Binary Love (18+)

Lab Rats

"After my parents died, I lived in the slums of Tsukimi. My family had never been wealthy, but had been fairly successful smugglers, so I knew just enough to survive at first. I lasted about a year by myself until I needed to run with others; it's not safe to be a young girl without some type of protection. That's when I paired up with Joon and his older brother Tae."

Nova gave a soft snort of laughter when she remembered how she met the two brothers. Both were older than her at the time, and had far more experience living on the streets, but were completely chaotic in their heists. It had been a partnership made in heaven for Nova; all she had to do was teach them everything she knew about smuggling, and in return the boys protected her from the scum that walked that moon's surface.

"They were good to me. We spent about two years together before we were finally caught and placed in an Earth Tech orphanage. When we got there we were treated so well. We were given everything; food, safety, education... We couldn't figure out why others had tried to warn us away from there."

"I shone in that environment - this was my chance to earn my way out of poverty, and I just seemed to have a natural aptitude for science. But the brothers..." She rubbed her temples, as if trying to keep the memories at bay, but the flashes of images just wouldn't stop. "They weren't bad at anything, as such, but they weren't exceptional. They were loyal though, and the three of us were never apart. In the end we all ended up working for Earth Tech, but they were placed into a separate department. We drifted apart until content between us all stopped entirely."

"Time passed and one day I just wanted to make contact with them again. Even though I had made friends with Rosalind and Harou, it's incredibly lonely working in an environment where everything is so secretive. I knew it was probably going to be a bit difficult getting in contact with them, but I was shocked when my supervisors completely shut down my request and made it clear that under no circumstances should I seek to take it further."

"It was like waving a red flag at a bull. I've never seen her so angry." Harou flashed his teeth in a grin, letting out a few chuffs of laughter. Despite being an Alpha, always demanding obedience and respect for himself, he found it entertaining when Nova fought against any type of authority. She probably seemed like some kind of small, hairless yapping dog to him.

"Damn right I was pissed. I may have owed a lot to Earth Tech, but I owed more to those men than they could ever comprehend." Folding her arms, Nova lent back further into her chair and stretched out her legs. "It took me a little while, but I constructed some spy tech and whipped up a couple of sneaky trojans to try and find out where they had gone."

"What I found..." She shut her eyes tight, trying to stop her eyes from leaking and to keep a tight grip on her composure. Her throat suddenly began to swallow her spit excessively - as if working triggered into some kind of spasm from her anxiety spiking. "It turns out that all the orphans that don't make the cut to work in the labs are still utilised. Some get placed in admin, some in security, that sort of thing ... others are sex trafficked, or are used in clinical trials."

Even with her eyes closed, trying to seek some safety in the darkness, she could feel warm tears start to gently trickle down her face.

She remembered when she had sat down at her terminal that day ... She had felt so smug - so proud of herself - about her research, until she had opened up those hacked files.

A 'prodigy', a 'genius', they used to call her...

When in reality, she was just a gullible idiot.

"It turned out that Tae and Joon had been put forward for a specific clinical trial. Other children were also put forward, but it seems that they were the more successful 'experiments'..." Nova let in a shuddering breath, her voice cracking over her words. "Dr. Haber was the lead for that trial, he was also my direct supervisor at the time. It turned out that my research on cybernetics had been used on these children. Some of them had been used in other trials, and had been left horribly scarred and missing limbs, and others were perfectly healthy, like Tae and Joon... They - they cut them up. Just chopped parts off, so that they could replace them with my cybernetic limbs and organs. A lot of the children died, or ran into complications, because my research was nowhere close to truly being ready for clinical trials. But Earth Tech pushed it through, not just because it was a product they wanted to sell, but because they wanted to create their own cyborg rent-a-army. They wanted to weaponize my research!"