Chapter Text
I couldn't wait to leave this fucking lab. I mean, come on, who enjoyed seeing little kids get tortured? Not me, that was for sure.
I knew what my father did for his job, I knew what it entailed and how he paraded as some sort of father figure for these strange, unnatural children, but I just found it easier to ignore than confront. Not that it was super easy to ignore. It wasn't like I could tell people the truth when they asked what my daddy did for a living. "Bring your kid to work day" was a bust, along with "bring your parent to school" day. Whenever somebody asked about my father all I said was "he's an accountant." Nobody really asked any more questions after that.
While my father was busy raising up his buzz-headed children, I was raised by a nanny. Her name was Manuela and she smelt like cinnamon and she made the best arroz con pollo known to man. Or at least, that was what she told me. It held true too, I always left Mexican restaurants unsatisfied. Manuela was my fill-in mother, sure, but she was more of a parent to me than my biological father ever had been. He was always working, Maneula was the one to hold me during thunderstorms, to hold my hair back when I had a sour stomach, to get me ready for my first ever school dance.
She did all that. My father did nothing, so technically, I owed him nothing, but alas...he was paying for my apartment in California, so I felt like I owed him at least this last request before I went off to college.
"Hello Miss Brenner," a guard said, nodding at me. I nodded back, wrapping my arms around myself. It didn't matter if it was nine hundred degrees in the damn lab, I'd always feel cold. Everything was cold there. From the linoleum white tiles to the fluorescent lights shining above. Even the guards were cold, unfeeling beings. When I was younger, I used to poke at them just to see if they had regular body temperatures. Unfortunately, they did, but the suspicion never really went away. I had half the urge to now at the age of eighteen.
"Your father is in the Testing Room, he told us to take you there," the guard said.
"Right," I said, rubbing my arms over the fabric of my sweater just to give my hands something to do. I always felt so tense here, like I was always being watched. My eyes shot up to the blinking red cameras that lined the halls. Ah yes, the source of the feeling.
We started walking down the bright white halls, our footsteps echoing loudly, so loud it was almost jarring.
My eyes scanned the rooms we passed. They didn't have any labels on them, but I could see shadows moving behind the frosted glass. My neck craned as I stared, trying to see what was going on. I didn't really want to know, but my curiosity always got the best of me. Like that time I caught Manuela kissing the delivery man one fine Saturday morning at our front door. But in my defense, I was eagerly awaiting a new edition of a magazine and she was taking a really long time.
My thoughts about Manuela and her UPS hunk shattered when I collided into something. My forehead smacked into something hard and pointy, and I would have fallen over had an arm not wrapped around my waist, the other cradling my neck.
"Careful there," a calm voice said. "Wouldn't want our most prized girl getting hurt." My forehead pounded uncomfortably and I reached up to massage the ache there.
"Already happened," I mumbled. "And what?" I lifted my gaze up to see a pair of crystal blue eyes gazing back at me. They belonged to...fuck, they belonged to a stunningly attractice man. He had sharp cheekbones and angular brows, everything about him seemed to be honed into fine points. He looked like he was made of marble. I had half the urge to reach up and feel his face just to know if it was actually warm or if it would be as cold and hard as marble. The arms around me certainly felt hard, coiled with fine muscle. I swallowed hard, my throat and mouth suddenly dry.
"You're Dr. Brenner's daughter, aren't you?" he asked, a beautiful, amused smile crossing his god-like features.
"Uh...yup. Yes." Smooth girl. Real smooth.
"Juliette?"
"Yes?"
He laughed softly. "I was asking if that was your name."
"Oh...right." I felt my cheeks blaze hotly and I bit down on my bottom lip. We were awfully close to one another at the moment. So close that I could count the thick, dark hair that made up his eyelashes if I wanted to. And for some reason I did, just as an excuse to stare at him for longer.
"Juliette?" he said, his tone still amused.
"Hmm?" I hummed.
"I can't let you go if you're holding me." I felt my brows jerk upwards and I looked down to see that sure enough, I had his pristine white shirt clutched between my fingers.
