June’s POV
The door slamd shut.
I heard it—felt it more than anything—vibrating through my bones like an aftershock. Sothing cold and distant inside stirred, like a ripple beneath ice. I wanted to sit up. I wanted to scream. I wanted to ask Justin what he saw—what he thought when he looked at now.
But my mouth wouldn’t work. My tongue sat like a swollen thing in my mouth, foreign, heavy. My limbs were slack, trembling from sowhere deep in the marrow. My eyes darted, unfocused, unable to anchor to anything.
I felt the seatbelt tighten across my chest as the car turned on. The world outside blurred into streaks of shadow and dying light. I curled deeper into the seat, a child again. No. Not a child. Not really. Not anymore.
"She’s gone."
That voice again.
Feminine. Familiar.
It lived in the back of my mind, trailing through sleep, crawling out of corners in mirrors, humming lullabies I didn’t know I knew.
"No one ever ca for you."
It was true, wasn’t it?
No one had.
Not when I scread.
Not when the wires burned into my skull.
Not when they peeled back my skin with cold gloves and indifference, labeling my sobs as "data points."
"You were born wrong."
"No," I whispered, or maybe I didn’t. Maybe I only thought it. My mouth barely moved. My throat was raw. I tasted iron.
I blinked, and the car ceiling warped above , turning into white tile—into flickering fluorescents that buzzed like flies trapped in glass jars.
I blinked again, and I wasn’t in the car anymore.
I was back there.
Back in the lab.
Unit 6-B. Underground level. No na. No exit.
They didn’t call June there.
They didn’t call anything human.
Number Twelve.
Always Twelve.
Never a na. Never a girl. Just an object on a clipboard, a thing to be monitored. asured. Broken down and logged.
I was strapped to a table again. tal cuffs biting into my wrists and ankles. My spine pressed to sothing wet. A chemical spill. Or maybe it was mine—my blood, my piss, my tears. It all slled the sa here. Sterile and rotting.
Above , lights swung, shadows shifting like ghosts. Figures in white coats circled , their faces blurred, features lost to the fog of mory or madness. But I rembered their eyes.
Unblinking.
Cold.
Curious.
"Begin stimulation."
A switch flipped.
Electricity tore through . My body arched. My mouth opened in a silent scream, jaw cracking wide—but no sound ca out. The air itself seed too dense to carry it. The shock didn’t just hit my body. It cracked through my mind, lighting every nerve, every locked door in my brain.
I saw colors that didn’t exist. I saw myself from above. A child—no, the child. The one in the room across the hall. The one they said was my reflection. But she looked like . Spoke like .
"That’s you."
The voice hissed again, louder now. aner.
"You always thought you were soone else. Soone normal. You’re not. You’ve never been. You’re the experint."
I whimpered. Clutched at my ears. But I couldn’t move.
Another injection.
Sothing thick. Cold. It coiled through my veins like liquid glass. My arms twitched. My vision doubled. A siren wailed in my head.
"Test Subject Number Twelve displaying elevated resistance. Administer sedative."
No! I wanted to scream. Please—stop—!
Another prick. Another plunge.
Then darkness.
Then worse.
When I opened my eyes again, I was floating.
Suspended in thick fluid inside a tube. Tubes ran from my arms, my neck, my spine. I couldn’t move. I couldn’t scream. My mouth filled with so kind of oxygen gel.
Through the thick glass, I saw a woman with red hair, holding a clipboard, nodding. A man beside her wore mirrored glasses. I could see my reflection in them.
Pale skin. Shaven head. Bruised temple. That was .
That was you.
The voices were singing now. A nursery rhy.
"Little lamb, little lamb,
Tied down and cold,
What did they take from you?
What were you told?"
"The stars were fake.
The sky was steel.
The pain is proof
That none of it’s real."
I gasped—but my lungs didn’t work. The gel. I was drowning in it.
I scratched at the glass. Weak. Useless. My fingernails left no mark.
A hand—my own—reached out to from the other side.
But that couldn’t be right.
I was inside the tank.
So who was outside?
The face staring in looked just like mine.
Sa eyes. Sa scars.
She smiled.
Not kindly.
"I’m what you locked away."
And then she vanished.
The next mory ca like a broken reel of film.
Snap. Flash. Shudder.
I was in a room. Naked. Freezing. Lined up with other children. Numbers tattooed on our wrists. They kept telling us the injections would help us sleep.
But sleep didn’t co.
Only the voices.
Only the dreams of fire and blood and the sll of burning wires.
A boy next to —Number Nine—took my hand.
His was shaking.
He was the only warmth I had.
He whispered, "When we get out... I’ll find you again."
I believed him.
I still believed him.
Even now.
Even if I was too broken to tell him so.
"June."
The sound yanked back, like a hook in my chest.
Reality hit in pieces. Dashboard. Windshield. The steering wheel gripped in Justin’s hands. Trees speeding by in the dark.
His voice.
"June, can you hear ?"
I tried to answer.
My throat moved. A scratchy croak.
"Shhh. You’re okay now. You’re with . Just hold on."
