The Experiment Facility discussion

((THORNE's cell- usually empty))

Thorne was sitting in her cell, perfectly free to leave when and if she wanted, but she was attempting something she hadn't for a long time. She had her eyes closed and was sitting on the ground, in a meditating pose. She was breathing deeply, with her tail curled around her in a wide arc and her glasses on the floor beside her. She took a deep breath, her small form moving nearly imperceptibly. She closed her eyes harder, as if that would help, but nothing happened. She closed her hands into fists, trying to remember who she'd been before she'd been here. She couldn't. She wouldn't. A cold sweat broke out on her forehead, and she breaths began speeding up, the brainwashing kicking in, but she didn't move. She couldn't move, it felt like. Suddenly she wasn't in her cell anymore and was instead handcuffed to a hospital bed, a young girl with fuzzy eyesight and a knack for breaking out of whatever sleeping, numbing or paralyzing serums, or poisons the scientists injected repeatedly into her veins. She had always been both hated and admired for that. Hated because she would never stay under it during surgeries, and admired because they used some really hard stuff, and most adults would be out for at least a couple of months with the stuff they were giving her. This time was particularly painful, as they were trying to replace her arm with a mechanical one. She usually went along with whatever it was that they were doing, but she was in so much pain, and her mouth was open, (screaming maybe?), but a gag had been tied in place and the handcuffs tightened. She jammed her eyes shut as hard as she could. They'd started the procedure. She tried to break out of the handcuffs, her hands were small enough to if she tried, and at least struggle, but there were arms holding her down, holding her in place for a searing, slow pain to cut into her. Her eyes dripped tears onto the crinkly paper on the bed. She wished and wished and wished for unconsciousness, but she stayed awake for her own dissection of her left arm. The lights above were so bright and the pain was so fierce.
Suddenly she was sitting in her cell again, shaking with tears on her face. She scrambled upright and, still violently shaking, waved her silver arm in front of the lock of the sealed door, unlocking it for the next second. She shoved the door open, not that it did any good, the doors were immovable by anything she'd ever tried in her fifteen years here. She rushed out into the corridor, the door immediately closing behind her, and sprinted past two guards who snickered in surprise when they saw her tears. She had always longed to prick them with her tail, see how they liked being paralyzed, but last time she'd even thought that, someone had seen the shift in her posture and called security. She'd been locked in her cell for three weeks with minimal food for that one. So, no, she wasn't treated like a guard, especially not by the guards. She took a left, trying to get to the back corner of the facility. But she was not an experiment anymore. All of them hated her. She didn't ever talk to them because she could see the hate on their faces. Last week, there'd been an escape and she'd had to- She had had to kill one of them. Just a small experiment, but it showed the others where she stood with it, and now treated her as such. She had been treated horribly by the higher-ups for that one. Guards were supposed to wait for orders, and were not supposed to kill experiments at any cost.
She hated when she did something wrong according to the facility. She hated being a cyborg. She hated being hated because of what she was. She hated pain. Tears had begun dripping down her face again, and she was unable to stop them. She passed another pair of guards who outright laughed at her and tossed a piece of trash at her. She ignored them, but the tears fell faster. She reached her small corner, just a nook she used to hide in when she was younger, but she still fit somehow. Her guard uniform became rumpled when she slid down, her tail curling beside her on the side that didn't have the wall to protect her. She continued crying, folded into the fetal position in her small safe haven. She huddled towards the wall, the name THORNE becoming no longer visible in the folds of her stiff uniform. It wasn't her real name anyways. She couldn't ever remember what her real name was, it had been the first thing tortured from her, becoming just number 25 and then THORNE. A cold, loud, prickly name that did not suit her at all. Her breathing sharpened, but started to slow down gradually. She glanced up when her heartbeat had slowed, and realized her shift would start very soon. She scooted out of the small nook and began walking back to her cell, where her shift orders would be given. The orders were always the same; to walk up and down every hallway at random so that there was no chance the experiments who were paying attention would figure out what she was doing. She thought she did this pretty well since she walked supernaturally fast, and ran much faster than any normal human athlete could dream of ever running. She arrived at her cell and took her orders silently. She began her walk, glad to see there was no other guards tonight.