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Toby rotates his wrist, examining the bracelet around it for the hundredth time.
Patient #43 – Blood Type B – Deviant Status: Active
It’s a little frayed on the edges now; compared to how pristine it’d been a few days ago, when he’d first gotten it. But the printed words are still perfectly visible, especially from this close up.
Deviant Status: Active
Toby accidentally put his fork through the table this morning. His plastic fork, through a steel table. He’d set it down to pick up his milk, and there’d been a burning fuzziness in his palm for just a split second, and before he knew it-There was a fork sized tear through solid steel, and a plastic fork stabbed an inch deep into the floor. On its blunt end no less.And then he sneezed about an hour later, and he floated nearly a foot off the floor.“Patient forty-three, arms down.”Toby sighs, and drops his arm back to the thinly cushioned examination table he’s lying on. Gloved hands take his arm and wrap an armband around it; wires trailing from it and hooking him to the monitor nearby. Next, his wrist is strapped down in a restraint, same as his ankles and opposite arm have been.“Administration number nineteen, first dosage of the day,” narrates the head doctor in the room, writing on his clipboard as the two nurses work. “Patient forty-three, please hold still.”“You strapped me down, dude, I don’t think I can get more still,” Toby half mutters, trying to be brave and still flinching away from the syringe coming towards his exposed skin.“Proceeding with the experiment.” The doctor completely ignores him, as is becoming more so the norm. “Nurse?”The needle bites into the crook of Toby’s arm. It burns, same as every other before it.
-/-
Six days so far. Toby’s been here six days and the treatments don’t feel like they’re working at all.The Janus Order promised his nana this would help him, maybe even eventually cure him. So far, Toby just has reddened and itchy skin, and sometimes accidently deflates his own lungs with gravity. Or levitates off the floor and can’t get down for anywhere from five seconds to five hours, and has to get towed around like a balloon.And that’s just the things directly involving his powers. Never mind that the top secret treatment facility he’s in is… eerie and unnerving, to say the least.There are armed guards here and there, stationed in a way that’s probably strategic. Toby’s clothes were taken away when he got here, and he feels exposed walking around in his thin white shirt and pants; doubly so whenever the blacked out visors of the security guards turn towards him.There are another dozen kids with him, sharing the sanitized spaces they’re allowed to move around in. They’re all the same as him. Deviants. Humans who’ve got something in their genes making them sick, making them… inhuman.They’re not allowed to use their powers outside of direct supervision; it’s strongly discouraged, as it could worsen their condition or hurt someone unintentionally. Toby sees accidental uses of powers anyway. Like he put his fork through the table this morning, another kid accidentally turned his milk to a block of ice. The night before, a girl tripped over her own feet and seem to just- split in half. There’d nearly been two of her for a second, two torsos with all the proper appendages and a head each, her- their legs stumbling in a mess of tangled limbs, before both of the girls reunited to be a single one again.It’d been freaky, and they’d gotten reprimands for not controlling their deviance better. Having both the doctors and the guards staring you down, stern words coming out icy and sharp- it’s the last thing anyone wants to experience, around here.But, it’s not all bad.At least here, if Toby slips up with his powers, the other teens around him don’t shy away or run screaming. Here, they’re all in the same boat.
-/-
“Hey,” someone said to Toby, the first day he arrived in the facility for treatment. It’d been the first kid his age to talk to him in… weeks, probably. Ever since he’d been outed as a deviant by accidentally levitating his math teacher with a single touch, no one but his nana had so much as met his eyes.When Toby looked up at the owner of the voice, the person met his eyes easily. And with a smile, no less.“I’m Jim,” the teen boy introduced himself, bright blue eyes welcoming. “I heard we were getting a new patient today… and I thought you could use a friend. The first days are rough.”Jim had been offering his hand.Toby shook it, faintly disbelieving of such a friendly attitude towards him after weeks of scorn and fear.“I’m Toby,” he’d replied belatedly. Then he remembered what happened to the last person who shook his hand, and yanked their grips apart. “Shit- sorry, I- I forget sometimes. You shouldn’t touch me, it’s not safe- and you’re not like, feeling floaty? Or super heavy? Both, possibly?”Jim had looked at his hand mildly, turning it from the back to the palm. He’d shrugged, and said, “Not really, no. That’d be your power, I’m guessing?”“…Gravity stuff, yeah,” Toby had admitted, lacing his hands in front of himself self-consciously. “It’s not even a good power, honestly. It only works on stuff I’m touching, or… me. I can’t control it, either.”He’d waited for Jim to take a step back, keep out of touching range- but the other patient only kept smiling.“Neat,” Jim had said, and- he’d sounded truthful with that praise. “I mean, it sucks you can’t control it, but it’s more interesting than mine.”“Oh?” Toby had asked, interested despite himself. Deviants were illegal, terrorists, pariahs- but then again… Toby wasn’t those things, and he’d never actually talked to another deviant.Jim had sighed. “Yeah. I can mostly only do little stuff with it, though… my mom did like the bracelet I made for her, just before I got sent here. It’s the trade off, I guess. Finer control instead of big showy stuff. Usually.”Toby had leaned in as Jim did, asking in a hushed voice, “Finer control over what?”Jim had darted a glance each way, before taking out something from his pants pocket. Between his fingers, he flipped a single silver coin.It’d hovered in the air above his fingertips.Then, it’d warped. Stretching out into five perfect little tines and spinning in place. A star. Jim had created a miniature silver star, the only thing that could be categorized as ‘beautiful’ in the stainless steel and whitewashed surroundings they were in.“I can control metal,” Jim had said, looking a little proud of himself as he changed the star into a flower. “It’s mostly stuff like this right now, but… it’s been getting stronger. I accidently- my mom and me, we were in rush-hour traffic, and she didn’t see someone cutting into our lane, and I-”Jim had stopped, going quiet for a moment. Toby had waited, watching the conflict of emotions across the other patient’s face.“…We would’ve crashed,” Jim had finally continued, after his pause. “But. I stopped it from happening.”“How?” Toby had asked.Jim had smiled, but that it’d been a little bitter.“I needed the car to get out of the way, and it did. It just… ended up crashing into three other ones in the process.”Toby had watched Jim’s smile slip for a moment, the teen tucking the coin back into his pocket and shuffling his feet. His voice had been lowered as he spoke next. “I didn’t kill anyone, but it. It could’ve been close. The Janus Order came for me two days after.”Toby had tilted his head a little, considering the obviously regretful Jim and his story.Jim hadn’t been anything like what the television claimed deviants were like. He’d smiled, shook Toby’s hand, and was… exactly like Toby. Jim didn’t want his powers any more than him.Maybe… none of them did.“More interesting than how I got outed,” Toby had said lightly. “I stuck my math teacher on the ceiling for about ten minutes, and not even because she was threatening me with extra homework.”And Jim, despite the way his shoulders had slumped for a moment, had smiled again.
-/-
Toby will be the first to admit it- he never had that many friends back home, even before he outed himself as a deviant. It runs with the logic of his life these days that he’d make fast friends with another deviant, and in the midst of them getting treatment no less.Jim likes to cook. He can’t exactly demonstrate that here, but Toby trusts his friend that Jim’s skills are decent. As they’ve gotten to know each other, that’s the thing Jim has focused on the most in regards to his hobbies.“I’m a little… single-minded about it, honestly,” Jim told Toby more than once, always with an embarrassed shrug. “I do other stuff, but it’s kinda my go-to whenever I have a spare moment. When we get out of here, I’ll make you something, okay?”When they get out of here. Jim says that with hope and faith. His mom is a doctor, he says. She raised him to have trust that modern day medicine would eventually crack every problem the human body creates for itself. Even… severe genetic mutations, like theirs.Severe genetic mutation sounds pretty scary, until Jim gets stuck to a door handle because he can’t get it to let go of him; coldly molten steel melting around his fingers and holding him fast. Then, it’s actually a little funny, even just for a moment.The facility staff have to physically remove the handle from the door to get Jim off it, and they both get in trouble for the entire debacle, but the brief minute of humor is needed for both of them. Jim, especially, as the other patient has been here nearly a week and a half longer than Toby. Jim smiles easily, but there’s a pang of sadness in the expression sometimes.Jim misses his mom, like Toby misses his nana. Like every kid in here misses their families.The facility won’t let them call anyone, or even email. No letter exchanges, either. It’ll interfere with their recovery, Toby was told at one point. Better that they focus completely on getting well, rather than sweat any details of what’s going on out in the rest of the world right now.The rule of no outside contact sits wrongly in Toby’s chest. It feeds the disquieted feeling he’s been steadily nursing, the longer he and every other patient are in the facility.He’s got #43 written on his wristband, but he hasn’t met a single patient that’s got a number below #27. Jim’s is patient #36, and he’s never seen any numbers below #25. There are only enough patients other than them to fill a couple tables in the small cafeteria, which looks like it was built for at least three dozen; and along the halls where they’ve been given small bedrooms, most are empty.Jim tells him there were others, before Toby and the more recent additions came. He says that in fact… three disappeared without word just before Toby’s admittance.No one’s said anything about anyone being cured.So where did the other patients go?When Toby questions the nurses, during his second injection on his fourth day there- they politely and firmly tell him it would be broaching patient confidentiality to explain anything. The doctor overseeing things ignores his questions completely.And the injections. Whatever they’re being given, it leaves the area surrounding the small wounds red and irritated for hours afterwards, and by now Toby has started feeling nauseous after his treatments. Moments where he’ll take a step and everything lurches, leaving him holding his stomach and taking deep breathes.Jim has it even worse; coming back pale and shaky, unable to breathe easily for almost two hours afterwards. The crook of his elbows are almost constantly reddened, weeks of injections adding up to multiple scabs the patient picks at if he’s not told to stop.Toby wants to have the same kind of faith Jim does, but he just… doesn’t feel like he’s getting better at all.
-/-
“Hey, buttsnacks… gimme your fruit cups.”Patient thirty-four. Always a joy to speak with. Or rather, be harassed by.“Steve… come on, man,” Jim sighs, meeting the eyes of the blonde menacing their table. “You already had one, and it’s only nine in the morning. Do you really need to do this right now?”Steve smirks, flicking his bangs to one side with a jerk of his head. “Yes, yes I do. Hand ‘em over.”Jim and Toby have a choice between letting Steve have his way, or picking a fight over fruit cups and get them all in trouble with the bored looking guard and nurse by the wall of the cafeteria.Jim, as someone who prefers avoiding being in trouble as much as everyone else here, scowls deeply as Steve takes his fruit cup, but doesn’t move to stop him.“We only get them like twice a week, this is just cruel,” Toby exclaims, grabbing for his cup before Steve can. His hand gets slapped away, at which Toby cries out under his breath, and he’s despairing about his loss of precious sweet fruits as Steve goes to pick them up, only to lose his grip abruptly.Steve frowns. He tries to pick up the cup again. It doesn’t budge. Steve grits his teeth visibly and yanks on it, and the thin clear plastic of the cup tears in half. Steve falls backwards with a yelp and fruit bits and juice go flying everywhere.“Oops,” Toby says, realizing his split second contact with the plastic had messed with its gravity. There are cracks all around it on the platter, showing how heavy it must have been.“Dumbzalski,” Steve growls as he stands up again. He has a peach bit in hair and juice staining the front of his white shirt. Toby and Jim didn’t escape the juice ‘n’ bits explosion either, but Steve’s mess is definitely worse.“If it’s any consolation, you got us with juice, too?” Toby offers weakly. Steve’s hand fists the collar of his shirt, and Toby leans away, trying to cover his ears. “Aw, Steve, come on, the last time you did this we both ended up on the ceiling-”“Steve, no,” Jim tries, grabbing Steve’s arms and turning it into a three-way tussle, “it’s too early in the morning for this kind of-!”Steve opens his mouth and proceeds to deafen them both. Almost literally. But, apparently he’s either holding back (not likely) or can’t get up to full power. In fact, at a reasonable decibel, Toby thinks the word he’s shouted at them would probably juice.Of all things, Steve picked juice. In any other situation, Toby might laugh, but it’s been yelled in his face at a volume that’s so loud his ears pop and everything spins sideways.It’s not so funny like that.Toby can’t hear anything except ringing, head whirling as he falls off the bench of his table- Steve’s fingers leaving his shirt and letting Toby drop. Toby lies on his back for a long moment, trying to not give into the nausea of destroyed hearing and turn over to throw up. God, of all people to develop sonic voice modulation, it had to be Steve.Who is glaring right Toby from above him, and probably yelling something, too. Except Toby can’t hear him, thankfully, and he doesn’t have to worry about further assault anymore because Steve is on the ceiling.Toby grins a little deliriously. “I keep telling you people it’s dangerous to touch me,” Toby is pretty sure he says, but he can only feel the vibrations of the words in his throat, not actually hear himself.Steve’s mouth opens- probably to do a stupid sonic scream again- but there’s shapes in Kevlar armor entering Toby’s vision and faint, deep voiced shouting. The guards and nurses, finally.Toby flips Steve off. He might as well; this’ll already all be fuel for further bullying later, whether he gets a parting shot in or not.Steve’s face turns a blotchy red with anger. The other patient kicks off the ceiling in an attempt to get back down, but only floats right back upwards. Nurses are already bringing out the extendable poles with hooks on the end to drag him back down (brought in specifically for whenever Toby’s powers fritz this badly), and if Toby didn’t know they were all going to be in trouble, he’d laugh at the whole situation.To his right, Toby sees Jim holding the sides of his head and mouthing, no, no, no, no- fuck me, and other fun curses as people try to haul them to their feet. His friend is pale as a sheet and Toby doubts he looks much better than that.Toby gets about halfway up before the nausea returns, and he jerks to the side to retch somewhere that hopefully isn’t onto someone’s shoes.He gets the toe of a guard’s black boot, despite his best efforts.Great morning so far, isn’t it?
-/-
Steve is still on the ceiling even an hour later, after they’ve all been given scolding for the abuse of their powers. Jim takes the joint reprimand like a champ; not speaking out even once, though he hadn’t so much as tried to use his powers.Toby finds the scolding easier to deal with than usual, basically tuning things out. The perks of still being partially deaf, right?He’s a little nervous about having missed something important, but from what he did take in they’re mostly okay. They’re not allowed any dessert side dishes for the next week, however, and will lose all access to what few activities there are to do around here if another incident happens.Watching the same 80’s movie a twelfth time in a row is more interesting than staring at blank walls, so… they all meekly apologize, and get off with just a temporary ban from the television in the social room. Just for today they’re not allowed to enjoy the thrilling entertainment of exactly ten different movies they’ve all watched, oh what a loss.Not that Toby or Jim would have been able to hear the television, but it’s the principal of things.“Five of hearts?”“What?”“I said five of hearts.”“Oh. Go fish.”Toby groans, adding another card to his hand. They’re stuck to the side of the social room, behind a hastily dragged out divider. It’s by far one of the most ridiculous things Toby’s done so far in this place; sitting obediently where he won’t be able to so much as glance at the TV screen, and playing card games to pass the time.“Three of… clubs?” Jim tries. Toby groans again and hands over the spoils. Jim smiles proudly and sets them in his wins pile.“Why do I always lose when we play cards?” Toby mutters, counting his thirteen cards to Jim’s scant four.“Because you suck at everything, that’s why,” sneers the voice above them. Toby glances up, almost bored. Steve glowers at him from the ceiling, still stuck floating around.“I don’t know if the guy on the ceiling has much of a leg to stand on here,” Jim probably says, though Toby only catches half the words with his busted ears. “Or… any leg, for that matter.”“I’m gonna kill both of you when I get down from here.”“And then you’ll get us all banned from TV forever, and we’ll get you first for it,” Toby says under his breath to himself.“Just TRY!” shouts Steve; voice enhanced just enough to be a pain in the ear, but not enough he can get in trouble. Apparently Toby’s angry mumbling isn’t quite as mumbled as he thought. Damn hearing damage.“Feel like playing Guts when we finish this round?” Jim offers, ignoring Steve again.“We don’t have anything to count the bets,” Toby points out.“We could, uh… use strands of hair?”“Jim, you’re my friend and fairly cool to hang out with, but I’m not doing that.”“Okay, then you figure out another card game at least one of us knows the rules to so we can avoid death by boredom-”Jim cuts off as a piece of peach hits the table. They both glance up again, equally unimpressed by their unwanted companion.“Look, idiots!” exclaims the floating teen. “Like I’ve been trying to tell you.” Steve gestures sharply at the doorway of the room and for once, both Toby and Jim follow his instructions, if only out of sheer tedium with life.Hovering in the room’s threshold… an unfamiliar patient fidgets with her bracelet; eyes slowly and carefully taking in the other teens in the room. Her white clothes are the same as everyone else’s, and other than the fact that she’s clearly here for the same reasons they all are, she wouldn’t stand out as anything beyond relatively attractive. The most striking thing about her is that she’s got a bright streak of purple through dark brown hair; which falls slightly in her face as her eyes find Steve on the ceiling and do a double take.But her eyes narrow with suspicion rather than go wide with fear, so there’s a bit of a shift from the usual first day attitudes.The short boy that slinks in from the hall to stand with her, however, does display the usual signs of first day stress. His messy dark hair and thick glasses don’t do anything to lessen the impression of him being perpetually startled.He squeaks when he sees Steve on the ceiling. There’s definitely already some contrast between the newly admitted patients.“We should go say hi,” Jim says, eyes mostly on the girl. Toby doesn’t really have anything to say against the idea, so he follows along. Steve gets left to drag himself along the ceiling, like something out of a horror movie.Their lives in general are something like a horror movie, these days, and Toby tries to not think too deeply about that comparison again.Other patients are joining in on the greeting, forming a loose cluster as the more curious (or bored) teens introduce themselves. Everyone here is just waiting for their rotation into treatment rounds, and the new additions are welcome break from that.“Claire. Claire Nuñez,” replies the girl, shaking Mary’s hand. Mary, who only shudders slightly at the contact; her form flickering and threatening to split into duplicates, but she holds herself together without too much problem.“I’m Jim, this is Toby,” Jim is introducing them both, addressing the mousy glasses kid. He holds out his hand. “Your powers let you shake hands at all?” The tone is teasing, but in the context of things it’s a very serious question.“Oh- oh, yeah. It’s fine. They don’t- do anything like that.” The new patient is stuttering and nervous as anything, but he takes Jim’s hand and shakes anyway. His bracelet reads #46, which Toby absently memorizes as patient forty-six introduces himself.“I’m Eli,” says Eli, giving Jim a look of gratitude. After who knows how much backlash whenever he’s from- deviant backstories never have a happy premise or ending- this is probably the kindest interaction he’s had in ages. Same goes for Claire, who is slightly less suspicious of the room, now that Mary and some other patients are smiling and talking to her.“What’re your powers?” Eli asks interestedly as Jim releases his hand, and he moves to shake hands with Toby instead.“Weird, uncontrollable gravity stuff,” Toby supplies, hands firmly in his pants pockets and grateful for the long sleeves his shirt has. Bare skin is often dangerous around here. Eli looks quietly confused and putout about him not shaking his hand, arm drooping slowly, so Toby elaborates further. “Weird, uncontrollable gravity stuff that transfers to whatever I touch. So I don’t think you actually want me to shake that hand of yours, dude. You might end up like Steve.”“End up-? Oh!” Eli snickers as he glances upwards; the worry lifting from his features for a moment as he covers a sudden smile. “Up. Haha, wow.”Steve scowls and flips them all off. Toby shrugs gamely. “Or down, that happens a lot, too. Jim’s powers are a lot safer than mine; he’ll make you neat figurines out of quarters and I, uh. Might break your bones by tripling your gravity.”“He mostly just sneezes and ends up floating for a few minutes,” Jim says, definitely attempting to lessen the somewhat scary effects of Toby’s powers. Which, given how skittish Eli seems, is probably a good thing. Jim’s eyes then flicker over to the other new patient, and Toby’s attention moves to her as well just as Claire cups her palms and-“They don’t get very big, and I don’t know where they go,” she’s saying, expanding a tiny flat swirl of darkness between her fingers, “but… I’m pretty sure they’re portals of some kind. I’ve lost two sets of keys already to them.”“It… kind of looks like it’s made of shadows,” Jim comments, leaning over Toby’s shoulder to get a closer look. Claire and his eyes meet for a moment, and the new patient’s lips quirk into a smile at his curiosity.“Hey- watch it!” Mary interrupts with a hiss, eyes darting to the cameras in every corner of the room. “We’re not supposed to actually use our powers. We’ll all get in trouble if you start doing a show and tell right in front of the camera.”“Oh, really?” Claire asks, brow furrowing. “Huh. That’s… alright. Fine.” She dissipates the swirl of shadows in her hands, but looks annoyed for it.“It probably sets back our recovery if we do use them,” Jim explains apologetically. “And I kinda doubt any of us want to be here longer than we have to be, right?”“Obviously,” Claire sniffs, arms crossed. “I guess… I guess I can see the logic to that, but I don’t get why we’d end up in trouble for it. That’s like- asking a kid with a broken leg not to have trouble walking, or something.”Toby’s mild interest in Claire gets a little more serious, because yeah, he agrees with that statement. From the way the rest of the teens murmur and look uncomfortable, the feeling is pretty much mutual all around.She’s been here for only a handful of minutes, and already Claire seems to want to pick apart the whole facility. One contradictive rule at a time. If Toby weren’t made kind of nervous by that sort of personality, he’d probably immediately see about them being friends. Even if he himself doesn’t actively look for risky endeavours, the idea of having friends that do seems like it’d result in fun shenanigans.But, as it stands, he just wants to go home and avoid being in trouble as much as possible. Hanging around Claire already seems like it could be counterproductive to that. And as he arrives at this conclusion, of course, Toby notices Jim giving the girl slightly mushy looks.Oh, no.Toby gives a small prayer that Jim’s reasonable amount of common sense and Claire’s friendly demeanor will cancel out everything else about their personalities- ie Jim’s desire for adventure in life, and Claire’s thinly veiled need to rebel against authority, while still maintaining a cover of respectability.Nothing will probably happen. They’re in the worst setting for romance, after all, and while it’s not been talked about there’s hopefully a rule against relationships between patients.But considering the streak of bad luck everyone here has been suffering recently, Toby has a feeling it won’t work out so neatly.“Hey, you didn’t tell us your power,” Toby says to Eli, drawing Jim’s attention off Claire. The other boy perks up momentarily, and then deflates again.“It’s, um. It’s complicated…?” Eli says, voice starting strong and trailing off weak at the end. He adjusts his glasses, nervous all over again. “It’s like- I see stuff that no one else does. Stuff that’s real but not yet, and is- in theory at least- subject to an individual’s moods, actions, and plans.”Toby blinks. Jim blinks twice.“…Sssso it’s… what exactly?” Jim asks slowly.“Kind of a future vision?” Eli offers, shrugging helplessly. “But also the truth of people? And it’s only sometimes. I can’t control it at all. No one believes me about it, either…”The last part is very sad sounding. Again: deviants, never a happy backstory. Toby can’t do anything to physically comfort Eli, but Jim does that for him by clasping Eli’s shoulder and smiling.“Everyone here will believe you, Eli,” Jim says firmly, to which Eli manages a small, shy smile.“Thanks-” Eli starts to say, but is drowned out by Steve’s scream as he falls from the ceiling. Even if Steve is frustrating and questionable in his intelligence, the guy sure knows how to take a sizable fall and pop back up barely bruised.Their little meet and greet is then interrupted, before Steve can work up a proper storm of indignation and the new patients can finish mingling their way into the group. The last rotation of patients for treatment files back into the room, escorted by nurses and a few guards. There are always guards, dogging each step the nurses and patients take. Toby knows, with the same unspoken certainty as everyone else, that the people under those black visors and Kevlar jackets aren’t here to protect them from anyone. They’re here to protect people from the patients. From the deviants.The youngest out of them… Toby knows the kid is barely thirteen. Maybe they’ve all got powers that make them freaks of nature, but a glance around the room doesn’t make him see any potential threat from anyone but the people in charge. They’re teens in thin cotton clothes. The men and women running this place have barely concealed weapons in their belts.Toby still hasn’t been able to shake the disquiet he feels about the facility. The way things are going- how he feels sicker coming back from treatments instead of better, how patients disappeared without notice or word just before he came here, how this whole place doesn’t look anything like the warm environment of healing the pamphlets advertised-Toby is beginning to seriously think his disquieted suspicions won’t go away at all.Something about this all feels off. And everyone here knows it, whether they’re willing to speak up about it or not.

