Lackluster

Nightmare

"Good Morning, my little pet. How are you feeling? You have had quite an interesting time these past few days. Your training, your newfound power, your amputation..." He pauses here reaching out to mockingly pat her cheek as he hisses his last words. "Your escape attempt."

The young woman groggily looks at the man as he touches her and yawns; she chooses to ignore his clear annoyance and focus on his question instead.

"I slept well enough. My body is still sore from my training with Mikhail yesterday."

She suddenly notices a quiet rustling coming from behind the man and leans up to get a better look. There is a small woman standing beside a mobile cart. She is pretty with long black hair pulled back in a half ponytail with her bangs framing her round baby face. The woman has mahogany-colored eyes with coral pupils and her left eye sports a scar causing it to be slightly malformed and smaller than the other. She wears a black and brown tight-fitting dress under her lab coat, and her right ear was adorned with a chain and cuff earring, a small intricate fox head dangles from one of the chains.

"Ahh. I see you've noticed my little assistant. Originally she worked at the main lab but because of her familiarity with the Elementium project, I had her transferred here to assist with your progress. You'll be seeing more of her. Assistant, introduce yourself."

The woman seemed hesitant to speak to Y/N and refused to make eye contact. After a short moment of awkward silence, she speaks up in a quiet voice.

"I am...Renee. Lord Dottore is correct, I am here to assist with his project."

'His...project? Is that all she sees me as?'

Y/N frowns slightly at Renee's words. ...but she supposed she couldn't blame her. That would certainly be the easiest thing for someone working for him to do. She knows that many of his subjects do not survive and so far she has been lucky. One day he could very likely kill her. Either from a failed experiment or because he simply grew tired of her. The woman swallowed anxiously at the thought.

"Nice to meet you."

The other woman nods slightly as she begins opening drawers on the cart. She meticulously prepared the various tools before laying them out on the work surface. The utensils look like the ones he usually uses to perform his physical assessments. The last item to be placed on the tray is a medium-sized machine attached with electrodes and a screen. Her brow creases.

"Are you...about to perform an examination?"

The man smiles eerily. "Quite perceptive of you little one. You are correct, my Assistant has brought the tools needed to perform a head-to-toe examination of your body."

"Again? You have already done several evaluations!" She really doesn't want to deal with this so early in the morning.

"Not since you were infused with the Elementium. It is imperative that we keep track of your condition after introducing a foreign substance into your body. This way if there are any nasty side effects, we can address them as they appear."

"You haven't seemed all that intent on checking up on me since then. It has been weeks now. What changed?"

"Your body hadn't had the time to fully adjust to the changes. In order to gather accurate results from the examination, we had to be sure the Elementium had fully taken root inside you. This is the opportune time for side effects to make themselves known. Besides, Néos has been keeping a close eye on your progress to warn us if anything went wrong." The man suddenly stops as if he is considering something. "Waiiiiiiit. You didn't think the boy was watching you out of the goodness of his heart did you?" He sneers, "He's one of us."