But I wasn’t okay.
I wasn’t sure I was with him.
Because even now, behind my eyelids, the lab was still there.
The screams. The experints. The dark room where they locked when I didn’t cooperate. The cold voice through the intercom, always saying:
"Subject Twelve is beginning to destabilize."
Maybe I was.
Maybe I always had been.
The next wave of mory dragged down again.
This ti, I saw them putting sothing inside .
Not a chip. Not a tracker.
Sothing else.
Sothing alive.
It twitched. Moved. Burrowed behind my ribcage. I clawed at my chest, screaming.
I knew it wasn’t real.
I knew they were making hallucinate.
But knowing didn’t make it stop.
The shadows in my head laughed.
"You were never whole. Just pieces stitched together. They built you to break."
I sobbed. Curled tighter in the seat.
Justin’s voice reached again. Far away.
"Hold on. We’re almost there. You’re safe now."
But was I?
Was I ever?
What if the voices followed ?
What if I was the voice?
"You killed him."
No. I didn’t.
"Yes, you did. You enjoyed it. The fork. The blood. You liked watching him fall."
"I didn’t," I whispered. "I didn’t an to—"
"Then why did it feel so good?"
I pressed my hands to my ears. Scread into them.
Justin swerved. Reached for . Pulled over.
"June!"
I shrank from his touch. Crouched against the door.
"I’m not her!" I cried. "I’m not Number Twelve! I’m not!"
He froze. His face twisted.
Then he did sothing I didn’t expect.
He knelt beside , still and quiet. His voice didn’t rise. His eyes didn’t burn.
He just said, "Okay."
And sohow, that word—
Just that single word—
Cut through the noise louder than all the screaming in my head.
But I knew it wasn’t over.
The voices weren’t done.
The mories weren’t finished.
And neither was I.
Because sowhere out there—sowhere deep in the bones of the world—the people who did this to were still breathing.
And one day soon?
I was going to rember enough to find them.
And when I did—
They’d wish they’d left in the dark.
*****
The silence in the car didn’t last.
Not really.
Not for .
Because even as Justin knelt beside , even as he whispered calming words and tucked his coat around my shoulders, I heard them.
The voices.
The others.
I didn’t know how many there were. They were like echoes across a canyon, bouncing off my skull, overlapping, whispering over each other. So were sharp and cruel. Others were soft, seductive. But they all said the sa thing, in the end:
"He was just the first."
I closed my eyes.
I could still feel the fork in my hand. The jagged tal. The sickening pop as it sank into soft tissue. The crunch of bone. The heat of blood spurting against my cheek. His eye on the end of the prong, twitching.
And I hadn’t scread.
I hadn’t cried.
I had felt—light.
Unburdened.
"There are more monsters," they said. "You rember them now, don’t you?"
Yes.
Yes, I did.
Doctor Halverson. The one with the fake smile and trembling hands. Always afraid of his own creations. Always watching with revulsion even as he injected the glowing blue serum into my spine.
Dr. Mikka. The one who laughed during the electroshock trials. Who made watch Number Nine seize on the table across from mine, just to see if I’d react. If I’d bond. If pain could force empathy.
The guards who strapped us down. Who called us freaks. Who took bets on which of us would break first.
They hadn’t broken .
Not completely.
Not yet.
"Find them," the voices whispered. "Find them all. Make them beg."
I lifted my head slowly.
Justin was still beside , his hand warm on my arm, his mouth moving in careful words I couldn’t quite hear anymore. I blinked at him.
His eyes were full of worry.
Affection.
Maybe even love.
I didn’t want to see that right now.
It made weak.
Made human.
I looked out the window instead, at the long stretch of road disappearing into the woods. Trees pressed in from all sides. No cars. No people.
Perfect.
The part of that was still June whimpered.
But the part of that rembered being Number Twelve—the part that had spent years screaming inside locked rooms and drowning in tanks—leaned forward.
I imagined what I would do if they were in front of .
I wouldn’t use a fork next ti.
I’d use fire.
Or pliers.
Or acid.
The voices humd in agreent.
"They deserve it."
Yes.
They did.
They turned into this.
Into a broken thing made of voices and rage.
"They should be afraid of you."
Justin spoke again, dragging back.
"You’re safe now," he said. "I won’t let anyone hurt you."
My lips twitched into a smile.
It was... not the right smile.
It felt like it belonged to soone else—sothing else. Sothing deeper. Sothing old.
I turned to face him, tilting my head.
"Do you believe in justice, Justin?"
He hesitated.
"Yes."
I laughed quietly. There was no joy in it.
"Because I believe in vengeance."
His eyes searched mine. He looked confused. Concerned.
But he didn’t look afraid.
He should have.
Because I was beginning to understand what I was.
What they made .
What they unleashed.
And I wasn’t going to stop with the man in the kitchen.
He was the first.
The warm-up.
A test run.
The next ti... I wouldn’t stop until their bones were dust and their nas were erased.
"Good girl," the voices cooed. "Now let’s go hunting."
And I didn’t argue.
Not this ti.
Reviews
All reviews (0)