[ ELECTRA ]
❧
Despite the tiniest fragment of hope that her life was finally allowed to be different, Electra woke up to the sobering sound of vigorous knocking at her door.
Claudia's voice was muffled by the heavy metal door, but Electra still loathed how cheerily she spoke, "Good morning girls! It's time to get up!"
Electra pulled her blankets off before swinging her legs over the edge of her bed. Teresa was already up and stretching in front of her. Electra slouched over and ran her hands through her hair as Teresa went over to try to open the door.
Unlike last night, the door was unlocked. Electra questioned if it had even been locked in the first place. Regardless, the door swung open to reveal Claudia's bright smile.
"Hi girls! Exciting day ahead! We just need to do a couple of tests before you can meet up with the boys and the Group B girls! Now come along."
Electra wondered how the woman in front of her could be so happy considering the impending apocalypse. Regardless, Electra groaned as she reached down to her feet to find her knife where she'd left it. Her heart dropped into her chest when all her fingers grazed was the cold metal floor. She fell onto her knees to look under her bed. It was gone.
"Electra. Is everything alright, dear?"
"You took it. Where did you take it?" Electra asked, standing up and sending a glare over at Claudia.
The woman's smile only grew as she innocently tilted her head, "What are you talking about?"
Electra started making her way over to Claudia, but Teresa jumped in her way. Electra switched her glare from Claudia to Teresa, and the girl slowly shook her head.
Careful. As if Electra had telepathy, she could immediately understand what Teresa was trying to tell her. They didn't know these people. They didn't know their true intentions, or what they were capable of.
However, Electra still couldn't shake off the anger. Somebody had come into their room when they were sleeping and they'd stolen the one thing she kept from the Maze. Electra pictured her knife melting in a fire, and her fingers bent into fists.
Teresa let out a small sigh, before speaking in the most polite voice Electra ever heard, "So sorry, Claudia. Electra has nightmares a lot. Really vivid ones too. She's just a bit confused."
Electra scrunched her face at Teresa's comment, but noticed Claudia's eyebrows bending with pity, "Oh, that must be awful! Electra, why didn't you say something? We could've given you something to help."
Teresa sent Electra a quick look, before Electra blinked a few times, "Don't worry about it."
Claudia's pity only grew, but regardless she beckoned the two girls to follow her into the hallway, "Come now, girls. Let's get you two fixed up."
Teresa gently nudged Electra forward, and the two girls followed the woman into the dusty hallway. With every opening and divergence in the walls, Electra peered down, looking for any signs of the rest of the Gladers. Last night, Claudia had said she would see Minho again at breakfast. That had to be soon, right?
After a few dizzying twists and turns down empty hallways, Claudia swiped her card in the keypad before it turned green and the door swooshed open. Unlike the utter grayness of the hallways, this room had blue-painted walls, and various people in white lab coats confidently strode around the room, all tending to their various tasks. However, when Electra and Teresa entered the room, quite a few of them stopped what they were doing to look up at them.
She felt like an animal on display, or more specifically a bird with an injured wing. All the people stared at her as if she was broken or as if she was a fragile miracle to have survived what she had. Electra frowned as Claudia led the girls to two parallel beds and sat them down.
The people in lab coats reminded Electra of her escape from the Maze, and how several people in lab coats soaked in blood were dead on the floor. She remembered the worker laying on their stomach, with a gun just barely out of reach. Then, she remembered how Gally had picked up the gun... and used it. Electra blinked the gory image away.
Claudia said something to the girls in a light tone, but Electra had already tuned the woman out. Thankfully, after whatever Claudia had said, the woman took the opportunity to leave the room. After a few moments of serene Claudia-less silence, Electra noticed a woman in a lab coat approaching her. The woman had a similar smile to Claudia, but without the incessant cheeriness.
"Hi, Electra. My name is Dr. Crawford. If you don't mind, we'd like to do a few tests on you."
Electra instinctively recoiled, "Tests?"
Dr. Crawford nodded before dragging over a rolling table with various needles and other medical instruments on it, "Yes. Don't worry, though. These tests aren't like the tests you've just faced."
"And what if I say no?" Electra asked, narrowing her eyes at the biggest needle on the table.
Dr. Crawford followed her gaze, "Not a big fan of needles? I'm not either, to be honest. How about we start with another type of test?"
