"Sorry that I didn't call you last night, the drive was long and I fell asleep at some motel."
That was her voice. English accent- slightest twang of American in there- and soft. It sounded exactly like it was her talking, yet no words were escaping her lips from where she lied on the bed staring up at the ceiling.
Harper turned her head to the side, blinking when she saw herself stood there.
"That's fine," she heard the stressed sigh of her boyfriend, causing her eyes to widen a little. "I thought you might want to know that my dad's awake."
"That's great, Stiles," the other her spoke softly, sounding happy- but she didn't smile. "Tell him that I say hi."
"What-" Harper tried to speak, her voice cracking. Her throat was incredibly dry, causing her to start coughing, her cheeks going red.
The other Harper glanced at her and her eyes narrowed as a warning.
"Who's with you?" Stiles asked quietly, "have you made it to the lady yet?"
"Hm? Oh, yeah, you can probably hear the TV. Keeps cutting out and turning itself back on. I'll talk to you later, yeah? You spend time with your dad," she insisted.
"Yeah, yeah, but when you get back, can we please have our talk?"
"Of course," Other Harper replied.
Harper's mouth opened to make noise, anything to alert Stiles she was not okay, but Other Harper moved forward, wrapping her hand around her throat. She gasped, though it was barely audible from where Other Harper's hands were pushing down harshly.
"Good, good," Stiles murmured before there was a small pause. "I'll call you again soon. I love you, bye."
"Yeah, bye." Other Harper hung up the phone, releasing the Empath so she spluttered painful coughs.
"Who are you?" Harper glared, glancing down at her wrists that were tied by leather straps to the bed beneath her. "What the hell is going on?"
"See if you recognise me now," they replied and when Harper blinked- it was no longer her but her father.
A horrified expression contorted on the teenage girl's face, a despicable feeling of violation coursing through her body. The restraints pinched at her wrists as her impulses made her jolt upwards. She winced, but her glare didn't falter.
"How did you do that?" She seethed.
"I can take the form of anyone," Valack smiled proudly.
Harper noticed how much cleaner he looked. There was no bandage around his forehead and somehow the hole had vanished. Instead of jogging bottoms and a shirt, he wore the trousers and waistcoat he always used to wear to work. She realised that he must have somehow gained control back.
He wasn't a patient anymore.
A sudden realisation that she was the patient caused her heartbeat to increase dramatically. This is what Valack had been threatening the whole time. It's what he did to her mother and her brother and what he came close to doing to her last year.
But now he really had her.
This was really it.
Before she knew it, she was having a panic attack. Her breaths came out quick and shallow and her eyes scrunched shut as she whimpered. Clenching her fists shut, she tried to calm the frantic beating of her heart and the sweat that was starting to form a thin sheet over her skin.
"Harper," a familiar voice called.
Stiles.
He leaned down, stroking her hair out of her face while his hazel eyes twinkled with concern. His slender fingers brushed against her forehead, making her flinch. Stiles' hands were always warm- these were freezing.
Harper appeared almost frozen herself. 'Stiles' noticed and reached down, squeezing her wrist that was already restrained.
"Tell me, Harper," 'Stiles' practically sneered, "did you find out? Did you see what makes you so confusing to them?"
This was just like the dream she had the night of the senior scribe. She had seen this happen before.
"You're not Stiles," Harper cried, tears falling. "Stop."
Her vision grew blurred before it was her father in front of her again. He didn't look too pleased that she hadn't fallen for it, his blue eyes glaring into hers. Harper thought it was truly disturbing that he was trying to take on the form of her boyfriend to get information out of her.
"I can become anyone," Valack explained, "I've been able to do it since I drilled the hole into my head. Since I gained true vision. It's how I got your little friend Lydia down to the supernatural level."
Lydia.
Harper lurched up as far as she could with the restraints pinning her down. "What the bloody hell have you done with her?"
"Your friend is a Banshee, not to mention the reason I was able to escape," he smirked, making Harper pull a face of confusion. "Her scream was powerful enough to shatter the glass. You know, she would be deadly to go up against if someone taught her how to control her abilities."
