One

Chapter Seven: The Lost Sister

-Hawkins, Indiana, 1971-
The four-year-old, red-haired girl sat in the cold metal chair, a glass of water sat on the table in front of her. Across the table, a man sat in a similar metal chair. He leans on the table, his arms crossed as he watches the girl.
"Can you show us what you can do, One," he asks the girl.
The girl glances at the man, "yes, Papa."
Her eyes trained on the glass, on the water inside of it. She had already shown that she could control and even produce fire, especially when upset, but the man sat before her had a theory, and if he was right, then this girl could very well be the strongest weapon this world had ever seen.
The girl's eyes narrow in concentration, the water ripples in answer. Her hands clenched into tiny fists, trying harder and harder to do what the man asked her, she knew what would happen if she didn't.
Back then, when Phina had been the first experiment, Hawkins Lab was a lot crueler. They didn't see her as the child she was but the weapon they were trying to make her. Her very first memory of that place was probably the worst one.
-1970-
She had exploded in a fiery temper tantrum that every three-year-old has. The only problem was, she wasn't just any three-year-old. She was a toddler with the ability to control fire. So when she exploded in rage, she actually exploded, sending out a wave of fire in all directions, scorching the room she was kept in. The men and women who did experiments on her had expected this, that she would explode like this when angered, so they had made precautions.
Men in fireproof suits had stormed her room, scaring the poor girl so much that her fire winked out on the spot, but they didn't stop. They grabbed her, ignoring her screaming pleas for help. "Papa! Papa," she screamed, struggling in their grip, "Papa help! Papa!"
He didn't come to save her. He watched as they threw her into a metal container. He watched as they shut her in that dark room. Her fear ignited her fire again, trying to melt the metal, anything to get out of there. Then they turned on the machine, a vacuum that sucked the air from the chamber.
They were suffocating her, suffocating her fire. She gasps for any air she can, her fire winking out at the lack of oxygen to fuel it, or her to sustain it. She fell to her knees, her lungs screaming for air. Through a small window, she saw him, standing there, watching her struggle for air, no hint of remorse. They didn't open the door until she had passed out.
After that, Phina had done everything they had asked. She pushed herself past the physical limits of her frail body, all so she wouldn't have to go back to that metal chamber. She did everything she could, but it was never enough for them, never enough for him. That was the first time she had gone to the chamber, but not the last.
She wasn't the only one though, no, when she was there, there had been another girl, Two, a small girl that was a year younger than Phina. She didn't last long.
-1972-
The screaming hurt her ears. Usually, it was her own screaming that she heard, but this time, it was her sister's. Two had done something bad, and Papa wasn't happy with her. One had tried to plead with Papa, tell him that it was all her fault, but he would not listen. Two was going to the chamber for the first time, One had gone many times but Two had never. Papa was making her watch as he usually made Two watch.
Two struggles in the bad men's arms, her arms swinging wildly as she screamed for help.
"Sissy," she screams, "help."
Tears streamed down One's cheeks, there was nothing she could do to help Two. If she tried, One would face the same punishment, or an even worse one. The men throw the small blonde girl into the chamber, her screams becoming muffled as the door shuts. One wants to turn away, Papa won't let her. He holds tight to her arm, forcing her to stay still.
With a nod from him, the machine is turned on. Two screams and screams. She didn't know. One had learned to conserve her breath, Two didn't know, she didn't know.
They didn't turn it off soon enough, didn't open the door soon enough. When they pulled her limp body out of the chamber One already knew that her sister was gone, lost, never to return. Her already pale skin was worse, tinted blue. The usual red in her cheeks was gone. Her pale blue eyes stared at One, piercing her soul yet not seeing.
One's knees go weak, no longer able to support her weight. Just five and she had already seen more than most adults have in their entire lives. Her sister, Two, just four-years-old, was gone, taken by the monsters that had owned her life from the moment she was born. Her sister lost forever. Lost, lost, lost. Gone. She was gone.
Fire, water, earth, they had come to her one after the one, but air, the last element, it had not. It had not worked. The scientists had tried, putting her through test after test, even dropping her off a ledge to see if she could use the air to catch her. It never worked, and they put her in the chamber to punish her each time. Papa was starting to believe that she would never be able to control air, that she had only been gifted with the three elements. Maybe they were right, maybe she hadn't been gifted air at first, maybe she never would have gotten it. If not for them, she probably wouldn't have.
The men and women in the room begin to gasp for air as she had done so many times before. They claw at their throats as the air is taken out of their bodies, as the air around them becomes thinner and thinner. The thing they had used to punish her now became their punishment.
Next to her, Papa's grip loosens as he falls to his knees, gasping for air that would not come. He watched her in horror and amazement. His hand falls from her and she stumbles away from them, the monsters that tormented her.
Her tears still stream down her face, the image of her sister's cold eyes staring at her. Behind her, she hears the monsters coughing, air coming back into their lungs, the farther she got away from them, the less her powers worked on them. She runs faster, her tiny legs moving as fast as they could. She didn't know where she was going, but she knew she had to run fast. She found a set of stairs and ran up them, setting the door behind her on fire in hopes of slowing down whoever they send to capture her.
She searches three floors, suffocating anyone she comes across as she goes before she finds a door that leads outside. The air outside is freezing, seeping through the thin material of her blue dress. Snow is falling, not that she would know what it was. Her bare feet turn red and go numb as she runs. She reaches a fence, with her tiny fists, she grabs the metal and melts it. She crawls through the hole, bolting away from the searching lights. She runs and runs and runs until her legs can no longer support her.
One trips, rolling down a large, steep hill. Cuts and scratches appear all over her body as she rolls down. At the bottom waits a large rock, one that her head hits. If she was any other kid, she would have screamed and cried, but she had been conditioned not to. So she just stumbled to her feet, fighting the blurriness in her vision as she tried to run again. She trips, falling onto her stomach. The blur turns to black dancing across her vision. When she tries to push herself up again, her arms give out. Snow covers her body as she slowly loses consciousness.

-1391 words- IMPORTANT A/N AT THE END
Whew, a completely OC chapter? That was rough. I had been pining over what I was going to do for this episode for a while now and this was just a kind of spur of the moment ordeal. I thought it was about time I gave you so more glimpses into Phina's past and I hope you caught onto the whole, "The Lost Sister" play I did. Next chapter will be back to normal but I really hoped you enjoyed this one! So I just finished writing the last chapter of this story right before posting this chapter, I love the way it ends and I hope you all are ready for the last two episodes because they are a whirl to get through, Chapter Eight having five parts and Chapter Nine having SEVEN parts. Get ready for this!
-Morgan