"Oh God," I stuttered, releasing him and taking a step back. He kept a firm hand on my back for a moment, ensuring I was steady, before he pulled away. "I'm so sorry. I didn't even realize-"
"It's alright," he said, eyes twinkling. "Don't worry about it, Juliette." Ugh, I wanted him to say my name again and again. I'd never get sick of it. Too bad he was working for my fucking father. But of course, the universe couldn't possibly be so nice as to give me someone so perfect at my dream school.
"There's been a change of plans," the mystery man said, turning to the guards who had been standing silent all this time. I cringed thinking about the way they must've watched that entire interaction. Had they laughed? They probably fucking laughed.
"Excuse me?" one of them asked.
"There was a bit of a tussle in the Rainbow Room," he said. "I've been instructed to send you there and escort Miss Brenner ro the Testing Room." Testing Room, Rainbow Room, they were really clear and to the point, huh? Was there a "Sleep room" and "Eating room" too?
One of the two guards let out a hefty sigh. "Alright," he muttered. "Let's go, Aubrey." The woman, Aubrey, merely shrugged before walked down the hall towards the supposed "Rainbow Room." God, who could possibly want to tussle in the Red Room? It sounded like an oxymoron. Like jumbo shrimp.
The man in front of me laughed and I flinched. Had I said that out loud?
"It does happen from time to time, surprisingly enough," he said. His hand was once more on my lower back, urging me forward with a gentle press. Somehow, despite the shaking in my knees, my legs moved forward. He didn't move his hand though. Oh. My. God.
"What's your name?" I blurted. I slammed my mouth shut, shaking my head. "Or are you not supposed to tell me those things? It's okay if you can't. I mean, I won't pry." I resisted the urge to veer to the right and slam my head against the shiny white wall. Why was I word-vomiting to this poor man? He didn't deserve it. I'd be better off leaving him alone and finding my own way to the Testing Room.
But, to my intense surprise, the man simply smiled at me, chuckling. "I don't see the harm in it," he said. "Not that anyone ever asks me my name. It's weird, we don't normally get a lot of...new people here."
"Well I'm not new," I said. "I've been coming here since I was a little girl."
"I haven't seen you here, though," he said. "I've heard all about the infamous Juliette Brenner, but I've never seen her."
I smiled, looking down at my feet that beheld my dirtied, three-year hightop converse. "Well now you are." I looked up at him to see he was looking down at me too. Oh God, were we flirting? Was this flirting? I was flirting with a man who experimented on children. I was an awful woman.
"Peter," he said suddenly.
I felt my brows furrow. "Gesundheit?"
He laughed. "No, I mean, my name is Peter. Peter Ballard."
"Peter Ballard," I parroted, nodding.
"What?" he asked, raising a brow.
"Nothing," I said, shrugging. "I guess I was just expecting something less..."
"Boring?" He laughed.
"Ordinary," I supplied. I don't know, I assumed for someone so attractive that his name would have to be like Dionysus or Achilles or some other person who sounded great and mighty that I just couldn't think of at the moment.
"Well I'm sorry for being so ordinary," he said, though his words were light-hearted, amused.
"Oh no," I said, "you are anything but ordinary, Peter Ballard." I didn't know why I had said it, it just felt right. I probably should've regretted being so bold, but I wanted to let him know just how great I thought he was after just a two minute conversation. Really, I had yet to see anything bad. He was good at keeping up conversation, was a good sport with my humor, and seemed thoroughly entertained when we talked. Not to mention he had beautiful golden hair and a face worthy of all the magazine covers in the world.
But with my luck, he'd probably actually be some cold-hearted villain with no moral compass and a tragic past.
"Huh," Peter said, moving his hand from my back so that he could open a door. I hadn't even realized we had stopped walking. "Funny. I was thinking the same thing about you, Juliette Brenner." I ducked my head to hide my blush as I walked through the door. Though any sort of happiness buzzing within me died the moment I crossed the threshold.
"Juliette," my father said, rising from his seat. The room Peter had led me to lived up to its name. The Testing Room consisted of one room, which we were in, made up of different computers that held graphs and numbers that hurt my head to even look at. The other side of the room was bordered off by a strip of glass, bulletproof, I was sure. On that other side stood a small child wearing a sort of hospital gown, their hair buzzed, their hands twining together nervously. God, what was going on?
But I had yet to face the music. "Father," I said, forcing a smile to my lips. I knew that every one of his other "children" called him Papa, and that he wanted me to too, but I chose not to. It was a small act of rebellion, but a rebellion nevertheless. Besides, "papa" just made me cringe. It was right up there with "daddy." Ew.