----- CHAPTER BREAK -----

“Try levitating the weight, patient forty-three.”“Wait- you want me to use my powers?”The hard, blank stare from the doctor is as much of an answer as Toby gets. He shrugs, not wanting to get in trouble for asking more questions. “Alright, if you say so.”He reaches across the table and taps the rectangle weight. Nothing happens immediately, but from the continued stares from the facility staff around him, Toby guesses he’s supposed to make something happen anyway.He’s… never actually tried to actively use his powers, just tried to turn them off once they’d been triggered. Toby can sometimes get them to listen to him, and has gotten the number of times it actually works to go up. Practice does make perfect and he’s been getting a lot of it. This, however, is the opposite of that skill, and one he’s definitely never given a try.Toby, internally cringing away from the intense observation around him, extends his hand again with splayed fingers.“Up or down?” he asks, pausing as that question occurs to him.“It doesn’t matter, just do it,” says the doctor, frigid as ice.“Okay, okay, jeez.” Hope you like having your table split in half, asshole. Toby clenches his fist, glaring at the weight on the table and searching inside himself for the metaphorical muscle that lets him turn his powers off. If he yanks it the other direction, maybe it’ll do the opposite of that…?The brick sized weight moves slightly. Toby almost breaks his concentration, amazed its actually working. The increased beeping of the machine his electrodes are connected to does nothing to help that concentration, either.Pulling harder on the twinging muscle inside him, heartrate kicking up and forehead beading with sweat- Toby lets out a choked sound and rotates his wrist sharply.The weight wobbles up into the air, rising a foot off the table and floating away. Silently, Toby curses that he didn’t damage the table like he wanted to. Maybe he pulled too far the opposite direction from turning off his powers.Of course, as his thoughts wander from the task at hand, the weight regains gravity and falls. It hits the floor, having floated nearly five feet from its original placement. Toby sits back, wiping at his face. He then grimaces at how hot his hands feel, shaking them to cool them off.He glances around, looking for reprimand or maybe, possibly some praise? But no one’s even looking at him anymore. The doctor is writing on his clipboard, expression as blank as it’d been at the beginning of this session. The nurses, both of them, are examining the feedback they’ve gotten from the still beeping machine.Toby rubs his sweaty palms on his pants nervously. He’d gotten an injection earlier, like always, but then they’d moved into this room next door. The whole using his powers on purpose thing? Completely new.“Alright,” says the doctor, finishing with his notes. He gives Toby another of his signature icy stares. “Begin again, this time with increased gravity if you can.”One of the nurses sets the weight on the table in front of him again. Toby gives it a long look, trepidation making his stomach queasy.“Now, patient forty-three. We haven’t got all day.”“Why?” Toby asks, managing to keep his cringing mostly internal. “You guys want my powers gone, right? Why am I-?”“We can’t very well measure how much effect the cure is having, if we don’t examine the impact it’s had on your powers.” The words are sharp as the doctor’s gaze, and Toby regrets asking his question at all. “No more interruptions. I have other obligations to get to today, and you are stalling me, patient forty-three. Now do it. Again.”Sufficiently warded off from further questions, Toby hunches his shoulders and touches the weight a second time.He causes it to float upwards again on that try, but the third try he does triple its gravity- putting a sizable dent in the steel table before the effect wears off again. He’s told to repeat the process multiple times after.Toby is sweaty as all get out by the time he’s allowed to leave, and he’s pretty sure he’s pulled he metaphorical muscle he controls his powers with. He could handle that, though, if it weren’t for the disturbing sort of satisfaction the doctor’s expression briefly had. Making just an ever so faint smile, when Toby warped the table so bad it nearly snapped in half.
-/-
“I think my powers are getting stronger,” Toby says, staring at his palms. They still feel too hot to be normal, even an hour after his appointment.“Really?” Jim questions curiously. He puts down one of the dozen blue puzzle pieces they’re trying to place. Why does the sky have to be so big and blue? Toby regrets suggesting this puzzle, even if its killing time.“Yeah, really. I woke up today and my entire bed was off the floor. I don’t even know how long I’d been doing that, dude. It could’ve been ten minutes, it could’ve been all night.”“That’s… rough, Tobes. Did you talk to the doctors about it?”Toby rolls his eyes. “Obviously, but they just said it’d get taken care of along with everything else, long as I keep getting the injections. During which, to add onto my first point here- they had me actually using my powers today. Like, having me workout with them or something. And they did that to you, and to a bunch of others here. All of which? Extremely weird. It doesn’t add up.”“They’re just documenting how much progress the cure has had, that’s all,” Jim says firmly. He goes back to working on the puzzle, not meeting Toby’s eyes as he says, “We’re in good hands, Toby. My mom knew one of the people who works for the Janus Order. She trusts Mr. Strickler’s word that they can help, so I trust it, too.”“Jim…” Toby sighs. “Dude, I know you have your whole ‘science will solve everything’ thing, but seriously. It’s not adding up. You’ve been here way longer than I have, and are you any closer to being cured?”“These things take time,” Jim says stubbornly. “You don’t recover from serious illness immediately, especially when it’s a genetic condition.”“Okay maybe, but-”“It’ll work, okay?”Toby stops talking, catching the harsher tone in Jim’s voice. His friend is clutching a piece of the puzzle in his fist, knuckles white.“It’ll work,” Jim repeats quietly. “It… it has to work. I gotta get back to my mom, alright? I can’t leave her alone out there, and I can’t leave until I’m normal again, so. The cure… it has to work.”Toby rubs the back of his neck, feeling a little bad for working up Jim. Between the two of them, while Toby definitely misses his nana, he doesn’t have the same desperation to get back home that Jim does. Toby has started to get the sense that when Jim is separated from the people he cares about, he tends to do badly on his lonesome.Hence, the way Jim is hunched up and miserably determined right now. Toby supposes the power of positive thinking, or at least bullheaded stubbornness, might have some effect on their conditions… but sticking your head in the sand about things doesn’t help, either.Still. Toby isn’t looking to alienate his friend. So, he says, “…Sorry. I’m sure it will, eventually. I guess I’m feeling impatient is all. A week and a half of getting stabbed with needles would make anyone twitchy, right?”Jim’s tension eases, and he smiles wanly. “I hear you. I’m on week three and it hasn’t gotten much better, haha.”“But it will eventually.”“Oh, yeah, of course. Things always have to get worse before they get better.”“Right…”Jim puts the puzzle piece he’d been holding into its place, pressing down on it to smooth the crumpled edges. Toby picks up yet another piece of the sky, and grumbles absently about how hard it is to find it’s companions.As Jim reaches across the table to take from Toby’s pile of pieces, Toby notices a bruise on his friend’s wrist.“Oh hey, where’d you get that?” he asks. The bruise is bluish, definitely painful looking.“Get what?”Toby points. “That, dude. You have to have bonked yourself pretty hard to get that kind of color.”Jim brings his arm close to himself, examining the bruise. He hums vaguely. “I must’ve done it when they were having me practice with my powers- I made a gauntlet, on this hand. Probably put too much pressure or something.”“You sure? Your powers never hurt you before, right?” Toby says, eyes still on the bruise.Jim shrugs. “First time for everything. It doesn’t even actually hurt, so it’ll probably go away soon enough.”Toby frowns, but… if it doesn’t hurt, then it’s probably nothing. He lets the matter go, and they resume their dragging but time killing task of assembling a five-hundred-piece puzzle of an open meadow.
-/-
“Oh my god, I miss the internet so much. How did my parents ever survive? How did my grandparents?”Toby usually tunes out a lot of what Mary says, but honestly? Mood. “Tack on video games to that list of things I don’t know how people lived without,” he says, receiving a few agreeably despairing nods from around the group. Even with how different each of them are, the mind-numbing boredom of their lives has managed to break down normal social barriers.Which is why, even though Mary still looks at Toby like she can’t believe they’re socializing together, she responds with a sniff and says, “The fact that we’re stuck with a television older than my nǎinai and only VHS movies to watch is practically barbaric. Not to sound like overly whiny or anything, but the least they could have done is give us Netflix.”“I’ve gotta say I’m with you on this one,” Claire says, nudging her friend’s side supportively. “I’d even welcome school work at this point. There’s nothing to do here.”Jim laughs. “You get used to the sheer boredom of it by week three, I promise,” he says sarcastically. Claire makes a disgusted sound, at which Jim’s smile gets a smidgen wider.Toby has revised his opinion about that, actually. He’d been late yesterday to breakfast after the whole floating-bed debacle, and found Jim talking animatedly with Claire over eggs and toast about advanced English classes. They’re both buffs on books that’ve been banned from the school system, it turns out, so maybe the cause isn’t so hopeless after all. Common ground is good for basing relationships of any sort on.Still. Not really the place or time. But who’s to stop either of them from finding a spot of happiness in the dreary settings they’re in?“We could always do what Steve’s doing, to avoid the boredom,” Toby suggests jokingly, gesturing at the other teen across the room. Steve, who is currently in the middle of doing push-ups, seems set on maintaining the toned body of a high school star athlete. Even if they only get to shower every two days, and exactly three sets of clothes to wear. Ew, does Steve ever stink.“I’ll literally die before I do that, thanks,” Mary says loftily, examining her nails. How they’re still so nice even away from salons, Toby does not know, and will not risk his neck asking after that witchcraft.“I honestly might be bored enough,” Jim says, watching Steve with a sort of grim resignation.“Ugh, god, I just might do it, too,” Claire groans, slumping further into the couch she and Mary are sharing. “I have never been this bored in my life, I swear. I’ll take anything for entertainment at this point.”Mary wrinkles her nose. “If you really want to, clairebear, but at least try and do it when we’re about to have showers, okay?”Claire laughs. “I promise I will, as long as you do it with me. Exercise makes you healthier, so if anything, this should help us along with being cured.”“Again: I will literally die before I do anything like that.”Toby snorts. “I take it we share the same opinion about gym class, then.” Ah, the withering look of a teenage girl. It never gets any less scary. Mary clearly doesn’t enjoy being compared to him, so Toby drops that topic. “Um, anyway. If anyone has any games to pass the time, I’m all ears.”“We could play twenty questions?” Jim suggests, eyes going to Claire briefly. Toby almost shakes his head; his friend is very unsubtle.“I doubt any of you have any decent gossip,” Mary says loftily, “but at this point, I’ll lower my standards.”“I’m game,” Claire says, nudging Mary with a grin.“Cool,” Toby says, internally laughing at the eagerness in Jim’s expression. “Uhhh… so who goes first?”“Claire does!” Mary declares, grabbing the other girl’s arm. “I wanna know everything about my new bestie. You both ask her five questions each, and I’ll ask the other ten.”“Isn’t that a bit unfair?” Jim questions.“No?” Mary replies, shooting him a weird look. Toby and Jim exchange a glance, during which Toby tries to silently convey how very not worth it trying to argue with Mary is. “Okay, let’s start with the important things. Claire-” Mary says in a very serious voice, “-do you have a boyfriend?”Jim makes an interesting noise between choking and squeaking.“Or a girlfriend, or- whatever, you know.” Mary gestures vaguely. “A romantic partner in general.”Claire laughs, cheeks slightly flushed. “No romantic partners, sorry to disappoint. I haven’t actually put a whole lot of effort into dating? I’m in a lot of advanced courses at school- it doesn’t leave much time for socializing.”Mary makes a put-out expression, while Jim quietly puts a hand on his chest, breathing out. Toby waggles his eyebrows at his friend, and Jim flushes, sticking out his tongue before looking away.“Ugh, fine, someone else ask, now,” Mary says, sulking a little at Claire’s answer.“Uh- any siblings?” Jim asks, going for a safe question.Claire smiles the widest she has since she got here. “A new baby brother, actually! He’s only a few months old. Enrique was a bit of a… surprise, you know?”“How so?” Toby asks.“Well, let’s just say my mom and dad took us on a cruise liner… and nine months later…”They all laugh. Toby does as well, but silently has to push down the old hurt attached to the subject. He won’t spoil the mood by playing the dead parents card.“Okay, my turn,” he says instead. “What video games do you play?”He’s sad to learn Claire has only really played a few Pokemon games and Animal Crossing. Her mom apparently doesn’t approve of teens spending their whole day playing mindless games like that, so their house doesn’t have even a Wii. Once again, Toby laments he’s the only one here who has any real love for video games. Jim is too casual about them to count, even if he has a Wii (which he plays Wii sports on, mostly, because of course he’s that much of a dork).They spend a fair while playing the game. Claire reveals she’s a pretty serious punk, despite how preppy her vibe comes off as. Jim tells them about how he spent a lot of his early years in hospitals, raised by teams of nurses and doctors his mom works with and trusted to mind him. Toby talks about how his nana has half a dozen cats and that they all smell terrible. Mary talks about how into fashion blogging she is, and her plans for she and Darci to do a photoshoot together when they get out of here.“Who’s Darci?” is Claire’s question for her, the fifteenth they’ve asked.Mary shrugs, and Toby notices a dip in her mood. “Another one of us,” she says, tucking her hair behind her ear, though it’d been perfectly placed already. It makes the gesture seem nervous. “A patient. She got moved to a different ward a little before Toby and the rest of his group joined.”“I remember her,” Jim says, nodding. “I guess I thought… she went home, or something.”“She didn’t,” Mary says, a little bitterly. “Darci’s powers- she was getting worse. They moved her so she couldn’t hurt herself or anyone else.”“But…” Jim looks confused. “She seemed pretty in control of her powers, if you ask me.”“I know,” Mary replies quietly. A tension falls over the group, thick enough Toby slides his tongue against his braces inside his mouth, wanting to fidget but not wanting to attract attention. For a few moments, there’s only the sounds of Steve still working out in the background.Thank god an entrance to the room breaks the silence. They all turn their heads towards the doorway as it opens and an unfamiliar kid steps through. One of the doctors is speaking to the newbie, but the teenage boy is clearly not listening very well, dark eyes averted and a scowl on his face. The doctor gives up and leaves in short order.Toby follows the others as they stand, headed to greet the new addition to their merry band of misfits. Said addition looks to be the same ethnicity as Claire, though he has darker skin and a surlier slouch, and has unruly black hair cut in a rough mohawk. He looks to them as they approach.“Hi,” Jim starts, heading the reception, “I’m-”“Don’t care,” says the kid, sticking his pinky in his ear and picking at it.“I- I’m sorry?”“Apology accepted.” New guy steps around Jim, stalking further into the room with his hands in his pockets. “Shit, is this really the entertainment I gotta work with? I would’a smuggled somethin’ in if I’d known.”“Hey, excuse me?” Toby says, raising his voice a little. “You can’t just blow Jim off like th-”“Can, did, doin’ the same to you,” says new guy, accent drawling. “I don’t really care what your names are, an’ you shouldn’t care what’s mine.”“Oh great,” Mary says, not bothering to whisper as she speaks to Claire. “We’ve got an edgelord in the room.”“Ey, fuck off, missy. You think I wanna be here?”“You think I wanna be?”Mary and the new kid stare each other down. Its only after a long minute of that that the new guy looks away, something like grudging respect in his expression. Mary does have one hell of a glare.“…Name’s Enrique,” he says in a grumpy tone.“Oh! That’s so weird,” Claire says, perking up a little. “That’s my little brother’s name, too, actually.”“And I’m the one- the only-” The jock of their group strikes a pose, exposing his pit stains. “-Steve Palchuk.”Enrique grunts in reply to both of them. He wanders over towards the TV and movie selection, poking through the videos. Toby scratches the back of his neck; he’s getting the sense Enrique isn’t going to be exactly buddy-buddy with them all.“So… why’re you here?” Toby asks anyway, wanting to break the new tension. “I do gravity stuff, Jim’s got an awesome metal thing going on…”“I duplicate myself,” Mary says as she loops her arm around Claire’s waist, “and Clairebear here can make portals.”“And I-” Steve starts to crow.“I do levitation,” Enrique says, cutting Steve off. “Nothin’ heavier than ten pounds. It’s not much, but fuck. Still enough to get me thrown in here with the rest’a you.”“We weren’t ‘thrown’ in here,” Jim says, frowning a little. “We all came here willingly, so we could get better.”“‘Better’,” Enrique mimics, scoffing for some reason. “Whatever helps you sleep at night, kid.”Toby furrows his brow. “Dude, I’m pretty sure you’re the same age as us.”“Sure, sure,” Enrique says, and goes over to flop down onto the couch. “Now bugger off. I’m tired an’ wanna catch some Z’s a’fore someone starts poking me with shit again.” He puts an arm over his eyes, shoes up on the cushions, and evidently is done with talking to them.Toby glances around at the others. Mary looks outright pissed off, while Claire’s frown is milder. Steve is muttering to himself and sulking about not getting a turn to speak, and Jim has an expression like he wants to say something but won’t let himself.Toby just sighs. He’s used to people being assholes to him. There’s decent people and there’s shitty people, and the ratio of each tends to shift without warning. Enrique is just the balance to Jim, in a way.Toby still goes over and gives his friend a sympathetic look, quietly saying, “Don’t worry, I think he’s a dick, too.”Jim stifles a laugh.“I can hear you,” Enrique says.Toby makes a talking motion with his hand, mouthing blah blah blah. Jim doesn’t stifle his laughter this time.
-/-
The sound of someone’s shin running into a metal bench is becoming a typical accompaniment to mealtime. Jim has the worst luck, honestly.“You going through a growth spurt, man?” Toby asks, already digging into his evening meal while Jim gingerly sits down, wincing and muttering curses as he recovers.“Apparently,” he grits out, hissing in pain as he reaches down to massage his poor leg. “God, I think my skin is just gonna stay blue at this point.”Blue? Toby leans to the side, enough that he can see under the table. Jim’s slightly too-short pant leg is shoved up, exposing the collection of bruises he’s got up and down underneath. Toby whistles. “Jeez, how many times do you gotta run into something before you stop doing it?”“More times than I have,” Jim says belligerently, sitting upright again and sighing. “I feel like one big ache lately, I hate it. It figures I get a growth spurt at the most inconvenient time possible.”“I’d take it off your hands if I could,” Toby says, somewhat envious of his friend’s budding height. He hasn’t grown since the end of middle school and it’s really started to rankle him, seeing classmates shoot upwards. Toby just got pimples and voice cracks out of the deal.“If only.”“Move,” says a voice behind Toby. “Me and Claire are sitting on this side.”Toby glances over his shoulder, and then rolls his eyes, pushing his tray across the table and getting up. He should have sat next to Jim to begin with, since Mary and Claire have started eating with them. He gets that Claire seems to enjoy spending time with Jim, but Mary is at best tolerating their presence. Maybe she’s just that lonely at this point, with how long she and Jim have been here.Once they’re all arranged on opposite sides, they tuck into their meager dinner. It’s mediocre food, just on the threshold of being enjoyable, but failing to make the grade. Toby thinks fondly of drive through junk food and his nana’s pot pies.They’re drawn out of small talk a few bites into the meal, everyone in the room glancing towards a commotion. In the far corner, in an oh so surprising turn of events, Steve is harassing the new kid.“I don’t know how he has that much energy,” Jim says wonderingly as Steve’s power laced voice starts to rise.“Probably goes with being chaotic dumbass,” Toby snickers. Jim laughs and they exchange a little fork-five; the safer alternative to high-fives, since it’s still dicey for Toby to touch people.“You two are such nerds,” Mary says, a tad derisively.Toby lets the slight flow over him; it’s just part of Mary’s personality. “You just hate you don’t know what that means.”Mary scoffs. “You think I haven’t seen DnD memes? Please. You wish you had as many social media platforms as I do.”“I’m sorry, did you just imply you know enough about DnD to understand memes about it?”Mary doesn’t deign to answer his question. They’re all distracted again anyway, since Steve’s intimidation spiel is cut off by him shrieking- normal shrieking, otherwise they’d all be covering their ears. They all look towards him just in time to see Enrique’s food tray fly through the air and smack Steve in the face.Plastic cutlery float around Enrique’s raised hand, responding to how he twitches his fingers. As the security in the room start to move to defuse the situation, Enrique drops the utensils and raises both his hands.“He started it,” says the new patient, loud enough to be heard by everyone in the room. Steve is still too busy wiping mashed potatoes and peas off his face to do more than splutter angrily.As the two of them are led away, Toby hums. “At least Steve didn’t bother us today,” he remarks, glad to avoid another lecture and punishment.“Why doesn’t he like you guys, anyway?” Claire questions. “You’re pretty chill.”“Fat guy in the room, squishy target, you know?” Toby says, gesturing at himself. He jerks a thumb at Jim beside him. “An’ he bugs him just because Jim likes domestic chores and he’s too nice to hit him back for it.”“I could hit him back,” Jim protests.“Ahuh.”“Seriously! I’m nice, but I’m not so nice I’m a doormat, jeez.”Toby exchanges looks with Mary and Claire. Claire seems a bit dubious, and Mary is shaking her head, mouthing, “Nope.”“Guys,” Jim protests again.“It’s probably also because he sees you as competition,” Mary adds on, giving Jim a considering look. “Guys who’re insecure in their masculinity tend pick fights with anyone they think will undermine their sense of said masculinity.”Jim blinks at her in confusion. Toby raises an eyebrow at her psychoanalyzing. As if reading his mind- which is a scary concept, Toby is so glad that’s not Mary’s power- Mary clarifies, “I was taking psychology courses, okay? They told me to pick a subject to study and I picked one that was easy to do.”“Humans?” Claire guesses.“No, boys. Easiest A I ever got.”“How am I undermining his masculinity?” Jim asks belatedly.“Because you’re pretty easy on the eyes, Lake,” Mary says in a duh tone.“I’m- what?”“She’s right,” Claire says, smiling at him. “You have nice hair, too.”Jim puts a hand on his head, looking even more confused and now as equally flustered. “My hair? It’s getting kind of long, I wish I’d cut it before came here,” he rambles. “But, uh, if you think it looks better longish-”Toby pokes Jim’s side with the dull end of his fork before his friend can dig himself any deeper. Jim’s mouth snaps shut and he stops talking.Normal conversation resumes after that, though Jim has a tinge of embarrassment the rest of their meal. Claire, too, which Toby notices when he looks a little closer at the undertone of redness to her brown cheeks.Toby glances at Jim. His friend sweeps his somewhat shaggy bangs out of his face just as he does, the gesture unconscious. From the side, it’s easier to see just how strong Jim’s nose is, which contrasts with somewhat delicate cheekbones he’s got.Toby moves his eyes back to his near-finished food. It’s a little weird to ogle your friend when you’re sitting right next to each other. But…Claire’s right.Jim’s hair is nice.

