Gluzze was in her cell crying softly. The cell was dark, and she was chained to the wall. She kept lowering her body temperature to numb the pain of both the metal cuffs on her wrists, as well as the many fresh scars crossing her body. The process didn't help though, as it still felt as if every bone in her body was breaking, no matter what she did.
Two guards threw Gluzze's cell door open, taking off her chains and dragging her by the scruff out of the room and into the bright, white hallway. Her eyes stung from the sudden change in lighting. She tried to stand to walk, but one of the guards immediately grabbed their electric baton and shocked her, making her scream in pain and fall limp as they continued towards a testing chamber.
The guards threw her into the chamber and locked the door as a voice came over the intercoms. "Today we will be studying the extent of your natural ice powers." They said in a monotone voice.
"You really think I'll show you?" Gluzze growled back. There was a pause, than the floor underneath her was electrified and she screamed out in shock, falling to the floor until it stopped. "You want to run that by us again?" The voice asked.
She glared at the plexiglass wall that separated her from the scientists behind, then proceeded to form a pillar of ice, trying to smash it through the wall. On contact with the wall, the ice shattered into a thousand pieces. In response, the scientist shocked the floor again.
Gluzze tried multiple more times to break the glass. and the process was repeated. After a bit, she grew fed up and formed a sphere of ice around herself to protect her form the floor. "Get the guards in here to get her out. No food for three days." The voice said.
Several guards walked in and broke the ice bit by bit until they got to her. After they made contact, they immediately started to shock her so she couldn't fight back to drag her back to her cell.
As they made their way out of the room, they passed two scientists in white lab coats. The two were talking, and one was holding a photo of some place outside of the laboratory. The scientist accidentally dropped the photo right as Gluzze and the guards were passing.
As soon as the photo came into view, Gluzze's eyes widened and she took it in. Within seconds, she disappeared into a cold mist and reappeared outside the lab, where the photo had been taken.
She stood up shakily, starting to run as fast as she could away from the facility. She heard alarms starting to blare behind her. She eventually remembered she could actually fly, so she opened her tattered wings and took off in a blur of feathers.
——
Stargazer was in one of the experiment rooms with a few scientists watching her. Always watching, always anticipating. She knew the guards beyond closed doors were itching for action. With that thought, she snapped her attention back to the task at hand. One of the scientists spoke, a younger zebra. "Okay, we want you to practice your interrogation skills. You know the drill." She said, no clear emotion in her voice.
She nodded slowly, and waited for them to un-handcuff her. She reached up to her ear and took out her earring. She winced at the sudden onslaught of thoughts around her. The earring stopped the thoughts from reaching her, but otherwise she could hear everything. But it was more than simply reading the mind.
The young coyote turned to the person in front of her. They were an older lion, probably about 45. "What secrets to you hold..." she muttered blandly, drawing closer to him. He was strapped firmly onto a chair, unable to move. He sported the tattered gray uniforms as the rest of the subjects.
"What have you done, what lingers in the back of your mind, locked inside that little box..?" She muttered to herself.
Their minds were so easy to navigate. It was the same wild river that jumped from place to place. These wild, unhinged minds surrounded her among the agony and suffering of the lab. She closed her eyes and reached into the depths of their mind. There were chains crisscrossing everywhere. This one was bad... very bad...
Star paused, eyes still closed. "I don't want to see it." She said. "You're going to see it. You can't just choose whomever you please for these things. Don't make me call the guards, just be a good puppy." One of the older scientists said. Power hungry. Looking for control. Star thought of them, but her ears simply flicked back as she did what she was told.
She continued her trek in the black abyss until she came upon a chest suspended in the sky by dozens of chains. She lost all knowledge of her body in the waking world as she pulled an imaginary mind-key out of her pocket. As soon as she heard the click of the chest opening, the lid broke open and memories started pouring out. Horrible images played in Star's head.
She screamed, stumbling backwards. "He did it. He murdered her, because she murdered her kid." She felt like she was going to puke, the memories flashing before her eyes. "The blood... the organs..." She shivered, backing away from the now screaming lion. She tried ripping away form the lion's mind.
"Take her back, this is the last on this level. This is getting too easy for her." The zebra said. "Yes, but we need to work on... emotional control." The older one noted as they called a guard in to take Star back to her cell. She clipped her earring back in.
She absentmindedly stared at the gray brick wall as they made their way down the winding halls back to her cell. These halls were so confusing, she still hasn't gotten a good mental map of the place.
Once they got back to the cell, the guard just shoved her in and locked it. She was generally trusted to not attack anyone or try to damage the cell. Besides, she was probably one of the youngest subjects in here. She barely remembered anything of her old life. She was taken away from her family when she was 10, but all she remembered were blurry images. She figured when they messed with her brain to give her powers, they also did something to her memories.
She paced back and fourth in the dark cell, not wanting to sit on the cold cement floor. Out of nowhere, the alarms to the building went off and the lights turned to red. She jumped in surprise, her fur bristling. Guards started leaving their posts and running to one side of the building. Star's eyes lit up and she reached for her pocket.
