Henley's point of view:
"I trust the boy is recuperating?" I ask of Steven in his office, walking in unannounced.
My presence catches him off guard, causing him to stumble back in the chair he was sitting in and a few papers to go flying, green eyes wide with alarm.
"Just fine, Ms. Collins," Steven rambles, quickly collecting the fallen papers and standing to acknowledge my presence. "He can walk much better and I took his stitches out yesterday, but I'm afraid he's asleep now," Steven adds, seemingly stepping in front of my line of vision to block Peter from me.
Glancing over his shoulder, I see Peter in his hospital bed sleeping calmly, a look of content on his face.
"Oh no, I'm afraid that won't do. You see, I have a few questions for him that I need answered immediately," I order Steven in voice strong enough to make him coward slightly.
Reluctantly, he steps out of my way.
Taking slow strides toward Peter, I eye him carefully as my head swarms with questions of his current mind-set. Is he still under my control, or does he remember?
"Wake up," I hiss at Peter, slapping him on the shoulder and causing him to shoot upwards in surprise.
With a bit of shock, I see that he doesn't look at all like the person I turned him into anymore. His face is much less hard-set, his hands no longer always clenched in fists. His eyes are wide with innocence and brown once again.
Oh no, this definitely will not do.
Peter's demeanor changes upon seeing me, my mere presence enough to send him inching away from me against his hospital bed. With a twinge of anger I realize that it is disgust, not fear, that sends him away from me.
So you do remember.
"You're looking well," I offer, baiting him.
Peter says nothing, merely turning his head away from me so he won't have to look at the woman who held his mind captive for so long. I want to laugh at his sheer childishness.
"Henley, he's still kind of weak. Perhaps you could schedule this at another time-" Steven begins from the behind me, but I immediately raise my hand to silence him.
"I was going to interrogate you to see where your allegiance lies, but I've already seen enough. Steven, escort Peter to the lab," I order him, and finally Peter turns to look at me with actual fear in his eyes.
"You're going to make me a bad guy again, aren't you?" He asks, even his voice sounding normal again despite the anxiety in it as Steven helps to lift him out of bed.
"Depends on what you deem as bad," I tell him, watching the two boys slowly follow me out the door with Peter walking at a slow pace to accommodate his bullet wounds.
"You," Peter mumbles under his breath, but I pretend not to hear. I'll have him as a trusty prison guard once again.
But for my own personal form of entertainment, I decide to take the long way to the lab, the path that takes us right by Julia's prison cell. Perhaps it will give her some willpower to get through these tests, seeing the boy alive. Lord knows she'll need it. Besides, it'll be the last time she'll ever see him normal again.
And sure enough there Julia sits by the door of her cell, her green eyes fluttering as if she was about to sleep. She seems peaceful, almost like she forgot she was a prisoner. However, as soon as she sees Peter, all traces of tiredness vanish.
Julia leaps to her feet, eyes wide with fear and shock as she plunges her hand out between the bars, desperately trying to reach Peter while shouting his name. Peter reacts, of course, shaking Steven off and lunging for Julia. His hand finds hers and his fingers intertwine with hers, his knuckles turning white at the sheer ferocity with which he holds on to her. Her green eyes are boring into his, a palpable feeling of electricity sparking between the two as a silent understanding seems to pass between them.
"It's not fair..." I hear her mumble to him, a single tear escaping her eyes and making a getaway down her cheek. "I just got you back."
My eyes widen at that, speech abandoning me at this sudden revelation.
So you knew he was alive.
I force my anger down, trying to convince myself that it doesn't make any difference now. Not with the path I'm sending him back down. They'll be at each other's throats again in no time.
Peter's mumbling something soothing to Julia, trying to calm her cries of anguish. "I can't...not again...I won't lose you," she mutters to him softly, as if nobody else exists except for the two of them.
I shoot Steven a look of impatience, and he obeys by walking over to Peter and grabbing his shoulders to tear him away from her.
Julia begins to sob, stretching her arm as far as it will go to keep a hold on his hand for as long as possible. Peter does the same, but eventually their hands are forced apart as Steven pushes Peter closer to the lab.
"You're despicable," a foreign voice spits at me, and I look down to see Felicity glaring at me from the shadows.
Instead I laugh, relishing in her disgust. She can't do anything and neither can Julia, for I'm untouchable to them. I win this one.
We make it to the lab, a team of doctors already waiting for my call as syringes sit on a tray polished and ready.
I dismiss Steven, and turn my attention to Peter as he is strapped down to a chair.
"I'm sorry, Peter. I'm so sorry," Steven rambles from the door, a look on his face as guilty as sin. Peter looks up at him, his eyes pleading for help.
"Out!" I order Steven, and he reluctantly obliges.
Peter tries to struggle against the restraints, his arms pulling taut against them but reaping no success.
He's fuming with anger, but his face is also as white as a sheet considering that this is probably the most he's moved in well over two weeks. Sweat beads down his face.
"That will do you no good, Peter. Just cooperate, and we'll get through this as painlessly as possible," I order him as the doctors begin to prepare him for a round of injections.