----- CHAPTER BREAK -----

“I’m dying,” says Eli.“I don’t think you’re actually dying,” says Jim.“I’m dying,” insists Eli, voice pathetic and pained.Toby looks towards the other teen, who is laid out on the couch with a washcloth over his eyes. Unfortunately, for some ridiculous vague reasoning, Eli isn’t allowed to just stay in his room to ride out the migraine he’s dealing with. Toby feels a lot of sympathy for him; Toby’s been feeling on the ill side lately, too.Though, not quite to the extent where even TV is too much for him (which has reduced Toby and Jim to silently playing solitaire on the carpet). Eli hasn’t been able to get off the couch since he stumbled in from his turn with treatment. It’s just getting plain sad to watch the guy suffer.“Do want us to go ask about more painkillers?” Toby asks softly, doing his best not to aggravate Eli’s migraine any worse.“I already had three extra strength ones… I can’t have any more until dinner,” Eli says, miserable as any human possibly can be.Jim and Toby look towards each other, sharing a grimace. Toby dislikes seeing people like this, it makes him uncomfortable- so it must be doubly bad for Jim, who legit can’t help how much compassion he has for others.“Well… if you’d be okay with it,” Jim says slowly, tentatively, “my mom sometimes has really bad headaches after twenty-four hour shifts in the ER. I’ve gotten pretty good at neck and scalp massages, and they’ve really helped her, so...”Eli is quiet for a pause, during which Toby worries for Jim’s feelings- he’s been in situations where he offered help to someone and they snubbed him for it. And the more he’s gotten to know Jim, the better Toby understands that Jim just inherently wants to be a helpful person. Being refused on that offer of assistance leaves him restless and upset.“…Would you really?” Eli asks, drawing Toby back to the present.“Of course,” Jim replies, a smile breaking across his face. “I wouldn’t offer if I didn’t mean it.”“Oh… Sorry, yeah, ‘course.” Eli gingerly sits up, taking the damp washcloth off his face, revealing a sheepish expression. “Sorry, I just- I don’t- I haven’t really had people who’d do that kinda thing for me…”Jim chuckles, not unkindly. “No, I get that. I haven’t really had anyone to do this for me, either.”“Seriously?” Toby questions dubiously. “But you’re like, the chillest guy ever. How could people not like you.”Jim shrugs. “I keep to myself, usually, and I don’t really go out much.”“You just offered a neck massage to a guy we met less than a week ago, and you’re telling me you ‘keep to yourself’.”“Well, this is, you know, an extenuating circumstance. This is different.”Toby gives Jim a long, pointed stare. He doesn’t believe for a second Jim doesn’t go out of his way on regular to help others. Whatever kids he went to school with, they’re all blind, deaf, and dumb, because Jim is basically one of the best people Toby has ever managed to befriend. If Toby has his way, he’s not going to let that friendship go even once they leave here. It’s only been a few weeks, and he already can’t really imagine going back to not having the other teen in his life.While Jim sits on the couch to help Eli, Toby keeps playing solitaire. He steals Jim’s cards to add to his own half of the deck, extending the lifespan of his game. It’s nice, the quiet right now. The only other person in the room is Mary, who came back from her treatment, curled up in one of the plush armchairs, and fell dead asleep over an hour ago. She hasn’t so much as twitched since then, breathing slow and even.She’s got some pretty dark bags under her eyes, though, and Toby is a little concerned by how pale she is compared to how she looked at breakfast. She’s a naturally fair skinned person, but it’s dipped into somewhat anemic, now.Toby absently scratches the backs of his hands- which are getting dry and itchy, lately- and wonders how much longer it’ll be before at least one of them starts to recover. Right now, it feels like no one is making progress. Jim still has a peaky look to him after each session, and has started to complain more about his body aching- though, that could just be his growth spurt. Eli is assaulted by headaches and bleariness to his eyesight, and Mary is more subdued, lacking her usual bubbliness. Claire is holding out better than the rest of them, but even she seems to be lagging sometimes, rubbing her hands together to shake a chill that comes and goes.Toby scratches at his knuckles a bit harder, pensively frowning as he considers those things. Again, the persistent feeling of something’s not right is still with him, and he dislikes that though he’s holding out for something to dissuade those thoughts, mostly because of Jim’s faith, nothing has managed to do so yet.He lets those troubling thoughts slide away, though, as Claire, Steve, Enrique, and two others patients come back from treatment. At the increase in ambient chatter in the room, Eli makes a wounded noise and curls up on himself, the steady, gentle ministrations from Jim’s hands on his neck not enough to deter the migraine’s effects.Toby puts down his cards and goes to tell the other patients to be quiet- the least they can do for each other is avoid making one another’s stay worse than it has to be. Of course, Enrique basically ignores him, and Steve makes a threat towards Toby for trying to get him to do anything.It’s only because Claire tries to intervene that Toby’s attention can catch the other things that happen in the span of a few seconds. Mary opens one eye as Steve’s voice climbs, Eli starts clutching his ears and stifling crying sounds, and Jim stands up with a barely restrained glare.Claire is trying to reason with Steve, voice firm and even, which wouldn’t work with Steve regardless of his bad mood post-treatment- and he makes the mistake pushing past Claire physically, hand shoving her away and heading for the TV.Jim’s expression shutters into something truly angry, eyes narrowing, and in parallel, Mary opens her eyes wide.Before Jim, Toby, or anyone else can react, there’s suddenly a lot more people in the room, and Steve reels with a shriek high enough to make Toby wince and Eli muffle a sob like sound.“If you don’t shut up right this second,” hiss twelve Marys simultaneously, “I’m going to make you regret deciding to even think about talking for the rest of the night. Do I make myself clear?”“I- you- hhheee-” Steve’s words become a tight squeak as all twelve Marys press in close, tired eyes blazing. “I’m sorry,” he says in a small whisper, cringing away from the dozen girls half his size.Toby doesn’t blame Steve for that reaction, honestly. Toby got behind Jim and Claire the second he realized just how very much Steve had fucked up. He’s currently depending on Mary’s friendship with Claire and her tolerance of Jim to save his skin if the infuriated teenage girl turns her ire on anyone else.“Good,” say the Marys, their voices overlaying each other and increasing their tone of authority. “Now go read in a corner, silently, and do not wake me again.”“Yes, ma’am,” Steve says. The Marys glare at him a moment longer, before deciding he’s been scared into submission enough. They nod to each other and start to move back towards the chair the original Mary had been sitting in. Steve makes a hasty retreat while he can.“Ha,” Enrique says, reminding everyone of his presence in the room. He looks utterly amused by the sequence of events that just took place.All twelve Marys shoot vicious looks over their shoulders. Enrique averts his eyes and goes to act very busy with some of the bland paperbacks they have in the library. Like photos being piled on top of each other, the Marys morph back together into a single person again, and she flops back into her chair- passing out almost immediately, head lolling back against the cushion.“…Well,” Jim says in the following quiet, “that certainly happened.” Eli is still making pained sounds on his couch, so Jim’s attention is taken once more.Toby is left standing close to Claire’s back, the other half of his hiding place from Mary’s wrath. They look at each other, and an unspoken reminder that they don’t really hang out without their other two friends makes them pause.Claire breaks the silence. “You wanna go ask for some paper and play hangman?”Toby doesn’t hesitate to say, “Sure.”It’s turns out to be a mistake to agree to play word games with Claire. Claire is a terrible, horrible, astonishingly smart person and is fluent in four different languages. Toby is fluent in one and a half (his Spanish marks were mediocre, but not awful), and has to fall back on using gamer slang and bits of lore phrases to keep up with how fucking hard Claire’s word choices are.
-/-
It’s uncomfortable how quiet Toby’s room is, late in the night.Curfew is at eight, lights out at nine. Toby doesn’t have a clock in his small room, but he feels like it’s been a couple hours since they went out. He’s spent the entire time staring at the dark ceiling; not feeling tired enough to sleep.Except, that’s not really it. He is tired after another treatment session- his daily injections, and then supervised experiments with his powers- but can’t fall asleep with his mind unsettled the way it is.Toby rolls onto his other side for the hundredth time, feeling the sterile, slightly scratchy sheets against his cheek. He misses his own bed and his own room. He’s lived in it his whole life, so every aspect of it is arranged just how he likes it. Blankets and sheets worn soft, scuffs on his headboard and side table, creaky floorboards he knows by heart…Toby misses his home. He misses his nana just as much. Sometimes he feels a little suffocated by her affection, but now? Toby would give just about anything to get another hug from her. Have dinner in their tiny kitchen, with his nana’s cats winding around his legs begging for scraps. Go back to normalcy.Toby misses normalcy. He doesn’t quite miss going to school, but he at least misses having the freedom to walk around his neighborhood. He knows the area like the back of his hand, due to taking off the beaten track paths to and from school. Kids in his grades have sometimes been… really shitty to him.But that’s not much of an issue anymore, given Toby couldn’t go back to his school anyway, and anyone who’d bullied him is probably too scared to try it anymore. One of the few perks to being a genetic freak of nature, right?Toby doesn’t expect his eyes to start burning, but they do. He turns his head into his pillow, swallowing a lump in his throat and taking a slow breath.It’s still hitting him, on and off, just what sort of situation he’s really in. That he’s basically going to be trapped here until it is that made him this way is fixed. He won’t get to see his nana, or her cats, or live in his own home. Not until he’s cured of deviancy.Even with the friends Toby’s made in this facility, he feels very alone, and very scared.How much longer will it take? How many more tests and injections until his powers are cured? Jim and other kids as well, they’ve been here for weeks, nearly months. Toby doesn’t want to be here for that long- if he had any say, he’d want to leave right this minute.But… what would happen if he did? If he walked away from the only people who stand a chance of making him normal again, what happens to him then? Would the mutation in his genes get worse? Would he eventually seriously hurt someone with his powers? Would he be arrested for just being a deviant?Would his nana actually want him to come home while he’s still like this? Toby feels a twist in his gut as he realizes he doesn’t know the answer to that question for sure.He feels a chill sweep over his body, goosebumps breaking out, and Toby lifts his face from his pillow. In the dim of his room, and with unwanted tears blurring his vision, it takes him a moment to figure out why he’s so cold. Then, as the bed lists slightly underneath him, Toby realizes he’s changed the gravity of his bed and blanket.He lets out a sound that’s half sob, half resigned sigh.“Of fucking course,” he mutters to himself, wiping his eyes as he floats upwards along with his entire bed. It says something about his mental state that while this should make him feel soul crushing despair, he’s mostly just experiencing tired frustration.Just another night of living in a ridiculous, scary, and ridiculously scary situation. Toby thinks he read something about how you can only maintain absolute fear for so long. Maybe that’s what’s happening to him right now; coming back up from a low enough point he started crying.Tears won’t fix this. They’d probably make this worse, in fact.Toby takes a deep breath, and very, very slowly tries to increase the gravity of himself and his bed again. It takes a few tries- involving a number of instances where he panics and floats back upwards- but eventually, Toby gets his bed to set down again without only a mildly loud thunk.He lays flopped on his disarrayed bed, feeling newly exhausted. Toby wipes sweat off his forehead, wincing at how warm his hands feel now. No one comes to check on the noise, thankfully. A reprimand for misuse of his powers (even accidental) isn’t something Toby has energy to deal with.Maybe he’ll actually sleep now, too.Toby drags his blankets and sheets into a semi-organized position, lies back down, and gives his best shot at getting some shut eye.Lucky for him, it works this time around.
-/-
“Scale of one to ten. How much trouble do you think I’d get in if I did sharpie graffiti all over the stupidly white walls?”“I’d say an eleven, maybe thirteen.”“Okay, how about this? Scale of one to ten. How worth it would it be?”“Same answer. Maybe even a fourteen.”Toby watches Claire twirl her sharpie marker threateningly, her eyes fixed on the social room’s walls with a worrying intent. Not that he could really blame her, though. The dozen or so (badly folded) paper animals on the table weren’t all that entertaining; there is only so much origami you can struggle with before you start getting destructive.“Buuuut, since I like having at least some freedom,” Toby says quickly before Claire can enact her plan, “let’s stick to drawing terrible things on malformed animals.”Claire huffs, rolling her eyes. “I’d say we couldn’t lose any more of our freedom at this point, but sure, whatever you want. Hand me that hippo- it needs some extra eyes.”“It’s a sheep.”“Close enough.”Toby pushes the hippo-sheep across the table to her. He picks up a piece of paper that’s been cut in almost a square shape and starts folding a new animal. The page he’s got the origami how-to manual open to is trying to teach him how to do a penguin.“You know,” Claire says, doodling on the increasingly eldritch sheep-hippo, “I’m usually less inclined towards destruction of property.”“Ahuh?”“I’m just- squirrely, I think.”“Mhm…”“I don’t think I’ve been this bored in my entire life. I’m actually missing how my mom would sign me up for like, five different after school activities every semester.”“Huh.”“I also miss the thumping of the heart I’ve hidden under my bedroom floorboards. I’m not sleeping the same without it.”“Personally, I think Edgar is a bit melodramatic, but valid.”“Melodrama is the point, obviously.”“Sure. And I am listening to you. I’m just really focused on my penguin.”“Is that what it is?”“Shut up. I’m trying my best.”“It looks like a Mr. Potato Head with a horn.”“Shut up I’m trying my best.”Claire laughs at Toby’s pathetic penguin blob. He almost admits that it does sort of look like a Mr. Potato Head with a horn, but refuses to give her the satisfaction of that admission, so he stays silent. When he hands it off to Claire for doodling, she sets to making it match her vision.“I can’t believe we’re the ones stuck on the waiting list today,” Claire grumbles, coloring in the hat of their potato head a tad aggressively. “I mean, I’m one of the newest patients- shouldn’t my treatment be a priority until they stabilize me?”“They took Eli, so I think we’re just unlucky,” Toby replies. He glances at Claire’s handiwork with their paper creatures, taking in the nightmarish details she’s added to them. “And I might’ve said that you’re relatively stable already, but I’m having second thoughts right now.”Claire flicks the potato-penguin at him, and Toby just closes his eyes as it hits his forehead.“Aren’t you supposed to be some kind of super mature advanced studies student?”“I’m on vacation. And I’m probably expelled by now anyway.”“Same, honestly. Except for the advanced studies part.”They lapse into quiet for a bit. They wordlessly exchange roles; Claire taking the little stack of papers and the book, and Toby taking the sharpie. He flicks the little clippy hook while he waits, snapping it back against the cap absently.Claire makes another cat- better than her first attempt, since it has four legs this time. Toby draws bugs on it, just because. Claire makes a really, really bad squid. Toby takes it and tries to turn it into a comet or something, but it ends up an even worse mess of scribbles.Claire stops in the middle of her folding after that, staring at the open book page in a way that makes it seem like she isn’t actually reading the instructions. Then, she holds out her hand and says, “Gimme the pen.”Toby hands over the pen. He almost reaches for the paper stack, thinking Claire’s fed up with folding things, but she starts writing something on her current sheet, and the sentence catches Toby’s eye despite it being upside down.I think there’s something wrong with this place. That’s what Claire writes on the paper. Toby holds it in his hands, thinking of the camera’s they’re on an angle from right now. The cameras can see what they’re doing, but not what they’ve written. Writing solves the issue of someone possibly listening in, too.Toby takes the sharpie after a moment, replying to the note.