"Hello, daughter," he said, coming up to me and giving me a hug. "It's been a while." Oh, I hated this part. I forced myself to wrap my arms around him and tried my hardest to release the tension coiled around my shoulders and torso. I had to at least act like I could tolerate him.
"I know," I said. "Not since my birthday."
"Right," he said, jerkily pulling away from me. My birthday had been at least five weeks ago. But we were making good time, normally I only ever saw him every two months, whenever he needed to come back home to grab some new suits or wanted to catch up on his soap operas or whatever it was he watched in his free time. I didn't know him that well. As far as I knew, he came home to watch porn in peace. I shuddered at the memory.
"How are you liking those new pencils I bought you?"
"Oh good," I said, nodding. "They're um...really nice." It wasn't like I was going to tell him I never used charcoal pencils, much rather preferring normal lead ones or better yet...paint. But he didn't need to know that. Just like he didn't need to know that they were currently shoved into the deep recesses of a trash bag meant for goodwill that I was going to dump off in the morning. Just because I couldn't enjoy it didn't mean some other person somewhere couldn't.
"You like them, then? That's good. I uh...I didn't know which ones to get you." And there it was. See, my father was (unfortunately) very good at his job of breaking down children and brainwashing them, but he wasn't so good at actually being a father to his biological daughter. I didn't blame him, we only ever saw each other once every couple months, but that didn't mean it didn't hurt. We had our good moments, sure, but I would see other girls with their fathers, making jokes and laughing and just loving each other and well...it struck a nerve with me. Every year of elementary school I forewent the Daddy Daughter Dance to have ice cream and play board games with Manuela. And while that was always fun, it was always underlined by the fact that I was at home...with Manuela...eating ice cream and playing board games because my father couldn't come home just to go to a stupid dance.
I didn't like to dwell on it much.
"I'm so glad you could come," my father said, sitting back down in the leather chair he had been sitting in before. I glanced behind me to see Peter had taken a stance by the door, along with another worker in an identical all-white getup. When he caught me looking he smiled sweetly. I was too embarrassed to return the gesture, instead whipping my head back forward...like an idiot.
"It's like my last hurrah," I said, walking over to him and perching on a metal bar stool that was stationed next to him. I only knew it was my seat because he had gotten it for me when I was five and wanted to sit next to him all the time while he worked. Times had obviously changed.
"Why is that, dear?" he asked, flipping through some sort of notebook or something. He scribbled a note in the margin.
"Um, because I'm moving tomorrow," I said, looking down at my knees, playing with a hole in my jeans, tugging on the frayed strings so I could ignore the sinking in my stomach and the heat blazing in my cheeks and ears.
"Oh right, of course," he said. "UCLA." He said it with a mocking tone, like he thought it was flamboyant or extravagant. And he totally did. He absolutely opposed the idea of me going to college so far away. He wanted me to go to a local school, or at least one in state, but the idea horrified me. I had worked my ass off all of high school just to get as far away from him and his little experiments as I could. The University of California in Los Angeles was about as far as I could go without going to like...Hawaii.
And it wasn't like he could exactly say no, not with me getting a full-ride scholarship. I graduated with a 4.0 gpa, took all honors classes, and participated in fifteen clubs over my four years, even working as a manager for the track team, just so I could get that scholarship. I knew if he didn't have to pay a dime it'd be that much easier to convince him. All he had to do was help with an apartment. I'd be getting a job to pay for textbooks and other expenses. But I was mostly all set to be an independent. It was my dream and it was finally coming true.
"Yup, that's the one," I said, bobbing my head awkwardly. "So um...what did you want to show me?"
"Right," he said, jerking his head up. I hated how brightly he lit up whenever he was working. Like it was his whole world. He never looked at me that way. "Well, today is a big day, Juliette."
"No way," I said, "7ou asked me to come in on laundry day?" I heard a snort behind me and my father and I both turned to see Peter overcoming an intense coughing fit. I pinched my lips together to keep from giggling.
"You know I don't appreciate the sarcasm, Juliette," my father said tersely, turning back around.
I ground my teeth together, biting back the retort poised on my tongue. The one that wanted to ask why he deserved an opinion when he hardly knew me at all.
