Screams

He screamed. And screamed. But not for anything in particular. He had stopped screaming for help that would not arrive. He'd stopped screaming for those monsters in the lab coats to stop injecting him with that burning serum. He just screamed.

The door creaked open and he backed into a corner, as far away from his "visitor" as was possible. Looking up at the shadows of the hood that hid the newcomer's face, he gave a half-fearful, half-pleading look as he attempted to bite back his cries for the duration of this round of treatment.

"Please," he begged, rocking back and forth to try and keep his mind off the pain. "Please, help me..."

"Now, now," chided a feminine voice, sounding almost like a mother scolding her child. "Why would I do that, Lucas?" He cringed away from his own name as if it were airborne poison.

A well-manicured hand ruffled his sweat-dampened, filthy hair, in an a seemingly-almost affectionate way. He would have swatted her hand away, if only his arms hadn't been bound by the straight-jacket he'd been forced to upon his arrival in this nightmare of a facility. Instead he tried to duck his head, but to no avail, as the woman tightened her fingers around his ginger - now almost brown with sweat and dirt - hair.

"Listen, and listen well. We're not making progress in your case, and for you, that is a bad thing."

Lucas was silent, shivering under this woman's gaze.

"You don't have special abilities like the rest of those punks, do you?" she continued, not giving him a chance to answer. "You can't conjure weapons out of thin air, or bend nature to your will. I bet you can't even throw a punch on your own, wrapped up in those computers as you are.

"You wish you were like the rest, don't you?" The woman released his hair and hooked her fingers under the hood she had been wearing and pulled. The dark fabric settled around her shoulders, and her features were revealed to the student.

Lucas's eyes widened, and for a brief moment all he could feel was shock. No pain, no fear, only shock.

"S-Sable?" For the first time in days, or weeks, or however long he'd been here, his voice wasn't used for pleading or shrieking, but to phrase a single-worded question.

The woman before him was identical to his classmate. The same dark eyes and even darker hair, although the style in which it was cut was different. But he couldn't stifle the feeling of joy at seeing a familiar face, regardless of whatever he'd heard her say only moments before.

"Sable?" the doppelganger repeated. Her voice held mocking laughter, and a cruel smirk tugged at the corners of her ruby lips. "Perhaps the serum is taking its toll on  your mental functions," she mused as she carefully pulled from her pocket a thin medical syringe and a small bottle with a special lid, made to be punctured but without letting any fluid in or out without a needle. Inside the glass bottle was a clear liquid substance, with a barely noticeable greenish tint.

Lucas panicked immediately, fully aware of what the content of the bottle was and what the woman's intentions were even before the needle poked into the lid of the bottle and sucked the syrum into the syringe. He knew what it meant for him, and made no move to protect himself. There was nothing he could do, anyway; the straight jacket kept his arms incapacitated. The most he could manage was a soft whimper as the tip of the syringe came closer and closer.

He turned his head away, but surprisingly strong yet elegant fingers grabbed his jaw and forced him to keep eye contact with the mirror image of the person he'd found himself wanting to know better, before all the fear and pain that now filled both his waking hours and his sleeping ones.

Lucas could plainly see the frigid grin in those dark eyes. And the reflection of a dirty, terrified college sophomore with dark, bruise-like circles under eyes that refused to believe the truth in front of them.

And the screams began anew.