That’s what I’ve been thinking. The no outside contact thing is really freaking me out honestly.

I know. It’s freaking me out too. We’re cut off from EVERYTHING in here- no news channels, no internet, not even radio. They’re hiding something, from us and everyone else.

They won’t tell us where the kids disappear to either. Not even people who’ve been here the longest know what happens to them.

Sorry to be pessimistic, but I’m starting to doubt it’s anything good.
Toby stares at those words, and feels the disquieted thoughts he’s been tamping down on rise up. Claire pushes a fresh piece of paper over to him, and Toby swallows the creeping fear he’s harboring.

My powers are getting stronger. I know Jim keeps saying it gets worse before it gets better, but I haven’t seen a single person get even close to ‘better’.

Mine are getting stronger too. They’re definitely doing something to us. Question is WHY tho.

Yeah… don’t people want us to go back to normal? I mean, everyone would be way safer if we did.

Toby almost writes ‘I’m scared about really hurting someone if we don’t’, but restrains himself from making things that personal. He and Claire are only just becoming friends at this point.It’s a conspiracy obvs, Claire writes back. They want our powers for something, so they’re collecting us all one by one. Trouble is finding out Why, and finding out just Who is the one behind it all.

Getting out of here somehow would be nice too.

Oh definitely. Claire hands that reply to him with a sardonic grin.“…I’m really missing fresh deep fried food,” Toby whispers with a small smile.“God, I miss fresh nachos!” Claire despairs, breaking their tense atmosphere. “Don’t think I’m being stereotypical here either, my dad makes fantastic nachos.”“I miss my nana’s cooking, too, honestly,” Toby admits with a laugh. “I’d kill for some of her pies.”“Oh my god you get homemade pies?”“You don’t?”“No.”“She also does great cookies. Her chunky chocolate chip ones are the best.”“Please stop torturing me; I haven’t had chocolate in so long.”Toby laughs at her and tells her they had chocolate pudding a few days before she came. Claire tosses origami at him for his teasing.“We got distracted,” Claire announces a couple minutes later. She shakes her fluffy brown hair and dislodges the paper gecko in it.“You started it,” Toby says, glancing around at the casualties of their spat. Little paper corpses litter the floor around them. “You also killed all our animals.”“You helped with the cull, don’t even deny it.”“No witnesses, no proof.”“Anyway,” Claire says, her tone amused, “we should talk to Jim when he comes back. Maybe some of the other kids, too. And yes, that means Steve.”Toby groans. “Why? He’s an asshole, Claire, and I doubt he’s noticed anything we haven’t.”Claire tsks at him. “Don’t turn down a source of information before even looking into it. Unless you’re suddenly developing new powers, you have no idea what he knows.”“Ugh… fine, you’re right.”“I know I am.”“Don’t push your luck by rubbing it in.”“Or what?”“I’ll sic a giant squid on you.”Claire doesn’t even pretend to be scared of the paper squid Toby brandishes at her. And she retaliates with unnecessary brutality, because she’s terrible.Toby wishes he could have grabbed the sharpie and thrown it away before Claire got to it. Everything went downhill from there.“I leave you two alone for a few hours, and this happens,” Jim says admonishingly to them when he comes back.“She-” “He-” “-started it.”“And I’m finishing it,” Jim says, plucking the sharpie from them both, “before you become those old timey tattooed performers in a circus.”To fill up the rest of the mind-numbing time before people started to return from treatment, there’d been… doodling. Claire now has an anime cat on her wrist, the triforce inside her elbow, a snake wrapped around her forearm, and twelve different monster flowers with teeth everywhere else. Toby ended up with bats on his left hand, a cartoonish vampire mouth on his other hand, a constellation between his freckles and moles, wonky squiggles that were supposed to be birds, and a crudely drawn phallic symbol.There are also smears and flicks of black on their pale clothes, which is just the kicker. Every time they wear this set from now on, they’ll be reminded of today.Unfortunately, the show and tell of their marker tattoos uses up what little time they had before being called away. Toby and Claire don’t have any time to do anything other than dispose of their incriminating written conversation, tell Jim they’ll see him later, and hurry to the door where a nurse waits for them balefully.Toby and Claire exchange a glance before they’re separated, silently and mutually promising to bring up the topic with Jim at dinner.Unfortunately, when they finally arrive at dinner time, they find Jim more than half asleep over his food. His complex is pallid and unhealthy, and his eyes are hazy with exhaustion. In their goofy mood earlier, neither Toby nor Claire noticed Jim’s tiredness, and they exchange a guilty glance. They make another silent agreement- this time to hold off questioning Jim until he recovers.And Toby doesn’t feel much better than Jim looks, honestly. The tests he’d been put through today were more tiring than the others; forcing his powers to act according to his will for hours, lifting and dropping different weights and objects. Toby is still feeling sweaty, overheated, and feels a headache coming on.Mary is practically knocked out on her side of the table, no energy to even idly chat. Claire is a little better off than the rest of them, poking at her food and holding her head up on her palm, but not by much.Tonight isn’t the night for discussing conspiracy theories.Toby puts those thoughts aside and lets his own tiredness take over, eating his bland meal and allowing the night routines to shuffle him along until he hits his bed finally. Unlike the night prior, Toby is out like a light without issue, and stays that way.

