Forgotten

Chapter Seventeen: Avery

A/N:  The picture above is what Avery looked like before the war started between humans and demins. The song is the music that Ryan/Terrance hears during this chapter. If, for some reason, you cannot view the song it is called "I Don't Want to Set the World on Fire" by The Ink Spots.

Enjoy :)

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Avery stared blankly ahead, her eyes blind to her surroundings. She was like the walking dead, and I was hardly much better; all I could do was stare at her. I was afraid that if I looked away that she would disappear again...forever. It was Avery, MY Avery; she was standing so close to me...

"Ah, so nice of you to finally join us," Lance sounded annoyed. "Introduce yourself, my dear."

Avery's voice sounded cold and fake, like she was a robot reciting her lines. There was no emotion in her voice, no life, no color. "My name is Iris," Avery said.

"Wonderful," Lance said, he seemed amused at the entire situation, "Now, who is this?"

Avery turned to look at me. For an instant, a mere fraction of a second she seemed to recognize me. A shade of color returned to her vampire-pale skin and a bit of her former self was returned to her; until she seemed to remember that she was dead and returned to being nothing more than a living corpse.

"That is Ryan Terrance Wicket, a male of seventeen. He is our latest test subject and will prove to be our most useful one. His father is John Ethan Wicket, he is a human, status: deceased; his mother is Riley Jones Wicket, she is a-"

"Enough!," Lance interrupted, "We discussed this, Iris, you are not to tell the test subject anything whatsoever about himself or his heritage. I thought that had been clear, do not disobey me again, Iris. As you know, there are things worse than death that I can cast upon you."

The hatred I had towards Lance grew with each passing second. What had he done to my Avery?! It seemed as if she was only a corpse with a beating heart. She was nothing more than a puppet now, and Lance controlled the strings.

Avery seemed as unable to take her eyes off of me as I was to take mine off of her. She had eyes of violent purple that never seemed to blink. Her hair was tangled, but it was clean, her skin was white as snow, yet full of bruises and I could see gashes across her arms and face that had long scared over. She looked so ghastly thin that she could've gone through the holocaust. When was the last time she had gotten a proper meal? Or a warm bed? Or been shown any kind of decency? These monsters who claimed to be so civilized had treated my sweet, innocent Avery worse than a goddamn criminal. Death seemed like it would've brought upon her a sweeter kiss than that of Lance's snake from hell.

"Yes, master, I apologize, I got overly excited for a moment," Avery's voice remained at the same monotonous tone, never showing any kind of emotion or intrigue at anything. "Please excuse my mistake."

Oh, my sweet darling, what have they done to you? I thought, I dare not say anything aloud, my tongue was too tied up in knots for me to form even a word, let alone a complete, comprehendible sentence.

"I forgive you, my dear, though do try to be more careful, you wouldn't want to ruin everything like last time, now would you?" Lance asked, "You will look at me when I am talking to you! I thought you had been trained better, girl!"

Avery just barely twitched, the slightest of all movements; I almost missed it entirely, but I knew her better than anyone. I hadn't seen her in nearly a year, but I still remembered how she would always twitch like that when something upset her deeply, but she wanted to conceal that it even bothered her at all. She quickly pried her eyes away from me and looked back towards Lance.