She had never thought this day would come.
She pulled out a bobby pin from her pocket. She had snatched it from a scientist's desk a while back. From her years of reading minds, she had definitely learned how to pick a lock. She started working on the lock through her metal door. Though the room was dark, she had developed a sort of night-vision from it. Soon she heard the lock click open.
She waited until the hallway was clear before running as fast as she could down the hall. She unclipped her earring again, and with that saw through the minds of people in the hall, and retraced their steps. She thought at one point she passed a short fox peeking their head out of a cell, but didn't pay attention.
Before long, she nearly ran straight into a scientist turning a corner. With quick thinking, she tripped them, stealing their ID card quickly before running to a door with a visible 'EXIT' sign above it. She scanned the card and took off out the door.
Outside was a bit of grass and a fence before a forest. The facility seemed to be in the middle of nowhere. As she climbed the fence, she glanced over her shoulder, seeing two figures. One was a particularly menacing black and red dragon, pointing his gun up at her, and the other was a cyan and green dragon who had the distinct grey uniform of a subject. They spread their wings and took off faster than her eyes could see. As she glanced back towards the black and red dragon, she saw he was running towards her. Behind him, the door opened and the fox she had glimpses earlier ran out with he was distracted. She hopped off the fence and took off into the forest.
——
Trippze was going on a patrol through the lab, whistling a strange tune. He wasn't really paying attention, and bumped into a short African Wilddog's shoulder, a scientist who had been going the opposite way. He faintly recognized her as Pheonix, supposedly his boss's girlfriend.
"Watch where you're— oh, hey kid." She had went from snarling to a smirk in the flip of a switch. "Oh, sorry 'bout that, wasn't watching." Trippze apologized.
Pheonix smiled. He couldn't tell what she was thinking as she turned to walk with him, a clipboard falling to her side. "It's fine, watcha whistling?" She asked. "Just some random tune that would play during training sessions as a kid. It just kinda stuck." He replied, glancing down.
"Oh, then you must've been here for a while." Pheonix said, tilting her head. "Here? No, raised in mercenary homes and assassins guilds around the place. I've been here for about the past three years. What about you?" He questioned.
"Oh, ever since Jaguar took over the building and remade it into the lab. So about 6 years?" She said, pondering. The red and orange flame markings on her fur swirled with unease. "What was this place like before the lab? Do you know?" Trippze asked curiously. "It was, ah, a storage facility." Pheonix replied, not expanding on that.
Their conversation was interrupted as the alarms started to ring through the facility, the lights flashing to red. Guards started to run by them. Trippze unclipped his gun from his side, ears perking. "Finally, something interesting going on." He said, following the guards running by.
Pheonix hesitated for a moment before shrugging and heading back to go find Jaguar. Trippze ran out of the lab and saw a very visible purple coyote on the fence in front of him. "I've got you!" He said, following them, not having a clear shot as they hopped down the fence and took off.
——
Star quickly took off into the woods, running faster than she ever had. She had no idea where she was going, but if she could get far enough away from the lab she would have time to think. She soon realized that the menacing dragon was tracking her though the forest. She weighed her options. She could continue running, which wasn't going to last her very long, or....
She quickly stopped and abruptly took a sharp turn in hopes of throwing the dragon off for a second. After a short while she reached a creek. Right at the edge of the creek, there was a tree with a thick, low-hanging branch. She jumped up, hauling herself high into the tree. She hid well, waiting for the dragon to catch up. It looked as if she had crossed the creek, but there would be no tracks on the other side.
Soon the dragon tracked her to under the tree. Star had glimpsed his mind a few times. His name was Trippze, and just from the small glimpses, she knew he was a psychopath.
He stopped abruptly under the tree. "Where'd ya go?" He questioned aloud, glancing around then down the creek, wondering off to check the surrounding area.
Star held her breath and didn't move a muscle, taking the opportunity to shift through Trippze's immediate thoughts. She then realized by reaching out that someone else was approaching. The fox from earlier. She spotted him, he was well camouflaged, hiding in a bramble bush. He was eyeing Trippze, before spotting Star in the tree. His eyes widened.
Star shook her head before pointing down to Trippze, then doing a 'shh' motion. Trippze sighed. "I fucking lost them. The boss is gonna be so pissed." He muttered, glancing around one last time before making his way back towards the lab.
Star relaxed a little and waited for him to leave before she did anything.
——
Back in the Laboratory, Jaguar hit a button in the main controls, silencing the alarms. The lab lit up again as he prowled through the halls. He had been in the middle of an important experiment and he was pissed. He started ordering the guards to take their posts again and take a headcount of the subjects.
Once he had gotten word that they had lost three subjects, he smiled in a barely controlled anger. "Really? And who's fault was this?" He asked one of the scientists who had been watching Gluzze. The scientist trembled, pointing to the one who had dropped the photo and sounded the alarm.
Without Jaguar having moved a single muscle, the scientist dropped to the ground, screaming and clawing at their eyes. "Find them." He said simply, leaving them.