----- CHAPTER BREAK -----

“You doing okay in there, Eli?” Toby asks around the toothbrush in his mouth.Inside one of the three bathroom stalls, Eli lets out a truly miserable groan. Toby grimaces sympathetically, calling out, “Hang in there, dude. I’m sure it’ll pass soon.”“Hhhhhhh,” Eli whines in response.Toby goes back to brushing his teeth; the rest of the male patients puttering around in the locker room, going about their morning routines. Today is shower day, too, so the sound of water rushing is just around the corner from the toilets. Pitying glances are thrown at Eli’s claimed stall as other teens file in and out of the locker room.Toby spits in the sink, washing out his mouth and rinsing his toothbrush. Beside him, Jim’s head hangs low, and a moan makes it way out of Toby’s miserable friend.“Man, you two are just not having it today, huh?” Toby remarks wryly, wiping his face off with his small washcloth.“Shhh,” Jim hisses, wincing as he does. Jim has bags under his eyes, an increasingly difficult time sleeping through the night the cause. Toby feels bad for Jim; not only are his constant collection of bruises taking ages to heal, but the growth spurt is really taking it out of him. With their treatments piled on top of those things, Jim looks ready to curl up in a ball on the floor right then and there.“You should ask for Tylenol.”“It doesn’t work well enough… it still hurts.”“Still. It’s something, right?”Jim nods stiffly- literally. His movements are starting to remind Toby of his nana’s when she puts out her back. Except with Jim, the aching muscles are all over his body. It’s clearly not a pleasant experience.Toby has since retracted his wish to have his growth spurt while he’s here. Jim’s struggles with puberty have cured him of his eagerness to get taller (for now, anyway).A stall behind them unlocks, the door swinging open. In the mirror, Toby sees Eli emerge like a wraith of pure suffering. Eli was in here before everyone else, possibly having camped out here all night. The nausea from his migraines is obviously killing him slowly, same as the migraines themselves. Within such a short amount of time, Eli has become the sickliest looking person among them, even next to veteran patients like Jim and a few others.Toby knows there’s always a mortality rate with trial and error cures. He knew that from movies and social projects at school; something he hadn’t had any issue with, back then. It’s just… so much scarier to face that possibility in real life.Toby shakes off that grim thought and collects his toiletries. He leaves Jim to wash his face and Eli to gulp down water from the tap; heading to change into his clothes for the day.
-/-
“Patient forty-three-”“That’d be me.”Toby is sincerely scared by the look his latest doctor gives him, but at the same time, he’s reaching the point where he’ll dare to sass the Janus Order’s doctors and orderlies.It’s been a very long few weeks.“Patient forty-three,” says his doctor pointedly, her eyes narrowed at him, “touch each of the weights, and then lift them with differing gravities. Each odd number should be lifted to three feet, and each even number to two. Begin now.”Pushy. Toby is barely halfway through digesting his breakfast and they’re already breaking out the hard stuff. He sighs, seeing no way around this, and does as he’s been instructed.Removing the gravity of the weights is the simple part. He’s gotten better at balancing his attention with multiple objects, so long as they’re not too big. The weights he’s working with today are only a pound each, so the first step goes fine.It’s the second step and onwards that give him trouble.Toby can use his powers on some decently heavy objects; his bed and computer desk back home, his bed here in the facility, himself… but that’s when he’s making everything do a single thing. This exercise has become one that Toby hates. He’s supposed to multitask while he’s already multitasking, and he would really love to snap and explain to the adults watching him exactly how ridiculously hard this is.He can make things float up and down. Easy stuff at this point. But, trying to do one as well as the other at the same time is like patting his head and rubbing his belly. It’s doable, but it’s hard, and he has to keep intense focus through the whole test.Trying to make three weights float down while another three float up is like, again, patting his head and rubbing his belly. Except it’s times six and Toby only has two hands. He can’t keep up, a throb in his head threatening to take hold as he strains against his limitations.He only manages to get two of the six weights to do what he wants. And after several minutes of struggling to correct that, Toby’s breathing getting more and more labored as he does, his concentration snaps and all six blocks of metal fall out of the air.As they all hit the table with loud, jarring thunks, Toby doesn’t even have to look over to see the judgement he’s getting from the staff. He just sighs and rubs at his sweaty face; accepting the fact that everything is terrible.The fact that all the spots he’s been getting his shots ache, the tiny injuries to his skin itchy and sore, does nothing to improve his outlook on life.The scratching of pens on paper and clipboard stops and the doctor lady speaks.“Again.”Oh boy. Toby’s least favorite word in the world right now. What a surprise.Toby tries, and mostly fails, at breathing through the too-hot flash he’s experiencing. Who knew using inhuman powers with his mind would be as bad as running laps in gym? Toby sure didn’t, and he wouldn’t have agreed to come here if he’d known.…He’d rather he hadn’t come here at all, hot flashes or no.Prompted out of his thoughts by the stern noise of a throat being cleared, Toby gingerly touches each of the weights and tries again.
-/-
“Alright, call it. I’m out.”“Out.”“…Out.”“Out.”“Uhhh… out, I guess?”“I’ll be in, why the fuck not.”Toby raises an eyebrow at Enrique. Everyone puts down their cards in the out pile except for the surly teen and the ‘dealer’. The dealer being the card game itself, trying to beat them all.Mary flips the dealer’s hand. A pair of queens. There’s an appreciative hum from their crowded table, and then a cackle of laughter.Enrique slaps down his two cards. Twin aces.“Ugh-”“What, no way-”“That’s the third time, what the fuck?”“You’re all shit at card games,” Enrique jeers at them, collecting the pot from the center of the table. He now owns, succinctly, every single piece of monopoly money.Claire sniffs, pouting. Mary mutters disgustedly, casting jealous looks at the fake money pile. Steve, their unlikely addition to the game, is still spluttering a defense that he’d had a better hand than that, if he’d played he would have destroyed Enrique. (No one bothers pointing out that there isn’t a more powerful match than two aces in Guts. If Steve wants to have that comforting delusion, he can.)Jim and Toby just accept their losing status. Honestly, by the third round and their piles of money already shrinking to a few bills, they knew they were going to lose.“You’re just freakishly good,” Mary accuses, voice strong despite her sickly skin tone. “You’re cheating, I know you are.”“Me? Cheatin’?” Enrique grins, exaggeratedly counting his paper money. “Now you’re just bein’ a sore loser, girl. Throwin’ insults around like that can really hurt a guy, ya know?”“Mary,” Claire says soothingly, putting a hand on her friend’s shoulder before Mary can snap back. “Let me handle this.”There’s a thunk under the table and Enrique yelps in his chair, jumping and scattering his winnings. Claire snaps her fingers and bunches of it disappear into thin air- or rather, thin void. The micro portals eat up handfuls of the money before they disappear again right after.A collection of extra cards are revealed underneath the money pile.Mary bolts out of her chair, grabbing at the cards as she yowls, “CHEATER!”“Sleight of hand ain’t cheating!” Enrique yowls back, jumping out of his own seat before Mary’s nails can scratch him.“That’s literally what it is!”“All’s fair in love an’ war!”“That is not applicable here and you know it!”“Wait,” Steve says belatedly as the chaos unfolds, “he- how was he cheating? Aren’t we supposed to have lots of cards?”Jim has his head down on the table, arms over top of it as he expresses silently how tired he is. Which, incidentally, leaves Toby to chat with their tormentor (perhaps former tormentor? They’ve all been too wrung out to pick fights much, lately). “He was- uh, loading his hand? Is that the phrase?”“No,” Jim mumbles.Mary and Enrique curse each other out as they grapple over the remaining monopoly money. Claire is dubiously on Mary’s side, though Toby thinks she’s grabbing the bills up for herself, too.“Welllll… same result, anyway, whatever it’s called.”“What?” Steve asks, increasingly confused.“Wait, I think I remember now. He was being a hand mucker? Jim, is that right?”“Yeah… I think so.”“What??
He was- what the fuck is a hand mucker?”“Not what it sounds like, anyway.”“Dumbzalski-”Mary’s voice suddenly gets way louder and more echoic, and Enrique swears in loud Spanish. So does Claire. Toby didn’t finish his Spanish classes, technically, but he almost feels like joining in on the multilingual swearfest as they’re treated to Mary’s wrath x5.Guards and an on hand nurse hurry into the room as their group’s volume rises further. Toby copies Jim’s sensible plan and makes himself small, keeping mum as the extra Marys, an angry Enrique, and a defiant Claire all protest their penalty for using their powers.It’s the monopoly money’s fault, Toby thinks to himself. Monopoly tears apart families, ruins lives… With their current life situation, they all should have known better than to be the fools who dared to open the monopoly game box. Curses this powerful are never to be trifled with, even if everyone had been collectively dying of boredom.Alas, it doesn’t last. The card game’s resulting chaos is short-lived, but nonetheless something to shake up the monotony of their afternoon.
-/-
Eli hates being one of the people who always goes last. It doesn’t matter where, when, or why, he always ends up last.He hates that he’s among the last to go to treatment. He spent the early afternoon all by himself, not talking to the other patients waiting with him (he didn’t know any of them and was too shy to fix that), and now he’ll miss social time with the few friends he’s made, here.Eli is fairly certain he has the worst luck possible. He’s always picked last, he almost never gets to hang out with what friends he has, and on top of all that, he has an utterly useless, migraine inducing power.Eli is having a harder and harder time turning said power off. Before coming here, he could sometimes go most of the day without triggering it accidentally. Now, it only takes the slightest thing to do that. The visions he has are sporadic and senseless. He doesn’t enjoying knowing that the pork they served for dinner was just mashed up cheap hotdogs, he doesn’t enjoy knowing that in the far future, his room will have rotted from floor to ceiling, filling it with water stains and crawling bugs…Eli just has to sneeze wrong and that’ll be it. He’ll be up all night before he can’t get his head to stop aching, and all day he’ll overstimulate himself again and again with vision after vision. He’s exhausted, and beyond anything else, he’d just like it to stop already.“You’ve been responding well to the new prescription we gave you,” says Eli’s doctor for today. He isn’t one Eli’s seen around before; on the larger side, though not in terms of height, a small beard and mustache and round glasses…“However, we’ve recently discovered one even more effective. You’ll be taking a dose today. Hold still, patient forty-five.”The needle is brought out by an attending nurse. Eli flinches up as it bites into his skin, adding to the dozen other sore spots he has. He rubs his arm, hunching up and wishing his power had been phasing through solid matter- then he could make the floor swallow him up.“Turn around,” instructs his doctor, the man’s voice clipped with a German accent. “Focus on the bed, today. Who was the last person to sit on it? Describe to me the previous patient who was in here. Ah, and before you do.”He holds out a hand. “Your glasses, please. We’ve come to a hypothesis that they might be interfering with your abilities, even just subconsciously. You feel as though your sight is diminished, and thus, your powers act accordingly.”“Uhhh… Sure, okay,” Eli says slowly, not certain which part he’s replying to, exactly. He takes off his glasses, a tad unwillingly as he hands them over. “But- wait, isn’t the point of this to get rid of my powers? Won’t fixing this make it worse?”His doctor waves him off, instructing for Eli to start the trial.Eli doesn’t like not getting straight answers. Knowledge should be freely given and spread. It’s one of the principals he follows, as well would love to shove down the throats of the government and its guard dogs. Suppression of literature, voice, and art is criminal, literally speaking, and nothing burns Eli up worse than someone who won’t give what’s asked of them.He wants to know what’s going on with him. He wants to know what’s going on with this place, why his visions are so vague and dark. Why so much of what’s been said to him feels like a lie.Eli doesn’t ask anything, though, as much as he wants to. He turns around, staring at his assigned target. It’s same as the others in identical treatment rooms. Eli breathes in and concentrates, trying to trigger the requested vision of the last person to be on the bed.He gets a few flickers. Insubstantial glimpses of people. Nothing fully visible, like they’re just static traces. Eli’s head starts to pound- his miserable morning migraine coming back with a vengeance- but he has to keep going. He doesn’t have a choice in the matter, short of passing out right here and now.The spot where the needle pierced his skin is itchy. More painful than usual. Eli scratches at it, nails dragging against the irritated skin as he tries to keep focus. His vision- his eyesight, not his powers- isn’t worth much without his glasses, and it’s not helping getting the various figures sitting, lying, leaning against-Eli has a sharp twinge in his head and he gasps, doubling over as he rides out the sudden swell of pain and nausea. He squeezes his eyes shut, wishing for a dark, soundless rom and a comfortable bed to hide in.“Patient forty-three, no dillydallying, hm? We all have a tight schedule to keep to, after all.”“R-right,” Eli stutters between his clenched teeth. The tone of the doctor doesn’t leave room to beg for the test to stop. Eli forces open his eyes again, sucking in a breath as he glares at the slightly blurry bed.The static forms of people start to get clearer, their flickering changes settling into something more concrete. Eli grins briefly, proud to be doing this despite his aching skull and churning stomach. He tries to reach for what he was told to- searching for the last person to be sitting on the bed, sorting through vision after vision-The people on the bed get clearer and more real looking as he does. Their clothes take shape, their faces coming into visibility. It makes things easier, until it doesn’t.The visions get- brighter. Too bright. Eli falters, losing control of the flow of what he’s seeing. The colors are so- so vivid, the sounds and sensations coming into full force along with them- Eli is getting overwhelmed by what he’s seeing, trying to process so much all at once. He clutches at the hem of his baggy hospital shirt, trying not to panic too soon. He can still do this, he can still slow it down, he can get back control- think one thing, no more searching, look for one thing and only that thing-But Eli’s mind is blank with panic and a growing headache. He’s at the whims of his powers- again.
I want to understand.
That’s the thought that finally makes it through everything. He wants to know what’s happening to him, to everyone here- he wants to have the knowledge he’s being denied.His visions, finally having something solid to lock onto, seize the task and change the scene all around him. Eli wishes a split second later that they hadn’t.He goes dead still as the vision forms. He can’t breathe. He can’t move.Eli is terrified.He knows what he’s seeing isn’t real. He knows it’s not actually happening right now. But- but its right there, right in front of him, and it feels and sounds completely real to him.“Describe what you are seeing,” intones the doctor. His words are overlapping with his other self’s, barely heard over, “Restrain her and get her downstairs. She won’t be causing any more trouble, now.”A slack hand falls from the examination bed Eli is staring at. The girl’s face- glasses cracked in one lens, pallid skin drained of blood, splatters of red flecks dotting her clothes and puddling on the floor beside the table-“Y-you- you k-killed her?” Eli gasps, throat constricting. He feels sick. He feels like he’s going to go to pieces right there and then.“Killed who? What do you mean?”“No one has died in this room,” says a nurse to the side of things, and Eli feels the lie of those words. He’s shaking and sweating as he glances at her, and sees the flecks of blood on her clothes, too. An aura of deception and cruelty hangs over her in the vision, seeping into her very being. She’s even worse than the doctor, she isn’t here for scientific discovery- she likes working here. Likes watching them suffer.A new shape appears in the corner of his eye, and Eli doesn’t want to look at it. But, he can’t stop himself from flinching and whipping around, locking eyes with wide dead ones.A different nurse lies on the floor of the room, next to the examination bed with the limp, pale girl. The nurse’s mouth hangs open, the puddle of blood having come from him. The red that’s leaking from him reaches Eli’s shoes, staining them as Eli whimpers and backpedals.Hands grab him, trying to keep him still. “Patient forty-five, calm down-”“NO!” Eli screeches, ripping away from the doctor and stumbling back against the wall. Other visions are starting to creep across the ones he’s already seeing, shifting scenes so fast his head starts whirling. He sees other patients, other kids, all of them in pain and scared and hurting-“Sedate him, he’s becoming uncontrollable,” orders the doctor, lost somewhere in the visions of the truth of this room. The insidious nature of what the injections have been doing to them, it’s all so clear to Eli now. The miasma of suffering is choking him, muffling his thoughts and pressing against his skull. It hurts. Eli can see and feel the hurt and he hurts.A person breaks through that, looming into his personal space. Eli is so shocked he reels his powers back, just enough that he only sees the truth of the present, of the actual people around him. He almost wishes he hadn’t.“Hold still, kid,” says the woman nurse, talking like she doesn’t have a gaping wound down her torso. Her splintered ribs creak and grind against each other as she comes closer with the needle, death’s shine in her eyes and a broken nose tacky with dried blood.Eli reacts on pure instinct, fear driving all thought from his head. The nurse cries out, Eli’s knuckles ache, and he scrambles out the door between people’s legs as they open it. He’s too small, too quick for them to catch.Eli almost pulls up short, though, as he stares around himself in the hallway, hyperventilating.The people around him- the walls- things flicker in and out of existence. A wall next to him becomes smoking rubble, then is whole again. The guards coming from an adjacent hallway are lying dead on the floor, limbs at horrible angles and skulls crushed, and then they’re up and running at him again.Eli thinks his powers have finally driven him insane.He runs.The hallways spiral and twist, his sense of direction completely gone. There’s people grabbing at him from every direction it feels like, and yet, somehow, Eli keeps dodging them. He sees where they’re going to grab at him- how and when they’ll grab at him- and he moves, just moves, ungainly scrambling and desperate dives out of the way. Everything is flying past him, and he sees, he sees.Everyone here will die. Every guard that grabs at him, their bodies flickering with deep injuries, limbs becoming severed or charred stumps- the nurses and doctors hovering behind them, purposeful blows of damage score their bodies, stain their clothes in thick crimson clouds- they’re all going to die, everyone is going to DIE-Eli hits a wide open room, the sensation of hands clawing at his back barely missing his shirt. He skids, tripping over his own feet, and ends up in a roll that ends him hitting something metal. A pained wheeze escapes his throat; tears renewed as the impact shudders through him.“Eli?!” someone- Jim- exclaims. There’s a wave of noise from all the people around Eli, and blearily, he realizes he must be in the social room. The metal thing that’s bruised his back is probably a table.Eli can’t respond, gasping as he tries to get up, keep running they’re going to catch him he has to run-Hands pull his up, the sense of safety- of being with people he might tentatively call friends, people who are like him and won’t just hand him over to the nightmares chasing him- it momentarily calms Eli, just for a few seconds as his eyesight fills with sparkles.The sparkles don’t go away, even as he blinks and blinks. Eli sluggishly takes in the person who’s nearest, right in front of him and holding him up.“Jesus, dude! What’s wrong?!” asks Toby’s voice, coming out of a being that’s on fire.Eli screams and yanks himself out of the burning hands- the stone and char and light too terrifying to look at, it’s so hot and blinding-“Eli, Eli, it’s just us!” says Claire, and- a creature in direct opposite to the first steps into Eli’s line of sight. Light is sucked inwards by it, swirling and deep at its core, strikes of lightning burning like stars in its eyes-More and more step into Eli’s vision. A being that’s a constant wave of motion, like a hundred film reels overlaid all at once- a figure that vibrates, the air around it shuddering and dangerous, and its voice, its voice rings out- a creature far from the group, a cloak settled around its true form, the cloak shifting as the other self writhes and paces its prison-More and more. Then, flickers of actual people, of the other patients in the monsters’ midst- older, injured, scared, wary, collared, furious, standing like soldiers, bleeding out, dying and screaming and-Eli screams with the screaming that only he can hear, clutching at his head.The things all around him try to reach for him, hands placating. Eli reels, stumbling away and so short of breath he can’t keep screaming. He runs right back into the first people he’d run from- guards and nurses and doctors, all waiting in the doorway as they pour in.“Patient forty-five,” starts one of the doctors- not the one Eli had, that one’s disappeared. “Calm down,” says that doctor, advancing slowly. His missing hand pours blood onto the floor as he does, along with claw marks through his eyes and throat. “You’re causing your fellow patients unhealthy stress right now-”“SHUT UP!” Eli howls at him, howls at them all. “You- you’re dying, don’t you get it?! Stop- stop fucking talking and just die!”Guards advance on him, flickering between death and ashes and existence- future injuries and present intent miring together to become a sickening sight. They mean to hurt him- their vague placations lies- and Eli can see, he can see what waits for them.“You’re all going to die,” Eli can’t help but cry. He doesn’t care. He doesn’t care they’ll inevitably die some horrible death. They’re hurting them, him and the others. But- but he still can’t- can’t stand looking at it-“Kid-” tries a guard in front of Eli, his helmet broken on one side, like a great bludgeon hit him and cracked clean through it to his brain.“You’re all going to DIE!” Eli shrieks, pointing at them. His words come out, wild and thoughtless. “You- you’re hurting us, you’re drawing something here by doing that, you’re going die and it’ll be your OWN FAULTS-!!”Weapons are raised. Eli is distant from his own reality, now, and the one part of his mind that isn’t engulfed by terror thinks, fine, at least I won’t die like you do.But, voices of dissent rise up, the inhuman beings of light and shadow and a dozen other things Eli can’t comprehend crowding around him. The adults are held back, weapons waver in their aim, and Eli thinks his heart is bursting in his chest as another migraine abruptly starts to turn his head inside out.“Eli- Eli it’s okay,” Jim’s voice says behind Eli, gentle touch brushing his shoulders. “Just- calm down, you’re okay, nothing’s happening, you’re just having a bad reaction to your injections. It’s okay, just breathe, alright? In, and out, in, and out… close your eyes. Don’t look at whatever you’re seeing.”Eli can’t breathe, though. Can’t close his eyes- he’d see some of it, anyway, he knows he’d still be able to see even then- but the comfort of Jim at his back steadies him somewhat, the uncontrollable visions he’s having slowing in their rapid changes. Eli sucks in a hoarse breath and turns.Something towers over him. Something dark, deadly, and dangerous.Eli doesn’t even have it in him to scream anymore.Something animalistic scared crawls out of his aching throat. He stumbles away, through the crowd of monsters far less horrifying than- than that, the one with hanging hair and sharp eyes, a deep, deep misery flowing out from its aura as it lumbers forwards, claws scraping the floor and a growl coming from its barrel chest-“N-no, please,” Eli whimpers, finally dropping to his knees, everything too much as his skull throbs and fear overwhelms him. He clutches himself, shaking all over as he says, “Don’t- don’t, please, don’t hurt me, please…”
He can’t look at anything around him, curling up pathetically and hiding best he can right there-Something pinches the back of his neck.A swift relief from consciousness follows.
-/-
Toby isn’t sure what’s just happened. He’s in shock. They all are. Everyone is dead silent as Eli becomes a little ball on the linoleum, crying in uneven sobs.When a doctor rushes over and jabs a needle into Eli’s neck, no one can even react in time to raise objection. As Eli is taken away, placed on a gurney and escorted by security, eyes slowly turn to stare at the figure that was last closest to him.“Why… why’d he react like that?” Mary whispers, eyeing the staff still in the doorway. “I mean, it’s just Jim.”Jim is still frozen where he’d stopped; the second Eli dropped to the ground and started begging to be left alone. His outstretched hand hangs in the air, the sleeves on his arms riding up to show blotches of blue bruises still on his wrists.Slowly, Jim lowers his arm. He looks stricken, so much so it hurts to see.Toby doesn’t understand what happened, between Jim and Eli. Doesn’t understand a single thing about any of this.“Jim…?” Claire asks in a hushed voice. “Jim, what was that? Why did Eli…?”“I… I don’t know,” Jim replies, so quiet they can hardly hear him. Jim looks shaken. He looks scared.Toby feels scared, too. The way Eli looked at him, frantically pulling himself out of Toby’s grip to get away- Eli had looked like Toby was going to hurt him.And, from Eli’s words- it’d been like he fully expected Jim to kill him.Jim’s shoulders are slumped, eyes on the door even though Eli is long gone. As the attention of the gathered staff returns to them, Toby moves forwards to be next to Jim. Claire follows, and Mary follows Claire, and… they all come together, despite vague lines of who knows who. They’re all unsettled. They don’t feel safe. Better to be together than apart as they figure this out.No matter the divide between groups or cliques, everyone ends up staying where they are, close together as they’re fed a story about Eli. That their fellow patient was having a hallucinatory allergic reaction to a new strain of treatment. That it’s fine, everyone is fine, and to not take a single word of what was said seriously. The doctor says that Eli is going to get the help he needs, and they plaster on a serene smile as they say that.Toby doesn’t believe it for a second. And with a glance at Claire, the same time as she glances at him, he determines she doesn’t believe a single word, either.Jim doesn’t look at anyone, gaze lowered. The only time he moves from his statuesque stillness is to rub at his arms. Maybe to soothe the aches he’s been having, maybe to erase the feeling of Eli tearing himself away.Toby tries to reach out to his friend, to put a hand on Jim’s shoulder to comfort him. Jim moves away before he can; drifting back to the table they’d been at when Eli ran into the room.The mood in the room is tense, full of whispered conversations and fervent, fearful voices.Toby wants to talk about what just happened. He knows they should talk about what just happened. But… he’s scared. He’s really, really scared, and it feels like it’s all just too much right now.Someone turns on one of the movies they’ve all seen a hundred times. Wordlessly, an agreement to regather in the sitting area is passed around. Toby doesn’t manage to summon the strength to talk about what’s just happened. No one does, really; discussion of it kept subdued and mostly private between groups.Toby ends up with Jim and Claire on either side of him, their backs to the foot of the occupied couch, and together, them and all the other patients present, hide from their grim reality with a pre-two thousands cartoon film.Eli- his appearance, his breakdown, his departure- it hangs over them all, even still.Toby vows to talk about it with Jim and Claire, at least, tomorrow. Maybe Mary, too. They can’t let this sit any longer than that. It feels like what’s happened today is a tornado, and now they’ve entered the calm before another storm rolls through.Toby, later, wishes he’d found the ability to talk about what happened that evening. That any of them did. Because they miss one of the precious few chances they could have changed future events.Toby realizes this at breakfast, sitting down with Claire. By then, it’s too late. They can’t talk about what happened at all.Jim is gone.

