Broken Away

Experiments

"Chase?" Eric whispered, his hand gingerly pressed against the glass to Chase's cell. Chase cringed into the corner more, as if she was avoiding lava. Her shoulders started heaving up and down as she started to take in massive amounts of air with every breath. Her hair was matted and worn down, wispy strands draping across her shoulders and face. In all the time that Eric knew Chase, he had never seen her with her hair down. It was a look that was foreign to him, especially with the state her hair was in.

Chase started screaming. "Please," she begged, "don't hurt me."

"Chase, I'm not gon—"

Arms wrapped around Eric and pulled him back. People in white jumpsuits ran down the corridor from what Eric thought was a dead end. Reni pulled away from Eric and pushed a button on her handheld remote, which caused the box holding Chase to go completely black.

"What are you doing here, Prince Eric?" Reni said, her tone respectful but strained.

"What are you doing to Chase?"

"I'm performing procedures that do not concern you," she replied. The people in jumpsuits rushed into Chase's cell while it was still black.

Eric's fists clenched once more, "I am the prince and you will tell me what procedures you're performing on my prisoners."

"You barely have any jurisdiction over them," Reni retaliated.

"But I do have jurisdiction over you. What are you doing to the prisoners, Reni?"

The jumpsuit-wearing workers exited the cell. The cell's walls slowly became clear again, revealing Chase unconscious on the ground. Reni sighed and waved the workers away. They went back down the corridor. Reni glanced at Chase before looking at Eric, who was trying his hardest to not look at Chase's body on the ground. He could only wish that they hadn't killed her.

"I was instructed to perform experiments on her."

Eric looked down at Reni, "I'm sorry, but what do you mean by 'on her'? Are you only performing experiments on Chase?"

Reni shoved her hands in her pockets, causing Eric to be wary since she could pull out a weapon at any moment. He had seen how she had injected Chase with whatever was in that syringe.

"I only perform the experiments on Chase. The other prisoners are the ones that get the basic treatment."

"Which is?"

Reni shrugged, "a mixture that'll make their minds completely blank. They'll stay that way until they reach the end of their sentence."

"What are the experiments, Reni?" Eric said, his voice almost getting caught in his throat.

Reni inhaled slowly, "I've created different elements that make one experience mental pain. Let me put it this way. When you embarrass yourself, that scene replays in your head no matter how hard you try to erase it from your memories. When it comes to trauma, the brain usually glazes over it to make the event fuzzy and hard to remember correctly. My experiments were to bring out those memories so that they replay in your head like an embarrassing memory."

Throughout Reni's explanation, Eric's fingers were digging deeper into his palms, "were?"

"That was the original experiment. I then took it a step further by making the memory even more painful than it is. For example, Chase probably sees y—everyone telling her she's unloved."

"That is mental torture, you said before that someone instructed you to do this. Who did so?"

Reni looked over her shoulder at Chase, "that's the point, Eric," she turned back to him, "it's a new method of torture more unbearable than physical pain. Lexi wanted me to create—"

"Lexi has no jurisdiction over you. My father does."

"That's where you're wrong, sweetie," the voice of his fiancée drifted through the corridor as her boots clicked across the smooth floor.

"Reni," Lexi said, "get back to work. I want something that makes her burn like the piece of trash she is."

"It's technically—"

Lexi rolled her eyes, "no one cares, Reni. Just do what I tell you if you value your family's life."

Reni bowed her head down, "sorry, Lieutenant," she whispered before hurrying off in the direction the workers went.

"This is illegal, Lexi," Eric said as soon as Reni's footsteps couldn't be heard.

"Laws don't apply to me, Eric."

"They do. What you're doing is wrong and inhuman."

"Great, I'm a crocodile, are we done now?"

"Father wouldn't have allowed—"

Lexi pushed Eric against an empty cell's wall, her hand around his throat, slightly choking him, "if you tell your father about this, I swear I will slit your girlfriend's throat myself. Do what I say or lover boy won't have someone to love. Besides, your father wanted to execute her. The only reason he didn't do so is because I convinced him not to. He knows of the experiments, he just doesn't know what they do. And he's not finding out anytime soon, got it?"

Eric clenched his jaw, "why are you even doing this? This doesn't benefit you in any way, just leave her alone."

Lexi smiled, removing her hand from his throat, "I needed a lab rat to figure out how to claim the king is mentally ill."