:) |A Fragment of Us|:) (A Found Family Fanfic)

Chapter One - The Before|Part One

"Mom, if you would just listen to me! Please!" A voice echoed from the depths of the darkness that contorted my vision.

"You lying filth! You dare sully the good name of our protector under my roof!" 

A vicious mockery roared boisterously just out of reach. Unattainable voices bouncing around in the isolated confines of my mind. Laughing at me in an eerie rerun of the same scornful expression like an old sitcom laugh track, but with the sole purpose of taunting you relentlessly for past mistakes that are forever beyond salvation.

The recurring nightmare of everlasting torment ripped me from my dreams setting me into another restless night. Memories spiraling in my mind. I knew I couldn't let it show through or affect my work. I had to be perfect. Flaws of any kind were undeniably dangerous. If they saw even a hint of remorse or a glint of regret I'd be condemned.

    Steadying my breathing I counted to ten and back again. The only sanctity of normalcy in this compound was the guarantee of enduring the same shadow-bound terror every time I closed my eyes to sleep. It visited my limp sleeping body, breeching my feeble defenseless mind every night for the past six years like clockwork. Sometimes my brain would refrain from waking me for larger periods of time leaving me on the precipice of damnation till the last possible moment. Other times my heart rate would skyrocket from the internalized exhaustion that my body wakes itself without me being forced to claw my way out.

    "Soldier 247, report to training room 3." The booming voice resonates over the intercom throughout the cell that these people call 'home.'

    This foreboding confinement was anything but my home. It was everything but my home. It was my prison, my hospital, my school, my workplace, and the physical embodiment of all my fears. But it was not my home.

    The heavy fall of footsteps marching in tow of one another sent a chill down my spine. In the almost twelve years I've been at ARCANE, I never could get used to the robotic rhythm of our day-to-day tasks.

    Entering the desolate training room, my heartbeat picked up speed. My face didn't show it, though. Letting your face betray you is a rookie mistake I learned to avoid in the earlier years rather quickly. The fluorescent lights above were dimmed just enough to cast a shadow over the face of the man across the room.

    The floors held scattered wet spots, presumably damp from the morning cleaning. The water smelled faintly of ammonia and bleach. The compound made us clean using the poisonous solution so that we would never be at full mental capacity. It was only one of the many ways they controlled us and kept us in line.

    The walls soared upward, higher than a geyser in Yellowstone. ARCANE tried to make every room seem enormous so that we would always feel small. Always.

Yet another one of their manipulation tactics. They had an over abundance of those.

The man on the other side of the room wore a mask that covered only his nostrils and his mouth to prevent him from inhaling the fumes that we were forced to endure. The man's neck held a shimmer of liquid, perspiration, perhaps he was nervous. His heart beat was rapidly increasing at a rather alarming rate. He was nervous. Something was wrong. His smooth uncalloused hands were tapping away at the table in a sporadic rhythm. Something was wrong. His pupils, though difficult to see in the shadows, with my heightened senses I could tell were overly dilated. Something was wro-

    "I assume you're taking in my appearance right now, are you not? Noticing the sweat, the elevated heart rate, the mannerisms, the constant state of anxiety? I would expect no less from a mutant like you. Now let's get to business, shall we?" The instructor addressed me from the end of the table.