----- CHAPTER BREAK -----

Toby scratches at his dry skin, too stressed to stop himself. The flakes that come away under his nails fall onto his lap, some catching on the wafts of air that come from Claire’s relentless pacing.“They were fine yesterday,” she insists, not for the first time. “We saw them right before bed- they didn’t even have sniffles, let alone a full blown allergic reaction! They were coherent, and- and they spoke normally- ugh, they can’t seriously think we’ll believe that explanation!”“Maybe it just took a while to act up,” Toby suggests, but his heart isn’t in it. He scratches harder at his skin- god, what he wouldn’t do for some good cream right now. “People react different ways to the same drug, right?”Claire shoots him a dubious glare, but Toby doesn’t take it personally. Claire is a very proactive person, and she’s feeling helpless in their current constraints. Toby, though he’s really freaked out, can bide his time a little longer and form a plan. Claire on the other hand had to be held back from causing a scene in the cafeteria, lest she march right up to a staff person and demands to see their friends.Claire… is also braver than Toby. She’s at least working up a proper fury about what’s happening. Toby feels anxiety locked like an iron bar around his chest. With Jim, it was easier to persevere despite everything. An unerringly positive and supportive friend helped him keep his head up. Without Jim… Toby feels lost, and scared.At least he still has Claire, as inconsolable as she is right now.His friend opens her mouth to speak- probably to snap at him- but she closes it around an unformed word, cutting off the sound and growling instead. Claire goes back to pacing. Toby scratches the back of his hand, resisting the urge to just bite at the itching on his too-hot feeling skin.A fever is the last thing he needs right now. What if he’s taken away? Toby wants to find Jim again as much as Claire does, but no one has ever returned from wherever they’re taken to. He can’t risk getting stranded somewhere, away from Claire and what remains of their friend group.Jim wasn’t the only one to vanish overnight. Two kids Toby didn’t know the names of are gone, too, as well as Mary. Their quartet has been halved. Toby feels very vulnerable and out of control. It’s just him and Claire, now, watching each other’s back.Their surrounding atmosphere only lends to the unease. The room around them, with the dark television, looming staff, and uncomfortable quiet- other patients sit in huddles, not wanting to be alone. Board games are played with dull interest, mostly used as a reason to sit and talk. Every conversation held in soft voices keeps circling back to the same topics: where did they go? And who’s next?Toby eyes the security at the door, and says to Claire, “Hey, maybe you should save this for later. Sit down, dude.”“I can’t,” Claire hisses, though she does stop pacing and comes to the couch. She sits, fists clenched in her lap. “I can’t just sit and do nothing,” she says in a quieter voice, close to Toby’s ear. “This is wrong. I can feel it, you can feel it, everyone can feel it. We’re cut off from outside contact and no one will tell us where the others go. Jim and Mary are in danger- we’re all in danger.”“I know, I know that,” Toby says snappishly, anxiety worsening. “You reminding me just makes it harder to not have a panic attack about it!”Claire bristle, but again stops herself before she says something. She takes a breath in, and lets it back out. “Sorry,” she says, easing out of her rigid tension. “I just- I don’t know what we’re supposed to do, Toby. We’re alone in this. Short of causing a riot, I don’t know how we’re supposed to…”“To what?” Toby questions. He’s gotten to know Claire the past while, and he doesn’t like the look on her face right now.“No revolution is won without blood spilled,” Claire says thoughtfully, fingers tapping her knees.“Claire, I really don’t like were I think you’re going with this.”“Think about it, Toby. There’s way more of us than them- and we have rights! And parents. If enough shit hits the fan, they’ll be overwhelmed and-”“And will probably shoot us or something! Jesus, Claire, in what world would that work?”“They won’t shoot us. We’re supposed to be getting medical treatment here; they’re like, incapable of seriously hurting any of us. Toby, please.” Claire looks him dead in the eye and clasps her hands around his, causing Toby to go still. The danger of skin to skin contact- her action startles him badly, the touch of another person one he’d begun to forget. “We have to make a stand. I won’t let them keep us in the dark any longer, and I won’t let them take anyone else. We’re getting out of here.”Toby stares into her dark, fierce eyes, and feels overwhelmed. This has all spiraled far out of his comfort zone; their futures are uncertain and it scares him.“We’re fifteen,” Toby reasons, whisper quiet. “We can’t drive, we don’t have phones- we can’t do this, Claire.”Claire remains undeterred. “We have to. For everyone’s sake. Look, with or without you, I’m going to do something about this. But… I’d rather it be with you.”There’s vulnerability in that admission, of wanting his support. Toby, unused to that much trust being placed in him, unused to having someone wanting to rely on him- he nearly reels, nerves and thoughts tangled and fearful.But, Claire’s hands are cool around his, easing the heat that’s been swelling in them on and off. Her expression is beseeching, determined, and underneath both of those, scared.“Please,” Claire asks again. “Please, Toby.”Dammnit. Dammnit, dammnit, damn it all.Toby turns his hands and grasps Claire’s, giddy with the feeling of risky rebellion.“Okay,” he says, managing a crooked smile, “I’m with you.”“Same here.”They both jump, Toby practically slipping off the couch as he does. Enrique puts his elbows up on the back of the couch, leering at them both with a lazy grin. “You two are shit at being discreet,” he informs them. “You’re both lucky I decided to cause a lil distraction ta cover for you.”He jerks a thumb towards the door. Toby follows the gesture and sees one guard bent forwards, helmet on the floor as he scrubs desperately at his eyes. The second guard is patting him on the back, saying, “C’mon, Charles, it’s just a bit of dust. It can’t hurt that bad.”“I stuck a bit of pencil lead in his tear duct,” Enrique whispers, grinning in a distinctly merciless way. “Took some serious concentration, but I got it done.”“How?” Claire asks.“Telekinesis, duh.”Toby rubs his eyes, sympathetic to the security guard despite himself. “That’s kind of evil. And dangerous.”Enrique chuckles. “Aw, it’s fine. What’s one little eye infection? They probably get better healthcare than any of us poor fucks.”Toby and Claire glance at each other, sharing a mutual moment of mild horror. Enrique has felt a bit off to Toby, ever since he showed up. This just confirms it. But… maybe that’s a good thing?“…You want to help?” Claire asks cautiously.“Sure,” Enrique says. “I’m bored out of my mind. Whatever you, missy-” he raises an eyebrow at Claire, “-have cooked up, I’ll bet it’ll cure me of that boredom.”Toby watches Claire calculate, examining Enrique with sharp eyes. He feels gravity lessen on his body as the tension rises, and he grips the couch to remain seated.“Alright,” Claire says at last. She raises a hand to shake, and Enrique takes it, smirking.“So, uh,” Toby says, concentrating on staying calm and returning to gravity, “what is the plan, exactly?”He really doesn’t like the way Claire and Enrique are looking at each other. Claire had been calculative, Enrique had been sneaky. Now, they’re very clearly plotting, and Toby has a sense of yet another upset on the horizon in their sanitized, confined world.
-/-
Mary regrets going quietly. It doesn’t matter how scared she’d felt, she should have fought back. Now, she’s just like all the other kids who disappeared without a word of goodbye. She can’t even tell how long it’s been, if Claire has woken up and noticed Mary is gone.Mary is curled up in the corner of the holding cell she’s in- and that’s what it is, a cell. Four blank walls, no windows, only one exit with no knob on this side. Mary is panting as subtly as she can, sweat making her hair stick to her forehead.The other seven clones of herself, crammed into the small space with her, aren’t much better off. They’ve been holding out for what feels like an eternity- using safety in numbers to stave off whatever it is that’s going to come next. Mary knows only two things for certain right now. One is that she’s deep below the Janus Institution’s main floor, brought down in an elevator. Two is that they were going to put a fucking collar on her.The only thing that stopped them is her clones. Mary panicked and split herself a dozen different directions, preventing them from finding her main body. However, one by one, she’d felt them be brought down. They’d all been shoved into these cells, a row of them down a hall behind numbered doors, and as time has dragged on… Mary’s strength is failing.She spread herself too far, too thin. And every time another of her clones vanishes, returning to her, her exhaustion only worsens. All of them- they’re hungry, tired, and scared. Mary, the core Mary, receives everything from her other selves, their strength and their weakness. She hates that aspect of her powers with every fiber of her being. What’s the point of being in two places at once if she just ends up twice as tired?Her eyes slip shut and her concentration wavers. She feels another of the clones- there’s only the ones in this cell, now- disappear, her energy flowing back to Mary. The drain hits her immediately after, wiping her out and doubling her over like a punch to the gut. Which, according to the clone’s memories, is exactly what happened to her earlier, during the chase.Mary gasps, winded, and her vision goes dark for too many seconds. Her concentration snaps completely, forcing her into darkness at last as every clone disappears at once.She comes back around as a lock clicks open, the door swinging inwards and heavy boots entering the room. Mary whimpers; no energy left to play her one trick card a second time. A cold ring is snapped around her neck. The floor hurts her bare feet as she’s dragged out, catching her heel on sharp corners of the tile.Her eyes won’t focus, the need for sleep, water, food- it’s overwhelming her. She burned through everything she had, and now she’s trapped for good. Mary hiccups and cries, fighting despair and unconsciousness.She’s too out of it to tell how far they drag her, but eventually the guards- far more intimidating than the other ones above- stop in the middle of the hall. Mary turns her head, blinking at someone in a lab coat punching in a code on a control panel, next to the opaque glass set into the wall. As the doctor steps away from the panel, the glass slides away in one section, whirring as it reveals an interior room. Mary doesn’t get a chance to take in its contents before she’s shoved inside.She stumbles and falls, landing on her hands and knees as the glass shuts again. Mary trembles as she looks back at it; there’s no sign at all of where the doorway was, the glass seamless across its surface. It only offers a blurry reflection of her misery. Breath hitching as she tries to not breakdown fully, Mary turns her eyes to her newest prison.There are beds on platforms stemming from the wall, one of each side of the room, and a toilet and shower stand exposed in the corner. There’s nothing else, just sterile floor and walls, and cameras watching from the ceiling.Mary is all alone. She crumples, adrenaline long since used up. She wants to go home- she wants the floor to swallow her up- she can’t take this anymore. It’s breaking her.Bent over her folded knees, her own harsh breathing filling her ears, Mary misses the shuffle of blankets. She doesn’t, however, miss the tentative voice that speaks.“…Mary?”Her head whips up, startled and searching. That voice- there’s no way-On one of the beds, the air shimmers in a spot. Colors and shapes meld, melting away like water, and just like that there’s someone sitting there, an overgrown afro like a halo around her head, skin richly dark despite the fluorescents. She’s staring, eyes wide and mouth gaping in shock.“Darci?” Mary breathes, and her friend chokes, eyes filling.“Mary- Mary, oh my god.” Darci scrambles off the bed- Mary scrambles to her feet- they meet in the middle and grab each other in a desperate hug.“Darci, Darci, god- I thought you were gone!” Mary sobs against Darci’s shoulder.“Me too,” Darci replies wetly, crying as much as Mary is. “I didn’t think I’d ever see you again- I- I thought I was gonna-”“You’re not, you won’t,” Mary swears, feeling the press of the cold metal collar around Darci’s neck against her cheek. Just like Mary’s.“Please, please,” Darci cries. Neither of them has to specify what they mean. They know what they fear most right now: death, with no witness or mourners. At least they have each other, now. At least they have this.Darci shakes and sobs, a hand comes up to the back of Mary’s head, tangling her fingers in black hair, holding Mary close as physically possible. The loneliness and fear her friend must have endured- all alone, stuck down here for weeks while Mary slept right above her, none the wiser.The hell that must have been- the thought of it brings fresh tears to Mary’s eyes.She twists her fingers into the other girl’s shirt, clinging, trying to convince herself that this is real. That Darci is here in her arms and even in this nightmare place, for a moment everything is okay.
-/-
His knuckles split hours ago. His hands throb as much as the rest of him does- aching deep in his bones, making each step painful.Jim can’t sit still, however, no matter how much his body wants to rest. His thoughts are whirling, heart trembling. He’s stuck inside a cell with no exit and no way to call for help. Jim can’t stand this- can’t stand being on his own, locked away from the world.He misses his mom. He misses Toby and Claire and every other friend he’s managed to make, here in the institute. He’s terrified and realizing slowly that the only reason he hasn’t been freaking out as the weeks of treatment mounted- it’s because of those friends. He can be brave for them, keep a calm head and belief in the best outcome.But on his own? Alone with his thoughts and growing fears? Jim knows he hasn’t been here very long- half a day at most- and already he’s fraying along the edges. Badly.The terror and angry suddenly become too much and Jim lets out a ragged shout, throwing his fist against the wall of glass. All it serves is to send the impact reverberating up his arm, worsening the pain that’s already been dully increasing. Jim cradles his hand to his chest, cursing around wordless, high noises of hurt. He looks through his long bangs, glaring at the only marks he’s managed to leave on the glass.Smears of red from his broken skin, interspaced around the center of the glass. He hasn’t made so much as a sliver of a crack, and no sound has come from the attempts except for his own bone and flesh hitting it.Jim lifts his hand from his chest, ignoring how it shakes in his other hand, oozing blood sluggishly from the torn skin. Purpling bruises are all over his hands and wrists, from his resistance to being dragged down here. They’ve finished the job the blue bruises started, hiding the normal color of his skin from sight.Jim can barely swallow his revulsion. Something is wrong. Something is very, very wrong. He’s known since the first bruise came and never left, only spreading wider, giving no pain, just feeling oddly… stiff.Jim is terrified of what’s happening to him, what his powers or the drugs or god knows what is doing to his body.He wants to go home. Nothing else matters except getting out, and taking every other person trapped here with him. They’ve been lied to, everyone in the country has been lied to- their parents are waiting for them to get better, but they’re just getting worse-Jim breaks from the spiral with a furious yell, hitting the glass again. Now both his hands ache all over again, hours of this punishment taking its toll. He’s too angry to stop, though. Jim is angry at himself for trusting blindly, for ignoring the signs- and he’s angry that the Janus Order would do this to them. They’re doctors, doctors like his mom. They’re supposed to help people, not lock them up and experiment them and- and-Jim chokes on a hoarse sob, slumping against the glass of his cell. He’s shaking all over, uncontrollably, unable to keep his legs from buckling. He slides down to the floor, smearing the red imprints all the worse, and staining his shirt.His body is giving up. Jim is giving up. He hurts all the way through, wracked with a slowly burning ache that only wanes, never dies. He’s tired, scared, and can’t manage a thought beyond the fuzzy desire to lie down for a while. Just until he feels more alert, until the pain ebbs again…Jim curls on himself in front of the glass, injured fists curled loosely, arms pressed to his chest. He’s swallowed by a cold blackness all too quickly; all the fight gone out of him.For now.

