Runaways: Book II

XIII

"So what do you supposed we do now?" I asked, the two of us staring at the face of the Dorchester Medical Research building. It was massive, solid, and intimidating. It made me want to grab Peter's hand.
He peered down at me, then back to the building, shrugging his shoulders before replying,
"Wing it."
He proceeded forward and I tailed behind him. We walked through the front doors into a white tiled lobby with a giant desk and a lady in a gray uniform.
There was an eerie feeling, like the designers of the place were somehow trying to compensate for the darkness of the atmosphere with white furniture. It was too silent, too unnerving.
We walked to the desk and the lady gave us a fake smile, her eyes containing a creepy stare.
"Hello, how can I help you today?"
I looked over at Peter, too scared to get the words out of my throat. He spoke for me,
"We're wondering if we could visit a friend that was placed here."
There was a tense tone that filled the woman's voice,
"Oh, is that so? And what would be your friend's name now?"
"Boyce Coleman," I said while looking around, attempting to subtly peek down the hallways for any signs of danger.
The woman opened a drawer in her massive desk, flipped through some papers, and pulled out a tan folder, spreading its contents out along the desktop.
"Ah, yes. It says here Mr. Coleman was transported here by the Washington D.C. Police Department because he has a rare life-threatening condition that required specialized medical attention."
That was bullshit. All of it.
Two years ago when Peter and I were still finishing up high school, a woman in my neighborhood discovered Bo was a mutant. Next thing you know, the cops arrest him for "attempted assault" against the woman even though he hadn't seen her before in his entire life. Then, as you know, things got more complicated after that.
"Can we visit him?" Peter questioned.
"I'm sorry. We have a strict no-visitor policy to ensure our patients get as much rest as possible with no interruptions to ensure a speedy re..." the woman paused for a moment, glancing down at a sheet of paper taped to her desk, and then finishing, "recovery."
"What the hell? Are you reading off a script?" I asked with wide eyes.
She quickly pressed an red bottom and spoke into the intercom,
"Security, we have a code four. I repeat code fou—."

Peter's POV:
I quickly grabbed ___ by the waist and began to dash away from the front desk and down the hall, snipping the woman's ponytail away only because I had some time to spare.
I held ___, close to me. She was so damn distracting with the way her hair lazily swayed around her face from the speed. I grinned because it made her look like she was underwater.
She didn't know it, but the moment I saw her standing outside the car at the train station was as if she had never left at all. Like she was here and she was going to stay, and the delusion convinced me she still loved me.
I hadn't ever been serious about much in the world. But this girl, in my arms in those fractions of a second, was quite possibly the only thing I could ever take seriously.
But I knew she was going to leave again. I knew I was going to be alone again. And there was nothing I could do.
I'm never fast enough to catch her.

Your POV:
There was an instant of blurred vision, then Peter and I were standing in a hallway beside two steel doors, with red printing that read Laboratory 12A.
I took a deep breath and winced a bit at the headache the travel brought. I couldn't take the pain away because my powers were already gone, stripped away by the dose I had taken the night before.
"Thanks for getting us out of there, Peter."
He snapped out of a cloud of thought and gave me a bittersweet grin.
"Are you okay?" I asked.
He glanced back down to the floor and replied,
"Yeah, yeah. I'm all good."
"Are you sure?"
He laughed and reassured me more confidently,
"C'mon, ___. I'm awesome. As always."
I chuckled a bit, still suspicious, but replied anyway,
"Alright, then. Let's go."
We opened the doors to reveal a complete horror show. There were about a dozen mutants in the lab, a couple shivering, naked in concrete electrified cells. Most of them were scattered throughout the room, accompanied by people in white lab coats, recording data as they were strapped to equipment, screaming from the pain of the tests. There was blood, so much blood, and in that moment I didn't feel human anymore. I felt like an animal.
There was a sudden buzzing noise in my ear and I quickly whipped my head to the left to see a security guard beside Peter, tasing him in the neck.
"Pet-" I started, but soon felt an electrified burning in my side, then a pain throughout my body as it hit the floor and darkness consumed my vision.