"Why is she here?" Harper dismissed his previous words, her tone much firmer.
"If this is to go wrong as it did with your mother, the banshee would see it, of course. I can't have her alerting your friends. Even in her comatose state she still manages somehow," he sighed.
Harper's eyes widened, half glaring and half terrified. She felt her body go almost numb, her eyes stinging.
"You're going to kill me and nobody's going to find out," she realised. "You're sick. Twisted."
Valack huffed as he moved across the room, picking up some needles. Using a cloth, he began to briefly clean the sharped edge, making the brunette grimace. She'd always had a distaste for needles, but this was perhaps one of the longest that she had ever seen. Her father pricked his finger with the end and raised his brows at the sharpness.
"It's not my intention to kill you, Harper," Valack insisted. "If anything, I want you alive. You're the last Empath. If you had offspring, maybe I wouldn't be so cautious, but point is- if you die, the experiments stop altogether."
Maybe it's better off that way, she thought bitterly.
"So why do you need Lydia?" Harper asked as she began to silently tug against the restraints— but to no avail. "If you want me alive, why do you think I will die?"
"It's likely it will happen," he sighed. "Especially in the limited time I probably have with you. While I remain keeping your friends unsuspecting, I fear they will figure out when you don't return after a while. So I must hurry, and these experiments are not to be rushed. I learned that the hard way with your mother."
Harper closed her eyes, shaking her head at the thought. That's why he had kept Harry for so long. It had taken him years to get to the point he had with Harry, and he wasn't even finished yet. Now he planned on doing the same thing to her in a matter of days.
"She died in this very room, you know," Valack recalled. "Are you able to feel her pain? When you focus on it?"
The Empath had no intentions on doing so. She stared at her father with a blank face, making his top lip curl into a vicious sneer.
"Can you?" He demanded, harsher.
"No," Harper spat. "No- and I don't want to, either!"
She could feel her blood start to boil, becoming furious with the man stood in front of her.
"You can't keep me here! You can't do this to me! My friends will figure it out, you bastard!"
A large hand striking her face silenced her.
She spat out the blood that clung to the insides of her cheeks, aiming straight at her dad. He growled in disgust, wiping it away. He dropped the needle back onto the metal table beside her bed and walked over to a towel, wiping it across his cheek swiftly.
"Don't think for a second because you're my daughter that I will treat you better than the other patients," he seethed.
"Wasn't counting on it."
Valack hissed, "oh, Harper. The experiments haven't even begun yet."
...
"Doctor Valack thought you could do with a little company," the woman from before huffed as she opened the door to the room that Harper was being held in. "Might keep you quiet."
She had her back to Harper, her red curls bouncing as she pulled in a girl on a wheelchair. Harper's breath hitched in her throat when she saw the strawberry blonde waves, and then the chair was turned around.
It was Lydia.
"Lyds," Harper strained against the straps, gritting her teeth as she glared at Nurse Cross.
Sweat dampened the hair around Harper's forehead and clung to her skin the more and more she pulled. Her head lifted up off of the pillow, craning to see as another Eichen worker came in, helping Lydia out of the wheelchair and into the bed.
Lydia was just as bad as Harper had remembered her being- if not worse. Her green eyes remained wide on the ceiling above her as she was practically dropped. Harper rolled her eyes at the way they handled her, feeling the anger in the pit of her stomach rise.
The male worker turned to face Harper. He wore a sadistic smirk, causing the bile to rise in her throat. Something about the man sent her bad vibes, but it could have been a number of things. The way he had touched Lydia a little too much and the way he was looking at Harper being two of those things. He was probably in his late thirties, but the bags under his eyes made him appear slightly older.
He moved down, touching Harper's hand gently and moving the restraints back a little. His eyes cast down to her bruised wrists and he shook his head, tutting slightly.
"You shouldn't tug," he muttered, "it leaves bruises on your pretty skin."
Fear started to replace the anger in her stomach and it grew- spreading to her hands which trembled against his. She pushed her head as far as she could back into the pillow, away from the man's face that was looming over her.
"Stop bein' a creep," huffed the southern woman, rolling her eyes. "Doctor Valack doesn't like you talking to his patients."