----- CHAPTER BREAK -----

Toby knew something had gone very, very wrong. He just hadn’t known just how wrong it was until he passes by where Jim’s assigned room had been.He didn’t notice yesterday, with the door shut. But now, it’s open as staff clean it out. Wide open. It’s first thing in the morning, maybe they’d meant to finish before the patients got up; Toby can tell he wasn’t supposed to see this.The exterior side of the door looks fine; the interior side not so much. Deep warps are clawed through it- like scrunched fabric, or paint dried wrong. But it’s metal, same as every other door in the hall. Only one person could have done that, and Toby sees the marks and knows Jim was taken unwillingly.His friend fought his kidnappers, to the very last second as he was dragged from his room, and none of them so much as stirred.Toby can’t help but step closer, putting a hand on the warps. He slots his fingers into where Jim’s had been ripped away- his are wider than his friend’s, but they fit enough to clearly say the marks were made by human hands. Or deviant ones. Like the severe twist to the bedframe, like the scattered, knotted nails and screws on the floor. All Jim, all done by his powers in a desperate fight.Toby feels himself lift from the ground, tethered only by his fingers in the grooves left by Jim’s. Weightless and breathless, and deeply disturbed.“Hey! Get out of here, kid!”He starts, dropping back into gravity and stumbling. The staff in what was his friend’s room are giving him narrow eyed looks, unhappy with his snooping.“Sorry,” Toby says quickly and retreats. Breakfast is soon; which means Claire’s (and in part Enrique’s) scheme will be put into motion. Toby wants to brush his teeth and use the washroom before then, in case things drag out.The scenes he imagines- of Jim struggling, his friend resisting the hands pulling him from his bed, scared and alone and no one hearing his calls for help- it all makes Toby’s hands shake, his throat tight. He hides the tremor by plunging them under the sink's water and splashing his face. When he meets his own eyes in the mirror, all he can see is how scared he is by all this.At least he’s not alone; Claire and Enrique are brave enough to make up for his cowardice. Whatever happens, they’ll (hopefully) make sure it turns out alright in the end.
-/-
Claire feels like she’s crackling with nervous energy, but she keeps it under her skin, under the mask of calm she’s wearing. She imagines this as just another lie she might tell her parents- no, I wasn’t at a party, I went to the library to study. I forgot to tell you I’d be staying at a friend’s afterwards, sorry. Here’s the report we were working on that I totally didn’t prepare days beforehand so I could go to a college frat party.One benefit to having a strict home life, Claire has definitely gotten good at being sneaky with her personal life.Toby, on the other hand, is visibly uncomfortable. He’s picking at his breakfast, not eating any of it, casting glances around the room like he’s waiting for an attack at any moment. Claire thinks he told her, at some point, that it’s just him and his nana at home. Obviously, Toby hasn’t needed to foster the skill of lying to adults.Claire doesn’t judge him for it; better that he has such a positive, open relationship with his guardian. And they have Enrique helping, anyway, so some of the burden is off Toby’s shoulders. The other boy is sitting with them today, acting like his usual disinterested self. Claire had tried yesterday to draw information out of him- where he’s from, what his family is like- but had gotten half-answers and vague replies.Right side of the border, or maybe the wrong side, he’d said when asked about his home. Too much, he’d cackled when asked about his family. Claire dislikes how cagey he is. It won’t directly affect what they’re about to do, but still. She’d prefer to have all the pieces to a puzzle accounted for, rather than just the edges of the full picture.Regardless, she’ll work with what she’s got. Which is two allies, her own stubbornness, and a room full of disquieted, malcontent deviants. Everyone has noticed the missing patients by now. Hushed words and murmured conversations flutter around their table; presumed truths and increasing worries. The excuses they’ve been fed about patients disappearing have lost their power; used one too many times, worn thinner per use.It’s not quite a powder keg, but it’s plenty flammable anyway. All they need is a spark, a reason to rise up.Claire is happy to be that reason. More than happy- excited, because it means she’ll be forcing events to finally move forwards. After maintaining her patience for so long, Claire is ready for the change.Claire takes a slow breath in, and then lets it out in a rush. She meets Toby’s eyes across the table, sitting up and preparing to stand.“Be careful,” he says under his breath, gaze showing every bit of how scared he is. For her, for all of them. And yet, he’s willing to follow along with her plan… despite it being less of a plan, and more of a gamble.“I’ll try,” she replies, not promising success, but hoping for it anyway.“Knock ‘em dead, kiddo,” Enrique drawls, expression reading like he’s enjoying the drama of things.“We’re the same age,” Claire retorts. He shrugs, smirking. Claire huffs. “Just make sure you do what you’re supposed to, alright?”He waves her off. Claire rolls her eyes and gets on with it; standing from their table and looking towards the cafeteria exit. Two nurses and two guards stand there, as usual; attentions having wandered as breakfast went on. Claire thinks of their missing friends, of how they can’t contact anyone outside the facility- and she squares her shoulders.The nurses notice her first as she marches over; it’s their job to take care of them, after all. One bends slightly, asking her in a patronizing voice, “Do you need something, sweetheart?”Claire scowls openly at him, the term of endearment unwelcome. She lifts her chin, defiant. “Yeah. I want my phone call.”He blinks at her, confused. “Excuse me?”“You heard me right. I want my phone call.” Claire gestures around them. “This is basically like a prison, so I think your prisoners should be at least granted the right to their phone call!”“Look, kid-” tries the woman next to him.“Don’t ‘kid’ me, ma’am,” Claire cuts her off, balling her fists. “I’m two years from being able to vote. Now, if you’d please, I’d like my phone call so I can speak with my mother, the mayor of my home town, about how you’ve been treating us all.”Claire doesn’t pull that card often, but now is the time. Any leverage she can get is leverage she can’t spare. The two nurses give her uncomfortable looks, glancing at each other with silent concern.“We- can’t do that,” says the man, standing straight and looking down at her. He visibly buries his nervousness at Claire’s claim. “You know the rules; no outside contact unless the doctor approves that you’re cured.”Claire feels the guards shift their gazes onto her; watching, warning. She’s stepping out of line, and so soon after Eli caused a giant mess, not a full two days after he and other patients were disappeared in the night. They’re on edge as much as she and the other teens are.Still. Claire scoffs, keeping her bravado as she turns to look out over the cafeteria. Unsubtle stares are pinned on her and the staff; a few dozen wide eyes, as scared as they are wondering. “Do you hear that?” Claire says loudly, pointing in accusation at the surprised staff. “That’s illegal. This is probably all
illegal! We are minors- we’re being held here against our wills, without any contact with our parents and guardians!”“Hey, settle down,” scolds the woman nurse, moving to grab Claire by the shoulder- she ducks the grasp and gets out of reach.“You won’t tell us where they take the other patients,” Claire continues, ignoring the nurses and the looming guards. “You refuse to explain the treatments you’re giving us. Everything here stinks like human rights violations- and you know it! That’s why you won’t give us answers, that’s why you make us disappear when someone doesn’t cooperate!”“Shut up,” growls a guard, advancing on her with his partner. “Go back and take your seat, or-”“Or what?” Claire challenges boldly. She glares at the mask he wears, her own reflection staring back. “Or what? What’ll you do if I won’t go sit down and shut up?”“I think you need to have a conversation with one of the doctors,” says the male nurse, voice tightly polite even as he glares daggers.“I think I need my phone call,” Claire snaps back, “and the truth of what happens to the other patients. I think we all need that- isn’t that right, everyone?” She whirls on the rest of the cafeteria again, jittery with adrenaline. She’s met with a sea of struck dumb stares, and for a moment, Claire is scared she’s failed in her gamble.Then, on the far end of the cafeteria, where he said he’d be, Enrique stands up from a table and shouts, “She’s right! I dunno ‘bout the rest of you, but I’m kinda sick of this place! Last I checked, none’a us are mentally incompetent. They’ve got no grounds to hold us if we don’t want to be here, no one is allowed to commit us to anything except us!”“Yeah!” Toby cries, standing up at their original table. His voice wavers slightly, very much unlike Enrique’s ballsy attitude, but he stands and speaks regardless. “I- I didn’t sign anything like that, and I read every part of the contract! We’re only supposed to- to be here as long as we’re getting the help we need, but we aren’t, are we? Why can’t we call our families and tell them to come and get us?”Murmurs become louder, other teens standing and making their voices heard. Choruses of yeah, what he/she said and I want my phone call and tell us the truth! Claire grins, giddy, as they start to gather, coming together to form their own little mob of kids pushed to the edge.She turns back to the guards and nurses, satisfied that they’ve been intimidated. That’s right, be afraid, feel exactly like they’ve felt since the first day they came. They’re deviants, they’re powerful, and they won’t let themselves remain captive any longer.“Where’d you take our friends?” Toby demands as he steps in beside her.“I want to talk to my mom!” exclaims an unfamiliar girl.“What’ve you been doing to us?” Claire asks in a steely tone.“Fuck your bullshit!” Enrique crows. “We want out, so you better let us!”“You can’t keep us here!” Steve bellows from the back of the crowd, louder than anyone.The nurses are hiding behind the guards, who brandish tasers but don’t seem to know where to shoot them. They’re on the defense; they’re retreating. Claire feels like she’s invincible, that she could reach out and wrench those weapons from their hands. The feeling inside her- the core of her yet unfamiliar powers- it pushes up, spreading
outwards. She’s suppressed it this entire time, but now it fills her, cool water rushing, a current threatening to become a torrent.This is what they are- this is what she is. For a split second, she can’t recall why she ever tried to reject this part of her.Then, the moment is broken as reinforcements arrive. Security guards- heavily armored in a way the others aren’t- pour in from the hallway. Claire’s mob scatters, scared once again, and she sees the raised batons first, the actual guns second.“Hands up!” shouts one in the lead, leveling his barrel at her and the others. Claire has a hysterical memory pop into her mind of herself yesterday, telling Toby they wouldn’t be shot at.She was wrong, it seems.Claire reacts in blind panic, world narrowing to the size of the gun barrel aimed at her chest. She jerks a hand up at it, fruitlessly trying to block the shot. The guard pulls the trigger, and-The cold energy inside her surges in an instant, blackness blotting out her vision as a portal opens up in front of her palm. Two feet in diameter, it swallows the projectile fired at her, and brings the guard up short as they reel from the display of her power.Claire is frozen for a second, startled by her own abilities. She snaps out of that right after, the portal dissipating and the focus of every guard nearby turning to her. Claire grits her teeth and draws on the power once again, embracing the torrent within herself and diving deep.Blackness springs into existence all around her- sending her attackers into retreat to avoid their smoky blooms. Claire closes the four portals immediately after, already panting from exhaustion- she’s never made anything bigger than her palm, this is insane- and is forced to try something even further outside her experience. Guards move to detain her, recovering from her scare, and Claire pictures the portals horizontal, wide, and-Three open up, right under the feet of their aggressors. Strangled yelps and cries come from those caught in the trap, feet slipping into the swirling nothingness and dragging them downwards. Immediately, their comrades grab hold of their flailing arms, trying to pull them out but terrified of being drawn in as well, footing uncertain and casting skittish looks at her.Claire feels herself waning- too much, too fast, it’s starting to hurt- and the portals shrink, barely larger than the girth of each fallen guard. In the span of seconds, she has the temptation to just let them close, come what may of the action and damn the consequences. These people took her friends, they’re holding them all prisoners, and they deserve payback for the misery they’re causing.Claire feels vicious and terribly angry for those few seconds... and then it drains away into exhaustion.She holds the portals until the guards are pulled free. She lets them collapse once they’re out. She loses her nerve and shudders, falling to her knees with her hands raised. Claire is shoved to the ground, biting back a furious cry as she knocks her head and bruises her nose. She feels cuffs locked around her wrists, hears a voice over her telling her not to move, or they’ll fire.Claire just barely holds herself from resisting further. She can hear the sounds of everyone else getting the same treatment- brought down, shackled, threatened into submission once more. Claire is cold rage and colder terror; her gamble failed. She made the wrong choice, charged ahead too rashly.And now they’ll all pay for her mistake.“Put them in their rooms,” says an unfamiliar, accented voice. Claire is yanked to her feet in time to spot the owner of that voice; a short, round man with circular glasses he glares over the rims of. He looks disdainful, more annoyed by their riot than anything else. “From here on, we will be giving them no more chances to plot idiotic protests,” says the man- a doctor, going by his white lab coat. He’s speaking to a cluster of shaken looking staff, familiar caretakers of the deviant wards. “I want all of them in isolation, and serum number one three one administered as soon as possible. Count yourselves lucky I was bringing orders to fast-track the treatments, or else… this little screw up on your part would not be forgivable.”His eyes flash an eerie yellow- red irises- and Claire jerks in surprise. An adult deviant? Working for the Janus Order? She’s so confused that Claire misses the order to start moving forwards, and gets a baton to the shoulder as punishment.Unwillingly, tears creep into her eyes as she inhales sharply in agony. She’s shoved into motion, limping as her shoulder radiates bone deep pain. She’s the first one out the door, the others filing out behind her.Claire feels shame claw at her. This is her fault. She started the uprising, she encouraged rebellion- and this is where it got them. Clutched tighter in the grip of the Order, condemned to complete isolation from each other.She’s accomplished nothing. Under the judgmental eyes of the doctors she passes- the strange adult deviant watching her closely- her utter failure couldn’t be more obvious if they branded her for it.
-/-
Enrique spins the pen he snagged off one of the nurses, idly killing time until he’s hauled out of his room and put through testing again.Time is losing its meaning, though; he doesn’t know how long it’s been since he got put in here, and he doesn’t know how long it’ll be until he’s taken out again. Sucks like hell that they don’t get so much as a window, he can’t even guess by the sun what time it is.Irritably, he flicks the pen and it goes flying from his hand. He waggles his fingers, drawing nonsense scribbles across the wall above the doorway. Some good old dick art comes next, and then just to see if he’s still got it, he signs his graffiti tag right on the edge of the mess.He tugs on the semi-uncomfortable power resting inside his chest, bringing the pen back to himself. He considers his handiwork for a moment, and then decides that yep, he is no less bored than he’d been before.Growling to himself, Enrique flicks the pen away again- this time with enough force to drive it into the wall, an inch deep in the plaster. Some dust dribbles from the impaled writing tool, which is about as satisfying as the doodling had been.Enrique sighs loudly and rolls onto his side on his bed, scratching at his stomach absently. He’s so bored he could yawn; if only he could nap this all away. He can’t, though, because he doesn’t have anyone watching his back just yet. He’s got to rely entirely on his own observation and paranoia- something that’s wearing his attention thin.Ugh, what he wouldn’t give for a break from all this. The Janus Order is as predictably bland with their sterilized evildoing. If he hadn’t overheard Claire and that other kid- Tommy?- he would’ve seriously considered causing a scene all on his own. Lord is this dull, waiting and waiting for creepy motherfucker extraordinaire Otto to show his stupid ugly face. Thank god for the glasses kid flipping his lid, it really got things moving along. The following abductions were the perfect thing to rile up all the rest.Enrique just hadn’t been satisfied with the rate they were riling, so he might’ve nudged Claire in a dangerous direction. He doesn’t feel bad for it; it’s all in their collective best interests that they make their way deeper into the Janus Order. A little bit of police-adjacent brutality builds character, toughens kids up. He's lived through worse, surely deviants more powerful than him can, too.Enrique carefully doesn’t let himself dwell on the naked regret and pain he’d seen on Claire face, half-dragged from the cafeteria like she was. There are bigger issues to concern himself with- the present situation is temporary and the future is forever. He’s got to keep his eyes straight ahead, locked on the prize. One spunky teenage girl is nothing in the grand scheme of things. Or, that’s what he tells himself, anyway.Enrique sighs to the empty blankness of his room, wishing he had some smokes at least.