Electra looked over at Teresa, who already had a needle in her arm. Teresa gave her a tiny nod before Electra felt herself getting ushered away by Dr. Crawford.
The woman brought her to a black treadmill tucked away in the back of the room. Electra was surprised when she felt a sense of familiarity around the machine. Had she used one before? Electra couldn't remember her life before the Maze, but perhaps she'd been an avid runner even before having to run till her legs gave out every single day for three years to survive.
Electra climbed onto the treadmill and Dr. Crawford pressed a couple of buttons for her. The machine started moving underneath her feet, and Electra began a brisk walk.
Dr. Crawford grabbed a clipboard from a nearby counter, flipping a page up and reading some details before looking back up at Electra, "You were – what they called – a Runner in the Maze, right?"
A Runner? Was she a Runner? Electra had never considered it like that before. Sure, she was out in the Maze, trying to find a way out. But she'd never actually been accepted in the Glade officially, especially not as a Runner.
"Yeah, I was," Electra said, lying through her teeth. Whatever she'd been in the Maze, it wasn't as simple as a Runner. But, it was close enough.
"Great. Now, I just want to see how well you can run." Dr. Crawford pressed a couple of buttons on the machine, and Electra was forced into a sprint. A timer appeared on the tiny screen of the machine, and green numbers slowly counted up.
Electra gave the doctor a pointed look, "And how is this relevant to saving my life?"
Dr. Crawford wrote some notes down on her clipboard, "Well, we need to see exactly what state WICKED has left you in. You can press this red button to stop, but I want to see how long you can go at this speed, alright?"
Electra merely glanced down at the timer, watching the number slowly tick up. She wanted to go faster, get tired quicker to be able to step off the machine, but the doctor had been adamant about the current speed. Electra continued running, hating the feeling of not going anywhere. At least in the Maze when running she actually went somewhere, instead of running in the same spot for long, agonizing minutes.
Electra pressed the red button on the treadmill once she'd finally had enough, and the machine slowly came to a stop. She bent over the handle on the side and let out deep breaths, beads of sweat gathering around her forehead. Dr. Crawford noticed that she'd stopped, and the woman walked up to the treadmill, peering at the timer and jotting down the number it said.
"Well done, Electra. Now, if you'll follow me we just need to take a quick photo of you."
Electra furrowed her eyebrows. A picture? She couldn't remember if she'd ever had her photo taken before. Electra stepped off the treadmill, wiping her sweaty face with her arms. Why hadn't they taken the photo before she ran for what seemed like hours?
Dr. Crawford brought Electra to a small rolling stool in front of a white backdrop. Electra sat down as another person in a white coat took Dr. Crawford's place in front of her. The new person held a small black device in their hands, and Electra recognized it as a camera, although she couldn't remember ever actually seeing one before.
Electra stared down the camera and was blinded when it flashed her. She blinked a couple of times as the new person looked at the screen of the camera, then showed the photo to Dr. Crawford. The woman merely shrugged, then gestured for Electra to get up.
Electra listened, blinking through the blind spots in her vision as Dr. Crawford led her to the same bed she had been at before. Teresa was still in hers and looked as if she'd fallen asleep somehow, even though various tubes were connected to her body.
Electra sat on the white parchment on top of the bed, uncomfortably adjusting herself on the firm plastic.
Dr. Crawford sat on another rolling stool, and brought the same rolling table from before close to her, "I'm just going to take a bit of blood, okay?"
Electra looked over at the needles, "Why?"
"We need to make sure you're not sick." Dr. Crawford reached over and grabbed a glass of water from the rolling table, handing it over to Electra. "Here. You must be thirsty after your run."
Electra took the glass of water in her right hand, looking down at it for a few seconds before downing the entire glass. Dr. Crawford tied a band around her right upper arm, and Electra faced her palm up to the sky before the doctor sanitized the area and pressed two fingers against one of the veins near the crook of the elbow. She prepared a needle and told Electra to form her hand into a fist. Electra couldn't tear her eyes away as the needle entered her skin, and red liquid was slowly pulled out into the needle.
