO EXCITED SHOUTOUT TO TAYLOR SWIFT I LOVE TAYLOR SWIFT.
genuinely so excited (I am going to be so tired at school tomorrow.)
ALSO I found out the boy I like is VIOLENTLY homophobic so fuck that guy bro. we're literally divorcing he's such a loser imagine being homophobic in fucking 2022??? that is so embarrassing I dare you to get a hobby.
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OKAY LAST THING
NEXT CHAPTER IS THE SMUT CHAPTER!!! AHHHHHHHH IM SO NERVOUS IVE NEVER WRITTEN SMUT WISH ME LUCK LMAOOO
comment if you enjoyyyy :) love y'all