----- CHAPTER BREAK -----

Toby makes a half-hearted attempt to keep track of time, but he quickly discards the effort. He has no way to tell how long it’s been since they were all put into isolation. The most he’s seen of any of the other patients is in passing, meeting eyes across a hallway as they’re marched in opposite directions.Toby hasn’t seen Claire, yet. No sign of Enrique, either. He saw Steve, at one point, but the other teen hadn’t noticed them passing each other. Toby doesn’t hold it against him; the sides of Steve’s mouth were cracked and bleeding slightly, and rash covered the side of his neck in an angry, flaking flush.Toby’s hands are in a similar state. He can’t get them to stay moist for more than a few minutes, no matter how he tries to combat the dryness with his meager resources. Spittle, damp toilette paper when he’s allotted bathroom time… he’s even tried holding them to his back, trying to rub skin oil onto them. None of it has any lasting effect.Toby can’t help but keep trying, though, and might have begun a habit of licking his knuckles to get some amount of relief, even if it dries worse after. The itchiness dulls by a small margin when he does, and the raspy edges of the scabbed over splits soften for a short while. Plus, it’s something to do and focus on, sitting in his empty room for hours and hours and hours without break.No wonder this is such an effective threat in prison movies. Toby has begun to sincerely empathize with inmates, fictional or real, who are sentenced to isolation like this.He’s not sure how long he’s stuck like that. Left alone to breathe (and sometimes cry) through the aftereffects of injections, left alone with his thoughts as they grow louder along with the ringing silence…A lot of his time is spent regretting things he’s done and hasn’t done. He’s never kissed anyone, he didn’t tell his nana he loves her nearly often enough, he couldn’t keep his powers under wraps… He landed himself here by his own mistakes, he screwed up, he’s lost track of all his friends and now they’re definitely in danger. What, specifically, he could have done to fix everything, Toby doesn’t know. But. He should have.Those thoughts chase each other around and around in his head, endlessly. It starts to become a little obsessive, after some indiscernible length of time. And then, it begins to get blurry. Arguments with himself are less coherent, bouts of time between meals, injections, and sleep become even more difficult to track.It’s not until he’s shivering and sweating under his covers, freezing, with a throbbing headache, that Toby clues in that he might have a sustained fever. As if he didn’t have enough problems.The next time his door is opened and he’s ordered to cooperate for his turn with the doctors, Toby struggles to get his wobbly legs to just work already. His awareness is hazy, sense of balance shot, and it’s not for a solid minute that he realizes how he’s managing to move around still.His steps are light, easy. Quiet. His bangs brush his forehead, floating gently as he walks. Oh… he’s lessened his own gravity. It isn’t helping his poor balance, but it’s making it much easier to keep putting one foot in front of the other.Toby is… tired. The momentary relief of his powers aiding him, for once, is short lived. He recalls where he is, what’s happening to him, and what’s about to happen. If he gets caught using his powers, too, he’ll be punished for it. The risk isn’t worth the gain.Toby struggles to feel for the trigger point of his abilities. His senses are so off it takes him nearly until they’re at their destination, which is cutting it very close to that creepy glasses doctor noticing his defiance of the rules, which in turn is making his palms sweat even worse and his heart thump against his rib cage and-Like popping his ears of pressure, the lightness of his body disappears. Toby’s knees buckle immediately.The floor is cold- he’s been cold this entire time, it stings- and his bare elbows and palms bruise on the unforgiving linoleum. At least he doesn’t hit his head directly, managing to catch himself enough to avoid it. He still finds himself with his cheek pressed against the floor, mind dizzy and grasping for the reason why he’s suddenly lying down.Voices swirl around above him. Toby can’t parse what they’re saying, staring at the way the lights reflect across the floor. There’s a weird ringing in his ears, getting louder.He feels people lifting him up, but doesn’t comprehend what that means. He doesn’t even notice his slip from reality and into unconsciousness.
-/-
“He’s ready. Collar him and deliver him downstairs. I’ll slate him for the next stage, come tomorrow morning.”Toby doesn’t feel himself be dragged away, doesn’t see them approaching an elevator with armed guards posted on either side of it. The doors shut behind him and the people stealing him away, sealing off the first level and lowering the elevator down, down, down…
-/-
Claire copes with her present situation best she can. She does stretches in her room, keeping active as she thinks. Focuses on an end goal of getting out of here, with her mind intact if not her body. Breaks a guard’s nose when he gets a little rough with dragging her from her room.It feels viciously good to cause the spurt of blood which slicks her elbow, even as she’s struck in the side with a baton. Her body might be shaky, aching and going numb in turns, but she’s not giving up. Not yet. Not while anger and determination burn in her stomach like hot magma.In contrast, however, as her hot emotions metaphorically roil, Claire is starting to struggle to stay warm. It’s not the environment around her, but something about her insides. Underneath the blanket, sheets, and even the mattress cover of her bed, there’s a level of comfort to be found. But within minutes of leaving them… the feeling of iciness begins to creep back into her limbs.Claire puts her hand to her chest more than once, and tries not to fear the fact that the coldness is coming from within.Her nails are darkening, like she’s bruised the nailbed of each. She sets the passing time by the rate the keratin blooms deep purple. It’s a morbid, faulty method to track hours, but she doesn’t have many other options. Based off the previous sessions of injections, the timing of them will change sporadically. Those are even less reliable.“Why are you doing this?” Claire asks, over and over, during her injection sessions. She's counted several, since their failed rebellion. Claire knows the stretches between are far longer, and the effects of whatever she’s being drugged with are drawn out just as long. The drug has changed. Why? Why any of this?She’s never answered, and if she does get a reply, it’s a reminder to remain still during the procedure, or it’s a passing comment by the adult deviant. His little round glasses always give him an extra creep factor, the way it makes her feel like she’s a bug under a microscope.“You will understand soon enough, neugieriges kleine Mädchen,” is the first answer she gets, dripping with smug amusement. She only gets a second one because strains against the escorts holding her, leading her back to her room just as they cross paths with the doctor.“You remind me of someone I knew, once,” he says, which isn’t what Claire expected or wanted to hear. The doctor regards her with a calculating stare, and as she glares defiantly, his eyes flash the inhuman red-yellow she knew she’d seen before.Claire can’t help the way she tenses at the change. The adult deviant smiles condescendingly at her, pushing his glasses up as his eyes return to normal between one blink and the next.“Let’s see that you don’t squander your potential like she did,” the deviant continues, and then walks away without so much as a look backwards. Claire is taken in the opposite direction, seething all the way to stave off her tremulous fear.Claire is trying to be brave, to stay strong and not break. But she’s scared, just as much as Toby is… last time she saw him, anyway.Part of her is tempted to say damn it all to hell and go looking for her friends. For Jim, and Mary, and Toby and everyone else in this distinctly evil place. Claire stares at the ceiling and counts her prayers for each of them, asking Señora de la Noche to watch over them all. When she closes her eyes, whispering those prayers, she hears in her head the voices of her parents, taking turns as she grew to tell tales of folklore.Claire is not someone who is overly devoted to religion or old stories, but right now… they can use all the help they can get. A request for the Lady of the Night’s protection is one meager reassurance she can give herself, to fend off terrible thoughts of never, ever escaping from here, and dying all alone on an examination table.Claire keeps herself upright with this. She stands tall as she’s able, refuses to cower under the clinical gaze of the bastards experimenting on her, and whispers rambling prayers whenever the lights flicker off for a spell.The desire to break that pattern, though- oh, she wants to so badly it’s a physical urge. But her show of power in the cafeteria was a fleeting moment, reducing her back to palm-sized portals and nothing further. Not that they’d help her, really. The blackness within them, completely devoid of light, tells her nothing of where they go, even if she could summon one large enough for herself.Her desperation to escape is not so severe that she’ll risk flinging herself into oblivion.…Not yet, at least.
-/-
The initial sensations Toby registers are these:
Something pressing around his throat, cold and hard.
The warble of hushed voices speaking around him, while the ring of icy metal makes an audible click.
Passing out does wonders towards easing a migraine, even if it comes back quicker than he’d like.
He manages to force his eyelids open, sluggish as he looks around. Someone in a white coat steps away from him, done with whatever the cold metal is for. The hands holding him up by his sore arms haul him backwards at the same time, startling Toby as he tries to get his feet under him so he’s not dragged along.“It’s awake,” says one of the people yanking his arm out of its socket.“Get up and walk, kid,” orders the other, with only slightly less disdain in her voice.Toby tries, and somewhat succeeds, in following the order. He stumbles along half-blinded by his watering eyes, dizzied by the lighting above. His exhaustion is creeping back, somehow worse than before. Toby- because he’s miserable, because he’s tripping on his own feet- reaches for the trigger in himself, to lighten his steps to a manageable level.Toby grasps at it, and the muscle he’s been steadily training barely responds. It’s like trying to catch smoke with his bare hands. He’s stunned for a moment, blearily wondering if he’s been cured finally. Maybe this was all a misunderstanding, maybe he and his nana were right to trust the Janus Order to fix him. Maybe he’ll get to go home, now.He's dragged to a thick pane of glass, one of many along the hall, and a digital keypad appears on the smooth surface. The heavily armored guard holding his left arm reaches over, tapping his glove against the glass and receiving a green light and beep. A door slides open from the seamless wall of semi-opaque glass, revealing…Foldout beds, one on either side of the room, set into the walls. What looks like a tiny shower block in the corner, lacking privacy of any sort, and a toilet next to it. That’s it. The space as a whole is barely bigger than an average bedroom.So. Not going home, then.Toby is dropped unceremoniously on the ground, and the heavy boots of the guards walk right out the door. Said door hisses shut and proceeds to disappear into the glass once more. From this side he can’t see out at all, while someone on the other side can certainly see in.Toby groans, rubbing his face. He’s gone a bit numb from the excessive, near constant stress of being here. Even the potentiality of someone peeking at him while he like, showers and pisses and such, is barely enough to push through the haziness of his thoughts.He watched a video about something similar to this, maybe. Toby vaguely recalls the idea of being exposed to high levels of fear gradually dulls the reaction’s severity over time… but who’s to say this isn’t all him, being sick and not processing anything right?Moving around nudges the new weight on his neck. Toby touches it gingerly, grimacing deeply when he feels the complete loop the metal makes. No clasp that he can find, either.Shit. He’s been collared. As if everything wasn’t fucked up enough, now he’s really being treated like a lab rat. And it’s probably interfering with his powers, what with how there’s a weird sense of… hollowness, where he should feel the presence of them. Toby didn’t even know he’d gotten used to that, that he’d had it at all, until it was taken away.He's wanted his powers gone from day one, so… why the feeling of loss?A shuffle of fabric jolts him out of his thoughts. He’s not alone. Toby scrambles to his feet and gets his back against the wall, eyes going to the figure on one of the beds he hadn’t noticed. They’re mostly underneath their blanket, curled up and only just starting to rise. The blanket slips from their shoulders, pooling around their folded legs. Long, unruly black hair hangs in their face, and even longer legs extend as they stand.In spite of bracing himself, Toby does wince back a little at the height of his cellmate. He’s a bit short, sure, but this person is well over a head taller than him and that’s frankly disquieting after the day(?) he’s had.“…Toby?” asks a raspy, familiar voice.Toby opens eyes he didn’t know he’d shut. Whipping his gaze upwards, he sees the tall, gaunt figure brush his long hair from his face and finds himself meeting blue, blue eyes.“Jim?” Toby gasps. “Oh my god! You- you’re-” He’s cut off as arms encircle him, hugging him tightly as Jim all but clings to him.“S-sorry,” the other teen apologizes, almost immediately trying to pull away again, but Toby grabs him back and clutches tightly.“I was scared I wasn’t gonna see you again,” Toby confesses, voice wobbling. Jim makes a sad, choked noise, and wraps himself around Toby to clutch back.“I didn’t think I’d see anyone ever again,” Jim says a tad wetly, sniffling. “I kept hearing things about- trial stages, and future transfers, and- just, awful things, Toby. I’ve been waiting to end up on a dissection table this whole time!” he exclaims, laughing humorlessly. He’s shaking. And his skin feels a touch too cold.They’re both in bad shape, Toby assesses distantly. Whatever has happened to Jim while they were separated, combined with the persistence of Toby’s feverishness- it paints them as a pretty sorry picture, alright.For a moment, though, things a less bleak as they hold onto one another, processing their amazement to have been reunited.
-/-
“Oh, jeez, Tobes. Your poor hands,” Jim speaks softly, holding Toby’s reddened, irritated hands in his.“It could be worse,” Toby jokes, and internally winces, because yeah, he could be worse off. Like Jim is.His friend is much taller than when they last saw each other- which wasn’t all that long ago, even. It’s like Jim is being stretched, bones lengthening faster than his flesh can keep up, and it’s resulted in him looking worryingly thin. And with the mop of hair brushing his shoulders, under other circumstances, Toby would comment that Jim looks like a scarecrow.This is not the time or place to even consider doing that. Not when, along with his growth spurt, the blueish bruises on Jim’s body have begun to eat up his skin in earnest. With his sizes too small clothes, it’s hard not to see the blemishes spreading.But Jim doesn’t seem to mind the poor joke. He just tuts and smiles, joking in turn that Toby really should consider moisturizing. The smile falls as their conversation lulls, silence settling over them in their newest prison.(They’re definitely prisoners, now. Not patients, not even humans. They’re freaks under glass to be prodded and poked and god knows what else. The grim reality of their situation is too depressing to dwell on, so they don’t.)“…Why are they doing this?” Toby finally asks, not sure why he chooses to, but. Jim is a sensible, empathetic person. In the turmoil he’s been feeling, Toby guiltily craves an anchor with those qualities.Jim sighs, dropping their hands to rest on the bed they’ve sat on. It’s his, with a very faint warmth to its thin mattress. “I don’t know,” Jim says, as lost sounding as Toby feels. “I’ve asked, but no one has given me an outright answer yet. I keep turning it over in my head, though, ‘bout why they’d want to do this to us, do this to our powers, and I've listened to everything I can whenever I'm taken for treatment…” He trails off, biting his lip. “…So, I have a suspicion.”Toby stays quiet, waiting for the rest. Talking about their situation, comparing the pieces of the puzzle… he’s not liking the image they’re beginning to form.Jim takes a breath, and then another. “As insane as it sounds, I- I do believe, now, that they might be like, trying to increase our powers,” he says, grey-blue fingers squeezing Toby’s. “It’s like something out of a comic, but I’m pretty sure we’re being prepared for something… or someone.”“So, what, we’re being made into… super soldiers?” Even as an avid fan of sci-fi stories, Toby has trouble saying that aloud. Then again, given the state of the world and the emergence of super powers in teenagers everywhere- is it really that hard to believe?His trepidation over their supposed "cure" treatments, back forever ago, no longer feels so paranoid.“Basically, from what I've managed to overhear,” Jim says wryly. “The collars feel a little counterproductive, though. Which I don’t get. I couldn’t levitate a penny like this, let alone be any use in a fight, or… whatever they want us for.”Toby looks at the metal shining around his friend’s neck and hrms, annoyed that their best chance at escape has already been nullified. If Jim could access his metal abilities, then it’d be a breeze for him to pop any door open they needed to. Unlike Toby’s powers, Jim’s are actually useful right now.Ugh, Toby shouldn’t feel as uncomfortable as he does, sans his powers. Not like making things heavy or light will help them much in this situation…He blinks at a palm touching his forehead, realizing he’s spaced out. Jim is looking at him with serious concern, keeping his hand in place for a long moment.“You’ve got a fever,” Jim declares when he sits back, unhappy with his discovery.Toby just shrugs. “I know. It’s lasted like… I don’t know how long, actually. They took away our access to anything resembling a clock.”“They what?” Jim says.“Oh. Yeah, you weren’t there. Claire tried to go all viva la revolution on their asses, and she actually succeeded in inspiring everyone to stand up against the Order… It didn’t last long, but it. It was really cool of her to do that, even if it kinda got us all put in isolation.”Jim processes the information in stages, emotions shifting thrice over before they settle on something like admiration. “Wow,” Jim says, grinning slowly, “that is pretty cool.”“Me an’ Enrique helped, but yeah, it was mostly Claire.” Claire, who is possibly the bravest person among them all, and who Toby is very worried for. He doesn’t know where she is, if she’s okay, if she was punished worse than the rest of them for being the leader or for her use of her powers…It's all very distressing to consider. Kind of like how Jim is still looking at him, obviously worried about the ongoing fever Toby has been dealing with.“When did you last have some water?” Jim asks, and doesn’t wait for an answer. He’s up and off the bed, knobby, fawn-like legs making him tower over Toby. And then Toby finds himself being pulled up and guided over to the shower stall. Jim explains that this is the only way they can drink; they’ve got no sink, and meals never come with beverages.Toby sighs and gripes but angles himself to cup his hands, catching water as Jim twists the knob. Toby is surprised briefly when a digital message appears on the mirrored glass wall, along with a voice narrating its words. “You have now used a third of your allotted water reserves,” says the pleasant, non-gendered voice, coming from a speaker above. It’s then that Toby notes the camera positioned there, as well.Jim explains they only get so much water per day, too. For bathing and drinking both. It’s an illusion of being able to control anything in their lives- they only get what they’re given, and nothing more.Toby drinks gulps of water and then washes his face without soap, shivering when he steps away. They’ve got no towels, presently, and so he’s stuck shaking his head and flinging water around, before swiping away the rest with his shirt’s front.Toby doesn’t miss the way Jim hovers, watching his every move. Isolation and continued experiments haven’t been kind to either of them, but the twitchiness Jim has bids for him having it worse. Toby gets the dork to sit down before he strains himself; he also didn’t miss the way Jim’s steps have a slight limp, a twinge of pain in his face now and then. The inhuman growth spurt has got to be painful, no matter which way you look at it.They’re back on the same bed, after that. Backs to the wall, sides pressed together as they sit. Nothing has changed, but the drink and soothing room-temperature water on his dry hands has helped Toby clear his head, and Jim seems happier for having gotten to fuss over his wellbeing.The bar is on the ground for things they’d consider good at this point. It’s a little sad. It’s also all they’ve got to work with, so.“Claire almost sent a bunch of guards to the shadow dimension,” Toby says eventually, because that’s been knocking around in his head for ages, and he really hopes Jim gets the reference.“No way,” Jim says, the start of a grin twitching his lips. “You mean like, from-”“Yu-Gi-Oh?”“Yes.”“Of course that's the only anime you ever watched. And it wasn’t exactly like it, but I mean, basically-!”"I only know it through memes, actually.""Why, Jim.
Why would you get my hopes up."Jim’s laughter is awesome to hear, after going who knows how many days in a row with just his noisy thoughts for company. Toby feels some of the despair that’d started to grow in him dissipate, talking and just being with his friend. They’ve objectively known each other for such a short period, but with everything that’s happened, the uncertainty of what’s to come- it’s like they’ve skipped milestones and made it to a weird zone of blooming friendship, with a touchstone core.God only knows what will happen to them, the next time someone opens the invisible door to their cell, but that’s far from mind, just for now.
-/-
Two deviated humans sit on a bed, chattering on about inane topics to comfort themselves. In the feed next to that video, two subjects are pacing the length of their shared room, one figure’s passive abilities disrupting her form. In another, the deviant with the most fascinating passive mutation sits alone; kept away from others, to prevent experiment contamination or the seeding of ill-advised escape plans. And a dozen other feeds, monitoring each experimental subject’s status, displayed across multiple screens every hour of the day.Some are of the entry level subjects, still contained by four walls and a locked door. Their progression towards stage two is as carefully watched as those already further along, ensuring they don’t make the mistake of letting an enhanced deviant escape their restraints.After past failures of that sort, there is no such thing as being overly vigilant.Otto doesn’t need to watch the security feed, but sometimes he does regardless. There is no better way to keep accurate notes on a subject than to observe it directly. And on the rare chance he’s already concluded his research for the day, and he simply feels the need to sit and watch… Well, that’s no one’s business but his own, really.Leaning back into his plush office chair, with the live video of his current favorites on screen, Otto can smile to himself and enjoy his evening tea. There really aren’t many things he likes better than to sit and watch, seeing the future in each of the deviants under his protection.The children should be grateful, or at least keep their dissatisfaction to themselves. The cells and collars are far nicer than the containment methods he endured at their age. Regular meals, access to ablutions, even constant companionship- it’s luxury, plain to see. They will no doubt come to reflect on this time as a kindness, if tinged with tough love.The children don’t know what’s good for them, not yet. Otto knows. He’s known for a long time, nearly as far back as he can remember. With that wisdom, he intends to help each deviant down the path of righteous glory they’re meant for. It’s only natural that he’d take the gift given to him at that age, and pay it forwards to the budding recruits to the Janus Order’s cause.The potential some of them have… It’s been a drawn out, painstaking process to create it, but the trial and error has paid off. Otto is thrilled to be at the head of such a conquest in modern sciences; the solution to the formula his predecessors wrote has been found, and with that they can finally truly begin to push onwards. The results of preliminary administrations have only served to further refine the drug. The success of his work has Otto feeling downright giddy.His pleasantly narcissistic thoughts are interrupted, unfortunately, by the phone on his desk ringing. Setting down his tea and sighing, Otto answers the call.“This is Dr. Scaarbach.”“Hello, doctor.”Otto’s calm turns to frigid terror. He sits up straighter, despite being alone in his office, and adjusts his tie as he clears his throat. “My lady, this is a surprise. I wasn’t expecting your call for another fortnight.”“I have heard tell of your project’s progress, mea crudelissimis puer. I wish to know the truth- did you truly, finally accomplish what I sent you to do?”“Yes, yes I did,” Otto says, caught between his fear and pride. “The acceleration of their DNA mutation has gone beyond the original trials already, and we are streamlining it further with every session. Everything is going exactly as you planned.”“Good,” she purrs. “I’ve waited a long, long time for this. I shouldn’t be kept waiting much longer, agreed?”“Of course, my lady.”“See that you send for me, once you’ve got a completed specimen. I want to be there to welcome our newest accolades into the fold. To witness the dawn of a new era.”“The moment we have confirmed the final stage’s end, you will be notified, I promise you.”“I’ll be looking forwards to your call, crudelis puer.”“It will be my honor, Lady Morgana.”A low, pleased hum, and the line clicks. Otto sets the handset into its cradle and then slumps into his chair, reaching into his vest’s pocket for his handkerchief. In the few moments their exchange lasted, he’s developed a sheen of sweat on his forehead.The smugness Otto felt prior to the call has shriveled up and become a spiny weight in his gut. Someone among the staff has been talking to a contact, passing information down the line and straight to the heart of their organization. The Pale Lady’s expectations have intensified, now that she’s aware of the breakthroughs he’s been having.They’ll have to keep up this rate of progress, then. He’d been planning to keep it a secret until he had at least a handful of perfected models- but, of course, his genius is going to have to be rushed. Were he not stationed elsewhere, Otto would have suspected dear old Stricklander as culprit for the security breach. This sort of underhanded trick is one his fellow vassal would use.Removing his glasses to rub his eyes, cursing his luck, Otto shifts the time table in his mind. He won’t let this project be ruined by anyone’s impatience, not even Hers. He’ll simply have to… take a more expedient approach with the trials.Sliding his glasses back onto his face, Otto closes the security feeds and opens documents for experiment scheduling. His relaxing evening thoroughly ruined; Otto begins rewriting the instructions for each team’s assignments. He only pauses briefly to reach into a drawer and uncap a flask, pouring it into his tea and downing it in a few gulps.It does nothing to numb the sense of the eyes on his back, watching him, watching him work with a single-minded determination to avoid failure, to ensure success. Though he’s always tried to quash the habit, the surge of stress has Otto scratching at the back of his neck, underneath the crisp white collar of his shirt. The tattooed serial bar there is itching once more, like the first days after he received it.Otto brews another cup of tea and finishes off the flask in the meantime. This night is going to be a long one, and all the ones following will likely be the same.