"Why do you do this?! Why do you insist on bringing misery to everyone around you?! Why do you have destroy everything good in this world?!" Peter demands, but I ignore him as the doctors begin to fill the syringes with an acidic-smelling liquid.
"I hate you so much," he spits out as a nurse hooks him up to a heart monitor. "Join the club," I tell him sarcastically.
He continues to struggle against his restraints that keep him strapped to his chair, his frantic heartbeat registering on the machine and filling the quiet space with its continuous sound.
"Ms. Collins, we're not so sure if this is the right time to alter his mind yet. He's still very weak, physically and mentally. We're not so sure if this will have the desired effects on him that you hope for," one of the doctors cautions me.
I turn to face the doctors, anger present on my face. "I have waited three years to get my city back. To get my city back, I need Julia to fail her tests. In order for her to fail her tests, she needs to think she can pass them and have something to live for. For her to think she has something to live for, I need Peter to get her to fight for it. In order for her to fight for something, he has to change. Julia won't cooperate if she doesn't have anything to fight for, and if she thinks that she can still get to Peter when he's like this, then it's enough to make her fail her tests with all the false hope she has. So inject the boy with everything you have, dammit!" I yell at them, and the fear on their faces is not without notice as they obey.
And so the needles enter Peter without another words, the acidic substance entering at places on his shoulder, his neck, his arms, his legs, everywhere.
The boy begins to scream, his hands clenching into fists as the foreign subject enters his body that will submit him to my will.
The doctors look concerned, but the injections keep going. I made sure to double the amount that he received the last time we had to go through this to ensure that he would not falter again. No no, he'll never be the same.
The sound of his heart rate on the machine brings me out of my thoughts, and I look at it in concern.
It doesn't even sound like his heart is beating anymore, but rather one continuous sound as if he's flatlined. But then, I realize that Peter hasn't flatlined at all; rather his heart has sped up so quickly that the beats have merged together to make one long, continuous sound that doesn't differentiate them.
"Is that supposed to happen?" I demand of the doctors, yelling over Peter's cries of excruciating pain.
No one answers me though, for Peter's head slumps forward as he continues to flex his arms against the restraints. The exposed veins on his skin begin to bulge, turning a sickeningly dark shade of blue and becoming even more pronounced against his paling skin. His cries of pain don't sound quite human anymore, so guttural and heart stopping that it's almost animalistic. The heart monitor begins to fizzle and smoke from the effort of having to keep up with his impossibly fast heart.
This definitely wasn't supposed to happen.
"He was too weak! We gave him too many injections at once!" One of the nurses yells to me, panic on her face as the rest of the team backs away from Peter.
He's begun to tremble with such fervor that one would think he was having a seizure, sweat beading down his face.
"What's happening to him?!" I demand from them, the heart monitor exploding and sending pieces of machinery in every direction.
"These injections were supposed to make more controllable, but he was too weak and the chemicals mixed in the wrong way. We don't know what's happening to him!" A doctor informs me.
Peter throws his head back and releases one last endless cry of pain, nothing like I've heard before. And then his head slumps forward again while his screams finally cease, his chest heaving.
We all stand back and stare at Peter, too dumbfounded to inspect him. The only noise now is his ragged breathing as his arms still clench in his restraints.
After a few minutes of this, I decide to swallow my fear and approach him, walking slowly like one would approach a wounded animal.
"Peter?" I ask him and reach out a hand to grasp the boy's hair, pulling on it to force his head upwards.
And the sight I see before me is enough to immediately make me let go of him and back a good distance away.
His face is sickly pale, dark bags under his eyes looking like bruises while his mouth is pulled back in what can only be described as a sadistic grin. You can still see some of his veins on the side of his face under his skin, practically highlighted against his pale skin.
The worst part, however, is his eyes.
No longer are they brown, nor are they the gold that I had hoped for which would mean he was under my control. No, his eyes are red, so much so that it looks as if all the blood in his body was sucked out and transferred to his eyes. They blaze with such hatred and barbaric anger, enough to make wildfires jealous. He looks so terrifying that I'm almost convinced that if I stare at him one second longer, I'll be obliterated.
Just by looking at him, anyone could tell that him falling under my command was beyond out of the question. His mind was gone, his voice of reason incinerated. He looks like he wants to shred me and everyone in this room, all of humanity vanished. All that remains now is this thing, this person who only wants to destroy.
Peter gives one last great tug against his restraints, and they finally snap this time, freeing him. He bolts upright and lunges for me, probably wanting to rip my throat out.
Out of instinct, I hold out my hand and use the power of control to knock him unconscious. A breath I hadn't realized I had been holding escapes me when his body hits the ground, and I look at him in bewilderment.
"T-take him...to Steven," I stutter to the doctors.
Nobody moves at first, but eventually they all carefully stalk over to his lifeless form, lifting him up and dragging him out of the room.
I slump against the wall in exhausted fear, trembling at the thought of what I've created.
Outside in the corridors by the prison cells, I can hear Julia's screams as the doctors pass her cell with Peter. The sound is enough to make me cover my ears, the noise sounding eerily similar to the sounds Peter was making just minutes ago.
I'm sick of the screams.