Once the needle was full, Dr. Crawford pulled it out and detached the needle part of the contraption, leaving her with a near-perfect vial of Electra's blood. The doctor placed a cotton swab on the tiny red dot on her arm and instructed Electra to apply pressure to it. Electra complied, feeling the tiny stinging of the needle imprint as she pushed down. The doctor then undid the band around her arm, before taking another needle, this one with a clearish-yellow fluid in it.
"What's that?" Electra asked.
"Just a vitamin shot. You've been severely depleted of vitamins for the last three years. Undo the fist and just relax your arm, or this will hurt more." Dr. Crawford stuck the needle in Electra's upper right arm, and she tried to relax but she found the task to be nearly impossible.
Dr. Crawford took the needle out, not bothering to place a bandage or telling Electra to apply pressure to it. Electra's arm already felt sore as Dr. Crawford reached for tubs of creams, and lathered a healthy dose onto her worst wounds. Electra felt awkward when the doctor rubbed the cream on her upper left arm, where her WICKED imprint used to be. The awkwardness only grew when the doctor rubbed the same cream on the glaring scar on her cheek.
The silence dragged on as Dr. Crawford inspected Electra's body for wounds and scars, before the woman spoke, "Have you been having your period in the Maze?"
Electra blinked at the question. A period? She tried to remember what that was, but nothing came to mind, "Um, no. I don't remember."
Dr. Crawford finished applying a cream to a wound on her leg, before looking up at her, "I suspected WICKED must've found a way to stop it. The Group B girls are all the same. I'm guessing it will come back whenever WICKED was planning on letting you all out. Could be never, could be days. I'm not sure. If it comes during your stay here don't hesitate to let one of the workers know and we can help you. It's not something to be embarrassed about, okay?"
Electra wasn't sure what to say, but her mind jumped at the mention of Group B. There was another Maze, and that one had girls in it. She tried looking for a clock in the room, trying to see what time it was since it felt like she'd spent hours being prodded and looked over by Dr. Crawford, but no clock could be found.
Electra grumbled in her seat as Dr. Crawford got up and tugged the curtain closed, leaving her and Teresa sitting on parallel beds to each other. Teresa's eyes fluttered open while Electra looked down at the needle marks in her arm coupled with the healing scabs doused in various creams. She wondered what the scratch on her face looked like.
"This morning... you shouldn't have acted like that," Teresa said in a low voice, and Electra met her gaze.
"Like what?"
"Like – I don't know – crazy." The last word was barely even a whisper.
"They stole from me. I'll act however I want to," Electra scowled.
Teresa slowly shook her head, her eye contact unwavering, "No. You need to be careful, Electra. We don't know these people."
"I fought Grievers for three years. I think I can handle whatever they want to do to me." Electra spoke confidently, but deep down Teresa's words irked her. The girl was right. Electra should be more careful.
"I'm sure you can. But you acting up puts everyone in danger. Thomas, Newt... even Minho."
Was Teresa right? Was Minho in danger because of her actions?
Electra felt like she was being brought back to her time in the Maze when she still believed in the voice. She'd believed her actions had caused the Doors to stop closing and had driven her to the point of a panic attack worrying about her best friend. The voice had been nothing but a test, and the Doors hadn't been her fault but Teresa's. The girl sitting in front of her had been the one to trigger the Ending, and all the pain Electra had felt over the years had been the fault of the Creators.
"Whatever. I can protect them too." Electra rolled her eyes. "And next time I don't need you covering for me with the nightmare bullshit, okay?"
Teresa simply gave her an unconvincing glance before the two girls sat in silence, Electra's statement hanging in the air. When the curtains were pulled open, Dr. Crawford beckoned the two girls to follow her. Teresa jumped off her bed and followed the woman. She cast a severe glance back at Electra, and Electra sighed before sliding off her bed and following the doctor.
Electra was brought to a small metal room, barren except for a table and two chairs sitting directly in the middle.
"Sit down on either side. We just want to ask you a couple of questions," Dr. Crawford said, and Electra was left wondering why she had to be brought to a separate room if all they wanted was to ask a couple of simple questions.
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A/N: IM BAAAAACK !!! the sequel is in motion everyone yayayaya !!! :)))
i'm also writing a hunger games fic if anyone is interested !! u can find it on my acc it's called doomsday!
it will be clove x cato AND peeta x fem!oc ! basically just all my fav characters hehe it should be fun!
anywaysss yaya!! vote and comment if u wanna