"Sorry, father," I mumbled.
"Or the mumbling."
I closed my eyes, inhaling sharply. "Can we hurry this up? I have last minute things I need to do before I go."
"On your trip?"
No to Narnia, father. "Yes," I said instead.
"Well I never really see you much anymore," he said, writing something else on his page. "I thought today could be a bonding day."
"So we had to do it here?" I blurted. "We couldn't go to like, I don't know, Denny's or something if you wanted to bond?"
"You used to be so interested in my work," he said. "What changed?"
"I grew up," I said. And I realized you were the villain instead of the hero. Yeah, I had to grow up really fast. Normally, it took kids a while to figure out that their parents are normal people, just like them. To figure out that they're not heroes, not worship-worthy figures. I figured that out at the ripe age of seven.
"Yes," my father said, eyes scanning my face, brows furrowed. "Yes you did." He suddenly leaned forward and pressed a red button next to some sort of microphone.
"Fourteen, dear, please take a step forward," my father said into the microphone, his voice taking on a softness that certainly had not been present in our previous conversation. "Remember, you're more than capable of handling this. Remember your training and don't be afraid."
He was talking to the girl on the other side of the glass, or at least, it looked like a girl. It was kind of hard to tell with the hair. She couldn't have been any older than six, with dark brown skin and wide doe-eyes. She was trembling in her hospital-like gown. She was terrified.
"Father-" I started.
"Release it, Peter," he interrupted me, jerking his head to the man behind me. Peter walked forward, his shoes clicking on the floor, before he went to the wall and raised his hand, punching in a long code into some keypad before raising a lever. Peter's face was pale, his hands shaking as they moved.
"What are you doing?" I asked, whirling towards my father.
He placed a hand on my knee, gripping it firmly. "Just be quiet and watch, Juliette." It felt like a punch to the gut.
As much as it hurt though, I couldn't help but turn my face towards the glass.
The girl was standing before two doors that were slowly sliding apart. I heard a shriek come from somewhere deep inside the darkness behind the door and my spine went rigid, my heart becoming a wardrum behind my collarbone. Oh no. No. No. No.
The crack widened into a large expansive gap of blackness and I pinched my lips together, waiting to see what would come from it. The girl, Fourteen, was shaking like a leaf caught in the wind.
"Father let her go-" My words were interrupted by another shriek, and then, something stepped out of the darkness and the words dissolved in my throat.
It was like nothing I had ever seen before. The creature was a strange pale color, although it ranged in flesh-like tones. It was tall...probably around eight or nine feet tall. It walked on two feet and had long, angular arms. Each point of the creature looked powerful, like it could ensure a world of damage...but that wasn't the scariest part. The scariest part was it's head.
The creature's head flared open like some kind of flower, if a flower had a large, black hole for a center and teeth on each of its petals. I swallowed down the bile climbing up my throat.
The creature let out an eardrum-shattering screech and I clapped a hand over my knees, my entire body shaking. It started to move towards the little girl, who let out a whimper and inched backwards. She wasn't ready. No one could possibly be fucking ready to face that...that thing.
"No!" I shouted, I sprinted to the wall and slammed my palm down onto the green button on the little control pad Peter had worked. I had no idea if it was the right button, but the gods must've been listening because the door to the room swung open, unlocking with a click. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.
"What have you done, you stupid girl?!" my father shrieked, rising to his feet, but I was already sprinting past him. I had to get her out. I had to save Fourteen.
I burst into the room, hearing what I thought was Peter yell my name, but I was moving too fast. I pumped my arms, remembering what the coach had yelled at the sprinters on the track team countless times before. Who said my managing experience wouldn't come in handy?
I heard the creature scream once more but my eyes were only on the little girl. I leaped forward and wrapped my arms around her and crouched down, as if I could somehow protect her from the great monster behind us.
I heard her sob, burying her face, wet with tears, into my neck. I squeezed my eyes shut, hearing the creature's pounding footsteps behind us.
Then, something happened. I felt some sort of tugging on my gut, and then light exploded, followed by an immense wave of heat. I had no idea what was happening, all I could do was hold Fourteen tighter. The last thing I remembered was the feeling of her small body in my arms before sheer darkness replaced the bright light, swallowing me whole.