The man's face hardened and he dropped Harper's weak wrist, storming out of the room. The door slammed behind him, causing the teenage girl's body to sag in relief. She looked across to Lydia, but she wasn't looking back- obviously.
Nurse Cross was snapping her fingers in front of Lydia's face.
"You really think she's gonna reply to that?" Harper hissed, trying to hide the anxiousness making her body shake.
The Nurse sighed, not looking back at the Empath, "I have been here a long time, Lydia. You think I haven't seen this before? I know when patients are pretending. Manipulating to get what they want."
Harper scoffed, shaking her head. This woman didn't know anything. Her eyes widened when Nurse Cross grabbed Lydia by the jaw, forcing her to look her in the eye.
"Get the hell off of her," Harper ordered.
"It's your fault," the woman glared at Harper, releasing Lydia. She began to walk over, pointing her finger. "She wouldn't be in this unit if it weren't for you."
"It's not my fault," Harper spat. "It's my dad's. My friends are gonna get me out of here, you know? You should just let both of us go."
"And why would I do that?" She sneered. "You really think they'll think something's wrong when 'you're' calling them every day to tell them you're safe? I don't think so."
Harper smirked slightly. "My friends aren't just my friends. They're my pack. And they'll figure it out. They always do."
...
The Empath laid on the bed while her father sat down beside her, scribbling information down into a leather book. She slowly turned her head to watch him, memories of him sitting beside her bed and reading to her as a child flooding back.
"You read it to me before," she recalled, causing Valack to glance up curiously. "That's what I saw. I saw mum yell at you, and you grabbed her."
"Someone had to put her in her place," the doctor muttered, not missing how Harper's eyes flashed with fury. "Tell me what else you saw."
Harper paused, "would it help with volume two?"
"It would."
She chuckled dryly, "then no."
His face hardened and he slammed the book he was writing into down on the table by her head. Valack grabbed her by the jaw, turning her face so that she was forced to look at him. Harper sent him a glare, her eyes narrowing at the man.
"Let me go," she demanded, her eyes flashing purple.
He laughed, releasing her and shaking his head. "You can't manipulate me, that's what true vision helps to grant as well as the other advantages, of course. Protection against manipulation."
Harper growled under her breath, becoming frustrated.
"Let's make a deal," he sat back down, a little calmer than before. "I imagine you still don't know a lot about your kind. I can tell you what you need to know, and in return, you will tell me what you saw in your hallucinations. Deal?"
Finding a loophole in his compromise, Harper nodded. "Deal."
"You may ask your first question."
Harper thought for a moment, "why am I the only one left? What happened to all of the other Empaths? The ones you didn't kill, that is."
Glaring, Valack began to explain, "Empaths have always been one of the rarest of supernatural creatures, a community of about fifteen families living in the countryside in England dating back to five hundred years ago. It was a powerful creature that wiped out most of them, leaving only three families left, one of those families being the Verums, and the others being Harry's family."
"The third?" Harper asked.
"Unimportant. They were wiped out by that same creature a few years before World War I."
Harper's breath hitched in her throat, "so there's something out there that wipes out Empaths, leading them to the point of endangerment?"
Valack nodded, "it's not what they set out to do, but Empaths are vulnerable to them. They create immense fear that they feed off, causing entire towns to be taken over by emotion. That's dangerous for the Empath. Too much can kill them."
"The Dread Doctors?" She assumed, her eyes widening a little in fear.
Shaking his head, Valack scoffed, "no. The Anuk-Ite, or Double Face as some call it. It hasn't been seen since 1912, in the USA, though. A man in this very building sent him away, into a whole other universe."
"Who?" Harper questioned.
"Too many questions," Valack shook his head. "Tell me what you saw."
"I saw the Dread Doctors," she started her lie smoothly, hoping to cause her dad fear. "They found me in the woods when I was about six and they told me..."
She trailed off deliberately, trying to make her act believable.
"Told you what?" He demanded, sitting eagerly at the end of his seat.
"That they were going to kill you."
...
some foreshadowing going on at the end maybe....
manip(s) of the chapter: